I am writing this article to encourage you to keep up on the maintenance of your car and to explain some of the common problems that happen because of poor maintenance. I will give several example of my own personal experience as a mechanic as well as some that I have seen with my friends. I hope this encourages you to keep a close eye on the maintenance of your car.

A question I have been asked many times is, why is it so important to do my oil changes every 3000 miles? It is a really good question, and one that drivers should consider. The basic and to the point answer is very simple. Oil can only stand up to the heat and contaminants that are produced by your cars engine for so long. The 3000 mile limit was set because that is about where it is safe to change it without risking damage to the motor. There are also some other good benefits to this. One being if your car is using a lot of oil you should find this out before you run out of oil and ruin your motor. I have changed the oil in many car that is way below the amount that it should be. A good example is a Toyota Camry I worked on, it had a regular oil change record and always seemed to be keeping a good level of oil. On one oil change I found it only had about a quart of oil in it. It had started a small leak in the oil pan and was slowly leaking out. Without regular oil changes this could have been the end of the car. The most extreme example of not making regular oil changes was on a Suzuki XL7 I worked on. It was purchased brand new from a dealer and driven regularly 200 or more miles a day. It came in for its first oil change at a couple of years old and had 36,000 miles on it. The oil came out looking like grease. I never saw the vehicle again but I can only imagine that it has a new motor by now or is in a junk yard.

Another very important aspect of maintenance is tire rotation. It is often overlooked, but without it a vehicle will wear out tires on the drive wheels and not the others. It also may have wheel bearing that are wearing out or a bad alignment that will destroy a tire before it has had half its usage. Rotating them simply extends the life of all of the tires to its maximum potential.

A major maintenance area is breaks. This area as well can become extremely expensive if it is neglected. I have seen this time and time again. When breaks are never checked they wear down and the noise they make often is ignored. The end result being a full replacement of the pads, rotor or drums as well as on an occasion a caliper. All of these add up to big money while pads themselves may only amount to 20 dollars or so plus labor.

The last thing I will encourage you to do is to check the fluids in your vehicle. The oil, transmission fluid, antifreeze, etc. You can see a problem before it happens if you do this regularly. Discolored coolant for instants is a sign of a lot of problems that can be corrected before they damage the motor.

In conclusion, if we maintain our cars and trucks we can save ourselves large amounts of money on repairs. Often it is easy to put these things off, but in the end we will always pay for it. I hope this has encouraged you to pay close attention to your cars needs.