How to Schedule Car Maintenance

Series Summary

Major car tune-ups, or vehicle overhauls, are vital to the upkeep and maintenance of an automobile. A car is a complex machine made up of simple machines which have many different parts and processes that must be checked for breakage, leaks and wear. A mechanic does all of these tune-up checks when a car comes into the auto shop. However, many car owners learn how to check their cars for issues themselves to fix common problems without costly mechanic visits. A little automobile knowledge goes a long way in saving money, avoiding scams and keeping cars in top shape. In this free video series on automotive maintenance, learn about long-term maintenance from an (ASE)-certified master mechanic. First he talks about scheduling routine maintenance. Then he discusses improving miles-per-gallon by cleaning fuel injectors. Find out the proper way to jump start a car and check differential oil.

Video Transcript

"Dave Erb here from Ultimate Automotive in Austin Texas and we'll be talking about how to schedule car maintenance. Scheduling car maintenance is really dependent on where you want to go with your car, what the future holds for your car, what do you want to get out of your car and how old your car is. If you start out with a car brand new then you're going to get into maintenance slowly, if you just bought a car that's old, you're going to be hit with a whole bunch of maintenance at once and then spread it out over time so you really need to understand where you want to go with your car, what kind of shape it's in now. You want to get a comprehensive check of the vehicle, what we call a courtesy check, which is a top to bottom, front to back check up of the vehicle, to kind of give you a starting point. As far as scheduling is concerned, it's knowing what's coming up and what's important. So if you've got like a car that has a timing belt on it, you know that's going to be due at a certain mileage whether it's sixty, ninety, or one hundred and five, you can plan for that, schedule that for the future. To be most efficient, you want to try to schedule things together and if you talk to most shops, when you do things together it's going to cost you less so if you schedule ahead of time, you do an oil change, a rotate and balance and a transmission flush at the same time, you'll be able to get a discount on that for doing it at the same time. You might want to couple things together like cooling system flushes and hoses because those systems are the same. That's going to save you time and money as well. So, if you're going to keep the car for a long time, get with your mechanic, work out a good schedule. You could go as long as you want because once you get two or three months under your belt, maybe two, three, six months maybe, at the most, under your belt, you'll know you're driving habits, you'll know what you drive everyday and you can set a schedule and a budget over time. It'll be easier on you, more efficient with your time and get you where you're going in the long run because maintenance is definitely the way to go. If you want to stay on the road, stay efficient, keep out of those high repair dollars, then schedule your maintenance and be diligent about it."