When you’ve worked so hard to be able to purchase a car, you’d do everything you can to preserve and prolong its life. Yes, cars naturally depreciate, but this doesn’t mean they’ve got to be rendered useless before you’ve made the most out of their mileage.
Prolonging Your Car’s Lifespan
How your car performs depends highly on how you do everything you can to take good care of it. You don’t have to be an expert mechanic for you to learn how to maintain it. There are simple ways you can do to become a responsible car owner.
For starters, why not check here for trusted car suppliers with whom you can develop a good working relationship, so you can ask them for the best insights on how to take care of your car. Also, this article explores some of the care tips:
- Take It Easy During Break-In Period
The break-in period of your car refers to the time when you first bring home your car, whether you’ve got a brand new or a used car. Because this is the first time to try out being on the real roads for longer distances, you need to take it easy during this time frame.
Because you’ve worked so hard to finally be able to bring home your car, you also want to do everything you can to give it a gentle break-in period.
The following are some pointers to remember:
- Use only light to medium acceleration during your first few drives;
- Keep your speed under 55mph (88kpm) on average during the first 1,000 miles;
- Don’t keep your car idle for extended periods.
- Go Through The Owner’s Manual Regularly
The owner’s manual isn’t just meant to sit on the glove compartment the whole time. If you haven’t gone through it, then it’s a good idea for you to do so.
The manual contains the manufacturer’s instructions on almost every concern or question you’re going to have about your car. It pays to go through it, so you know everything you do is within the metes and bounds set by the manufacturer.
- Drive Carefully Every Day
Your car can benefit when you drive it as carefully as possible. If you’re cautious with your vehicle, it’ll come back to you with good rewards of better performance and longer life.
Here are some tips on how you can be careful with driving your car every day:
- Don’t let your engine warm up while keeping it idle on the driveway. When you do this, the engine wouldn’t be at its peak. Hence, components may get damaged easily, fuel combustion will be incomplete, and oil will be contaminated.
- Don’t race your engine when starting up. Otherwise, this will make it wear out even faster.
- Shift to neutral during stoplights. Typically, red lights mean a long stop, so you’ll want to reduce the wear and tear on the engine and the transmission by being in neutral mode. If not, then your car is unnecessarily working itself even when it’s on a halt.
- Give Time For Your Car To Cool Down
This maintenance tip applies only to those who live in colder countries where the temperature can get so cold come autumn and winter.
As you use your car, you’ve got to give it ample time to cool down because when you leave it parked on your garage or driveway, the engine would be cold. When you switch it on, leave it for a few minutes before taking it out, just to give it time to warm up.
- Buy Gas From Trusted Stations Only
If you’ve got a trusted gas station from the very first time you brought home your car, then stick to it for the entirety of your car’s life when you can. If you have to buy from another station, make sure it’s a trusted and reputable one. In this way, you can ensure the fuel quality is good.
Surely, you wouldn’t want to fill it up with dirty fluids. Otherwise, you could be unnecessarily damaging the system.
Conclusion
Taking good care of your car isn’t that difficult. Especially if you’ve worked so hard to pay for your car, the last thing you want is for it to underperform or die an early death. At most, you’ll want to prolong its life. Since buying a new car regularly is out of the question, the tips above are more than enough to put you in a good position of being a more responsible car owner.