Liberty Auto Electric 101 Straight Street, Paterson, NJ 07501 973.754.9355 Categories Air Conditioning Alignment Alternator Axles Battery Cabin Air Filter Check Engine Light Cooling System Diagnostics Did You Know Differential Service Disc Brakes Drum Brakes Engine Air Filter Exhaust Fuel System Headlamps Inspection Making Your Vehicle Last Oil Change PCV Valve Power Brakes Serpentine Belt Shocks and Struts Spark Plugs Steering Suspension Timing Belt Tire Pressure Monitoring System Tire Rotation and Balancing Tires Transfer Case Service Transmission Uncategorized Water Pump Wheel Bearings Windshield Wipers More Information Home Articles Contact Us Email Video To a Friend Login Busted In Paterson: The Maintenance Free Myth August 9, 2013 Busted In Paterson: The Maintenance Free Myth Filed under: Making Your Vehicle Last — libert264 @ 4:27 pm Quality surveys report fewer problems with new Paterson cars than ever before. So does that mean that modern vehicles have become maintenance free? Back when cars spent more time in Paterson repair shops, NJ drivers were more mindful of routine service. Now, it’s much easier to put it off. Take Paterson tune-ups for example. In the days of mechanical ignition systems, an engine needed to be tuned-up every couple of years. If your engine was out of tune, you knew it. It ran poorly and got bad fuel economy driving on NJ streets and highways. Now, the ignition system is electronic and controlled by the engine management computer. Spark plugs rarely get fouled and will last for as much as a hundred thousand miles. So family car tune-ups used to force you in for service and while you were there you just took care of whatever else was on the list. So what’s the benefit to keeping up with factory scheduled maintenance at Liberty Auto Care? Well, your family car will perform better and return better fuel economy. Those benefits pay for the service as you go along. The big plus is that major repairs – and the associated breakdowns – are prevented. And these aren’t just repairs that are a long ways off. Modern engines are far more sophisticated and have many parts that are in critical need of proper lubrication. Missing just one oil change at Liberty Auto Care can allow oil sludge to start forming. Sludge clogs small engine passages, robbing family car parts of the lubrication they need. An expensive failure could easily occur within two or three years. Taking care of the little things at Liberty Auto Care prevents big problems with your family car later. No Paterson motorist wants to be stranded by a breakdown. Your family car still needs to be taken care of – it’s just that some of those points of care have changed with automotive advancements. The need for proper maintenance at Liberty Auto Care in Paterson did not go away. Give us a call Liberty Auto Care 973.754.9355 101 Straight Street Paterson, NJ 07501 At Liberty Auto Care in Paterson NJ (07501) we install quality NAPA replacement parts. Give us a call at 973.754.9355. To learn more about NAPA AutoCare, visit NAPAAutoCare. Comments (0) August 2, 2013 PCV Valve Replacement At Liberty Auto Care Filed under: PCV Valve — libert264 @ 9:49 pm Today’s Fairfield car care article focuses on PCV valve replacement. The PCV valve is a little, inexpensive part that does a big job for your family car. PCV stands for Positive Crankcase Ventilation. The crankcase is the bottom area of the engine that holds the oil. When the family car engine’s running, fuel is burned to generate power. Most of the exhaust from combustion goes out through the exhaust system. But some exhaust blows by the pistons and goes into the lower engine, or crankcase. These hot gases are about seventy percent unburned fuel. This can dilute and contaminate the oil, leading to damaging engine oil sludge. It can also cause engine corrosion in your family car. At high speeds, the pressure can build up to the point that gaskets and seals start to leak. Fairfield car owners need to know that over time, the vented gases will gum up the PCV valve and it won’t work well. That can lead to all of the problems I’ve already described, oil leaks, excessive oil consumption and wasted gas. Fortunately, it’s very easy to test the PCV valve and quick and inexpensive to replace it at Liberty Auto Care. Even so, it’s often overlooked because many Fairfield drivers don’t know about it. Check your family car owner’s manual or ask your Liberty Auto Care advisor. If this is the first time you’ve heard of a PCV valve, you might be in line for a PCV valve replacement. Please ask us about your PCV valve. For the price of a couple of burger combo meals, you can avoid some very expensive deep engine repairs. At Liberty Auto Care in Paterson NJ (07501) we install quality NAPA replacement parts. Give us a call at 973.754.9355. To learn more about NAPA AutoCare, visit NAPAAutoCare. Comments (0) July 25, 2013 Tire Tread Depth Filed under: Tires — libert264 @ 8:30 pm When talking about stopping power, we tend to focus on our brakes. But our tires are where the rubber meets the road. So having good brakes isn’t enough: we have to have tires with enough traction to translate braking power into stopping power. Let’s focus on stopping in wet conditions. In order for a tire to have good contact with the road, it has to move the water out of the way. If it can’t move the water, the tire will actually ride on top of a thin film of water. To move water out of the way so the tire has channels for water to flow through. Look at a tire and you’ll see channels that run around and across the tire. They’re designed to direct water away from the tire so it can contact the road better. The deeper the channel, the more water it can move. A brand new tire has very deep channels and can easily move a lot of water. As the tire wears down, the channels become shallower and can move less water. When it wears down enough, it can seriously affect your ability to stop on wet roads. Consumer Reports and other advocate groups think that a good standard of replacing tires when the tread is worn down to four-thirty-seconds of an inch. That’s 3.2 millimeters. When tires are worn to two-thirty-seconds of an inch, the tread wear bar is visible. So the recommended standard has twice the tread depth as a completely worn out tire – and that little bit of additional tread makes a big difference. Stopping distances are cut dramatically on wet roads. A safe stop from freeway speeds with four-thirty-seconds of an inch of tread could result in a crash with worn out tires. There’s an easy way to tell when a tire’s worn to four-thirty-seconds of an inch. Just insert a quarter into the tread. Put it in upside down. If the tread doesn’t cover George Washington’s hairline; it’s time to replace your tires. With a Canadian quarter, the tread should cover the numbers in the year stamp. At Liberty Auto Care in Paterson NJ (07501) we install quality NAPA replacement parts. Give us a call at 973.754.9355. To learn more about NAPA AutoCare, visit NAPAAutoCare. Comments (0) July 19, 2013 Cooling System Service At Liberty Auto Care Filed under: Cooling System — libert264 @ 8:11 pm Your family car cooling system’s job is to keep your engine cool. Coolant (also called antifreeze) mixed with water flows through your engine and absorbs heat. The mixture then flows out to the radiator where it’s cooled by air flowing over the radiator. From there the cooled mix circulates back through the family car engine to absorb more heat. Coolant, or antifreeze, is specially formulated to keep your engine safe in a wide range of environmental and operating temperatures in Paterson. Without coolant, the family car’s metal engine parts would expand so much that the engine would seize up and stop running. Expensive parts could be broken or warp so badly they would have to be replaced at Liberty Auto Care in Paterson. It could even be so bad that the whole engine is ruined and has to be replaced. Also, if it’s freezing outside in Paterson, the water in your engine could freeze while your vehicle is sitting out in the NJ cold. This is why you check coolant levels frequently and have your cooling system inspected for leaks. Also your manufacturer has a maintenance requirement for draining and replacing your coolant. These recommendations can vary widely, so check your Paterson owner’s manual or ask your service advisor at Liberty Auto Care in Paterson. The reason you need to change the coolant is that it has additives in it to protect the cooling system. As you can imagine, with all the heat, the cooling system’s a pretty harsh environment. The additives keep the fluid from becoming corrosive and damaging the radiator and other Paterson cooling system components. Over time, the additives are depleted and the coolant just has to be replaced. A simple pH test can measure the coolant’s acidity. You may have noticed that there are different colors of antifreeze at Liberty Auto Care: it is very important that you use the correct type. The different coolant types are different colors so you don’t mix them up. Manufacturers use different materials to make the cooling system, and they require different types of antifreeze to protect them. So check with your knowledgeable Liberty Auto Care service advisor or owner’s manual for the right kind because using the wrong coolant can void the warranty for your family car cooling system. Ask us about trip inspection, check engine light diagnostic and transfer case service.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 19:23:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015