Fall Car Care Month

Brake pads will tell you when they need replacement, but rotors are a different story.  

Your car’s TPMS can save lives and fuel - but it needs to be maintained. If your vehicle was made after 2002, chances are pretty good that it has a Tire Pressure Monitoring System. Mandated by the Federal Government as a standard safety feature on all 2008 cars, vans, or light trucks, millions of TPMS equipped cars are already rolling on US roads. This system constantly monitors your car’s tire pressure and alerts you if it falls below a preset limit.

While the increasing complexity of today's cars, light trucks, and SUVs has put many tasks beyond the capabilities of light do-it-yourselfers (DIYers), filter changes can still be easily handled by most DIYers. In fact, the opportunity for car owners to change their own filters is actually growing, thanks to a design change in newer vehicles that includes never-before-used filters that clean the air you breathe.  

Dust, dirt and grime are all enemies to the longevity and efficient performance of your vehicle's engine. To prevent engine damage, your vehicle is equipped with various filters – air and oil among them.  

Statistics gathered at a recent National Car Care Month inspection campaign conducted by the Car Care Council show that 30 percent of the vehicles failed because they had low, overfull, or dirty engine oil. ‘Clean’ oil is the life-blood of any engine and changing it and the oil filter frequently is what keeps the vehicle’s engine running smoothly, mile after mile.

There has been a lot of talk, news and claims surrounding Ceramic brake pads in recent years. We would like to shed some light on the term and its proper meaning.

TRICO Products announces the availability of new Exact Fit® Wiper Blades engineered to fit the unique pinch tab arms on current vehicles including the: BMW 5 and 6 Series; Buick Lucerne; Mercedes-Benz ML, R and SLK Class; Pontiac G6; and Volvo S, V and XC Series. The new blades also will accommodate future vehicles such as the 2007: Audi Q7; Cadillac Escalade; Chevrolet Avalanche, Suburban and Tahoe; GMC Yukon; Mercedes-Benz GL Class; and Saturn Aura.

You wouldn’t wear sandals in the snow. And sneakers at a wedding would be quite out of place. Just as proper footwear is critical to your comfort and correct body alignment, appropriate tires are vital to affecting the overall performance and handling of your vehicle.

If you’ve shod your SUV with this weekend’s “four for $99” special, you can expect an underwhelming experience on the roadways. The wrong tire does little to benefit the vehicle wearing it. The good news – optimizing your vehicle’s performance is as simple as shopping for the right shoe.

Properly balanced wheels have long been recognized to help provide improved ride quality, better gas mileage and reduced tire wear, making wheel balancing an important part of car care and maintenance.

For decades wheel weights have largely consisted of chunks of lead clamped to the wheel rim. Lead has traditionally been used to make wheel weights because it is cheap and heavy, allowing the use of relatively small weights to balance wheels. However, the highly toxic metal can cause brain damage and other nervous-system disorders in people.