Thankfully, this topic only comes up once a year! With the Thanksgiving holiday followed immediately by the Christmas holidays (or whatever you celebrate, there are many of them, based on your religious preference or lack thereof- we’re auto technicians, not politicians) many of us get a little um….punch drunk with everything we need to handle around this time of year. Personally, I’m just recovering from umpiring fall baseball and running in fall marathon season, so I’m just glad of a chance to sit down and blog about cars.
Winterization.

Ok, it’s pretty minimal these days. We need to make sure you are up to date on your oil change, check the antifreeze, belts, cooling system, and run a test to verify your battery, alternator, and starting systems are healthy. As always, we’ll take a peek at the tires and brakes, and look at the wipers. To be truthful, if you’re seeing us regularly, these things have been getting checked. If you haven’t been seeing us regularly, what’s wrong with you? KIDDING! If you haven’t had your car in to a shop for a while, this really is a good time to do it.

The difference is simply that we combine temperature related winter stress on the car with holiday travel stess, and it means things that could have been left for a while longer in less stressful seasons are more likely to rear their ugly heads (at the worst possible time). Think of it this way: Do you really want to deal with a car problem at any time between the Monday before Thanksgiving and the first of February? Of course not (you never want to deal with a car problem, ever, but it’s really bad when you’ve a car full of kids and luggage 6 hours from home on I-95 in a rainstorm).

Keeping that in mind, the best way to ensure the best odds of avoiding car-related stress is to prepare. If you’re due for an oil change, great- come in, get the oil change and we’ll check for trip for FREE! If you’re not due for an oil change, come in and the maintenance inspection is simply 27$. We’ll check the brakes, tires, lights, wiper, battery, suspension, exhaust, filters and fluids (plus some other things) and we’ll make a list. We’ll check it twice. Then we’ll find out- oh wait- sorry, got a bit carried away there. We’ll make a list, tell you what items are highest priority, and what to expect in the future, and you can decide what to fix now and what to wait on. If we think you shouldn’t take the car on a trip, we’ll tell you that, too.

Really, that’s all you need to do- our winters here aren’t unduly harsh here so it isn’t that bad. A good battery, good antifreeze, good tires, and good wipers are necessities, and of course the other maintenance items need to be checked at least every 6 months no matter what, so why not check them now. Remember, we never sell unneeded services, and we never create an emergency to push you to buy. Honest service, fair prices, and a smiling face!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Mike Leech

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