Four Steps To Making Sure You Keep Car Repair Costs To A Minimum

By : Steve Carr   
Submitted 2010-10-31 15:55:05 Owning a car can be a costly experience, but with the right knowledge and information you can lower the amount of money you spend on your car, with the following four steps showing how you can reduce your potential car repair costs.

1. Become a model specific car enthusiast - it can be difficult to become enthusiastic about cars if you have next to no interest in them. However, you'll often see a substantial benefit in the amount of money that you spend on maintenance costs if you take the time to educate yourself on the exact model that you're driving.

The reason behind this is that some people will drive away from Dodge dealers with a brand new car and as soon as it develops a fault, they'll take it back to Dodge dealers to get it fixed, something which could be costly if not covered under the warranty.

If you had spent a few hours learning about your car and some common faults, there's a good chance that you could determine what is wrong with your car when a fault does develop and if it's something relatively easy to resolve, fix it yourself, without having to pay out the often costly fees of a main dealer's garage.

2. Change the oil and filter every six months - something that's done at your car's annual service, if you find that you cover a lot of miles in your car, perhaps driving up and down the motorway on a regular basis, it's advisable to change your oil and oil filter once every six months.

A process which is a lot easier to do than you probably think, it's simply a matter of taking the lid off your oil tank, unscrewing the sump plug screw or bolt underneath the tank, letting the old oil drain out, unscrewing the filter and screwing a new one in and then topping the tank up with new oil after you've replaced the sump plug.

3. Wash it regularly - understandably, a lot of people only wash their car when it's particularly dirty and in need of a good clean. However, if you drive up and down the motorway regularly, make a journey through a particularly unclean area, such as a building site or you park underneath trees, there's a good chance that your car could be getting overly dirty and it's therefore important that you give the car a good cleaning on a regular basis to remove any dirt that could result in problems developing.

4. Test everything at least once a month - for the most part, you won't have to do anything extra than simply driving the car as you normally would to ensure that you're testing most things on the car throughout the year.

However, it's imperative that you don't neglect certain aspects when the weather changes.

For example, when the winter comes around, it's important that if your car has air conditioning, you put it on for a few minutes once a month. This is not ideal when you could do with being warmed up rather than cooled down, it will ensure that the air conditioning does not become faulty, such as by having mould develop inside it and it remains cool and ready for use once the summer comes around.

Author Resource:- Jardine Motors Group UK operates a large portfolio of specialist franchises of the world's most prestigious marques, including Dodge dealers.

Four Things You Should Know How To Do That Will Help Reduce Your Car Maintenance Costs

If you're the type of person who drives away from BMW dealers without thinking about car maintenance costs, taking your car back to the garage whenever it needs something doing to it, check through these four points to help you reduce the amount of money that you spend maintaining your car.

1. Change the oil - when changing the oil is mentioned, a lot of people instantly assume that they can't do it themselves as it's too technical and leave it for a garage to do.

The truth is that the process is a lot easier than you're likely to think and is simply matter of unscrewing the plug on the bottom of the oil tank and letting the old oil drain out in full before you replace the plug and top it up with new oil.

You can even change the oil filter if you so wish, as it's a process that requires for you to do nothing more than unscrew, by hand, the old oil filter and screw in the new one.

2. Change a wheel - whilst a lot of people think they know how to change a car wheel, when they come to do it, it's not as easy you first think and requires for you to have gone through the process once to know how to do it effectively.

One of the most common mistakes that people make is by jacking the car up first and then attempting to loosen the wheel nuts. Whilst this in theory is possible, you'll find it a lot easier if you loosen the nuts slightly when the car is on the ground and then continue unscrewing them once the car is jacked up.

3. Check your tyres - there's two parts related to this point, both of which some people might take as a given and something that they do regularly, but there'll be plenty of others that don't know how to do either.

The first point is to know your car's correct tyre pressure. Keep in mind that this isn't how you actually inflate your tyres, but what the correct pressure should be.

Not every car is the same (in fact, not every tyre on your car will be the same) and it's therefore recommended to increase the life of your tyres, as well as to aid with maintaining an optimum miles per gallon ratio, you know exactly what level your tyres should be inflated to.

The second part is to be able to know when your tyres need changing due to having insufficient tread.

Yes, everyone will be able to pick out a bald tyre against a tyre with tread, but do you know that the minimum amount of tread you can have on your tyres, by law, is 1.6milimetres, but that it's recommended to change them when it's 3mm? This is because your car can take an extra 26 foot to stop when travelling at 50 miles per hour if your tyres only have 1.6milimetres of tread on them.

4. Check your lights - this might seem like a plain and simple one that everyone can do, but imagine you're checking your lights; how do you do it?

Chances are you'll turn your lights on, put your hazards on and walk around the car, checking that they're all bright enough and none of them are faulty or not working all together.

Sound about right?

What about your full beams?

And you can't forget the light bulb that illuminates your rear registration plate - if this is out, your car will fail its MOT.

5 Ways To Save Money And Lower Your Annual Car Related Costs

By : Steve Carr   

is one of the most expensive things that you can do and although the freedom that a car gives you is priceless, keeping it maintained so that you can go wherever you want, whenever you want unfortunately can bring with it a rather hefty price tag.

However, there are various ways that you can save yourself a small fortune each year on your car related costs and the following 5 points are some of the easiest to carry out.

1. Check your car before it goes in for its MOT - unless you're a car aficionado, it's highly unlikely that you carry out even the most rudimentary of checks before your car goes in for its annual MOT.

However, if you spend less than an hour ensuring that, for example, all of your car's lights are working properly and the fluid levels are topped up, you can save yourself the money of a retest - and the embarrassment of failing on something so minor.

2. Service it yourself - although you won't get a stamp in your log book, if you're planning on keeping your car for years, you could save yourself the cost of an annual service by servicing it yourself.

As complicated as you may think it is, servicing a car is actually relatively easy and as long as you have access to a Haynes manual - or even the internet and YouTube - everything you need to know from how to change the oil to replacing the spark plugs will be covered in an in-depth and easy to follow way.

3. Spend 30 minutes a week maintaining it - the best way to ensure that your car doesn't need any unnecessary repairs is to simply spend 30 minutes once a week maintaining it. Checking the fluid levels and tyre pressures, as well as washing it to ensure no substances damage the paintwork, the 30 minutes will be time well spent and after a few weeks, you'll begin to take it as a given that you have to maintain your car for that length of time and won't miss the 30 minutes from your week.

4. Shop around for everything - whether it's a bulb that needs replacing or all 4 tyres, never take the first price you come across, especially if you're going to a national retailer - although they're popular and have competitive deals, these deals are often only competitive to other major retailers and you could reduce the cost of your purchase by looking around and using the internet or small, local dealers.

5. Only buy what you can afford - it might sound simple and straightforward, but you should only ever buy a car that you can comfortably afford in all respects; not just in the initial price, but the on-going costs, too.

For instance, you might be able to walk into second hand Jaguar dealers and purchase a used XJ, but it's useless if you can't afford the service or repair costs.

Stick to what you can afford and you won't be met with any unnecessary or unexpected high bills.

Four Additional Costs You Need To Keep In Mind When Choosing Your Next Car

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By : Steve Carr   
Submitted 2010-10-31 15:52:17 One of the problems that people have when purchasing a car is that they don't budget properly.

They put money aside to pay for the car itself, but don't think about what additional costs they're going to have to pay afterwards, usually spending their entire budget on the car, without realising just how much money it's going to cost them throughout the year.

For instance, you could walk into Audi dealers today and stretch your budget so that you could drive away in a new A6.

Now that might seem fantastic and you might get a great feeling as you drive away from the Audi dealers, but if you've spent all of your money on the car, how are you going to afford all of the additional costs throughout the year?

This might not be a problem for some, but if you're concerned about the additional costs you're likely to have to pay out for, taking a look through the following four points and try and budget for them when you're next looking for a car.

1. Insurance - if you're buying your very first car, you're likely to know that your insurance premiums are going to be high and so you'll spend hours trying to find the cheapest quotes possible for a car before you even buy it.

When you've been driving a while, you will often skip this part, as the prices for a similar car are going to be roughly the same.

If you're spending your money on a different car to what you're normally used to, especially one that's high up the cost ladder, it's strongly recommended you check how much the insurance is going to be before you hand over your money for the car.

2. Fuel - generally speaking, the first few cars that you own will have a relatively small engine, so to keep the costs down on everything, including fuel.

If you're about to upgrade to a car with a larger engine, however, you really need to work out how much fuel you're going to go through each week, as where you might have spent 25 or 30 pounds a week previously, a bigger engine could easily see you spend 20 percent more on fuel.

3. Vehicle tax - something that is becoming the bane of many people's lives who purchase new cars, the way vehicle tax is calculated changed from 1 March 2010 and there are now two rates for cars less than 10 years old - one for brand new cars and one for cars that are between one and 10 years old.

Based on vehicle emissions, the less environmentally friendly your car is, the higher your vehicle tax is going to be and in an effort to deter people from buying cars that are harmful to the environment, the cost of vehicle tax for the first year for a car that falls into Band M is 950 pounds.

4. Maintenance - for most cars, standard maintenance is going to be roughly the same cost. However, if you're looking to get your Audi, for example, serviced annually at Audi dealers, you need to be aware that the cost could be several hundreds of pounds - average for a service for this quality of car, but considerably more than if you're used to getting a cheaper car serviced at a local garage.

Author Resource:- Jardine Motors Group UK operates a large portfolio of specialist franchises of the world's most prestigious marques, including Audi dealers.