Daily drivers are the king of the roads! They pretty much know everything – cars, traffic laws, roads and directions, and many others. Are you one of them?
However, there are still much to learn in the world of motoring especially about vehicle maintenance.
In this post series, I’ll share to you five basic and practical car tips that will help make your car run better, faster and more reliable. Read on and learn more!
After Ignition, Don’t Drive Right Away!
People who drive daily often rush things just to get to their destination on time. What they do is that, they get in their car, start it up, and they drive right away.
That’s a big mistake especially if you want your car to last a long time.
Driving right away in a cold engine is bad for your car. You need to give at least 30 seconds before you drive to let all the fluid to circulate and get to every critical components, and also to wait for the RPM to drop down to its normal range.
If you have an old vehicle, you are required to warm up your engine more time or even needs to reach its operating temperature before you drive. This is also crucial if you live in a place with cold weather.
What you should you do is to follow simple habits that will greatly benefit your car. Like wearing your seatbelts, wiping dusts on your dashboard, and many other things. This will help fluids like oil to circulate to every essential components while you prep for a road trip.
Drive Hard from Time to Time!
Many conservative drivers believe that not flooring the accelerator will make their engines more fuel efficient while prolonging their engine’s serviceable life.
While driving smoothly and slow can contribute to better engine performance, but the reality is the opposite as engines need to be pushed to its limits from time to time.
Of course safety should be your number one priority when driving hard. You should always follow the speed limit and ensure that your car is capable for high speed drive.
You can floor it when driving onto highways. Step on the gas and try to achieve the highway’s speed limit for swift acceleration, but try not to overspeed.
Driving hard from time to time will help burn and remove excess carbon deposits that has accumulated inside your engine’s valve train, exhaust system and may even help improve your engine’s overall performance.
So flooring your car occasionally will help prevent having an engine head all gummed up with carbon wastes. This is applicable for both petrol and diesel engines.
Get to a Full Stop Before Changing Gear
Like the first tip above, daily drivers are always in a rush while driving. They often throw the gear lever into either Reverse or Drive, while the car is still in motion.
This is a perfect recipe for early transmission retirement.
Whether you have a manual or automatic transmission, shifting or changing to a different gear while the car is still in movement will damage your transmission as it will take the impact of momentum while shifting.
This will cause severe damage to your clutches and other critical components of your tranny. There’s also an immediate effect. Most of the time, the engine will likely stall especially in automatic transmissions.
Modern vehicles have electronic controls that will not enable you to shift into reverse if your car is not yet in full stop. However, modern transmissions don’t have the same control when shifting from Reverse, to Neutral, to Drive (where the car is still moving backwards) which has similar damaging effects.
Steer Only While Rolling
Are you a type of driver that often steer when the car is in full stop? If this sounds like you then this tip is for you!
Most of us are guilty of this from time to time especially when doing a parking maneuver, steering in full swing without getting the car moving even in slight motion.
Doing this has several bad effects on your car.
One, steering while in full stop will give your steering rack a greater impact as it will exert more to turn the wheels. This is the leading cause of steering rack failure. But, the burden isn’t just on the steering rack but on the whole steering system.
Another bad effect of this habit is that, it will wear your front tires fast. Turning the wheels while the car is stationary puts a lot of friction between your front tires and the asphalt (the whole weight of the car is on them), especially that the contact point of the tires are only focused on one area.
So the next time you maneuver your vehicle, make sure that your car is rolling slightly before steering the wheel.
Popping the Hood After a Long Drive
Again, daily drivers often neglect the health of their engine by not opening their car’s hood after a long drive. Why is this so important?
Well, popping the hood after driving allows the heat to escape easily and quickly from the engine bay. This will help your engine to cool down much faster and prevent any fluids from getting baked on critical components such as the turbocharger.
Dissipating heat as fast as possible is your number one ally if you want a longer engine life. Plus, all rubber and plastic components inside the engine will last longer as they don’t get brittle due to prolonged heat exposure.
A cooler engine bay also benefit every electrical components in your car. So the next time you drive your car, make sure to pop the hood once you reached your destination.
Summary
There you have it! Five car tips for all daily drivers. I will write a second part of this post so make sure to stay tune as I’ll make this topic a series.
Until next time…
