Shop Talk – December 2009

This month’s article was inspired by Oscar Myre IV at the Bugler’s 10th anniversary birthday bash last week. But before I get into that, I wanted to say if you weren’t there, you missed a fine party; lots of good food provided by Hattie’s restaurant of Castle Rock and Judy’s Restaurant of Longview. In addition, great music by the “Left Coast Jazz Ensemble” and a real plus – Michelle Myre singing a couple great tunes! I’m looking forward to the next 10 year birthday bash.

And because it is almost Thanksgiving as I write this, I would like to say that we all have a lot to be thankful for, and one of them is we have the Valley Bugler to read which is always fun and entertaining. Since this is the Christmas issue as well, I hope all of you are filled with the spirit of Christmas and all that entails.

The subject of this month’s diatribe concerns delayed maintenance that is so easy to do, yet can be real costly oftentimes. I thought a few examples would be a fun way to get my subject across.

The first one is those funny noises you hear just before the friction material completely falls of the brake pads. When the noise first starts (often a high pitched squeaky noise) we tend to put it out of our mind. At this stage of the game, it only takes an hour or so to replace the pads and perhaps a cleanup pass on the rotors to make the brakes 100% again.

However, if one ignores the sound, it doesn’t take very long for the brakes to be metal to metal and the repair costs to go up dramatically! We have seen cases where the metal pad even went away and not only were rotors required, but also calipers and their foundations had to be replaced.

Another example is the old timing belt. These have been around for a long time now, but people still ignore the need to replace them on a regular basis. The fact that timing belts are made with aramid fibers that have no design life (they don’t break with any regularity) so once in awhile, they do last for a very long time.

However, the manufacturers specify a certain number of miles between changes so that you can schedule a replacement and no further damage will occur. Left to chance, a lot of engines are what are called “interference engines” meaning when the belt breaks, internal items interfere; i.e. pistons run into valves and something always gets bent! Also a lot more money exchanges hands when this happens.

Fluid changes are another very simple task that pays great dividends if the maintenance schedule is followed. As I have said in the past, fluids in your automobile are just like the blood in our bodies; if it’s clean all is well, but if it gets dirty, we are in trouble!

Transmission services vary some, but typically around 150 dollars to replace all the old fluid and filter every 30K or so will generally allow a transmission to last the life of the vehicle. Ignored and often times 60 to 80k the vehicle will be towed to the shop with a fried trans – not a cheap experience either.

The last example I will share is out of balance tires. As a vehicle gets older, it develops little noises and so forth that we just get used to.

Oftentimes we aren’t aware anything is even wrong because it comes on so gradual, but that bouncing tire does all kinds of insidious damage and can greatly shorten the life of the car.

Things like bearing damage, shock and spring damage, cracking of sheet metal and even the frames sometimes all caused by out of balance tires. That’s one of the reasons you should take your vehicle to a professional once in a while so that someone who is trained to recognize abnormal noises and vibrations can advise you on corrective actions before real damage is done.

I’ll leave it there for now – Happy Motoring – Ray.

Suggestions for future articles – email me: rayscartalk@yahoo.com

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