Spring Cleaning: 7 Important Car Maintenance Tips
Each season comes with its own set of car maintenance tips, whether it’s preparing for the cold winter months or extreme summer heat. By properly maintaining your vehicle throughout the course of the year, you can increase safety, lower the costs of repairs, and improve the overall performance, health, and features.
After the cold temperatures, road salt and sand can build up under your car, along with other seasonal wear and tear. April is National Car Care Month, which makes it the perfect time to “spring clean” your car and take preventative measures to make sure your car is running smoothly headed safely into the Spring season.
This blog post covers 7 important spring car maintenance tips you can follow to avoid serious issues in the future.
7 Tips for Spring Cleaning Car Maintenance
Test Your Car Battery
A strong battery can determine a safe and successful commute or stressful morning.
Low winter temperatures can slow the chemical reaction in your battery, causing it to work harder. Most batteries lose about 20% of their normal capacity around 32 degrees and continually gets worse when temperatures go below freezing. Batteries that are a few years old already may need replacing altogether.
Headed into warmer weather, it’s a good idea to get the battery longevity tested. A mechanic can check to make sure it’s properly mounted, it has a strong connection, and it’s free of any winter damage.
Check Under the Hood
It’s a good idea to check all fluid levels to see if there’s anything critical you need to top off or change. Here are 5 fluids to check under the hood.
- Engine Oil
- Transmission Fluid
- Coolant
- Windshield Wiper Fluid
- Power Steering Fluid
Each of these fluids help to support your car functioning to its best ability. Your mechanic will be able to tell you what needs to be changed and how often, depending on your model car. Taking the proper steps to ensure this has been checked is an important part of regular car care.
Tire Rotation Maintenance
Tire rotation is an important part in upkeeping your vehicle. Tires should wear evenly so rotating them on a regular schedule (or replacing winter tires) is a great way to keep them lasting.
Tire pressure can decrease due to temperature drops. This does not mean there’s air escaping from your tire but inside the tire is condensing. You might notice in the winter you need to add air to your tires more regularly. With the temperature changing make sure you’re prepared. Check your tire arrangement and equilibrium and rotate them if necessary. Be sure to keep an eye on tire pressure throughout the season and always check the pressure before long trips.
Replace Windshield Wiper Blades
Windshield wiper blades often spend months clearing way ice and snow. This can leave them bent, cracked, or warped. Gear up for spring and summer rainstorms by replacing your windshield wipers. You can easily change them yourself, without having to bring your car in for service. Check your vehicle manual to make sure you get the correct size and always test them before driving in poor weather.
Check the Air Conditioning
Before the hot and humid weather, now is a good time to make sure your air conditioner is in working order. At a routine maintenance check, a mechanic can check the system for any damage or needed repairs.
Clean Cabin Filters
The cabin filter helps to remove any allergens, pollutants, and dust as air travels through your car’s HVAC system. When the filter is old and clogged, it can contribute to spring allergies, leaving you feeling stuffy. You might notice a musty smell in your car or possibly more dust on the interior of your dashboard. Typically, a cabin filter should be replaced about every 15k miles. It’s a good idea to check the last time it was replaced prior to the allergy season ahead.
Change Your Oil
Regular oil changes are crucial to the longevity of your vehicle. Oil changes help to reduce and remove any excess dirt and build up from your car engine. Fresh oil helps your car to run smoothly, increase performance and use fuel a lot more efficiently. This means better gas mileage and cost-savings. The cold weather can reduce the life of your engine oil, meaning you need more frequent oil changes during this time of year. Spring is the perfect time to have your oil checked and changed if necessary.
Importance of Car Maintenance
Car maintenance consists of regularly servicing your vehicle, including inspections, updating and replacing parts and fluids, and cleaning. Regular service to your vehicle will help improve your safety and reliability. Staying on top of key maintenance can also save you major costs and repairs by identifying potential red flags before they are a serious problem.
Follow these spring maintenance tips to help improve the overall health of your vehicle.
How NJ Insurance Agencies Help You Save Money
Insurance is one of the most sensible financial investments you can make. There are many kinds of insurance, and each of them is designed to help give you greater peace of mind while protecting your finances as best as possible in the long run. But when you are trying to find how to purchase the right insurance and who to purchase the insurance from, you can easily feel lost in the woods.
In particular, you don’t want to overspend on your premium, but you do want to get the necessary protection that you are looking for, whether it’s motor insurance, home insurance, or business protection. One way to save money throughout all this, while also making the process so much easier to manage, is to use an insurance agency.
Here are some of the major ways in which using an NJ insurance agency can help you save money. After reading this, you might decide to never try finding your own insurance again.
1. Finding the Right Policy for Your Needs
When you are searching for insurance policies on your own, it can be difficult to determine which is likely to be right for you, and which you should probably do away with. You might simply try to choose one almost at random, based on the prices that seem right when you research. But often, these prices do not reflect quality, and you might accidentally sign up for a policy that will not give you what you need. It could also raise its price later on.
When you use a reputable insurance agency, they are going to help you find the right policy for your needs. They will consider what your budget is, and you'll also be likely to receive a policy that is going to protect you in the way you would hope. That will mean you are better off financially in the long run, while also having greater peace of mind than you would otherwise.
2. Access to a Wide Range of Insurers
Here’s something you might not know: when you do your own research of different insurers in NJ, you are unlikely to find them all. Just looking online or even calling around will not cut it, as there are so many insurers out there that are hard to find - and one or two who even actively only work through agencies.
So when you use an insurance agency instead, you are going to be opening yourself up to a much higher number of options. That’s obviously really helpful, and it means that you will have a much better chance of getting what you need at the right price.
Your insurance agency will save you money in the long run while finding you a policy that will provide you with the protection you have been looking for.
3. Open Up Your Payment Options
When you go directly to insurers of all kinds, they will be keen to push a monthly payment for the premium. At first glance, this can seem very helpful. After all, you might have a fluctuating income and so you want to make sure that they can still cover later you in the year, no matter what happens. But when you look into it, you are more often than not paying quite a lot more for this pay monthly option. Try to avoid that.
If you seek out insurance through an insurance agency, however, you will generally have many more options available to you than just the monthly one. You will still have that option, if you prefer, but you can also choose to pay for your annual premium in one go, which usually means that you are going to be making a saving overall.
This can be an especially beneficial choice for businesses, or if you know that you have the money upfront and don’t want to pay more by paying monthly.
4. Time Costs Money
The amount of time you spend on trying to find the perfect insurance can end up being huge. And when you are running a business or just trying to get more work done personally, you know that time is money. Avoid spending more time than you absolutely have to by utilising the right NJ insurance agency.
When you have an agency on your side, you will be able to let them do the hard work, meaning that your time is freed up to do with as you please. Whether that means doing more business or enjoying more leisure time is up to you.
5. Take a Second Look at Your Current Policy
You are unlikely to be in the best financial standing if you never take a second look at your current insurance policy, so this is something that you should think about and take seriously. When you simply let your policies renew automatically year after year, it is unlikely that you are going to be paying the fairest price for what you are getting.
That’s another great reason to get in touch with an NJ insurance agency - they will be able to check your policies for you, making sure they up to date and that you have the best ones for your financial needs at all times. All that without you having to lift a finger.
Save Money With An NJ Insurance Agency
If you are keen to save money on your insurance policies, make sure you get in touch with a trustworthy and reliable insurance agency as soon as possible. It could be one of the best moves you have ever made regarding your finances.
