Few of our possessions have the potential to inflict as much financial pain and inconvenience on us when they fail as our motor vehicles.  Many of us rely heavily on our vehicles for travel to and from work, for shopping, visiting friends and any number of things involving physical movement from A to B.  It is discouraging and expensive to be at the mercy of our motor vehicles.  Our schedules can be thrown into turmoil if our vehicles suddenly decide that they are not going to function properly and our cash flows can take a hit for the cost of the repairs involved in getting the vehicles to operate again.  There has been a growing realisation among motorists over the last ten years that taking a proactive approach to car maintenance can lead to greater control over the reliability and performance of a vehicle and over its condition.  Many motorists have realised that a lot of problems and even breakdowns can be avoided with some foresight and planning to keep their vehicles in good running order.  The reality is that vehicle performance is a spectrum from ‘Very poor; About to die; Fit for the motor vehicle wreckers’ to ‘Outstanding; Smooth and powerful; I am NEVER selling this car!’.  With the progress of motoring technology culminating in where we currently are in the twenty-first century, there is no reason why we have to settle for performance somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.  We don’t have to settle for ‘good running order’ any more.  If your car is currently in ‘good running order’, I strongly suspect that it is possible to get it running as well as the day it left the showroom floor and possibly even better.

This book is about the procedures and systems for maintaining a motor vehicle that will absolutely minimise the wear and tear on that vehicle so that it rarely, if ever, needs to be disassembled to have the engine reconditioned or the fuel injectors cleaned or the automatic transmission repaired.  All of these kinds of repairs represent a failure of the maintenance of the vehicle to prevent wear and tear inside these vehicle systems (ie. engine, fuel system, automatic transmission) and the inevitable, consequent malfunctioning that leads to the mechanics needing to open the vehicle up with their tools much like a surgeon opens a patient up on the operating table to work on their bodily systems.

For example, if you have a vehicle with electronic fuel injection, it makes a lot more sense to use a high-quality fuel additive every time you fill up the vehicle with fuel to keep the fuel injection system perpetually clean from contaminants in the fuel, than it does to pay a mechanic so many hundred dollars to pull the fuel injection system apart and clean the fuel injectors.  It’s a lot cheaper also, costing less than 1 cent per kilometre.  The fuel injection system contains precision-engineered components such as the injectors which are much better off being maintained internally by a high-quality fuel additive than being disassembled, cleaned and reassembled.  A sure sign of a vehicle that is maintained properly and correctly is that there is seldom a need to pull anything on the vehicle apart, aside from expected routine maintenance.

I’ll never forget an elderly gentleman showing me his pride and joy at a service station where I worked pumping petrol in my early twenties.  The car was spotless; it was about fifteen to twenty years old at that time and he beamed at me proudly, saying, "It’s never had to be pulled apart", referring to the engine, transmission and probably all other systems on the vehicle.  He had maintained that vehicle so well that nothing ever went wrong with it.  He never had to send his mechanic in with a socket set to open it up.  This is exactly how motor vehicles should be maintained.  This is precisely the hallmark of a vehicle in its optimal state.  "It’s never had to be pulled apart." Something about that elderly man and his gleaming vehicle really sunk in for me.  I realised instinctively that the reason his car was almost glowing was because he had maintained it in all of the best possible ways.  At the time, I didn’t have the faintest idea what those were but I was determined to learn.  Over the next fifteen or so years, I pursued mechanical know-how with enthusiasm, suffering, fascination and even awe.  I have always wanted to be able to maintain my own vehicle well, and now I do.  This book is the culmination of my journey which began slowly, then plodded along until all the pieces eventually fell into place and I finally understood what it takes to get a car running like a Swiss clock that never misses a beat.

The following practices are essential to getting your vehicle running superbly and keeping it running superbly:

• Maintaining every single aspect of the vehicle for 100% reliability so that nothing can slip through the cracks and cause problems.

• Using car maintenance procedures that prevent wear and tear from occurring inside the vehicle’s systems (eg. engine) to keep the vehicle ‘as good as new’.

• Preventing problems from developing with the vehicle instead of letting them develop and then fixing them.

• Replacing parts on the vehicle before they wear out, not after they wear out.

• Using the highest quality parts you can obtain and afford.

These practices represent a proactive approach to car maintenance and will result in your vehicle running at its best all of the time.  They will also save you a heck of a lot of time and money.  There are two options for running a motor vehicle, the reactive approach to car maintenance and the proactive approach to car maintenance:

1. Spend time and money getting the vehicle repaired when things go wrong.

2. Spend time and money maintaining the vehicle in such a way that very little, if anything, goes wrong.

In the context of all the systems on the vehicle, the second option, represented by the practices listed above, always requires less time and money than the first option.  ALWAYS!

In earlier years, many people organised the maintenance of their vehicles by working on them only when something went wrong.  ("If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.") This is a reactive approach to car maintenance because the owner reacts when a problem develops by getting it fixed.  The problem with this approach is that if a vehicle owner waits for a problem to develop with their vehicle, they are allowing their vehicle to suffer excessive, avoidable wear and in some cases, damage.  For example, a vehicle owner may wait to change the engine oil until they can see that the engine oil is pitch black on the dipstick and hear that the engine is much noisier.  However, waiting for these symptoms to materialise means that excessive contaminants such as tiny metal particles from the moving engine parts have already been allowed to accumulate in the oil, rendering the oil excessively abrasive to those moving parts and exacerbating the wear of those parts that the engine oil is meant to protect.  In more serious instances, a vehicle owner may neglect to check or change their automatic transmission fluid for a long period of time, causing the transmission to cease to function properly.  This kind of scenario is relatively common among motorists and carries a high financial price tag in terms of the work required to fix the transmission.

An additional problem with the above reactive approach to car maintenance is that it is actually very inconvenient and time-consuming.  At first sight, the reactive approach looks to be very convenient and time-saving.  The vehicle is neglected until something goes wrong, which frees up the time and finances of the owner to be devoted to other things until something does go wrong.  However, when the inevitable occurs and the vehicle does eventually require repair, the time and money required to carry out the repair for the particular system that failed (eg. power steering system) is usually a lot greater than any time and money saved by avoiding the proper maintenance of that aspect of the vehicle.  When a vehicle develops a problem serious enough that it can no longer be driven until it is repaired (eg. failed automatic transmission), the inconvenience to the owner is immense.  They virtually become a servant to the vehicle and have to attend to its every whim until it is running properly again.  They need to take it to the repair shop and then leave it there for however long they are told the repair is going to take.  They don’t have much control over this length of time because they’ve waited until the vehicle absolutely requires attention before acting.  So they have to accept whatever timeframe the mechanic they use tells them.  Then they need to organise themselves with alternative transport while the vehicle is off the road and being repaired, which is pretty inconvenient in relation to all the day to day things that they still need to do such as travel to work or care for their children.  With the vehicle now in the repair shop, they are suddenly compelled to organise the means of payment for the repair.  They have no choice in this matter and little control over the cost.  When they want the vehicle back they are going to have to pay for its release and the ransom for unscheduled repairs is generally high.

It’s difficult to see the vehicle owner as being the master and the vehicle as being the servant under this scenario involving reactive car maintenance.  That’s because the vehicle owner is not the master but has become the servant and the vehicle is not the servant but has become the master.  I’ve certainly experienced this scenario myself and it is no fun whatsoever all.  There has to be a better way, and there is.

Nowadays, more people recognise the necessity of a proactive approach to car maintenance in order to get the best out of their vehicles for the minimum investment of time and money.  The proactive approach to car maintenance involves accepting that certain maintenance procedures MUST be performed on the vehicle on a routine basis in order to keep the vehicle running at its best, to minimise wear on the vehicle and to avoid damage to the vehicle.  The vehicle owner who uses this proactive approach understands that keeping the maintenance up-to-date means that they will actually prevent bigger and more expensive problems from occurring later on, in addition to minimising wear on their vehicle.

Whereas the reactive vehicle owner is a slave to the demands of their vehicle when it ceases to function properly and must put other parts of their life on hold to attend to those demands, the proactive vehicle owner is the master of their vehicle and is, accordingly, more relaxed and less stressed.  The proactive vehicle owner knows that they have a certain window of time within which to organise for the routine maintenance to be performed on their transmission on a six-monthly basis and they’re able to find a convenient time that fits in with their busy schedule.  Furthermore, they may even start to enjoy organising their car maintenance in this proactive manner, because they know how much time and money they’re saving and how much stress they’re avoiding, all while their vehicle runs at its best without missing a beat.

Does this sound too good to be true?  It’s not.  Your vehicle can run as well as the day you bought it (and probably better).  Proactive car maintenance is the key to making that a reality.  This book is all about telling you every single way I have discovered over the past fifteen years to make your motoring experience less stressful, more relaxing and less expensive while at the same time ensuring that your vehicle runs at its best all of the time.  The things I suggest may sometimes seem like they require a lot of effort but they always require less effort than the alternative of letting a particular aspect of the vehicle fall into disrepair, necessitating costly repairs.  The reality is that almost every part of a vehicle will fail eventually if it’s neglected.  In the context of a particular system on the vehicle (eg. power steering system), proactive car maintenance will usually require less time and money than the alternative of letting that system fail and then repairing it.  In the context of all the systems on the vehicle, proactive car maintenance will always require less time and money than the alternative of letting all the systems on the vehicle deteriorate and then repairing them.  ALWAYS!

There’s a line of thought around that keeping on top of car maintenance isn’t really that important, since there’s always the alternative of buying another vehicle, either new or second-hand, when the vehicle no longer runs as well as desired (if at all).  However the reality is that there is an enormous investment of time and money required in this approach.  A replacement vehicle will have to be paid for and if it is financed, the cost of interest is massive, taking an even greater toll considering the fact that motor vehicles in general are depreciating assets.  The time required to find a replacement vehicle, arrange for transfer of ownership at the governmental roads authority and sell or dispose of the vehicle being replaced is no small exercise.  I know that I would much rather spend time doing the things I enjoy than have to change vehicles every two, three or even five years.  In the case of replacing the vehicle with another second-hand vehicle, the second-hand vehicle essentially comprises all the same vehicle systems and components as the vehicle being replaced (eg. vehicle body, engine, cooling system, transmission, differential, brake system et cetera).  There is no guarantee when purchasing a second-hand vehicle that all of these systems or components are going to be functioning correctly or in a good state of repair.  In fact, most second-hand vehicles on the market are being sold with some kind of deficiency.  People who own vehicles which are functioning well in all areas are less likely to put them up for sale.  Instead, they hang on to them to enjoy the benefits for as long as possible that these well-kept vehicles provide.  The point is that it’s often easier and less expensive to simply get all the systems on one’s current vehicle working properly by taking better care of it, than to replace it with another second-hand vehicle which will probably have its own bunch of problems needing attention.  This is especially true if the current vehicle is in reasonable condition already.

If you follow the proactive approach to car maintenance, you WILL enjoy the following benefits:

• Your vehicle will require less of your time and money to keep it properly maintained and running well.

• Your vehicle will run at its best all of the time.

• Your vehicle will rarely, if ever, break down, leaving you stranded.

• Your vehicle will rarely, if ever, require unscheduled repairs.

• Your vehicle will be easier to sell because of its excellent condition if you ever choose to sell it, and will attract a higher price.

There is a lot of information in this book and it might seem a bit overwhelming at first.  However the reality is that all of the methods outlined in this book can be implemented over time as the opportunity arises.  Nobody wants to have to work on all the different systems and components of their vehicle in one fell swoop.  It would be pretty exhausting!  Most of us have other things we’d much prefer to be doing than working on our vehicle or organising for that work to be done.  The methods outlined in this book can generally be implemented one at a time as the opportunity arises.  Every single one of these methods is going to improve the performance of your vehicle, saving you time and money down the track.  Considering how often we find ourselves with our hand going to our wallet or purse to pay for vehicle expenses, that’s a pretty short track.  It will be a pretty short wait from the point at which you start implementing these methods to the point at which you start saving time and money.

This book can be read from start to finish but it can just as easily be read like a reference book, a section at a time.  I do recommend that you start by reading the section on safety in its entirety, which is the most important section in the book.  It would also be beneficial to read the subsequent sections on general car maintenance tips, driving habits and fuel economy before reading other sections in the book.  Since these early sections provide foundational information, the later sections on the different vehicle systems will make more sense if you have already read these early sections.  Throughout the book, the main points in each section are highlighted so that you can quickly see what the section is about.  If a main point is of interest to you, you can keep reading the surrounding text which is not highlighted and which will explain the subject at hand in more detail.  These main points will save you time in obtaining the information you need from this book.  The meanings of the three colours used to highlight the main points are as follows: