5 Ways to Keep Your Car Running Smoothly

Routine maintenance is critical to keeping your car running in tip-top shape and prolonging the life of your vehicle. The single most important piece of routine maintenance you can have done is an oil change. Oil changes help prevent damage to the motor, and keep your vehicle running smoothly. Dirty motor oil can literally ruin your engine, the single most expensive part of your vehicle. We recommend that whenever you change your oil (typically every 5,000 miles) you also rotate your tires whenever your oil is changed.

Tire rotations prevent uneven wear on your tires, helping you to get to the most use from each set of tires. As an added benefit, keeping your tires serviced and properly inflated will improve your fuel economy. Best of all, we provide free lifetime tire rotations on every set of tires that we sell, so if you have bought tires from us, you can have your tires rotated for free when we change your oil. When we rotate your tires, we also measure the tread depth of each tire. To pass inspection, the State of New Hampshire requires a minimum tread depth of 2/32 of an inch, which is not very much. If your tires are getting down around 3/32 or 4/32, ask yourself if you really want to be driving on wet or icy roads with tires that are on their last legs. As we get ready for another winter, you may want to invest in either a new set of all-season tires, or a set of snow tires for winter use.

An alignment, as its names suggests, makes sure that all of your wheels are properly aligned, so that they work together. Cars that are out of alignment cost you money in two ways: their tires wear unevenly, and they have worse fuel economy (the tires “fight” each other and it requires more power to go in a straight line). Having an alignment done is an easy way to prolong the life of your tires while improving your fuel economy.

Just as changing the motor oil prevents gunk from building up in your motor, a “transmission flush” keeps your transmission working smoothly and helps to protect your gears. By changing your transmission fluid, you remove any dirt that may have accumulated and prolong the life of your transmission. Be sure to consult your owner’s manual to see how frequently your manufacturer recommends changing the transmission fluid. And if your service adviser recommends that you change your transmission fluid, do it. Trust me; it costs a lot more to replace a transmission than it does to change the fluid.

Your air filters can also get dirty and need to be replaced from time to time. The benefit of a new, clean air filter is that you are getting as much fresh air as possible into the cylinders so your engine will work as efficiently as possible, delivering the most power and improving acceleration.

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