Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Maintenance For Your Vehicle

What is it that you seek? Over maintenance, under maintenance, or just the wright amount. 


How many times a year does a vehicle need an air filter?  Depends on operational environment, for instance if you have a work truck that is always in the dust or out the fields maybe a few times.  But for those who are not in a dirt/ dust/ grass/ grain free environment maybe only a filter every few years.  I personally have owned cars for over 7 years and the air filter never needed changing.


It drives me crazy to see how many filters some people have paid for when I go through their receipts from other shops. Other things which are often over sold is fuel injection services or decarbonizing services.  Sometimes these are needed services but many times they are just commission driven sales.


Ever been a shop and thought "My car drives just fine... how could these problems exist?"


Monday, May 4, 2015

Goldilocks Maintenance II Transmissions

Maintenance is indeed important for longevity and avoiding usually unnecessary repairs.  A long time customer had a transmission go bad.  He wanted to know why and I asked if he had ever serviced the transmission because the fluid was nasty.  He stated that his father told him servicing a  trans was the quickest way to have them go bad. 


My question back was if this was so, why is there a serviceable filter? Would the filter never clog or become restricted?


Myth: Serving transmission is bad.
Truth: Changing the fluid and or filter helps keep fluid flow and quality of fluid good, hence longevity for the unit.


Could the repair of this transmission been avoided? Yes and no.  In this case yes, but even with proper maintenance  sooner or later all transmissions wear out, so later in this case would have been preferred.