If you’ve ever owned a car, chances are you’ve had to deal with the heartbreak of having to shell out hundreds of dollars for repairs. What you may not know is that many of these problems can be prevented with proper vehicle maintenance.
Oil Change
One of the most common vehicle maintenance tasks you’ll need to perform is an oil change. Engine oil is vital to your vehicle as it has many moving parts that need constant lubrication to work properly. When oil isn’t changed, it becomes dirty and will eventually deplete. Dirty oil will cause significantly more wear on parts, due to the fact that it’s thick and coarse. When oil levels deplete too far, parts will have little-to-no lubrication and rub directly against each other. The metal parts rubbing against each other creates so much heat that the engine seizes. In either case, you’re potentially looking at thousands in repairs that could have been avoided by spending around 25-50 dollars every 3,000 miles.
Brakes
If your car isn’t coming to a full stop easily or is making noise when you brake, it’s probably time for a brake replacement. It’s important you get this done before waiting too long as brake pads being worn down too far causes metal-on-metal contact. This will cause damage to the calipers and lead to having to replace them in addition to the pads and the rotors if they need to be replaced. You’re essentially adding hundreds of dollars, or sometimes even thousands, to your eventual repair costs because you didn’t fix your brakes sooner.
Transmission Fluid
The transmission fluid in a vehicle is one of the most over-looked common vehicle maintenance task. However, over-looking this aspect of your vehicle’s maintenance can cause you to ruin your entire transmission. This could force you to buy another car entirely after learning the cost of a repair.
Since so many car parts work in unison to do one job, you’ll find a plethora of parts that, when not replaced, can cause significant damage to other parts of the car. It’s better to spend hundreds now to potentially save thousands in the long run.