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.
Hidden Problems
Static electricity can be a lot of fun to play with, but it can be dangerous and damaging around an automobile. Let’s say you’re putting fuel in the fuel tank, and for some reason you have to go back into the inside of the car. Maybe you forgot your credit card or something like that. You go around the side of the car, you slide in on the seat, you get the credit… Read More
Cooling Problems
There’s a lot more to checking for an overheating car than just belts, hoses and the thermostat. See, lots of times debris will clog the front of the radiator or the front of the air conditioning condenser. And when you look through the grill, the only thing you really see is the front of the condenser. If that’s dirty it needs to be cleaned, but maybe it looks… Read More
Spare Me
One of the most neglected parts on the average automobile is going to be the spare tire. Nobody ever seems to check them, and that can put you in an embarrassing situation. You’ve got a flat tire on the car, you’ve got a flat spare. Now what do you do? Well, you should have checked the tire pressure in your spare once every month to make sure that it has the… Read More
Hitch Me Up
Trailering is very important to a lot of people these days. And we have some interesting tips that, well, might make your trailering life a bit easier. Now here’s something very interesting. This new Hummer H2, well it has a front receiver and it gives you the ability to put a coupling on it so that you can move your boat or your camping trailer or whatever it… Read More
Not New Products
If you lock your keys into a modern car, you may be faced with a new challenge. See, on many of them you can’t use the old-fashioned Slim Jim. As a matter of fact, you have to use tools that are shaped like this. They can be very complicated, but they’re also a lot thicker than the old type tools. So that means you need more space between the window and the body… Read More
For Your Information
Back in the day, you didn’t need a whole lot of information to repair cars, and what you did need was easy to come by. But that has changed dramatically over the years with the complexity of modern cars. And here to explain some of that to us is Jeff Lagges. Jeff is the general manager of ALLDATA. Jeff, what are we seeing here? Jeff: Well, with the proliferation… Read More
Under Pressure
Low tire pressure is becoming a national epidemic. Some experts estimate that as much as 80 percent of all of the cars riding around on the highways have dangerously low tire pressure in one or more of their tires. That’s bad news, because it is dangerous. So you really need to pay attention to the pressure in your tires, either with an old fashioned gauge, or… Read More
Tire Basics
It’s amazing that one of the most important safety features on any car is also the most overlooked: the tires. They are critical to safe driving, yet nobody pays attention to tire pressure and tire wear. Find out where the tire pressure label is on your vehicle from the owner’s manual, and always inflate the tires to that proper pressure and check them regularly.… Read More
Vettes Only
Corvettes are wonderful automobiles, but they do have some unique problems. Take mid-year Corvettes with four-wheel disc brakes through 1982. They used brake calipers that were fixed in position. So because the calipers couldn’t move, the pistons inside the calipers had to be able to move in different directions, up, down, sideways, where a normal piston just… Read More
Premium Shocks
As cars have become more sophisticated their suspension systems and the components in them have become more sophisticated too. Take the shocks and struts, for instance. A car has one or the other. They don’t have both, as a general rule. Now what’s the difference between a shock absorber and a strut? Well, they both control the vertical movement, the bounce of the… Read More