Even if you consider yourself meticulous about your car’s well-being, you just might miss something. So just in case, here’s Audra Fordin with some often overlooked car care advice in this week’s Your Drive.

AUDRA FORDIN: Maintaining your car is a task, and if you own a car, well then it is such a priority to make sure that you do take real good care of it. You know, putting a good coat of wax on your car is going to help the finish, to prolong its life, and that’s certainly an overlooked maintenance. In addition to that, take a look at your headlights. Headlights used to be glass, now headlights are plastic. Because they are plastic, they oxidize from the sun. You can see here, there’s a haze coming over this headlight. I call that cataracts because there’s actually light that’s being limited, that you can’t see through. Something as simple as using a headlight polish, with a chamois and some elbow grease, is going to help you to clear the headlight and restore it back so that you can get visibility on the road.

Another overlooked maintenance is your engine air filter.  Think about the air filter like your lungs, taking in air so that your body can breathe. Your car breathes also, and it needs fresh air in order to breathe. Take a look at this air filter. It’s filthy, it’s got oil and debris and all kinds of blowby. This restricts the amount of air that can actually be pulled into the engine while your car is trying to breathe, which limits how much fuel you’re going to burn, and this costs you 10 percent fuel economy.

Another very important overlooked maintenance is your tires. To make sure that your tires are rotated every other oil change makes a difference. You know, if you think about the tires on your car, they are your car’s shoes on its feet, just like you have shoes on your feet. You can tell how you’re walking, if your car is in alignment, just by looking at the tire tread. Most important here– about tires– is to check your tire pressure. You’ll find the sticker on the driver’s side door jam, it has the correct pressure for your car, and to check your tire pressure every month, especially when you have seasons change, to make sure you have the correct tire pressure in your car. That will make sure that your tires last the most life.

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