DIY Saturday: How to Do a Coolant Flush

The cooling system of your vehicle also deteriorates over time, especially the quality of the coolant used in its radiator and cooling assembly. It is because of this that periodic coolant flush and refill is important. Otherwise, when you continuously use the coolant even after its quality has already deteriorated, it won’t provide your vehicle with proper cooling and you may encounter engine overheating.

Luckily, you need not wait for something like this to happen. Doing a coolant flush is easy and you can accomplish this all by yourself. Here’s how:

1. Prepare everything that you will need: pan for the used coolant, new coolant, and radiator flush.
2. Remember not to do this work if your engine is still hot.
3. Position the coolant receptacle or pan below the radiator drain plug and then remove the plug to drain the coolant from the radiator.
4. Replace the plug and then open your radiator cap to fill your radiator with the radiator flush solution. Replace the cap and tighten it.
5. Start your vehicle and allow it to run until it reaches the right temp (refer on the gauge on your dash) – if there is an indicated number of minutes needed to run your engine as indicated in the radiator flush label, follow it.
6. Turn your vehicle off and let the engine cool before proceeding.
7. Drain the radiator flush (similar to what you did with the old coolant).
8. Refill the radiator, and the coolant reservoir, with new coolant mixed with water—follow the indications in the coolant when it comes to the right coolant-water mix ratio.

These simple processes take only a few minutes to complete, but they go a long way in keeping your cooling system and engine in good shape and in preventing possible problems and expensive repairs.

What to Do if a Mechanic Lien is Placed on Your Car

So you have brought your car to a shop. And for some reasons, the repair price climbed higher and you ended with a huge debt that you are unable to pay. The next time you know it, the shop has already placed a mechanic lien on your car. What should you do now?

1. The most obvious thing to do is, of course, to pay the amount that you owe the auto repair shop. If you think there is some form of fraud or rip-off behind the very huge amount being asked from you, you can file a complaint afterwards. As I have mentioned in my last post, leaving your car in the property of the shop could have more expensive consequences—storage fee.

2. If you cannot pay the entire amount just yet, you can negotiate with the shop and ask for a feasible payment plan (i.e. installment) until you are able to pay off the entire amount. Most shops will agree on a settlement in order to avoid more complications. Some of them, however, may charge you for such things as the legal fees incurred in the processing of the lien.

3. Find a counsel who can help you do the best move to handle the situation. If you are not very familiar with how the system works, it would be to your best interest to have a specialist handle the situation. A lawyer can tell you the best thing to do, and he can even find a loophole in the lien placed on your car, which may result in the lifting of the lien.

A lien placed on your car could be a source of serious headache, but know that there are certain things that you can do to get out of the situation. Just follow the tips given here to make everything easier.

Mechanic Lien Part II: Storage Fee

As mentioned in the last article that I posted, a mechanic lien is mainly a shop’s tool in holding a customer’s vehicle in case the customer fails to render payment for a performed repair. But, while holding your vehicle until you give payment may be bad enough in itself, there’s actually something worse: storage fee.

There are shops that charge vehicle owners with a fee for the storage of a vehicle that is kept in the shop because of a lien. So, while you may be trying hard to earn the money to pay for the repair done to your car and finally drive your vehicle home, the amount that you need to pay is continuously accumulating because you are sort of renting the shop for keeping your car.

And, this is not good news. Some shops charge a very high storage fee—one hundred dollars per day. In fact, there are instances when the storage fee equals, or even exceeds, the actual amount that you will need to pay for the repair of your vehicle. This is the reason why it’s never a good idea to have a mechanic lien placed on your car. If you can avoid this at all, do so.

Or, you may want to just pay the shop upfront and take your car home with you, then just contest the repair amount charged to you afterwards. This way, no matter where the case takes you, you don’t have a storage fee to worry about. Other than this course of action, there are other steps that you can take to deal with a mechanic lien when one is placed in your car. The next article will discuss the options that you have and the different actions that you can take if you happen to be in this situation.

A Look at a Mechanic Lien

You’ve heard of a written estimate and an order repair, but are you familiar with a mechanic lien? This is often a part of the repair order, but not many car owners and drivers pay attention to this when they sign any document upon bringing their car to an auto repair shop.

But what is it, really? And what is its purpose? Well, a mechanic lien is a form of a legal document that gives mechanics and auto repair shops the guarantee that their customers will pay the due repair amount. The lien states that the mechanic or shop has the right to keep the car in case the customer fails to render the proper payment. This means the customer cannot bring the car home until the time he pays his debts to the shop. In other instances, he may be forced to sell the car just to pay the amount he owes to the shop or mechanic.

Filing of a mechanic lien is done in court, and this will entail money as the customer may also be asked to pay for the legal fees incurred in the process. Other than this additional payment, the customer may also have to pay for the car’s storage fee (to be discussed in the next article), so he’d have a lot more amount to think about at the end of it all.

Today, the term “mechanic lien” is also used in many other properties other than vehicles. It works the same, and its purpose is similar. If you happen to have brought your car to a shop and the shop places a mechanic lien on it after the repair because of certain reasons, there are some things that you can do to remove the lien—watch out for the next two articles for more discussion on this.

Written Estimate and Repair Order

When you bring your vehicle to a shop for a repair, there are certain procedures that you have to follow and observe, and some of these are so important and you should not neglect, or they may cost you a lot. One that you should pay attention to is a written estimate and a repair order.

I’ve mentioned these in some of my posts before, but what are they really? And how important are they when it comes to auto repairs? Well, written estimates and repair orders are sometimes used interchangeably, but they actually have some shade of difference.

A written estimate is one that you ask from a shop mechanic before he makes any attempt at doing your car a repair. After a car inspection and diagnosis, the mechanic will tell you what the problem is and how much it would probably cost. But, don’t take your mechanic’s word for it—ask for a written repair estimate. Although a written estimate is not fixed and will not indicate the final amount that you will have to pay, the final price should not be too far off from this estimate. Should the amount go much higher than this and you feel like there’s a rip-off that happened, you can use that estimate to contest.

Meanwhile, a repair order is like the official receipt that states everything—from the work that was done to your car, to the parts that were replaced, as well as the cost of the repair. Everything should be tallied down. In many instances, the repair order will also contain your car’s odometer reading before and after the repair.

It is important that these documents be signed by both parties, as these could be useful should you have problems with the shop or mechanic after the repair. 

DIY Saturday: Some Auto Maintenance Mistakes Not to Commit

Auto maintenance is one of those things that you do everyday, as you drive your car or store it in your garage. It doesn’t necessarily require a mechanic. You can accomplish the job as long as you have some mechanical inclination and discipline. In doing your DIY maintenance, however, there are some mistakes that you have to avoid to ensure success.

Below are some of these:

1. Of course, the biggest mistake that you can commit is not following the proper maintenance schedule. Oil change, for instance, has to be done at the correct interval. Postponing this until sometime later can lead to problems as the oil may have already lost its lubricating properties and already cause problems among the parts that it lubricates.
2. Too frequent maintenance interval. This is the opposite of the first mistake, and I have already touched on this in some of my previous posts. Although frequent oil change or coolant flush will do no harm to your car, it can do harm on your pocket.
3. The use of wrong solutions for cleaning your car and car parts. Some drivers believe that detergents are fine to use when cleaning a vehicle, but not really. When you use them in your car’s body panels, they can strip off the protective coating of the panels such as your car wax. In the long run, this can cause more problems than solutions.
4. Not paying attention to small things. What are these things? An example is your car’s tire pressure. Not many drivers know that an improperly inflated tire affects a lot of things in your drive: your handling and braking, for instance. Additionally, it also causes premature tire wear and can even be dangerous. So, it’s very important not to neglect these things.

These are but some of the mistakes that you can commit in maintaining your vehicle. Take note of these and try to avoid these to keep your car in good shape for long.

Friday’s Advice: Do You Want a Coolant Flush With Your Oil Change?

It’s time for your oil change again, and you bring your car to your local auto parts repair shop for the job. Then the mechanic says, you also need a coolant flush. A coolant flush?!

One of the misconceptions that many drivers have is the need to flush the coolant every time you have an oil change. Given the fact that the coolant does a lot in your vehicle—it dissipates engine heat and prevents the onset of corrosion in your engine and in other parts where the said substance circulates. And while the coolant does all these, it has to keep its anti-freezing and anti-boiling properties. No wonder it wears out over time, and failure to notice this can cause a considerable amount of damage to your car engine.

However, this doesn’t necessarily warrant a coolant flush as frequent as your oil change. In reality, when you look at your car owner’s manual, most will indicate and suggest a 60,000-mile coolant flush interval.

What you actually have to look into when it comes to the coolant in your car is a possible leak. Here, there’s no interval when it comes to doing inspection. You have to be vigilant, do an inspection as often as you can, especially if you get any indication that you’re running low on coolant, and more especially if this happens frequently, even right after you do a refill.

When it comes to coolant, as well as the flush and refill of other liquid substances in your car, the best reference still remains to be your car owner’s manual. You’ll even find some tips in your manual that can help you get the most from your coolant. Now that you know this, it would be easy to say no to your mechanic when he offers a coolant flush together with your needed oil change.