Preventing maintenance may feel like a hassle to undergo, especially when your car seems to be okay. However, therein lies the crux of the matter. Your car is still fine — and you’d want to keep it that way. That’s what preventive maintenance is all about.
Many things come under the umbrella of preventive maintenance, including oil changes, fluid level checks, and tire tread inspections. Let’s take a look at 5 ways you benefit from sticking to your maintenance schedule:
1. Saves You Money
Your car needs gasoline to move, so you’d want fuel consumption to be as efficient as possible.
Therefore, what can cause reduced fuel economy?
Here are some common culprits:
- Bad ignition parts (like the spark plug or ignition coil) — cause engine misfires.
- Dirty air filter — reduces the air that your engine needs for combustion.
- Clogged fuel injectors — won’t inject the correct amount of fuel.
- Clogged fuel filter — lowers fuel pressure, affecting engine performance.
- Underinflated tires — increase rolling resistance and, subsequently, engine effort.
- Poor wheel alignment — creates resistance to straight-line travel, drawing more effort from the engine (and you) to keep steering straight.
Fixing these can easily keep your car running at peak performance. However, maintaining fuel consumption isn’t the only way you save money with preventive maintenance.
For example, rotating your tires allows the treads to wear evenly and extends tire life. This means you get more use out of your tires. In this way, spending on more minor services can help delay the need for bigger expenditures.
2. Extends Vehicle Life
Preventive maintenance helps you remedy small problems before they cascade into more complicated issues.
For example, if you change your oil regularly, your engine stays well-lubricated and won’t strain while it’s working. An engine running at optimum performance will be fuel efficient and won’t create problems that can affect other parts.
However, if you skip your oil changes often, the oil gets dirty and won’t lubricate your engine correctly. This causes it to work harder with more friction between its parts creating more heat. Not only can you end up with an overheated engine — every car owner’s nightmare, the excess heat can deform your engine components, further damaging your car and reducing engine life.
3. Minimizes Future Breakdowns
You can’t always avoid trouble — like that nail your tire picked up on a long drive.
However, preventive maintenance will help you keep the more predictable issues in check.
Here are a couple of examples to illustrate this:
- If your battery has difficulty charging and is underpowered, your car won’t crank. Cleaning corrosion off your battery, or replacing it with a new one in a timely manner, ensures it can adequately deliver and receive electrical charges.
- Low coolant levels can quickly lead to engine overheating. Therefore, a well-maintained coolant system ensures your engine stays cool.
- Sludgy oil increases engine friction, affects fuel consumption, and can also lead to overheating. Regular oil changes help your engine stay lubricated and running efficiently.
- Low tire pressure reduces braking performance and potentially causes blowouts. However, correctly inflated tires keep your ride rolling smoothly. And circling back to the nail-in-the-tire issue, you might notice it while checking tire pressure, allowing you to fix it before the problem strands you on a roadside.
As you can see, small fixes help prevent bigger problems.
4. Maintains Vehicle Value
This benefit is for those of you who are thinking of swapping cars in the future. The time and effort spent on preventive maintenance will contribute to your vehicle’s resale value, as a well-maintained car has better prospects of being sold at a reasonable price.
5. Improves Safety and Reliability
There are no two ways about it — safety is the most important benefit garnered from regular preventive maintenance. No one wants to experience unexpected breakdowns (or, in all honesty, breakdowns of any kind). And surely, no one wants a car that doesn’t handle the way it is intended.
Preventive maintenance ensures that all systems are “go” in your car, giving you the peace of mind to focus on simply driving and enjoying the experience.
Need help with preventive maintenance?
Contact AutoNation Mobile Service and get the task dealt with right from your driveway.