4 Common Car Maintenance Mistakes to Avoid

With so many responsibilities to take care of, it can be easy to overlook your car’s maintenance requirements. However, ensuring you take the time to keep your vehicle in tip-top condition can offer a wide range of benefits, including helping to prevent costlier issues, increasing your enjoyment of driving the vehicle, and boosting resale value. 

Plus, it’s not as if modern cars need all that much maintenance anyway. Mostly, keeping your car in check comes down to avoiding some of the common maintenance errors that car owners make. We’ve rounded up some of the most frequent mistakes we come across, and we’ve also put together some handy solutions for each. 

Ignoring the Car’s Maintenance Schedule

There’s a lot of generic advice online about how often you should service the key parts of your vehicle, and a lot of people take advice as gospel. While it might align with your car’s needs, it makes a lot more sense to be sure of your car’s maintenance needs rather than just hoping for the best.

And actually, understanding those specific needs is a lot more straightforward than you think. Your car’s manual will tell you exactly what it needs, and when it needs it. Follow the exact guidance from the manufacturer, and you’ll be doing right by your vehicle. 

Not Working With Specialists

You wouldn’t make an appointment with an eye doctor for a broken leg. Yet, many people are more than happy to make an appointment with a car mechanic that doesn’t have specialist knowledge relating to their specific brand of car. While a general mechanic might be able to keep your vehicle on the road, they’ll be unlikely to have the expert knowledge required to really make sure that all aspects of the vehicle are exactly as they should be.

The solution? Find a specialist, and entrust your vehicle with them. If you’re a GMC-owner, then you’ll get better results by making an appointment with a Certified GMC service center than with a general repair show, just as a Ford owner will get better results by working with a Ford specialist. It’s a seemingly small detail that many car owners overlook, but which can make a big difference to the performance and longevity of the vehicle. 

Underrated Car Cleaning

Many car owners do the bare minimum when it comes to cleaning their vehicles, but it’s worthwhile taking the task seriously. Not only can it prevent serious issues like rust, but it can also help maximize sale value when you decide to sell. 

Common Tire Mistakes

You can understand why people are reluctant to invest in tire maintenance. It usually requires a few slightly complicated steps that make it easy to bypass. 

But tires have a big impact on the driving experience, and deserve some TLC from time to time. Rotating and aligning tires can help to extend the life of your tires and improve performance. It’s also best to replace all four wheels at once, rather than just one, or at least replacing in pairs.