Keep a watchful eye with arrival of pothole season
As the ravages of winter subside and temperatures rise, there is probably a pothole out there with your name on it, cautions Car Care Canada. Cold temperatures, snow and rainfall create the perfect storm for the motorists’ dreaded “perils of potholes period.”
Drivers know immediately when they hit a pothole. The heart-stopping, teeth-jarring noise is hard to mistake. However, it’s not always immediately clear if hitting the pothole caused damage to the vehicle, and to what extent.
Hitting a pothole can damage tires, wheels, steering and suspension, wheel alignment and more. Car Care Canada recommends that motorists who experience any of the following warning signs after hitting a pothole should have a professional technician at their local repair shop inspect the vehicle:
- Loss of control, swaying when making routine turns, bottoming-out on city streets or bouncing excessively on rough roads. These are indicators that the steering and suspension may have been damaged. The steering and suspension are key safety-related systems. Together, they largely determine your car’s ride and handling. Key components are shocks and/or struts, the steering knuckle, ball joints, the steering rack/box, bearings, seals and hub units and tie rod ends.
- Pulling in one direction, instead of maintaining a straight path, and uneven tire wear. These symptoms mean there’s an alignment problem. Proper wheel alignment is important for the lifespan of tires and helps ensure safe handling.
- Low tire pressure, bulges or blisters on the sidewalls, or dents in the rim. These problems will be visible and should be checked out as soon as possible as tires are the critical connection between your car and the road in all sorts of driving conditions.
Car Care Canada offers these tips to help protect vehicles against a pothole encounter:
Maintain full air pressure in all tires to provide as much cushion as possible between the pothole and the rim of the tire.- Watch for potholes by leaving plenty of space between your vehicle and the one in front of you.
- Before swerving around a pothole, be sure to check surrounding traffic.
- If you can’t avoid a pothole — at least slow down! Hitting a pothole at high speed increases the chance of damage to tires, wheels, shocks, struts or springs.
- When driving over a pothole-filled road, hold the steering wheel firmly to avoid losing control.
- Do not brake when directly over a pothole. Applying the brakes causes the car’s weight to shift to the front of the wheel and can increase damage from the impact.
- A broken shock or strut from a pothole encounter could alter the steering and handling of a vehicle and create dangers when driving at high speeds or in tight corners. Broken suspension components should be repaired immediately.
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Air Conditioning, which was once considered a luxury, is now a common feature on most cars and vehicles today.
An annual servicing of your car’s air conditioning system will guard against malfunctions in the compressor and other vital parts of the system. Regular maintenance will save you money in the long run and guarantee you comfort in the hottest months.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gasoline is wasted every day by motorists, because simple and inexpensive vehicle maintenance is neglected,” says Car Care Canada’s Marc Brazeau. “Loose or missing gas caps, under-inflated tires, worn spark plugs and dirty air filters all contribute to poor fuel economy.”
Vehicle gas caps – In Canada, the provinces with emissions testing programs suggest that this is a common cause for failing an emissions test – yet it is simple and inexpensive to fix. According to US studies, about 17 percent of the vehicles on the roads have gas caps that are either damaged, loose or are missing altogether. 
Just like preventive maintenance on brake, engine, transmission, and other systems, maintaining the interior and exterior of your car is also important – and it can vastly improve the resale value of your vehicle!
“For the consumer, selecting a vehicle with a lower depreciation rate will reduce their overall cost-of-ownership,” says Canadian Black Book executive vice-president Larry Shred, whose company has long been a reliable source for used-car values.
The CAA’s Driving Costs 2010 Edition determined that depreciation accounts for $3,628 in annual ownership costs on a 2010 Chevrolet Cobalt LT – or 20 cents/kilometre based on 18,000 km of driving a year. The No. 2 cost is insurance at $1,850 a year or six cents/km. Financing at $666 a year (four cents/km) is the No. 3 cost of ownership for the Cobalt.
Some, of course, contend that depreciation and financing are not legitimate, across-the-board ownership costs. And not everyone pays to borrow the money for a new vehicle. But for this article we have included it as a cost. Indeed, the vehicle management company Runzheimer Canada does just that in calculating costs for the CAA.
In short, for most people a car is the No. 2 family expense behind housing. Therefore, for those who watch family finances, it makes perfect sense to look beyond the actual sticker price; it is only one piece of a much larger picture. Everything from fuel to insurance will take up major chunks of your transportation budget.
As for other costs, while maintenance and repairs do not consume a huge piece of the overall ownership cost of relatively new vehicles covered under three- or four- year warranties, there are still savings to be found in this area, minor as they might be in the first few years of ownership. Thrifty buyers might want to look over the maintenance schedule of any potential vehicle purchase and also ask the seller of a new model if maintenance is included in the purchase price, free of charge. With some auto makers, it is.
Spring is the perfect time of year to make sure your vehicle is ready for the upcoming travel season.
With gas prices reaching close to a dollar a litre in some pats of the country, Car Care Canada is offering gas saving maintenance and driving tips that really work.
Not only will maintaining your vehicle save you money, it will also help you to protect the environment by reducing emissions.
The goal of Car Care Month is to build awareness and knowledge to prepare motorists to make sensible decisions about their vehicles.
If you have a reliable vehicle that is paid for, as an example, you may be spending $1000 per year on preventive maintenance service (regular oil changes and inspections) and general repair.
At $600 per month, you would spend $7,200 this year on car payments, plus pay higher vehicle insurance rates. Over a four year period, the savings are dramatic – in this case, a savings of over $6,200 per year. And if you placed the same amount as the car payment in a savings account you would have earned interest!
