This is a follow up to my last post about driving habits. This time, we’re looking at maintenance, performance, and functionality! I’ll start.
Tires. Very few people understand the importance of good tires. Not only that, but the habits for maintaining them. Firstly, your tires are the only thing truly connecting the road to the rest of your vehicle. This extremely important link is overlooked when I comes to just about every category people look for in a car. Generally, Performance, Comfort, and Efficiency are the three focuses consumers have with vehicles, and it heavily affects all three.
Performance is self explanatory. You want to go fast? Good tires are the easiest thing to change for the biggest gains. New tires means as much power as possible your engine puts into spinning those wheels gets delivered into the road, propelling you forward. More grip also improves braking, cornering, and lack of hydroplaning in the rain, or slipping in the snow and dirt.
Comfort. You want a smooth, quiet ride? Get new tires first. This will dampen vibrations coming from road imperfections that travel to the cabin area, and that means you won’t feel the bumps, the rumbles, the texture of the road, meaning you can enjoy your drive in peace.
Efficiency. Want to know what’s efficient? Getting up to speed, maintaining speed, and keeping control. The enemy to all of this is losing grip, and tires play a huge role. Even if you drive easy, the ability to turn at consistent speeds without braking is more efficient, so it not slipping while driving up a hill, so is not sliding around in harsh conditions. Better tires save gas, they save your suspension, they save your money.
What other aspects do you feel are not well understood or are under-appreciated here?
Car washes for those living in salt prone areas.
I’ve lived in NY. The salt DESTROYS cars. My family and myself had cars ruined by salt. I was amazed at all the older cars I saw when I moved to SoCal. Old beetles, small toyota trucks, 70s American cars, etc.
Yearly oil coating is way more important to keep cars less rusty underneath. Also special attention to rear fenders and grommet holes or exposed bolts.
Source: I restore and maintain cars in New England, near the nice salty ocean air to top it all off.
I got onna those giant cans of pb blaster for my 01. Glad I did.
If it’s not already rotting away too badly there’s still time to coat it this fall.
https://nhoilundercoating.com/ Is pretty good and comes in big buckets.
It’s all surface rust for the most part. The worst of it was a flange gasket on the exhaust but I replaced it.
Any point in using it with a 10+ year old car with rust?
Sure, it won’t fix the rust but it’s ll still slow it down and keep more from happening. I’m doing my new-to-me 2016 Subaru this fall. It’s not terrible, but seams and edges are already crusty.
A youtuber, mustie1, uses bar and chain oil in a sprayer and has shown that the coating lasts for years.
Yeah, any sticky enough oil will work, people used to use old motor oil back when 20-10W40 was the norm.
They make some waxier oils now and it’s more popular in Canada.
Oddly enough I live not too far from that Mustie guy. Haven’t watched too many of his videos though.