When your car’s check engine light flicks on, the first thing that pops into your head is probably how much is this going to cost me?” But new data show that for newer cars about half the time the problem is often as simple as a loose gas cap. Inspect the repair shop and ask questions. Look for a clean, well-organized facility and make sure the shop has updated equipment, such as handheld computer scanners and diagnostic software. These systems and tools are necessary to diagnose and repair your vehicle accurately, which will save you money.
Nearly every facet of your regular maintenance, or tune-up, in car speak, is easy to do yourself. Each part of a tune-up is a separate procedure, so we’ve broken it down into individual sections that guide you through the process. With regular maintenance, your car will last longer and run better over time. We’re not going to walk through each of these, but you’ll find how-to guides by clicking the link on each section.
Finding a scratch, dent, or ding on your vehicle can be gut-wrenching. Trying to establish the depth of a scratch will help you decide which approach to take. For a first-timer, undertaking the touch-up paint process for either a clear coat or primer scratch is relatively straightforward. On the other hand, deep paint layer scratches can double the length of the home process and may newbies uneasy. If it is your first time repairing a scratch and it is deep, exposing the metal underneath, using a body shop may be your best bet.
When the check engine light pops up on the dashboard of our car, it sends many of us into detective mode. Amateur sleuths love to try and figure out why the engine light has come on and what problem may be lurking under the hood. But a lot of damage can be done poking around under the hood of a car. And the reality is that unless you own very expensive automotive diagnostic equipment, the chances of you getting to the bottom of the mystery are slim at best. Truth is that the engine light could be on simply because your gas cap is not screwed on tight enough, or because your car is overheating and the engine is about to blow. The range of reasons is that large and dramatic. Best to get a mechanic to hook your car up to a diagnostic machine and source the problem for you. A diagnostic test on a car typically runs about $100 to $130.
Head gaskets fit between the cylinder block and the head and they keep the combustion chambers, oil and cooling systems sealed and separate – until they fail. That’s when you get oil or water in the cylinders, lots of smoke from the exhaust and a marked downturn in your popularity with the neighbors. It can be worse still if water gets into the cylinders because water doesn’t compress. Annoyingly, the head gasket itself is pretty cheap, but the labor involved in getting the head off and milling it (don’t skimp on the head resurfacing) is pretty huge.
If you can drain and refill a bathtub, you can do an oil change. Doing it yourself doesn’t make you the Orville Wright of Chevy Berettas. What an oil change will do is force you to crawl under your car and have hot liquid spill down your hand and possibly your face. You’ll need to extract the filter, which is great fun if you think your knuckles have too much skin. Then you need to safely get rid of the old oil, which won’t happen before you step in it, knock it over, or otherwise replicate Deepwater Horizon in your driveway. Do you know what’s easier? Pay the guys who do this every day and can knock it out in ten minutes.
While repairing your automotive, you can also check your headlight to make sure whether they need to replace. You can buy the 6000K 9006 led bulb on the website.