Why PM(Periodic or Preventive Maintenance) is important?
There are people/drivers who believe that they know a lot about vehicle maintenance so they decide what to do and not to do by themselves instead of getting checked by an expert, and many of them simply overlook the importance of periodic maintenance as they think its waste of money. What they usually say is “I don’t have any problem even if I don’t do items like brake service…” If you are one of them and have not experienced a bad situation yet, then I would say you are lucky so far but may not be in the future. The scope of periodic maintenance can include not just fluids & filters change or top-up but also lubing brakes & joint components and many other jobs. You may think that you could save money by not doing what you think it’s not necessary until the moment you feel something is wrong, and you ended up having to spend multiple times more money than its normal maintenance costs, and most importantly the moment accompanies inconveniences on mobility and time, etc.
It may not be just a matter of repair costs and inconveniences but of you and your family’s safety. Although there are a variety of cases I’ve experienced, I’ll give you just a few possible stories with lack of awareness of periodic maintenance.
– Firstly, let’s say you’ve missed a right timing to get your spark plugs replaced, and you just went on a long distance driving in the freezing winter. The engine, all of a sudden, started making misfires and getting worse as you drove, and you didn’t have choice but to keep driving in the middle of somewhere out of town ended up the vehicle to stall. This situation could happen and if happened it must be unsafe as you get no heat on the road. It also can cause additional problems like melting catalytic converter which costs you up to a grand or more.
– Secondly, what about tires? Some people check for tire wear on their own way not noticing an abnormal tire wear that is an inner tread of one of the tires becoming bold while others look normal as it’s not easy for you to access inner treads to check especially, if the vehicle’s ground clearance is low with low profile tires. Then, let’s say you drive on a highway in the scorching Summer. The tire with bold spots which exposed steel belt can be abruptly blown out at high speeds causing you to lose steering control, and it puts you and passengers in a risky situation. You can easily see debris of ruptured tires on highways, which means the incidence happens frequently. Other tire issues that can make the same result and not-easy-to-be-checked by ordinary drivers are a bulged tire and a gouged tire on the inner side of tires.
– Lastly, what about brakes? This could be one of the most often occurring issues, and this starts from missing the brake service that cleans and lubes on the brakes specially on the caliper slide bolts/pins/clips. Once the grease on those bolts/pins dry out then rusts start building up causing the caliper bolt(s)/pads to stick or seize up and this ended up making premature wear in one of brake pads, mostly inner piece of pads while you still believe your brakes look good as outer one which is visible from outside is still normal. Consequently, you have to get your brakes pads (and rotors) replaced, and we know you could have used them much longer if you had brake service job done at the right timing, not to mention you spend unscheduled time for it. And you may have to get your vehicle towed in for the brake repair from out of town in the worst case.
Here is one of the good tips for you on how to choose a right service provider from the perspective of PM. I can tell you about this frankly during my tutorial session. I know that there are a variety of opinions from other shops or experts that may differ from what I described above, but they’ll also know there is no single absolute rule in regards to PM. What you take from abundant information in the world is all up to you! Imagine there are three doctors, and you ask each doctor a question about what the most important factors to keep you in good shape, then they’ll tell you all different story for sure. However, you can’t argue with any of those answers because every answer is based on their knowledge and experience, and no one has all by oneself.
The Trusty Auto Service performs MPI(Multi Point Inspection) for free when you come in for other service if you agree to do it, and it’ll lead you to be well aware of your vehicle condition as it is, and we do not scare you with failed items unless they are imminent safety issues. We, as always, do not try to up-sell but do care about your safety and happiness.