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.
Importance Of Flushing
We all know that flushing at home is important, but it’s also very important on our automobiles. You know, cars have become very heavily dependent upon electronics, and things like automatic transmissions now that use electronic controls, well they really need to be flushed on a regular basis. That means every two years or 24,000 miles, unless your owner’s manual… Read More
Products For Your Garage
The home garage can be a wonderful place, or it can be something out of a horror show. See most of them are really cluttered, stuff everywhere. Well, one way to get around that is to buy tools that fit on the wall, like this shop vac. It has a wall mount. It gets it up off the floor and out of the way. You know you also have brooms and various things with handles.… Read More
Car Covers For All Seasons
Keeping a nice car nice can be a real challenge these days, what with air pollution and acid rain and bird droppings and dust and dirt. Well, one of the things you might want to consider is a car cover. There are a lot of ways to buy car covers. You could go down to the local chain store and buy a one size fits all, or maybe one size fits nothing, and you could… Read More
Modis Operandi
Whether you drive a practical 4-door sedan or a highly impractical, supercharged road warrior like this, you’ll find that they all have one thing in common: that’s computers and computer problems. Now, whatever the problem might be, whether it has to do with performance, a check engine light, or emissions, you have to have the car tested. Now in the past testing… Read More
Spend Now Or Spend Later
Taking proper care of a modern automobile can be complicated. It’s easy to spend too much money. It’s also easy to try to save too much money. Well, how do you hit the balance? Well, first you start out by keeping a log of everything that you do on your automobile. Every job that’s done, you mark it down so that you don’t buy the same thing twice. You also keep a… Read More
Light Fare
Lighting systems on vehicles have really evolved over the last few years. Something we’re seeing a lot more of are HID lights. Well, those are the ones that you see coming down the road, they have kind of a blueish tint to the light. Well, they’re mostly on upscale cars, so a lot of people would like to mimic that, and one way to do it, as they’ve found out, is to… Read More
Keeping A Low Profile
One of the most changed parts of a modern automobile are its tires. There’s been this continuing evolution in tires, especially when it comes to the profile. See over the years they have become lower and lower in profile. Twenty years ago, a 75 series tire was quite common. Then it went to 70 and 65 and 60 and so on, where today we have tires that are 60 series… Read More
Rattles & Leaks
John, wind leaks, water leaks, squeaks, rattles, noises. If you don’t have the right equipment, they can be very difficult to find and take care of, especially water leaks. Now that’s something if you don’t take care of it, it can lead to a lot of other problems, like the covering on the inside of this sunroof where it’s come apart. You may also find damage to… Read More
Timing Belts
Cars are slowly moving away from timing belts. More and more cars these days are equipped with timing chains. But that still leaves millions and millions of cars on the road that have timing belts. Now, timing belts should be looked at like tires or brakes. They have a life span. They do wear out. And they need to be replaced, otherwise you’re going to be stranded… Read More
Pat Gets Stoned
The fronts of automobiles are considerably different than they used to be. Everything is painted, and that means there’s a lot more painted surface to be exposed to stone chips and so on. Plus, if you look at the headlights on modern cars, they’re very aerodynamic. They blend into the design of the vehicle, and many times they’re outrageously expensive. So the… Read More