Goss’ Garage

Pat Goss, MotorWeek's resident master technician, helps consumers understand car problems and how to speak the same language as their technician. As cars becoming increasingly complex, fewer repairs can be accomplished at home. Effective communication with a repair shop is vital to keeping consumer and operating costs under control. From rattles and squeaks to leaks and drips, Pat covers a myriad of issues designed to keep cars on the road and out of the repair shop.

Environmentally Safe Parts Cleaning

If you own an auto repair shop like I do, you find out that one of the most important parts of repairing vehicles properly is clean parts. Now the big machines that we have in the repair shop certainly aren’t practical for most home use, but here’s one from Eastwood Tools. This uses their Metal Wash parts cleaner. It mixes with water, does a very good job of… Read More

Battery Care and Confusion

Electrical problems are always frustrating, but when you’re checking them, make sure you start with the basics, namely the fuses. Now if you’re in the habit of checking fuses using a test light, be very, very careful if you have a late model car. Make sure your test light is computer safe because some of these fuses will be hooked directly to electronic… Read More

Big Rig Blind Spots

There’s some real issues on the highways these days between the drivers of passenger cars and the drivers of the big rigs, and here to explain some of the things that can make driving safer for those, well, for both parties, Bill Adams. He’s a long-haul trucker driving for Overnite. Bill, welcome to Goss’ Garage. ADAMS: Thank you for having us. GOSS: All right.… Read More

Corvette Car Care

C5 Corvettes are wonderful, but not so wonderful they can’t be improved. Here I have an assortment of goodies from Mid America Motorworks to make the C5 a more enjoyable car. First is the VaraRam induction system. It picks up cold air from down here and actually has a ram air effect at higher speeds that can add significantly to the horsepower of the C5. And one… Read More

Garage Essentials

This time we have some interesting and handy items to have around the home shop. First, this is something that I use on my cars. This is a FilterMag. It’s a very strong magnet that attaches to the outside of the oil filter. Now the way I use this is I leave it on when I take the old oil filter off. Then I cut the oil filter apart and I look inside to see if… Read More

Car Wash Short Cuts

As most things on cars have become more and more difficult, there are still a few things that have actually become easier. Take car washing for instance. Now, remember, you never wash a car in the sunshine because that can damage the paint. But, suppose you could get rid of that nasty car wash bucket? Well, you can do that. Eagle One has bucket-free car… Read More

Modern Mufflers

There’s a wonderful sound - high performance exhaust on a high performance car. Now, it doesn’t make any difference what you drive. There are high performance exhaust systems available. But you know before we go into the high performance exhaust system, let’s take a look at the way the typical muffler is designed and constructed. This is the way the average… Read More

Protecting Against Car Identity Theft

Identity theft is an enormous problem, and now it’s even happening to cars. You know, anybody can walk past your car and copy down the VIN number because it’s right there in the windshield. Once they’ve copied your VIN number, they can apply for duplicate papers, and those papers can be used on another car that has been stolen or may have been reconstructed. How… Read More

Garage Dressups

There isn’t a reason in the world that a garage has to be dull and boring. Well, we went on the Internet to find some things that we could use to, well, make the garage a more appealing place to be. The first thing we came up with is two cool kits. Now this is one of them. Notice the filling station pump nozzle and hose and everything. This kit simply fits on to a… Read More

Black Boxes

We have some really neat add-on black box technology here. All right, first on my Explorer I wanted to have a reverse sensing system, but I didn’t want the buttons that show through the bumper. I think those are pretty ugly myself. So I elected to go after market on it, and I installed one of these systems. This is a ROSS system, and ROSS stands for Rostra… Read More