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PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE
If you visit your dentist before you get a toothache, you will save yourself a lot of pain, inconvenience, and expense. The same principle applies to your car. Regular inspection and routine maintenance can prevent major;and expensive;repairs. Preventive maintenance means performing certain service jobs on a car on a regularly-scheduled basis, before there is any sign of trouble.
There are several good reasons for preventive maintenance, but the most important is to prevent accidents. According to the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association, more than 60 percent of the cars in the country are running inefficiently, and inefficient cars waste time, money, and gas. But more importantly, they are a major cause of highway accidents. More than one out of eight accidents involves a vehicle that is not in proper working order, resulting in over 5,000 deaths and 200,000 serious injuries annually.
There are additional reasons for preventive maintenance. It allows you to uncover and immediately correct mechanical deficiencies while they are still minor; it helps you to prepare your car to meet extreme weather conditions; and it is generally required to keep a car's warranty in effect.
The engineers who designed your car spent many hours in laboratories and on proving grounds to find out how long each part would perform before it needed lubrication, adjustment, or replacement. The service recommendations in your owner's manual and in this chapter are based on those tests.
If most of your driving is local, the engine never really warms up, so condensation and unburned fuel do not get hot enough to boil off and escape through the crankcase ventilation system. Instead, they just dilute the engine oil. That is why car makers recommend that oil should be changed every four to six months when the car is driven less than 1,000 miles per month.
Most joints in the steering and suspension systems are sealed and require lubrication only at infrequent intervals. However, there are exceptions, even in late-model cars. Some parts may need lubrication as often as every 4,000 miles. Check the recommendations in your owner's manual or in this chapter.
Remember that time is just as important as mileage. Some materials, such as rubber, deteriorate from exposure to the elements even when the car is not in use.
How and where you drive also influences service requirements. Most car manufacturers specify more frequent changes of transmission fluid and adjustment of the transmission when the car is used to tow a trailer. And if you drive in dusty territory, the air cleaner should be serviced at shorter intervals than those specified for normal use.
Before the development of lubricants and coolants suitable for year-round use, it was necessary to change to a winter-grade oil and
add antifreeze when the weather turned cold. Now, in most sections of the country, you can use a multi-grade oil, such as 10W-30, at all times. The 10W-30 designation means the oil flows as freely at low temperatures as a 10W (winter-grade) oil, and yet holds its body at high temperatures just as well as a 30 (summer-grade) oil. If, how-ever, you encounter extremely high or low temperatures, seasonal changes may still be necessary.
The same coolant should be used throughout the year and changed once a year. Fall is the best time of year to change it to be sure you have maximum protection against freezing. Normally, no seasonal changes of transmission or rear axle lubricants are necessary. However, some manufacturers recommend the use of winter lubri-cants in manual transmissions for easier shifting in cold weather.
This chapter is organized into two sections. The first is a series of checklists you should use as a guide to the services your car needs daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, and before a long trip. The sec-ond section covers the step-by-step procedures necessary to perform the various preventive maintenance operations. Refer to the Appendix for the manufacturer's recommended maintenance schedules for all four major US automakers. The tables cover all models from 1973 to 1978. Generally, the recommended service schedules must be met or exceeded to keep a car's warranty in effect, so these maintenance schedules are very important if you have a late-model car still under warranty. If your car is no longer under warranty, the manufacturer's recommended service intervals are a useful guide for minimum periodic maintenance on your car. Our own recommendations are somewhat more extensive than those of the manufacturer.
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