You can save hundreds of dollars on garage fees every year by carrying out minor servicing and maintenance jobs on your car yourself. Armed with a selection of widely available automotive tools, a garage manual for your car, and enough time and patience to get a job done properly, pretty much anyone can carry out the routine tasks needed to keep your car on the road and running smoothly.
One of the most satisfying aspects of carrying out maintenance tasks on your vehicle – aside from saving money on expensive garage bills – is that you are able to get an understanding of how the car works, and the more you understand about the vehicle, the easier it is to put things right in the event of a breakdown.
Any home garage requires a good selection of automotive tools to carry out work on a car. Some vehicles from certain manufacturers have non standard machining and sizes used throughout their construction, and you will need to get automotive specialty tools designed for the purpose of working on that particular car from a motor store. No home workshop is complete without a trolley jack and axle stands to allow you to get under the car and do things like oil changes and exhaust checks.
For most small jobs, such as changing the oil or replacing filters, changing the spark plugs and brake pads on your vehicle, general tools such as a wrench and a screwdriver are all that is required, and these are widely available in most hardware stores. It is a good idea to keep your automotive tools separate from other tools you may have, because if you begin a job and then discover that the tool you want to use is missing, it can cause major headaches.
Twenty years ago, cars were much simpler to maintain and understand than they are today. Computerised engine management systems and adjustable fuel injectors are now commonplace, and special automotive diagnostic tools are required in order to make adjustments to the engine timing and fuel air mix, whereas in the past, these jobs could be done quite simply.
Areas of the car that almost anyone can handle the regular maintenance of are the interior and exterior panels. Simple scratches and dents to the bodywork are easy to repair using a soft mallet for panel beating and abrasive paper, spray paint and filler for paintwork repairs.
If your car is well used, the interior is likely to start to look tired and dated and in need of a little tender loving care. Thankfully, there are many automotive upholstery tools available to help you to tidy up the interior of the car and bring it back to its sparkling best. You can repair small tears and burns on the seats by darning them or applying a repair patch over the affected area. The trim of the car can be brought back to life with a good buffing using a polisher, while using specialist tools it is possible to repair the carpets or even replace them.
Of course there is much more to owning and maintaining a car than just tightening nuts and sewing up split seams, and you may find that you want to add non-stock parts such as a more efficient air filter or new exhaust to improve performance, and once you understand the basics of automotive maintenance, upgrades and tuning will become more accessible, saving you even more money in the long term.
Doing small jobs yourself can save you plenty of money on garage bills, and having the right automotive tools to get the jobs done is an excellent idea that will save you time and effort in the long run. However, one of the most important things for any mechanic to know is when to pass over a job to an expert, and rather than potentially do more damage than good, to get a qualified mechanic to carry out work on a car.
By: Jason Miller
Archive for March, 2010
Automotive Tools for Your Home Garage
March 29th, 2010Learning About Automotive Technology
March 28th, 2010
Suppliers that fail to be ahead of regulations, standards, and consumer requirements can suffer in bringing up new automotive technologies to market. In early days of auto industry, latest technologies tend to introduce in random manner, at times based on inventor’s whim or possibly even dream tinkerer had night before. Great Bentley brought in aluminum pistons in automobiles due to decorative piston shaped paperweight that he had seen! To men and women functioning in this area, vagaries that enclose successful new automotive technology introductions most likely seem wide open. For each technology that embraces, over 10 potential fresh ones are been discarded. Steam cooled engines, talking dashboards, plastic cylinder blocks, as well as high-temperature electric batteries are some of ideas, which sounds good at some point, however finished up on the industry’s discard pile.
In order understand forces at work – and huge investments that they make – means knowing four main drivers of the automotive technology achievement and failure. Those 4 drivers are:
The robustness of technology platform: Accurately, is a technology market ready? Obstructions to robustness comprise lack of resources possessing properties needed, insufficient control plans to make thing work in a field, short of infrastructure to hold up invention, unproven construction processes as well as faulty and under-optimized product & process designs.
Many of obstacles to market readiness for new technology is related to lack of required control and pointer systems. The anti-lock brakes were foiled for years unless necessary sensor patterns and cheaply obtainable digital power caught up. Original ABS systems that was introduced by Hayes & Bendix in 1960s utlized analog PC systems, which had important performance, cost & dependability drawbacks – in some other words, they did not work very well! Ever more, robustness comprises of ability to net with industry wide standards when they evolve.
One more key “gating feature” for automotive technology is materials performance. Some designs developed in early days of automobile might succeed if materials were available with necessary performance properties. Key to Ford Model success and indestructibility need to do with the apply of molybdenum steel that was hardly at limits of the commercial feasibility until obsessed Ford drove the producers to build necessary developments.
Lack of transportation also constricts technology’s marketplace readiness. The major obstacles facing today’s substitute fuel technologies is a lack of fueling and charging stations for the natural gas and electric cars. Lastly, less than optimal basic pattern solutions have harshly inhibited latest technology robustness, in spite of soundness of an underlying pattern.
Entertainment & Convenience. The satellite radios allow drivers listen to favorite music and radio programming continuous across all over the country. Some also straight connect Mp3 player in stereo system. Some cars feature the DVD systems in order to keep the passengers calm. Movable GPS systems are used in whatsoever car you are driving and phones can give maps as well as driving directions.
By: Tom Tessin
Automotive AC Machines
March 27th, 2010
As any mechanic knows, the ability to offer a comprehensive service to customers, being able to offer repairs and care for all aspects of a motor vehicle maintenance program is key to being able to retain customers. Air Conditioning is more or less standard across all models these days, and while in the past, AC maintenance was a highly skilled and niche market, it is now an essential side of the business and key to any workshop’s continued success.
In order to ensure that refrigerant is recovered properly from a car’s air conditioning system during servicing, a workshop must use an automotive AC machine. These devices prevent the release through venting of CFC gases. EPA guidelines require that when a car is being serviced, the Freon, or CFC12 that is used as the coolant should be collected and recycled in order that it is not released into the environment where it can potentially damage the ozone layer.
The refrigerant used in most motor vehicle air conditioning systems is based on chlorofluorocarbons, which have been linked with causing damage to the ozone layer, and as such, the control of these substances is of particular concern to the environmental protection agency. Whenever a car air conditioning system undergoes maintenance, proper care must be taken to protect the environment from the release of CFCs, and this is best done by using automotive AC Machines.
By reusing Freon gas rather than allowing it to be vented into the atmosphere, the environment is protected. However, when the refrigerant is collected from a car’s air conditioning it can be contaminated with water, oil and any of the other liquids that are used in cars. By using automotive AC machines, it is possible to process the refrigerant and remove any of the other fluids from it, allowing it to be reused, either in the same system as it has been drained from, or alternatively, in another car altogether.
There are a whole range of different refrigerant recovery machines on the market to suit all types of workshop, from small operations through to large commercial garages that deal with many different types of car, and need to be able to offer a complete service to clients.
Choosing the right automotive AC machines for your needs can be a daunting task, and too many people simply opt for the cheapest model available, rather than making an informed decision about the best product for their needs. EPA requirements aside, the most important factor when choosing the correct automotive AC machine for your business, is the capacity of the machine to deal with the range of vehicles that you currently work on. You need to choose a machine that can connect easily with all the different types of car that your workshop deals with, and which has enough capacity to recover and treat the refrigerant left in the system to remove any impurities.
Basic automotive AC machines such as the Pro Set Oiless Portable Recovery Recycle Unit are flexible enough to reprocess coolant from a fairly wide range of sources, remove any contaminating oils and other liquids, and release the Freon in perfect condition for reuse.
There are other machines in a similar price bracket that are reliable enough for every day use, and yet still compact enough not to require a vast amount of space in your workshop. Automotive AC Machines such as the Inficon Vortex refrigerant recovery machine are ideally suited to occasional use, and are very compact.
If offering AC repairs and servicing is key to your business, then having the right tools for the job is essential. Getting it right at the beginning when you choose an AC coolant recovery machine often means choosing a model from the Cool Tech range. These robust and highly regarded specialist tools are at the centre of any serious AC shop, and thanks to their efficiency and great value for money, will pay for themselves over and over again.
By: Jason Miller
