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Taking care of your motor with easy car maintenance tips
A lot drivers are often hunting for useful car maintenance tips. We don't just want to be told "take it to a garage". This costs cash and it's something we are all short of in this current economic situation.So what's the solution? DIY! Buy yourself a basic tool set and get ready to make them hands dirty.
What does it need?
First of all I often say regular maintenance helps keep your problems to a minimum. By giving your auto a good bill of health, this will help keep those rattles away. However before we begin, get your cars reg plate number, model and make. Now take this info to your local motor spares counter and ask for |the following items:
They're the things we shall be changing. This is a basic vehicle service that you would expect to pay a mechanic approx £80, so let us save some cash.
Lets get on with it.
Lift your bonnet and you will be able to locate a black unit with a black pipe leading to the top of the engine, the box is made of plastic so this will be easily identifiable. The lid on this black box will either unscrew or just clip off. You may have to take off the pipes to do this, but that's easy and self explanatory. Now the cover is off, simply take out the present filter and swap with the new. Now was that not easy. For the rest of the car maintenance tips we will do the oil.
Doing this, I like to remove the oil out of the the engine first. For this the vehicle can be switched on for a short while to warm the oil up (no more than a few minutes) this helps thin the oil so that it purs quicker. Please be sensible, do not let it get hot as this will cause injury. To be sure feel the bottom of the engine. It should still be cool.
Get to the engine sump, it is kind a shaped like a big steel bowl. It will have an easily identifiable nut or hex nut near the center. Get yourself a large conatainer that sits easily under this nut (you will want a bowl that holds about five litres or more).Now if you have not guessed already, we shall unscrew this nut and that is where all the oil will flow from. At this point I just let the nut fall into the container and get it out afterwards, if if you try and hang on to it you just end up splashed in oil (one of my handy ittle car maintenance tips). When this has finished, keep the nut off and pan under whilst we do the last part. What you need to do now is locate the oil filter. This will be either a plastic dome or a can, and protrudes from the engine side. Look in your manual or go online to help locate anything you are unsure of. This is also very simple to change, either the the plastic cap or the can will unscrew. This can be tight but trust me it does unscrew. Once you have removed the filter replace with the newone . In the case of it being the plastic cap type you have removed, more than likely it will have a paper filter to change and then this cap is then put back on.
Get the oil in and we are off.
Now all we need to do is replace the nut back in the engine sump nice and tight please. On the very top of the engine you will have an oil filler cap, normally yellow or at the very least it says oil on it. Take off this cap, you can just see into your auto engine. Here is where we will pour the oil, now this is why you needed the motor factors to tell us the amount, what we now need to do is pour in just under this amount. When that's complete give it a minute to trickle to the sump and then look at your dipstick for the oil level. We want it just under the maximum level. Keep filling up until you hit this mark.
That is it we are all done and your automobile has a fresh bill of health. Easy car maintenance tips like this are all it requires to care for your vehicle and use it for many years.
