by Pat Goss
OFT-FORGOTTEN WINTERIZING
Winterization time is also a great time to improve your vehicle’s reliability, convenience, and safety. Whether you’re a gear-head or neophyte you surely realize there are numerous parts on a car that could suffer from harsh winter weather and chemicals. Most repair shops are well versed in conventional winterization procedures but not necessarily with protecting obscure parts.
Door locks are a good example of forgotten services at most shops. What could be more frustrating than a door that won’t open with the unlock fob and when you try to use the key the lock is frozen solid. Not only is being frozen out of your car a problem so is worn-out locks and wear they will unless they’re lubricated. To prevent both problems use a graphite lock lubricant in all the locks on your car twice a year. That’s especially true of the lock that gets the most use, the ignition lock. Ignition locks get lots of wear and tear plus they are expensive to replace. Locks are mechanical devices and like all mechanical devices proper lubrication is their key to long life.
White lithium grease is an elemental product that adds years of life to door hinges and latches so lubing them at every oil change is recommended. This keeps moisture out of door latches, which prevents rust, wear, and freezing. Latches only freeze when it’s bitter cold and when they do the door can’t be opened.
Another frozen-out, can’t-open-the-door challenge results from frozen weather-strip. Weather-strip is the rubber surrounding car doors and windows. This usually happens when snow or ice on the car’s roof melts from warm daytime temperatures or heat from the heater followed by night-time freezing. Melt-water runs down over the doors and collects between the doors and the body, then proceeds to, you guessed it, freeze solid! Frozen doors won’t open; you’re cold, you’re miserable, and you’re locked out.
Either waiting for spring thaw or pouring hot water over the car is not realistic. Hot water makes matters worse and may cause damage to parts inside the door or cause glass to shatter from thermal shock. I don’t know about you but settling in and waiting for spring just isn’t an option so what to do?
This is one where you have to be proactive because waiting until it happens doesn’t work. During winterization and at each oil change, have your weather-strip sprayed with silicone. Silicone prevents moisture from collecting on weather-stripping and keeps the rubber soft and pliable for longer life. Even if water collects and freezes silicone is so slippery that ice can’t stick to it and the doors can’t freeze shut. For most of us winter driving is no fun but a couple shots of white lithium grease, graphite and silicone spray goes a long way toward making winter driving safer and more tolerable.
© Copyright 12/15/08 Pat Goss all rights reserved
by Pat Goss
BRAKE WINTERIZING
The days are getting noticeably shorter, the nights cooler, and there’s that cold winter feel to the air and it’s time for a winter safety inspection. Although most inspections cover the strictly winter items there are some obscure things that are routinely overlooked. Among those overlooked pieces-parts are brakes. Oh I know most technicians check the amount of friction material remaining and do the basics but winter requires a bit more.
Most important is performing the yearly brake service. Didn’t know there was a yearly service? Yes there is and the best time to service brakes is in the fall. So if you haven’t had your brakes serviced yet this year you’re due. A yearly brake service and inspection requires checking the physical condition of all the brake parts plus a thorough cleaning and lubrication of moving parts. Here in Goss’ Garage we see far too many cars with binding brake calipers, worn drum-brake backing plates and a host of other maladies caused by nothing more than the absence of a couple dabs of brake grease. For winter safety the caliper slides should be cleaned, inspected and properly lubricated with synthetic brake lube.
But don’t try to cut corners by using wheel bearing grease or chassis lube which can actually make matters worse. How’s that possible? Easy, most of those lubes are designed to be used in sealed relatively dirt-free cavities. Brake calipers, backing plates, brake hardware and other brake parts are out in the open and exposed to road debris, sand, salt, dust and a host of other nasties.
These mostly gritty particles collect in the sticky grease and slowly work their way into the caliper slides and other moving parts. Once there the contamination does one of two things; causes the moving parts to wear or causes them to stick and bind. Neither is desirable and both lead to questionable brake performance. Brake grease on the other hand has a very high resistance to collecting road grit and therefore keeps the nasties out of moving parts.
Bottom line make sure every moving part in the brake system moves like it should and has a liberal coating of the proper type of grease for the part being lubricated. I say this because some brake lube suppliers make one grease for metal to metal contact points and another for rubber to metal contact and they shouldn’t be interchanged.
Finally there is a relatively new but very dangerous problem that we’re seeing much more frequently these days; rusted brake lines (pipes). These are the steel tubes that carry the highly pressurized hydraulic fluid from the master cylinder to the four corners of the car to operate the brakes. In the last two years we have had to replace more brake lines due to rust than in the previous twenty five years combined. I’m not 100% sure what’s causing this but the one thing that has changed is pretreating roads when snow or ice is expected. The pretreatment chemical is highly aggressive and eats steel tubing like candy. The snow or ice event may never happen but your car is still subjected to the pretreatment chemicals.
It’s an incredibly dangerous problem because rusted brake lines fail when you really can’t afford a failure, that’s during the extreme stresses of a panic stop. Brake line failure means loss of braking and you hit what you’re trying to avoid. I have found a way to prevent this through coating the brake lines with either white lithium grease or far better, one of the new corrosion preventing chemicals. This will keep the rust at bay and help prevent premature brake line failure. Yearly brake service and rust prevention will reduce repair costs and keep brakes working better, longer, and safer.
© Copyright 12/09/08 Pat Goss all rights reserved.
by Pat Goss
GIVING CAR GIFTS
It’s gift giving time but sadly gift giving is often followed by gift-remorse. That sinking feeling you get when gifts that seemed just right when you bought them flop miserably. For anyone who owns a car you can avoid those flops by choosing an automotive gift from the thousands of practical and whimsical things available. Although car gifts aren’t normally glamorous they are actually used and appreciated.
But the holidays also bring out the crooks so watch for scams and misleading ads that flood mailboxes, inboxes and the Internet this time of year. Catalogs and mailers often contain car-oriented gifts, so theoretically you could sit at home and pick from thousands of items. No fighting holiday crowds, no reason to stand in line, just choose, dial or click and in a few days your order is at your door.
Most, but not all, of the ads are legitimate which means extra diligence is important. Catalog, flyer, and Internet shopping is not like shopping in a store because you can’t examine what you’re buying. There’s no way to know the quality, practicality or desirability of your purchase. Even when it arrives you usually can’t examine it because everything now comes in packaging that utterly defies non-destructive opening. So when the big day comes and the package is finally opened what’s inside may be a disappointment.
Anything for a car can be high quality or pathetic junk. Modern photography and printing can make pathetic junk look I-gotta-have-it enticing in a catalog. Add cleverly written text with impressive adjectives and even if you know it’s junk you may feel compelled to buy. So before buying, research which brands have good reputations then look for specific models within those brands. Same brand, different model may get you more or, oops, less quality. Some manufacturers even make a first line and a discount line. Frequently the discount line will look like the first line product but may be more lightly constructed or lack features. Even the model numbers may be identical except for one character so look closely.
But maybe you’re looking for something unique to show you really care. Shopping for unique automotive-related gifts can be interesting but, I strongly suggest a huge helping of common sense. For example I recently saw an air bag deflation tool in a catalog. Claim to fame: “Tool easily punctures air bag after inflation allowing faster exit.” Wow, sounds impressive, great safety item, and only $48.00 plus S&H. If unique is all you want, this tool certainly is but save your money because air bags can’t remain inflated, that’s impossible, which makes it a total rip-off. Yet there it was with a gorgeous picture and an enticing description. In fairness on the same page was a backup warning system that beeps if there’s anything behind the car when you back up. This could be a true life or bumper saver. But enough already here are a few ideas to make you a gift-giving star.
I’m a big fan of modern battery boosting units to start cars with dead batteries. These make an excellent gift for everyone and they eliminate all possibility of vehicle damage and operator injury caused by booster cables. Less than $75.00 could save hundreds in booster cable damage.
Another practical idea is a set of plastic shields to cover expensive headlamps or fog-lamps. These protect against breakage from stones and flying debris. They usually cost less than $50.00 and could save a $1,000.00 HID headlamp.
I don’t know about you but my trunk is always a mess, nothing seems to stay put. A fix for that special someone with a messy trunk is a trunk organizer. They’re less than $75.00 and help keep things in the trunk in place.
Rubber floor mats to protect against winter slop make a thoughtful gift as do cleaning supplies, tools, emergency items, safety items and stores full of ideas.
For pure whimsy look toward completely useless but interesting “stuff “like nostalgic reproduction metal business signs or coffee table books. The current selection of auto books spans the entire automotive experience from racing to rebuilding and driving to exotic cars to drool over.
Maybe none of this makes sense for your special car-challenged someone. Car-challenged individuals usually procrastinate about service so give them a gift certificate to a good repair shop. There is an almost endless array of gifts for people with cars.
Happy Holidays to one and all --- Please Drive Gently!
© Copyright 12/02/08 Pat Goss all rights reserved
Goss’ Garage
by Pat Goss
DRIVER TUNE UP
Every day I get questions about how to get better gas mileage. The questions usually revolve around miracle gadgets that supposedly defy the laws of physics and convert your gas-sucking behemoth into a fuel sipping lightweight. Let’s get those out of the way right now because they don’t work. Actually they can’t work unless the geniuses who try to steal your money have indeed reversed the laws of physics. That of course would be earth shattering news and would make headlines worldwide. So far I haven’t seen any headlines or Nobel candidates for cow magnets and HHO generators.
So what can you do? Consider a tune up, that’s what, but not a tune up for your car because they really no longer exist, a tune up for you! Yeah, give yourself a driver tune up and you’ll save a lot of money at the pump. But what is a driver tune up? It begins with driving attitude, aggressive driving and road rage wastes lots of gas. Whether you realize it or not, streets are not for competition they are a convenient way to get to where you need to be efficiently and safely. Acting like a race driver usually only saves a few seconds per trip and really sucks-up gas. Easy on the “go” pedal for substantial fuel savings.
Another thing many drivers don’t comprehend is that stopping a car improperly wastes a lot of gas. How? Why? Quite simply by throwing away energy. It takes energy to make a vehicle move and unless the energy needed to get the car moving, is used to keep it moving it’s wasted. So accelerating hard from a stop to get up to speed in a hurry (that burns gas) then applying the brakes hard to stop means a large portion of the energy used to make the car move (burning gas) is literally thrown away during the braking process. In this case the built up energy derived from burning fuel is not used to move the car but rather it’s converted to heat in the brakes and expelled into the air around the wheels.
Other things to consider are weight; it takes more fuel to move more weight. I’m not talking about your love handles nope it’s all that stuff that collects inside a car and in its trunk over time. Even a full tank of fuel when it isn’t needed decreases fuel economy. Speeding wastes gas because the faster you go the more gas you use per mile.
Of course there are the basics we hear so much about such as tire pressure, alignment, fresh fluids, and all the other maintenance items. They all add to economy when they’re done and subtract when they’re ignored. Then there are “the who is right things” like air conditioning on and windows up or air conditioning off and windows down? Actually it’s both. At city speeds windows down and air conditioning off, but at highway speeds windows up and air conditioning on.
Finally, rethink how comfortable you absolutely have to be. I was sitting outside a drug store the other afternoon waiting for my wife and was amazed at how many people were sitting in their cars with the engines running. I guess they had to have those cool breezes when it really wasn't that hot outside. The worst gas mileage in the world is delivered by a car that is sitting still with its engine running. If you think those monster SUVs get wretched gas mileage they're nothing compared to your idling subcompact. The worst SUV on the planet gets a thousand times better gas mileage because when a car is sitting still it gets zero miles per gallon. Drive gently --- see you next time.
© Copyright 09/05/08 Pat Goss all rights reserved
Goss’ Garage
by Pat Goss
SEE AND BE SEEN
The days are already getting shorter which means it’s time to be proactive with our cars. Each day from now on will have slightly less daylight and less daylight means more driving in the dark. Less daylight requires two import safety factors, you have to be seen and you have to be able to see.
Both are surprisingly simple checks. Begin by making sure you can be seen which means all your lights must work properly. That’s easy enough to do but it does take two people and some distance. Stand back from the car fifty to one hundred feet while someone in the car operates all the lights. The distance is so you can see variances in light intensity that isn’t apparent when you’re close to the car.
Suppose you have a light that is less bright than its companion light? Begin by checking the bulb to make sure it is the proper type. Many bulbs will interchange physically but the watts of light they produce is different. This means it’s necessary to check both the brighter and the dimmer light as one may be too bright or the other too dim.
Brighter would seem to be a benefit as it makes the car more visible but more light comes from higher wattage and that means more electricity has to flow through the bulb and related parts. The extra wattage means more heat which can cause burned wires, melted bulb sockets and sometimes even melt the lamp lens.
Too dim usually means a wrong bulb but if the bulb is correct, check the bulb socket and its ground connection. Bulb sockets are particularly problematic on some GM vehicles. Inspect ground wires for corrosion where the screw attaches them to the car’s body. Also that nasty looking grease on the base of bulbs is there for a reason so don’t wipe it away; renew it when you renew the bulb. In addition to keeping moisture out of the bulb socket the grease helps hold the bulb firmly against the electrical contacts in the base of the socket. Wiping away the grease leads to corroded sockets and intermittent light as the bulb wobbles in its socket.
Headlamps are just full of nasty surprises. Most drivers and technicians alike think that if a headlamp lights it’s good. Not true because all bulbs, including headlamps, lose intensity over time. This means by age three years your headlamp bulbs may only produce fifty percent of the light a new bulb produces, that’s a serious nighttime hazard. So, if your headlamp bulbs are three years old replacing them with fresh bulbs is an inexpensive way to gain significant nighttime safety.
Another headlamp issue is alignment. Vibration, road shock, and numerous other things cause headlamps to move out of proper alignment. When your headlamps are out of alignment they don’t properly light the road so yearly headlamp alignment checks are highly recommended.
Finally, if your headlamp lenses have become dull and cloudy this will also reduce the light that reaches the road and reduce safety. Headlamp assemblies are very expensive so look for a shop that restores headlamp lenses, another economical way to help make your car more nighttime safe.
© Copyright 08/22/08 Pat Goss all rights words.
Goss' Garage
by Pat Goss
BATTERY BASICS
One of the most important parts of any vehicle is its battery. Take away the battery and the car is useless. You can't even listen to the radio without a battery. But even though batteries are fundamental to the operation of all vehicles most drivers ignore them until they're stranded or the car is damaged.
Personally I absolutely despise an unreliable vehicle so I check my battery at least monthly. I check the water level (it's actually electrolyte, which is a mixture of sulfuric acid and water) by looking through the see-thru case. Sometimes holding a flashlight behind the battery makes it easier to see the level. If your battery doesn't have a see-thru case or removable caps you're out of luck. You may also be out of luck if the liquid level becomes noticeably low, as most batteries have no provision for adding water. Therefore when the liquid level in a sealed battery drops significantly, the battery will soon fail. That always means it's time to start shopping!
On the plus side, some batteries are designed with removable caps. If this is the case with yours keep it topped off with distilled water for longest life. Tap water is not acceptable as it normally contains minerals detrimental to batteries
But don't confine your battery exam to liquid level; it's equally important to check battery cable connections for corrosion. Corrosion: nasty looking, fuzzy, gray-green, mess that grows on battery cables. If left alone corrosion will ultimately cause a no-start situation or damage your car's electrical system. Even if battery cables look okay they should be cleaned, properly tightened, and have corrosion inhibitor applied yearly.
For you non-professionals who have been cleaning batteries for years, I wouldn't recommend it on your late model car unless you have a service manual and a memory protector. Many newer cars will lose a portion of their computer memory when battery cables are disconnected. Some will even require a repair-shop procedure to re-establish proper computer function.
What are the warning signs of a failing battery? Today usually none, the majority of batteries are working fine one minute and dead as yesterday's herring the next, absolutely no warning signs. So maintaining reliability requires being proactive with a simple five minute battery test using an electronic battery tester. Modern battery testers are highly accurate and also have the ability to check the alternator and voltage regulator. It's always best to have the full test performed since a bad charging system can destroy a battery and a bad battery can destroy a charging system and electronics.
But suppose the battery test confirms yours is a goner and you need to buy a replacement, what next? Knowing the standard battery rating system is crucial to making a smart purchase. Batteries are rated in Cold Cranking Amps (CCA) and don't be fooled by Cranking Amps (CA) which is not the same. Compared to Cold Cranking Amps, Cranking Amps gives an inflated number, which implies a battery, is stronger than it actually is.
The rule for putting this information to work is easy. Always buy the largest battery, in Cold Cranking Amps, that will physically fit your vehicle. Also, there is no such thing as a battery with too many Cold Cranking Amps. By using this rule you'll purchase a longer-lasting battery, more reliability, plus added protection and life for every electrical component on your vehicle. Even the bulbs will last longer. Finally it's a good idea to have your battery tested early in the spring and late in the summer (now) because most batteries fail when there is a significant change in average temperature.
© Copyright 08/11/08 Pat Goss all rights reserved