Archive for April 2021Sounds Like a Hot Rod (Noisy Exhaust System)Posted April 25, 2021 7:50 AMDriving along, your exhaust system's rumbling so loud that people turn and stare at you pass by. You're wondering when the police are going to pull you over for illegal noise. Your mind immediately thinks, aha! A broken muffler. Well, your exhaust system is composed of many more parts than just a muffler. Your engine makes power because of thousands of tiny explosions from detonating fuel. Those explosions make a racket, so engineers came up with a system that acoustically dampens that sound in addition to getting rid of harmful exhaust. In the engine is the exhaust manifold that looks like several pipes that join up into one pipe. It directs exhaust to the catalytic converter. The catalytic converter converts harmful gases into less harmful gases using certain chemical reactions. Then comes the muffler that has baffles inside to quiet the sounds of your engine noise. Finally: the tailpipe. All of those pipes and parts are joined together by clamps and held up by brackets, and they ride over some pretty bumpy roads. They are also exposed to the elements, like salt, water, rocks and grit. Chances are that one of those clamps or brackets has been weakened by corrosion. When you hit a bump, bingo! The crack widens into a gap and there's a spot for the engine noise to come roaring out instead of being directed into the muffler's quieting chambers. You might be surprised to know that the exhaust system can rust from inside out. How? Moisture is one component of exhaust, and moisture on the inside can do the same kind of damage as moisture from the outside. It's a good idea to have your exhaust system looked at regularly by a technician. He or she can evaluate the condition of the metal and recommend when it might be time to replace parts before they break. Then you'll have a decision to make. Newer exhaust systems are made out of stainless steel that is much less prone to corrosion issues. Others are made of aluminized steel that also fights rust. You've probably already guessed that they can cost more, but the extra price up front may give you an exhaust system that will last much longer. Sure, with a repaired exhaust system, you won't have quite the head-turning vehicle you once had. You'll just have to live with all the quiet.
The Sign of the Shield (Heat Shield Repair and Replacement)Posted April 18, 2021 9:21 AMEven in the months where temperatures are cooler, heat is still an enemy of your vehicle. When your engine runs, it creates heat, so there are numerous heat shields that protect other parts from those higher temperatures. Heat shields are installed around several areas of the exhaust system. Others prevent heat from reaching parts of the vehicle. Still others prevent heat from reaching the ground (or maybe grass underneath) and starting a fire. If you remember your space travel history, you'll know how important a heat shield can be. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth, but during that maiden orbital flight, a sensor on board was indicating the heat shield on his capsule, Friendship 7, was loose. If it had come off, his spacecraft could have burned up upon re-entry. Fortunately, the heat shield stayed on, and Glenn made history. Unfortunately, the heat shields on your vehicle don't have warning systems like the space vehicles did. So you have to maintain them. Heat shields are constantly exposed to elements like water, salt, sand and dirt. That makes them prone to rusting and corroding. Here's one unfortunate fact: Materials that make them good at preventing heat transmission also are soft and vulnerable, often aluminum or special fabric. One sign a heat shield will give you that it's loose is noise; you'll sometimes hear it rattling underneath your vehicle when it's running. One way to locate it? Put your vehicle in park, leave the engine running and take a listen outside. It's usually pretty easy to pinpoint the location. Make a note of the noise when you are talking with your service advisor. It's important to have those heat shields working correctly so the heat is kept away from your other vehicle systems and combustibles on the ground. The good news is that heat shields can frequently be inexpensively repaired or re-attached. In other cases, they should be replaced. Missing or loose heat shields? Let's just say they're not cool. Auto Authority LLC Fears and Gears (Signs of Automatic Transmission Problems)Posted April 11, 2021 11:00 AMAutomatic transmissions rule. The old days of shifting your own gears are a thing of the past for most drivers. But automatic transmission trouble can be a big inconvenience for any driver if it comes at the wrong time in the wrong place. Here are some signs to look out for that may mean you are having transmission issues. When you are driving, your vehicle seems to slip in an out of gear without you touching anything. That's what some call, not surprisingly, a "slipping transmission." When your vehicle shifts from one gear to the next, you hear a loud "clunk." Transmissions are supposed to be nearly silent when they shift, so that noise is telling you something is wrong. If you notice there's a puddle of some fluid under your vehicle, your transmission could be leaking fluid. Try to figure out what color it is (try putting a piece of cardboard underneath to capture some of the fluid). If it is red or brown, that's a sign it could be transmission fluid. Sometimes you may smell the transmission fluid, too; it has what some consider a "sweet" odor. You may have a warning light that goes on when your transmission fluid is low (it could be a special transmission symbol or simply the Check Engine light). That light could also mean the fluid is too hot or has low pressure. If you shift your vehicle into D (for Drive) and it doesn't move or slowly engages after some delay, you may be seeing the start of a serious problem. Of course, you don't want a malfunctioning transmission to strand you at some inopportune time. So if your vehicle is showing any of these signs, arrange a time for a technician to check it out. Not only are broken transmissions an inconvenience, they can be a safety hazard, too. Auto Authority LLC Out with the Old (Vehicle Parts that Wear Out)Posted April 4, 2021 10:11 AMSome drivers don't pay any attention to their vehicles until something breaks. Others take them into their service repair facility for maintenance even before a problem develops. Still, even if you fit into the second group, there are some parts on a vehicle that will simply wear out over time. Your vehicle has gaskets in several places. They use a flexible material to seal the gaps between metal parts that fit together. After time, that material shrinks or gets brittle and fails. Eventually, after time, you will have to get gaskets replaced. Same goes for belts. Your engine has belts that help take the mechanical energy of the engine to drive other parts such as the generator and air conditioner. Heat and age will eventually cause these belts to wear out or break, so you'll need new ones at some point. You'll also find yourself buying brake pads. As much as you may try to go easy on them, brake pads work by wearing off a little bit of them each time they help you stop your vehicle. Do a lot of stop-and-go driving and you'll hasten the process. No battery lasts forever, and your vehicle's battery is no exception. It can only charge and discharge electricity so many times. Count on getting no more than 4 or 5 years out of a battery, fewer if you live in a very hot spot. Other parts that don't age well? Tires. They can have plenty of tread left on them, but rubber gets old and loses its flexibility. Tires have their date of manufacturer stamped on them for a reason. Finally, your muffler is being subject to moisture from inside and out: inside because of moisture-containing exhaust and outside from the elements outdoors. Stainless steel or other alloys will last longer, but after a while, either the moisture or constant pounding from vibrations will take their toll. That's why it's important to maintain every part on your vehicle. You can't wave a magic wand and make everything last forever, but take care of your vehicle and it'll take care of you.
The Third Brake Light (Third Brake Light Service)Posted March 28, 2021 9:16 AMSo you thought you only had two brake lights. Look again and you'll see one in the center at a higher level than the two on either side of the vehicle. They're sometimes in the inside of the vehicle behind the back window, or they could be in the deck lid, on the roof or on the spare wheel carrier, But why is that third brake on your vehicle? Experts say it helps prevent rear end collisions. Tests done by installing the third brake light in taxis and fleet vehicles showed fewer rear end crashes in the ones that had the extra light. The third brake light was mandated in new passenger cars in 1986 in the US and Canada. The requirement was added to new light trucks and vans in 1994. Sometimes it's difficult to know if your third brake light is even working. Many vehicles have bulb warning systems that alert you to non-functional bulbs, but not all do. Your vehicle service facility will often check to see if all your turn signals, taillights and headlights are working during routine maintenance inspections, and they may notice that the third brake light is out. So, do you have to have it replaced? Not necessarily. Many areas only require one brake light to work in the rear of a vehicle. So even though new vehicles have to have the third brake light, you may not get a ticket if it eventually stops working. But you may be missing an opportunity to drive a safer vehicle if you don't get it fixed. In 1995, an insurance institute study found that 1986 model cars were involved in 5 percent fewer rear-end collisions from 1986-1991 than they would have expected without the extra light. Ask your service advisor for advice. Keep in mind that in these days of drivers distracted by everything from texting to putting on makeup while driving, you can reasonably conclude that anything that makes you more visible to the vehicle behind you adds one more—possibly life saving—safety margin.
Greeted by a Screech (Loud Noise when Starting Vehicle)Posted March 21, 2021 10:41 AMNo one likes to be greeted in the morning by having someone screech at you. The same goes for a loud, high-pitched noise your vehicle greets you with every time you start the engine. If you're wondering if that's normal, no, it isn't. And it is worth getting checked out. The good news is that it might be nothing serious. Then again, it may be. The first things to suspect any time you hear a high-pitched sound coming from the engine are belts. They have tension on them and they're trying to turn lots of different pulleys, pumps and other equipment the engine needs to work properly. The noise could come from the belts starting to wear out and dry out. If one of those belts breaks at an inopportune time, not only can it strand you somewhere, the damage to the engine could be very expensive to fix. Other things that will cause a high-pitched sound are the pulleys and tensioners. The tensioners keep the right amount of pressure on the belts and some pulleys contain rubber that dampens engine vibrations. The rubber in the pulleys can crack or deform with age, which prevents them from working correctly and may cause your belts to wear out. A technician will check to see if the belts are worn or cracked. He or she will also check the tension on the belts, the condition of the pulleys and whether all components are aligned the way they should be. Sometimes, the noise is nothing major to worry about, but it's still worthwhile to rule out any problems that have cropped up now or may appear in the future. You'll have a properly running vehicle that sounds like its engineers intended… quiet and smooth.
The Best Book that's Not a Best-SellerPosted March 14, 2021 7:41 AMSometimes the movie is better than the book, sometimes it's the other way around. But when it comes to your vehicle, the best book of all is the owner's manual. The plot is simple: Owner wants long life and dependable performance from the vehicle, manual has the way to achieve that long life and dependable performance. And yet, it's amazing that some people will own a vehicle for years and never even crack this book. They'll only read it when they absolutely have to, for things like finding out how to change the clock. Ok, so you're probably not going to rush right over to your glove box and start reading the owner's manual cover to cover. We know that. But just think of what you can get out of it. Consider this. Those who wrote or helped write this book include the engineers who designed it and the people who tested and refined it. They know more about your vehicle than anyone, period. They know how long a part is likely to last and what you need to do to take care of it. They know how far a distance or how long a time you can drive before you have to change certain fluids in it. They know what temperature it can reach before things will start to break. And they've put your vehicle model through torture, testing it in the absolute worst conditions to see how to make it stand up to more abuse than it will ever receive. They've then torn it down, examined it and, in many cases, redesigned the parts to make them even better. And they've put down—in fairly minute detail—this blueprint that, if you and our experts at Auto Authority LLC follow their suggestions, will make it very likely that your vehicle will serve you well for a long time. If you don't follow those suggestions, all bets are off. We didn't even mention that the owner's manual tells you how to operate everything in your car. How to adjust the heat and air conditioning, how to pair your smartphone with the audio system, how to program your key fob so it won't sound the horn when you lock your vehicle. Have you lost your manual or did you buy a vehicle that didn't come with one? Many are available either online or in paper form. If you don't know where to begin with such a long book, try a couple of pages a week, just three minutes. You’ll discover your vehicle does things you never even knew it could do. And the movie will never be as good.
It Wears on You (Tire Rotation)Posted March 7, 2021 8:02 AMIf someone told you there was a fairly inexpensive way to improve your vehicle's handling, fuel economy and extend the life of your tires, you'd probably ask, "What do I have to do?" The answer is to rotate your tires. But you have to do it regularly. A lot of drivers think skipping tire rotation is a way to save money. But when you don't rotate your tires, they will almost certainly wear unevenly. That's because when your tires touch the surface of the road, the friction and traction causes miniscule parts of the rubber to come off. And that process isn't exactly the same on each corner of your vehicle. Some vehicles have the drive wheels in the front, some in the rear and some on all wheels. Rotating your tires at regular intervals minimizes the differences in the way the tires wear. The amount and pattern will be spread out equally if your tires spend time at all different positions. The more even the wear, the more consistent traction, handling and braking will be. All four tires will last longer this way, and when it is time to replace your tires, they'll all be worn out the same so you can replace all four with the same model tire. Some people who choose not to rotate their tires find that one or two will wear much faster than the others, and often they'll replace just the worn ones. While you can find similar tires, they won't all be the same and will certainly not have the same amount of wear. There are different tire rotation patterns depending on several factors: front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, directional tires/wheels, different sized wheels/tires on front and rear axles. Also keep in mind that when your tires are new, some tire manufacturers require you to rotate them or else they won't honor the warranty. Your manufacturer recommends intervals for tire rotation, so it's best to follow their suggestion. Your vehicle service facility can advise you when you need to get your tires rotated. And many facilities include free tire rotation for as long as they're on your vehicle if you buy your tires at their shop. Auto Authority LLC No Fountain of Youth (Aging Tires)Posted February 28, 2021 8:53 AMCan you think of anyone who enjoys aging? Wrinkles where you don't want them, gray hair, eyes that won't focus any more, no stamina. Believe it or not, your tires age, too, and they don't get better the older they get. And here's the important thing to know, even if they can still pass a tread depth test, they may simply be too old to be safe Here's the best way to understand this. Have you ever found an old deck of playing cards with a rubber band wrapped around them? Try stretching the rubber band. SNAP! It's all cracked and brittle. And you haven't stressed that rubber one bit since the time you put them in that drawer. Now you know what's happening to your tires. Rubber ages. Just like us, the day we come into the world, we start to go downhill (no pun intended). Oh, engineers are able to make a tire last longer than ever before. But that gas that keeps us alive—oxygen—seems to love to chemically mix with some components in rubber. Oxidation causes rubber to become hard and brittle. The rubber band test. Is there an age test that can tell you when a tire is tool old to roll? Well, not really. They don't all age the same. Hot climates can make tires wear out more quickly. Some experts say a tire can last up to 10 years but should be inspected every year after the age of five. Others say tires should have an expiration date at six years old. Since no one would ever ask a tire its age, how do you know how old one is? Believe it or not, tires made after the year 2000 have a date code stamped on either the inside or the outside of the sidewall. It's a four-digit numbers; the first two tell you the week, the second two tell you the year. So if it has the number 1916, it was made in the 21st week of 2016. Another way to find out if your tires still have enough life in them is to have your vehicle service facility inspect them. They look for signs of age, such as developing cracks in the rubber, the condition of the sidewalls and, of course, that old standby: tread. If it's time to "retire" them, discuss options with your service advisor.
Drivers that "T" Us Off (Bad Driving Practices)Posted February 21, 2021 10:03 AMWe've all seen drivers who do things that—let's be frank—really irritate us. They're inconsiderate, can put people in danger and make the road a much less friendly place. They really "T" us off. These are the bad drivers who fit their description to a "T."
Auto Authority LLC | ||
SearchArchiveNovember 2011 (5)December 2011 (4) January 2012 (5) February 2012 (3) March 2012 (5) April 2012 (4) May 2012 (4) June 2012 (5) July 2012 (5) August 2012 (4) September 2012 (4) October 2012 (4) November 2012 (5) December 2012 (4) January 2013 (4) February 2013 (5) March 2013 (4) April 2013 (4) May 2013 (4) June 2013 (4) July 2013 (5) August 2013 (4) September 2013 (4) October 2013 (4) November 2013 (4) December 2013 (5) January 2014 (4) February 2014 (4) March 2014 (4) April 2014 (4) May 2014 (5) June 2014 (4) July 2014 (5) August 2014 (4) September 2014 (5) October 2014 (4) November 2014 (4) December 2014 (5) January 2015 (4) February 2015 (4) March 2015 (4) April 2015 (5) May 2015 (2) June 2015 (6) July 2015 (4) August 2015 (4) September 2015 (4) October 2015 (5) November 2015 (4) December 2015 (3) February 2016 (2) March 2016 (4) April 2016 (4) May 2016 (5) June 2016 (4) July 2016 (5) August 2016 (4) September 2016 (4) October 2016 (5) November 2016 (4) December 2016 (4) January 2017 (5) February 2017 (4) March 2017 (4) April 2017 (4) May 2017 (4) June 2017 (4) July 2017 (4) August 2017 (5) September 2017 (3) October 2017 (5) November 2017 (4) December 2017 (3) January 2018 (5) February 2018 (3) March 2018 (4) April 2018 (5) May 2018 (3) June 2018 (4) July 2018 (5) August 2018 (4) September 2018 (5) October 2018 (4) November 2018 (4) December 2018 (1) March 2019 (3) April 2019 (33) May 2019 (4) June 2019 (5) July 2019 (4) August 2019 (4) September 2019 (5) October 2019 (4) November 2019 (4) December 2019 (5) January 2020 (5) February 2020 (4) March 2020 (5) April 2020 (2) May 2020 (2) July 2020 (1) August 2020 (5) September 2020 (4) October 2020 (4) November 2020 (5) December 2020 (4) January 2021 (6) February 2021 (4) March 2021 (4) April 2021 (4) May 2021 (5) June 2021 (4) July 2021 (4) August 2021 (4) September 2021 (4) October 2021 (5) November 2021 (3) December 2021 (5) January 2022 (6) February 2022 (4) March 2022 (4) April 2022 (4) May 2022 (5) June 2022 (4) July 2022 (5) September 2022 (4) October 2022 (5) November 2022 (4) December 2022 (4) January 2023 (5) February 2023 (4) March 2023 (4) April 2023 (5) May 2023 (4) June 2023 (4) July 2023 (5) August 2023 (4) September 2023 (3) October 2023 (1) January 2024 (1) February 2024 (4) April 2024 (1) May 2024 (4) June 2024 (5) July 2024 (4) August 2024 (4) September 2024 (5) October 2024 (4) November 2024 (4) December 2024 (4) | CategoriesTire Rotation and Balancing (4)Fluids (10)Tires and Wheels (4)Parts (1)Maintenance (17)Automotive News (5)Shocks & Struts (4)Wheel Bearings (2)Service Standards (4)Fuel System (8)Tire Pressure Monitoring System (1)Air Conditioning (11)Headlamps (6)Safety (3)Diesel Maintenance (1)Inspection (5)Battery (12)Fuel Economy (8)Alignment (7)Brakes (17)Keys to a long lasting vehicle (2)Service Intervals (2)Exhaust (10)Timing Belt (5)Auto Safety (5)Transmission (5)Fuel Saving Tip: Slow Down (2)What Customers Should Know (83)Alternator (7)Check Engine Light (4)Steering (11)Dashboard (1)Windshield Wipers (3)Cooling System (9)Drive Train (4)Oil Change (9)Customer Detective Work (1)Older Vehicles (1)Winter Prep (5)Safe Driving (1)Spark Plugs (2)Suspension (2)Tires (12)Winter Tires (1)Water Pump (2)TPMS (3)Differential Service (2)Trip Inspection (2)Cabin Air Filter (2)Fuel Pump (1)Brake Service (6)PCV Valve (1)Transfer Case Service (1)Shocks and Struts (3)Engine Air Filter (3)Fuel Filter (1) | |
Partners
What our clients are saying about us
We have established longterm and stable partnerships with various clients thanks to our excellence in solving their automotive needs!
Absolutely the best mechanic I have ever been to in my 40 years on this planet. Honest, trustworthy, and reliable. I will definitely be back.
These Guys (and Gals!) are great. Love them. Trust them. If you are looking for a REPUTABLE mechanic for your car or truck, look no more. Just go there and see what I mean.