Free Money Finance: Car Maintenance Tips that Pay Off

Yahoo has a video detailing car maintenance tips that pay off. Their suggestions:

• Follow your owner's manual. Only get oil changes when you need them (not every 3k miles like most mechanics suggest) and use the type of gas that gets you the best mileage for the buck (which is regular unleaded. This is, of course, as long as your manual doesn't say you need premium gas.)


• Tend to your "check engine" light when it goes off. Many times it comes on simply because the car's gas cap wasn't tightened enough.


• Wash underneath the car. Dirt and grime get on it (of course) and can be a problem in the long-term.

They also shared a couple of interesting points as follows:

• AAA estimates average annual auto costs as $9,000. This includes EVERYTHING -- maintenance, insurance, depreciation, etc. This is an estimate, of course, that's dependent on how much you drive. They estimate costs at 59 cents per mile if you want to calculate the costs for your car.


• They suggested that once a year you fill the car with a tank of high octane fuel. The guy in the video says that it cleans out your engine.

My thoughts on these:

• I follow my car's owner manual and get oil changes (synthetic) every 10,000 miles. My first two years' of service are free (my dealership offered it), so I don't know if I'll go back to regular oil (I believe my manual says I can use it now and then) once I'm paying for the service myself.


• My wife had the "check engine" problem with her gas cap for a bit of time. The light would then go off once we simply tightened the cap correctly.


• I don't think I've ever washed underneath a car -- isn't that what rain is for? ;-) Any of you do this?


• 59 cents a mile, huh? I'm trending towards 20,000 miles in the first year of having my new car, so that's a cost of $11,800. Yikes!!!


• I had never heard the "fill your car with high octane fuel once a year" suggestion before. Have any of you heard this? Do you do it?

Overall, cars seem to be fairly reliable if you simply take care of them. Read the owner's manual, do what is says, and you'll be fine in most cases IMO.

Source: http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2011/08/car-maintenance-tips-that-pay-off.html

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