Summer vehicle maintenance just as important as winter maintenance

During the cold winter months, vehicle maintenance is vital to keeping your repair bills down and ensuring reliability.

The same goes for summertime, especially when the mercury rises and extreme temperatures like recent days appear.

Perfection Paint and Body assistant manager Adam Derry says one of the most basic things you can do for your vehicle is regularly change your engine oil.

“You really want to stay on top of your oil change intervals,” Derry said. “It’s just good for overall car maintenance and preventing future catastrophic failure.”

Checking tire pressure is also important. Heat breaks down tires and can cause a blowout.

“When your tire comes in contact with the road, it compresses and then expands again,” explained Derry.

“That friction builds up heat which can break down the rubber. The hotter the ambient temperature, the more that compounds the problem because those tires, it’s not cool enough for those tires to shed that heat.”

Derry adds that checking your coolant or antifreeze levels is critical, especially given the recent extreme heat.

“You could have a really bad day. Typically what’ll happen is you’ll get some warning lights flashing on the dashboard and if you ignore those and overheat the motor, you could actually warp the cylinder head and blow the head gasket, leading to a costly repair,” he said.

For driver comfort, checking and/or changing the cabin air filter is also a good idea. This can be done about every other oil change.

“When they get plugged up, they reduce airflow through the HVAC system in the vehicle. That can prevent it from cooling as efficiently as it should be,” added Derry.

The owner’s manual for any vehicle is a handy place to find information to answer questions about car and truck maintenance at any time of year.