Tips To Extend the Life of Your Car
Care and Maintenance Tips Keep Your Car Running in Top-Notch Condition
We’ve compiled our best expert advice, surprising tricks, and car care tips to prolong the life of your automobile!
6. Lighten up your key chain
Does your car key share a chain with a dozen or more other keys? That’s a pretty heavy load hanging off the car key when it’s in the ignition.The weight, combined with bouncing while you drive, can wear out the tumblers inside the ignition and eventually lead to ignition switch failure.To add years of service to your ignition switch, purchase a lightweight key chain that allows you to separate your ignition key from the others. Drive with only the ignition key in your ignition. If your ignition key “sticks” when you try to turn on the car, it’s a warning that your ignition switch is about to fail. Replace it before you get stranded.
Tips To Extend the Life of Your Car
Care and Maintenance Tips Keep Your Car Running in Top-Notch Condition
We’ve compiled our best expert advice, surprising tricks, and car care tips to prolong the life of your automobile!
5. Go easy when you’re stuck
When stuck in mud or snow, don’t make the problem worse by damaging an expensive component. Gently rocking in an attempt to free the car is fine. But if it looks as though you’re really stuck, don’t keep at it. Throwing your car from forward to reverse repeatedly, as well as spinning tires at high speeds, can generate lots of heat and spell trouble for transmissions, clutches, and differentials. It may be cheaper in the long run to call the tow truck rather than risk big repair bills down the road. It’s a good idea to carry a traction aid in the trunk, such as sand, gravel, or cat litter.
Tips To Extend the Life of Your Car
Care and Maintenance Tips Keep Your Car Running in Top-Notch Condition
We’ve compiled our best expert advice, surprising tricks, and car care tips to prolong the life of your automobile!
4. Don’t fill up if you see the tanker
If you happen to see a gasoline tanker filling the tanks at your local gas station, come back another day or go to a different station. As the station’s underground tanks are being filled, the turbulence can stir up sediment. Sediment in your gas can clog fuel filters and fuel injectors, causing poor performance and possibly necessitating repairs.
Today’s drivers have access to a multitude of tech tools that make travel easier: in-car GPS, telematics services, smartphone apps, and so on. But a new survey suggests that those tools aren’t helping younger drivers keep their cool on the road.
The study comes from marketing firm Galaxy Research, which conducted interviews with 1010 drivers across Australia and uncovered some very interesting trends:
- Drivers from Generation Y (i.e. people born between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s) are three times more likely to make erratic decisions than those in other peer groups.
- Fully 20% of Gen Y drivers said that they would duck down a side street rather than get stuck in oncoming traffic. (By contrast, only 6% of Baby Boomers said the same.)
- One-third of Gen Y drivers say they have a poor sense of direction.
- Of all peer groups, Gen Y was the most likely to get lost while driving.
What does this mean?
At least one researcher — Mark McCrindle — claims that Gen Y’s problems are rooted in overstimulation. People from this generation grew up with cable TV and the internet, and they’re rabid consumers of social media. According to McCrindle,Gen Yers are bombarded with information, and as a result, they’re less able to filter out irrelevant data and focus on what’s important — for example, getting through a clogged intersection.
The problem is, we hear this sort of argument all the time in a variety of contexts, and we don’t fully buy it.
What the report fails to address is Gen Y’s lack of driving experience compared to their elders. Sure, some may have short attention spans, but they also haven’t been driving nearly as long as their parents or grandparents. It seems logical to believe that Gen Yers are naturally more likely to get lost or stressed while driving.
Another possibility that the study avoids — and one that seems very plausible — is that Gen Y drivers in particular have become so dependent on tech toys, they have a hard time making decisions without them. For example, if traffic suddenly changes before the GPS has a chance to catch it, drivers who aren’t used to managing such crises could be at a loss.
The Australian Driver Stress Survey might’ve skipped mentioning that possibility because the study was commissioned by a manufacturer of those very tech toys: Navteq. That fact, paired with pat psychological analyses like McCrindle’s, makes us somewhat wary of the survey’s final analyses. After all, Navteq stands to benefit a great deal from creating concerns about Gen Y drivers: if Navteq can prove that Gen Y drivers are disadvantaged, it can leverage that data to encourage sales to Gen Y consumers (and their loving parents, of course).
That’s not to discount the study entirely — in fact we have the utmost faith in the stats it uncovered. However, we approach the analysis of those stats with more than a little caution. We recommend you do the same. We also encourage you to check Antony Ingram’s suggestions for minimizing stress behind the wheel.
Tips To Extend the Life of Your Car
Care and Maintenance Tips Keep Your Car Running in Top-Notch Condition
We’ve compiled our best expert advice, surprising tricks, and car care tips to prolong the life of your automobile!
3. Buy gas at reputable service stations
Ask whether the gas you buy is filtered at the pump and if the station has a policy about changing the pump filters regularly. If you get a song and dance, find another gas station. Some stations don’t have pump filters, making you more vulnerable to dirty gasoline. Other stations may not mix alcohol and fuel properly — or worse, water down their product. Find a station you trust and stick to it.
Tips To Extend the Life of Your Car
Care and Maintenance Tips Keep Your Car Running in Top-Notch Condition
We’ve compiled our best expert advice, surprising tricks, and car care tips to prolong the life of your automobile!
2. Drive with care everyday
Being car considerate shouldn’t stop after the break-in. Drive with care every day and your car will reward you with longer intervals without repair.
- Do not race your car’s engine during start-up.This is a quick way to add years of wear to your engine, especially if it’s cold outside.
- Accelerate slowly when you begin your drive.The most wear to the engine and drive train occurs in the first ten to twenty minutes of operation.
- Warming the engine by letting it idle in the driveway is not a smart idea.The engine doesn’t operate at its peak temperature, resulting in incomplete fuel combustion, soot deposits on cylinder walls, oil contamination, and ultimately damaged components.
- Put less strain on your engine and automatic transmission by shifting to neutral at red lights. Otherwise, the engine is still working to push the car even while it’s stopped.
- Avoid driving at high speeds and accelerating quickly, especially when it’s very hot or very cold outside. Such driving behavior will result in more frequent repairs.
- Extend the life of your tires with careful driving. Observe posted speed limits. Avoid fast starts, stops, and turns. Avoid potholes and objects on the road. Don’t run over curbs or hit the tire against the curb when parking. And, of course, don’t burn rubber.
- When turning your steering wheel, don’t hold it in an extreme right or left position for more than a few seconds. Doing so can damage the power-steering pump.
- Consolidate your short driving trips. Most of the wear and tear — as well as the pollution your car generates — takes place in the first few minutes of driving. Doing several errands at once, during low traffic hours if possible, will keep your engine happier longer.
Tips To Extend the Life of Your Car
Care and Maintenance Tips Keep Your Car Running in Top-Notch Condition
We’ve compiled our best expert advice, surprising tricks, and car care tips to prolong the life of your automobile!
1. Be patient during the break-in period
You’ve bought your dream car and now you want to make it last at long as possible in top condition. Here are some things to remember as you pull it out of the dealer’s lot:
- During the break-in period, typically the first 1,000 miles (1,600 km), keep your speed under 55 mph (88 kpm) or to the speed recommended by your car’s manufacturer.
- Avoid heavy loads on the drive train, such as towing trailers, and loading the roof rack or trunk with heavy construction materials.
- Do not allow your new car to idle for long periods — this is good advice for the life of your car, but especially during breakin. The oil pressure generated by doing so may not be sending oil to every part of your engine.
- Use only light to medium acceleration, keeping the engine rpms below 3,000 for the first few hours of driving.
Prevent Damage From Insufficient Oil Levels
As a rule of thumb, the normal car has to have a complete change of the engine oil every 3,000 to 4,000 miles. But just to be totally sure, you should refer to your manufacturer’s handbook, or consult the service center that has the best knowledge of and most extensive experience in dealing with the make of your car. Oil, obviously, is important to the car, so do not let this be the source of car problems!
What happens to your engine when there’s not enough engine oil, or it just gets very old?
Engine oil is so essential in keeping the working parts lubed up and protected. Without enough oil, metal will over heat and the engine will run extremely hot. A domino effect may then follow, with the car actually drawing more fuel up to try and keep itself cool. If the situation continues you will have the more serious problem of having the metal parts of the engine actually start to expand under the severe heat.
At this point, the damage is already going to cost money. Allowing it to continue will mean the metals will most likely begin to twist out of shape, and then react against other parts of the working engine. This results in the engine beginning to seize up, repairing which is going to cost a fortune. In some cases, it’s not even worth it to try and go for a repair. (Just buy a new car instead.)
Another problem with leaving the engine short of oil is that small puddles of oil will start to appear under the car. Nothing serious at first, but they will get worse as time goes on. This is like an early alarm system, and will need investigation as soon as the oil leaks are noticed.
Why change engine oil?
One of the reasons engine oil has to be changed is because it has a limited life within the car. It loses integrity and carbonizes. As a result, the carbon will clog up the oil pickup screen, and this will cause less oil to flow around the car and further increase mechanical frictions.
Those same carbon deposits come through the engine ventilation system and will undoubtedly cause further damage to the throttle, which in turn will cause very rough idling. The car is still sufficiently self-compensating to try and keep going, but if you see this warning sign, make sure you do something immediately.
Ensuring that the car undergoes the required regular oil change will help you save a considerable amount of money and time from unnecessary breakdowns and repairs. Remember, too, that when the car is off the road for repair, an alternative method of transport is required. (Which, of course, means further incidental costs.)
So don’t skip or ignore this simple service requirement. To determine when it’s time to change engine oil, just look at the color. Engine oil should not be black; it’s more like a light, transparent, tan color. Black indicates that it has passed its effective life, and that it needs changing immediately.
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