Periodic vehicle maintenance

Auto accidents cause significant increases to your auto insurance premium, as well as damage to you and your vehicle. After an accident, even well-ranked auto insurance companies will average a high percentage increase in your auto insurance rates. This is why periodic maintenance of your vehicle is so necessary.

You're probably feeling pretty good about your vehicle maintenance skills. You may have done your daily walk-around, you've checked your fluids, you've rotated your tires, you've even lubricated your door hinges. So, now that you've mastered the short-term maintenance and inspections, it's time to start thinking about what kind of maintenance you're looking at in the years to come.

These procedures are part of most cars' long-term service schedules. Some, like the fluid flushes, probably won't surprise you much. Others, like regular O2 sensor replacement and valve lash adjustment, will likely leave you asking, “We're supposed to mess with that before it breaks? What is this, 1890?”

However, what won't come as a shock is that many of these procedures are significantly more complex than checking your oil. 

Should you do the maintenance yourself?

Those are really the questions when you're talking about things you might not want to or be able to do yourself: “Can I do this myself?” and “How much is it going to cost me if I pay to have it done?” These questions take on a whole new relevance when you look at regular maintenance items that you can't do yourself. Alignments fall into this category, which is why the third focus is as much on showing you how this stuff works. That way, if you do decide to pay to have it done, you don't fall prey to that huckster with the discount muffler bearings and blinker fluid.

And doing this sort of long-term maintenance will net you a bit of practical experience in wrenching, so you're not afraid to dive in when something actually does break.

Polish Headlights – Every 20,000 Miles

Even with a cheap car insurance policy, it is wise to avoid traffic accidents. Therefore, your car needs to be always road-ready. Headlights are essential components on your road trip.

“You're supposed to polish headlights?” A fair enough question to ask, with a simple enough answer: yes. In the mid-1980s, manufacturers figured out that they could take advantage of this new-fangled “plastic stuff” to make their cars more aerodynamic and to get rid of those giant, clunky sealed beam headlight bulbs used since the 1940s. Since then, the acrylic headlight lens has stretched, grown over many cars' corners, and actually become an integral part of the car's bodywork. But the problem with using clear plastic lenses instead of glass is that plastic is very soft and doesn't appreciate being sandblasted continuously at 60 mph.

What about the Headlights?

Over time, tiny dust particles in the air, and dirt kicked up by other cars, will turn your nice, clear lenses a milky white. This milkiness isn't just ugly; it blocks and diffuses the light like a piece of paper held in front of a light bulb. This is nice if you're filming a Celine Dion video, but not so much if you're trying to avoid crashing into things at 60 mph.

Regular headlight polishing 

Regular headlight polishing will keep your lenses looking new and transfer light the way they should and keep you from having to go after them with wet/dry sandpaper later on. A bottle of plastic lens polish will run you around $10 and will likely last you the next 100,000 miles if you use it regularly. Compare that to the $25 you'll spend on a headlight restoration kit – which you'll need after they fog over – or the hundreds of dollars you'll spend on a new headlight bucket once yours is sandblasted beyond repair. Regular polishing starts looking like a pretty good deal.

As a procedure, polishing headlight lenses doesn't differ significantly from polishing any other part of your car. The primary difference is that, for the headlights, you'll need a specialized headlight polish design for acrylic lenses. Once you get the polish, it's just a matter of following the bottle's directions and using the recommended polishing cloths.

Change Fuel Filter – Every 30,000 to 40,000 Miles

There are many variables in terms of fuel filter location and replacement procedures. Even more so than replacing spark plugs, and that's saying something.

Most modern fuel injected cars use a pre-filtering screen around the fuel pick-up line or the fuel pump in the tank and this screen keeps larger debris like rust scale and dirt from entering your pump. The primary filter – the one you’ll be changing -- may be in the fuel tank, on top of it, next to it, in the fuel line under the car, or the engine bay.

Get a repair manual

A repair manual or outside source of information is your best friend here, not only in terms of filter location but also for removal and replacement procedures. In particular, Ford is very fond of weird little plastic clips that require a special tool to remove to replace the filter, and other manufacturers may use multiple filters that are identical on the outside but different on the inside. 

A few basic principles apply to most filter changes

If the engine is fuel-injected, you'll need to relieve residual fuel pressure before doing anything. Some cars use a Schrader -- which looks like a bicycle air valve -- on the fuel line under the hood. In these cases, wrap a rag around the valve to soak up any fuel that squirts out, and then press on the pin in the center of the valve with a screwdriver. Other times, you'll just pull the fuel pump fuse to deactivate it, start the car and allow it to idle until it stalls from a lack of fuel pressure.

On all cars, disconnect the negative battery cable before replacing the filter, especially when working on a filter mounted in the engine bay. Sparks and fuel vapors don't mix well.

Fuel filter replacements, as a rule, are worth doing yourself. But, you'll need to do some homework to determine if you can or want to do it in your car.