Chesapeake Auto Repair

Gear Up: Transmission Service at West Service Center, Inc. in Chesapeake   The transmission system in your vehicle allows you to change gears. Lower gears are power gears. They get your vehicle moving and get it up hills. Higher gears get the vehicle up to speed and get it rolling faster. If you have a standard transmission, then you have to do the work of shifting gears yourself. But with an automatic transmission, the vehicle shifts gears on its own. It automatically starts out in low gear and automatically shifts to high gears as it gets rolling. Again, it will automatically shift to a lower gear to climb hills or when you need a burst of speed. How does it know when to change gears? Today’s automatic transmissions are computer-controlled. The computer gathers information about what the vehicle is doing, and changes the gears as needed. Automatic transmissions are becoming more sophisticated all the time. More gears, or “speeds” are being added. A ... read more

Odometer Rollback On Your Chesapeake Virginia Auto How do Chesapeake motorists know if an odometer is telling the truth? Well, back in ’86, Congress passed the Truth-in-Mileage Act to protect Virginia consumers against mileage fraud. It says a Virginia seller must certify the mileage reported is the Actual Mileage. To have your odometer checked in Chesapeake Virginia, stop by West Service Center, Inc.: If it isn’t, the seller must say why; like maybe the odometer is past its mechanical limits. Some older odometers only go to 99,999 miles and then start over at 0. Or, the odometer has been tampered with, broken or replaced. If the seller tells you the mileage isn’t accurate, there’s not much chance of putting a good number to it; And there’s the unscrupulous seller who claims the reading is true, but it’s not so. What can Chesapeake car owners do? First, you can go to www.CarFax.com, where for a small fee, they’ll give ... read more

Suffolk Drivers: Is It Time To Replace Your PCV Valve?   Improved fuel economy has two benefits for Chesapeake drivers: less fuel is necessary and fewer emissions are released. Suffolk cars and trucks run cleaner than ever. Chesapeake car owners may not realize that the first federally mandated pollution control device came out almost fifty years ago. Virginia car owners that were around in the early 60’s may remember that the PCV Valve came out on 1964 model cars. PCV stand for Positive Crankcase Ventilation. The crankcase is the lower part of the engine where the crankshaft is housed and where the engine oil lives. The crankshaft is connected to the pistons that power the engine. When fuel is burned in the van engine, it pushes the pistons down and the crankshaft rotates and sends power to the transmission. Some of the explosive gases from combustion squeeze past the pistons and down into ... read more

Go Straight: Wheel Alignment For Chesapeake Automobiles   Chesapeake auto owners may have an alignment problem if their car drifts or pulls to one side, the steering wheel’s off center, they notice uneven tire wear or the car doesn’t feel like it handles right as they drive down Chesapeake, Virginia streets and highways. When all of a vehicle’s wheels are lined up exactly with each other, your wheels are in alignment. Running into potholes, smacking a curb or other objects around Chesapeake, Virginia are great ways for Chesapeake car owners to knock their car out of alignment. Then one or more of your wheels starts pulling in a slightly different direction and the problems begin. The team at West Service Center, Inc. in Chesapeake wants you to know that driving for an extended time when your car is out of alignment causes your tires to wear unevenly and excessively. Sometimes the tire can be worn so badly that it will fail. At the very least, Chesa ... read more

Hey Chesapeake Drivers, How Many Miles Are On Your Car?   Nowadays, Chesapeake auto owners are paying more at Chesapeake gas pumps. For some families in the greater Chesapeake area, it adds up to several hundred dollars every month. That’s got to come out of the budget somewhere. This is one of the reasons many Virginia auto owners are putting off buying a new car. They plan on keeping their old vehicle for a year or two longer than before. Even now, 2/3 of the personal vehicles on our local Chesapeake, Virginia freeways have over 75,000 miles on them. The average age of vehicles is over nine years. And most people in Chesapeake can’t afford to be stranded or inconvenienced by a break down. So following a regular maintenance schedule, like personal diet and exercise plans, is actually critical to preserving your investment. Determining what to do for a higher-mileage vehicle can be challenging because many automobile manufacturer’s manuals don’t publish ... read more