Chesapeake Auto Repair

Easy Miles Have you ever noticed that your car maker has a schedule in your owner’s manual for what is called “severe service” maintenance? Let’s define what severe driving conditions aren’t: The easiest driving a vehicle experiences is traveling on the interstate for twenty miles or more at a constant rate of 65 miles per hour in 75°F weather with only passengers on board. Change any one of those parameters and you are adding stress to your engine. Change them significantly, and you are driving under severe conditions. Let’s look at the essential parameters one a time. First, the length of the trip. Short trips around Chesapeake are harder on an engine than longer ones. As your engine cools down, water in the air condenses onto the engine. When you heat the engine again, the water evaporates off. This is healthy. But on short trips, the engine doesn’t stay hot enough long enough for all of the water to evaporate so it st ... read more

West Service Center, Inc. and the Maintenance Mindset   When it comes to their vehicles, some Chesapeake car owners don’t have a maintenance mindset. They know they need to take care of their cars, but it just seems really hard to get them to remember to do it. Chesapeake drivers generally accept that many things in life require regular maintenance, but just may have not applied it to their vans. For example: the lawn. You water it and mow it every week. And weed the flower beds and rake the leaves. There are other things that Chesapeake residents are diligent about. Going to the dentist twice a year. Clothes to the dry cleaner. Flu shots. Taking the kids to your Chesapeake doctor for a checkup before school starts. So Chesapeake auto owners really are maintenance minded. They just have to learn to apply that mindset to cars. I mean, if you never brush your teeth or g ... read more

Fuel Injection Keeps Getting Better For Chesapeake Motorists Chesapeake auto owners know that engines burn fuel to operate. Fuel is pumped from your fuel tank to your engine where it is squirted—or injected—into your engine’s cylinders. This is the function of the fuel injectors. There are two ways to inject fuel into an engine. Fuel needs air to burn, so in the first method, fuel is injected into a port and allowed to mix with air and before it is drawn into the cylinders. In the second method, fuel is injected directly into the cylinders and mixes with air after it enters the engine. Direct injection engines burn fuel more efficiently than conventional engines. Some models can deliver the power of a V8 with the economy of a V6. For example, in one family of engines, the conventional version (a V6) delivers about 250 horsepower. The direct injection version delivers over 300 horsepower and gets about the same fuel economy. The turbocharged v ... read more

Cool Running In Chesapeake Unless you live in Death Valley, you really don’t hear much any more about cars overheating. That’s because cooling systems in vehicles have been much improved. That doesn’t mean you can’t overheat your van engine, though. Without proper preventive maintenance, you could still find yourself on the side of the expressway in Chesapeake waiting for your van engine to cool down. When you service your cooling system at West Service Center, Inc., your technician will check the condition of the coolant. It can become corrosive over time, which can damage a radiator — leading to an overheated engine. Changing the coolant periodically is good car care. Your van owner’s manual can give you guidelines on how often to replace it. If your engine overheated, your honest tech will also check your coolant system for leaks. Check the va ... read more

What is That? Check Engine Light Service At West Service Center, Inc. Okay. You went to your local Chesapeake car wash and while your van was under the dryer, the check engine light started flashing. Panic! What did you just do? Something is seriously wrong with the van! You head for the nearest Chesapeake service station, but on the way, the check engine light stops flashing, and just glows red. Hmm. Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem. You decide to wait until payday to take your van in to get serviced. In the meantime, the check engine light goes off. What? You decide the light must be faulty, or that when it comes on it doesn’t mean anything, or that it’s just in your van as some sort of scam to get you to pay for unnecessary costly repairs. You’re glad you didn’t take your car to the Chesapeake repair shop and resolve to ignore that engine light in the future.   Whoa! Let’s look at what really happened. Your van was under an air ... read more