Car maintenance tips – owning a car and keeping it running

Car maintenance tipsOwning a car and keeping it running can be very expensive and ensuring a car is road legal is very important. Generally new cars do not require a great amount of maintenance but older cars will require maintenance in order to keep them road worthy. Cars that are older than three years require an MOT each year; this is a certificate that certifies a car as being road legal. It is important to keep on top of car maintenance where possible and by looking after a car it can often reduce the costs associated with maintenance. Without having maintenance carried out some cars will not pass their MOT; this work can often be quite expensive. Carrying out regular checks on a car can help to indicate whether any maintenance will be required. Simple checks can be carried out on the tyres of a car to check whether they are road legal. Also regularly checking the oil and water of a car can be very useful. Topping up the oil and water on a car is very inexpensive if completed at home but many garages will charge expensive fees to carry out this work. If the oil of a car needs topping up on a regular basis it may mean that there is something wrong with it; in such cases the car should be taken to a garage. Changing the brake pads of a car is a job that requires doing every six months on older cars and this can also be an expensive task. Rather than going to a garage to have this done it is quite inexpensive to complete the work at home. Brake pads can be bought from any car shop or online. In order to fit them the car will have to be raised in the air using a jack and the wheel must be taken off. The old brake pads will simply slip off and the new brake pads will slip back on.Windscreen wipers are something else that will often get brought up during routine maintenance checks. Again, these can be replaced at home very cheaply and they can be purchased at most car maintenance shops. When looking to do car maintenance at home there are often many car guides on the Internet and therefore carrying out the maintenance can be very cheap. If using a garage for car maintenance it is advisable to shop around as much as possible as prices will differ greatly.