Maintenance & Repair

We offer a comprehensive array of maintenance and repair services. Click on the maintenance, mechanical repair, or electrical repair pages to see in detail what we offer.

On this page we explain why we think maintenance is so important, and cost effective. Please read on.

We believe very strongly that properly maintaining a vehicle, and using it for as long as possible, is the most economical way to save a fortune on your basic transportation needs. Most of the vehicles made in the last three decades will easily last for upwards of 300,000 miles or more with money spent on proper maintenance.
The average life span of an improperly maintained car is around 70,000 to 100,000 miles, often much less. Most vehicles are taken to lube only shops for oil changes and not much else. There are no trained mechanics looking the car over and many needed maintenance services do not get addressed. Mechanics see the car only when it malfunctions, often due to lack of complete maintenance. Even with the costly repairs along the way, these cars often fail early in life. To cut to the chase, you have to spend money to save money.

If a person spends the money to keep a car running well for 200,000 to 300,000 miles, they are getting the equivalent of one or two more cars for the cost of the maintenance. I guarantee this adds up to less than two new cars purchased in the same time frame. If you have more money than time, buy a new vehicle every seven years or so and don’t worry about it. If you have more time than money, maintain your car and expect it to spend time in the shop, as good maintenance requires more than just oil and filter changes. One must remember that everything that can wear out on a car can be unbolted and replaced, and this will never add up to the cost of replacing the car with a new one. Also with proper maintenance far fewer things wear out and need to be replaced.

We hear people say often “ the car isn’t worth spending any money on, it’s old”. This may be true if you plan on selling the car now, if not, it doesn’t matter. If it has been taken care of, and is in good shape, and has had a failure of something expensive, I feel the vehicle is worth what it would cost to replace it with one that doesn’t have anything wrong with it. This might be $5,000 to $10,000 dollars for something that may be in better shape, to the sky is the limit for something new. So if the repair is $2,500 and you get four or five years or hopefully more out of the vehicle, that is an inexpensive cost per mile figure. You won’t sell the car and get this money back out of it, you drive it out of it. An ill maintained car with an expensive failure often is not worth the big expense, as too many other areas have been neglected and will lead to other failures. So maintain your vehicle, drive it forever, fix what does wear out, and don’t spend a fortune on basic transportation.

On a final note, there is a disturbing trend now with some of the newer vehicles. It is a trend towards making vehicles that are disposable, or so difficult to maintain that they appear to be disposable. We are seeing vehicles with automatic transmissions that are sealed units, with no dipstick. They are very hard, if not impossible to service properly or to check for fluid condition. There are other problems, in other areas, but I won’t list them here now. A person needs to research the vehicle they are buying if planning to go the distance, and drive it for hundreds of thousands of miles. It must be maintainable. Some are designed far better than others to accomplish this.