Tip of the Week Archives

Keyword Search

Search
Sort Results: Newest First Best Match

Filter Results

Year
Month
Filter

Fuel Filling Tips

Our Tip of The Week concerns winter time fuelling tips for your vehicle. There are a number of reasons why it is advisable to operate on the top portion of the fuel tank in the winter-time. First of all, by keeping the tank close to full you will minimize the effect of water vapour and condensation

Battery Capacity

Our Tip of the Week concerns the reserve capacity built into your vehicle's battery. It's always given in the spec charts but rarely talked about. Reserve capacity is the ability of the battery to deliver approximately twenty amps of current which would be required to

Breaking In A New Car

Our Tip of the Week concerns breaking in a brand new engine. Obviously, in most cases, that means you've just taken delivery of a brand new vehicle. But it could be that you just replaced the engine on your high-mileage used vehicle. In any case, the first few thousand kilometres could be critical.

Checking Your Brakelamps

Our Tip of the Week concerns the importance of checking the function of your brake lamps and a simple way to do it yourself without an assistant. The other day, I was in heavy traffic on a multi-lane highway and noticed a vehicle just ahead of me in one lane over that had only a single brake light f

Flooded Engines

Our Tip of The Week concerns flooded or wet valve engines. If you don't let your car warm up during sub-zero temperatures, it's entirely possible that you can get a flooded condition when you try to restart the car. That's when the spark plugs are actually fowled with raw fuel. In that case most car

Fuel System Additives

Our Tip of the Week concerns the use of fuel system additives. Let's have a look at three of the more common ones. Injector cleaner, as the name implies, keeps your fuel injectors working as designed. When the injectors are clean, they deliver a nice, fine spray of fue

Gear Shifter Positions On Your Car

Our Tip of the week concerns gear shifter position with an automatic transmission. Via e-mail we've been asked a couple questions about this. First question was: "in city driving with an automatic transmission should I defeat the overdrive and run it in drive or leave it in overdrive?" Wel

Mechanical Fixes For Winter

Our Tip of the Week concerns getting your car mechanically prepared for wintertime. First of all address any areas that have been problems. If your car's been acting up in the spring, summer and fall, it's likely to worsen with dropping ambient temperatures, so check those items first. Also do a vis

Punctured Tires

Our Tip of The Week concerns repairing punctured tires. There are number of different procedures for repairing punctured tires. Some involve a quick easy removal of the tire from the vehicle but not de-mounting the tire from the rim. In other words the plug is installed from the outside of the tire.

Seized Spark Plugs

Our tip of the week deals with dealing with seized spark plugs. It's not uncommon these days for a vehicle to come in with one or more spark plugs that simply can't be removed because they're seized. When that situation occurs, in some case, a repair can be made to the vehicle without changing the s

Spare Tires

Our Tip of The Week concerns your spare tire. You know that saying "out of sight out of mind"? Well, that really applies to your spare tire and this car is a perfect example. When we lifted up the parcel shelf in the back, we found about 5 inches of rusty rainwater in the spare tire well.

Starter Motors

Our Tip of the Week concerns starter motors. Somewhere underneath your vehicle is a 12-volt starter motor similar to this one responsible for cranking that engine over. In most cases, it only takes a momentary crank for the engine to fire up. However, if you run into problems, like run out of fuel o

Proper Tire Inflation Pressure

Our Tip of the Week concerns loss of tire inflation pressure. Even if your tires have no punctures or leakage it's still normal in the fall and winter as ambient temperature drops for your tire inflation pressure to drop accordingly. For approximately every five degree

Tire Noise

Our Tip of The Week concerns tire noise. A radically or uneven worn tire can produce an awful lot of noise. It's really annoying and can be often misconstrued as a bad wheel bearing. Replacing the wheel bearing can be a very expensive proposition on a modern car, so you don't want to incorrectly rep