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4 Essential Car Maintenance Tips

by Dave Dobson

Car maintenance is an important aspect of car ownership. Understanding how to take care of your vehicle while improving the longevity of your car and reduce the amount you will have to pay in repairs. Prevention is always cheaper than paying to fix an issue after the fact. Therefore, I am going to give you 4 essential car maintenance tips, as well as letting you know that blogs such as https://www.sprawlway.org/, can offer insight into how to maintain your car so you are not forking out a lot of money for something preventable.

Check Tire Pressures

Poor tire pressures often lead to awful fuel economy. In addition, it can affect comfort and handling. Checking your owner’s manual will help you ensure the right PSI for your tires. There are plenty of gadgets and basic tools you can use to check your tires pressure. If you have the time, this should be done on a weekly basis, although making it part of your daily routine will not hurt.

Some cars have tire pressure monitoring technology installed before they leave the factory. There are also some great gadgets that connect with mobile devices that constantly monitor tire pressure and send out notifications in case one or more tires need some air.

Check Oil Levels

Your car’s engine has a lot of mechanical moving parts that create friction as they brush against each other. This friction generates heat, and this can wear an engine down and reduce performance. Therefore, minimizing, if not eliminating, friction from these moving parts is critical to ensure smoother operation.

Otherwise, you would need to experience loud noises or knocking from your engine and even substantial reduction in fuel economy. Checking your engine’s oil level should thus be made an important part of car maintenance. It is easy. Find the oil dipstick, pull it out, and evaluate the oil. Moreover, if you encounter any issues with the oil in your engine, it is worth reaching out to a mechanic by researching mechanics in your area on websites such as stevesorsenmechanical.com.au for instance.

Replace Spark Plugs

If your car’s engine has a rough idle or misfires from time to time, you might want to replace your spark plugs. Other symptoms of a malfunctioning spark plug can include lack of acceleration, trouble starting your car, often high fuel consumption, or even engine surging. In an ideal world, you need to replace your spark plugs every 30,000 or so miles if it is just a standard copper spark plug.

However, if yours is of the more advanced iridium spark plug, then these can last up to around 100,000 miles which can reduce the among you will be spending in the long-term often. But do not forget, you need to double-check your vehicle owner’s manual or even your car maintenance checklist to determine when you should replace your spark plugs.

Properly Disconnect Batteries

To further improve your understanding of your car’s electrics, you need to know how to disconnect your battery. Disconnecting your battery terminals could be an easy task. It is all a matter of unfastening the bolts that keep the cables secure onto the battery terminals, right? But there is a proper way to do it. You do not just disconnect the first connector that your hands are able to reach.

Always disconnect the negative terminals first to help prevent the chances of electrical short circuit. This cuts the return path of the electric current. If you disconnect the positive terminal first, currently is still pretty much moving along the negative terminal. If by accident, you dropped your wrench and it landed on the positive terminal and one of its ends also touched any other metal, then you have a complete circuit. Removing the negative end of the connector will help prevent short-circuiting. Even if your tools drop on either battery terminals or touches anything else on the car, there simply is no return for the current to complete the circuit.

As you can see, changing a battery is not super easy. If you are not confident with this and do not want to risk short-circuiting your battery, work with a professional mechanic.

Ultimately, these basic car maintenance tips can help you troubleshoot a range of issues with you might encounter with your car. By being able to maintain your car, you will reduce the amount you have to pay overall, hopefully, saving you a lot of money in the long run!

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