When to get your car or truck tuned up is not a very hard question if you look at a few things. The first thing you can do to find out if your car needs a tune-up which is the easiest thing here is to pull a spark plug out and examine it. After 20-30 thousand miles the center electrode will begin to wear down forming an increased gap and begin to round off. At this time if you determine that a car or truck tune-up is needed, remove the rest of the spark plugs and replace them with new ones.
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Examine each spark plug as you remove them and look for signs of a black shiny substance on them. If you find one then this tells you that you are leaking oil into that cylinder from either your piston rings or your valve guide seals. A white chalky appearance would let you know that your engine is burning on the lean side which is good. Now on the other hand if you noticed a black carbon appearance this means your engine is running rich which is a bad thing and you need to have your car or truck looked at by an engine performance expert hopefully ASE certified. Here are a few more ways you can tell if you need a tune-up on your vehicle.
1. If your car or truck has over 30,000 miles on it.
2. Your “check engine” or “service engine soon” light comes on.
3. You just purchased a used car and you want to keep track of your vehicle maintenance schedules.
4. If you noticed that under a load such as driving up a hill and you feel the engine cutting out, you need a tune-up.
5. Planning a road trip and you want to make sure that your car or truck is going to make it to your destination ok.
Important Reminders: Car and truck tune-ups can be classified in 2 categories. You either need a minor tune-up or a major tune-up depending on the mileage on your vehicle. I will discuss the difference in my next article. Most of the newer cars and trucks built today require the use of platinum plugs which auto makers claim should last you up to 100,000 miles before needing to be changed out. My experience tells me that this just isn’t true. For more auto repair savings and tips please visit my blog at, “Auto RepairSavings And my Special Links.” Happy driving!
Tags: car and truck, tune-up, spark plugs, vehicle, mileage
