Do I Really Need To Take My Car To "Fast Lube" Place?

By Sherry Hayden, Editor, Home at Work Online!

Did you ever have an experience like this?  My boyfriend and I were going on a trip to Maine (from PA) so I got my Ford EXP (I assumed later that EXP stood for experimental engine!!) to a Jiffy Lube type place.  You know, they tune it up, replace spark plugs, that sort of thing.  Well, the next day we left for our trip, got on the Turnpike and 2 miles down the road -- my car broke down!  Dead as a doornail!  Fortunately, a friend of ours who was a mechanic saved our butts and told us later that when that lube place did my spark plugs, they never bothered to check the gaps before installing them - I guess that's a problem.

Well, later in life when I went through my "entirely too low on cash all the time" phase, a couple of friends of mine who always do their own vehicle maintenance, taught me a few things.  I had a 1988 Subaru Wagon - which to this day, had to be one of my most favorite cars!  My best friend, Martha, taught me how to do tune-ups on it and it was amazingly simple!  My other friend, Jim, helped me do brakes on the same car because there was no way I could afford to pay a mechanic or even Sears to do it!  A brake job costs is usually around $125 or so.  Did you know that brakes only cost around $20 from an auto store?  That's right - the rest of the cost is all labor.  Well, here's my buddy, in my garage, putting on my new brakes and I sat there and watched.  I couldn't believe how easy the job was!  Of course, we did run into a couple of snags that caused quite a few unmentionable words to be spoken and we got really, really dirty!  It was great!!  I learned how to do brakes and found out something else...  Did you know that there's a company called Chilton and that they print manuals on just about every vehicle - old or new - on the road today?  All you have to do is buy the manual that matches your make, model and year of vehicle and they give you pictures and how-to's on anything you might need to do to your car or truck!  Can you believe it?

One of the other things I learned is how to pay attention to certain details.  This learning experience has greatly helped me on all of my repair projects - vehicles, appliances, computers...  You have to remember to pay attention (even marking parts with notes, labels, magic markers, etc.) to how things come apart.  However it comes apart is how is goes back together!  If you can take something apart, repair or replace whatever's not working properly, then put it back together the same way (but in reverse, duh!) than you can fix anything!  Sooner or later, you'll get to a point where the taking apart and putting back together "thing" becomes logical.  Soon you'll be doing all sorts of projects!  Also, if you take great care of your vehicle, it will take care of you!  (Sounds real "parent-ish" but makes a lot of sense!) 

Change you own oil and rotate your tires regularly (minimal maintenance, easy to accomplish!) and try giving your vehicle a tune-up - believe me, you care about the gap on those spark plugs a lot more than that guy at the lube place!  There's actually a maintenance schedule in your vehicle's owner's manual - did you know that?  I'll bet you never even read that thing except to find out about the "neat" stuff!  (Well, that used to be me, anyway!) You'll be surprised at how easy it is to maintain your vehicle and how well your vehicle runs - regularly!  Happy motoring and good luck!