Archive for the ‘Maintenance’ Category

STUDY: Despite insurance breaks, hybrids driven more, cost more to fix, and get more tickets

2010 Honda Insight EX – Click above for high-res image gallery
Conventional wisdom is that hybrid vehicles reduce our dependence on foreign oil and emit fewer environment hurting CO2 emissions. When comparing a hybrid to a conventional gasoline-powered model on a mile-by-mile basis, there’s some logic to this argument provided the pricing disparity between the two [...]

Does brake dust affect a car’s quality? J.D. Power thinks so (w/POLL)

When wheels are covered with brake dust, the entire car looks dirty and in many cases, a basic wash will do little to rectify the problem. Most associate brake dust as a mere nuisance, but others actually see the sight of pad particles as a fundamental problem with the functionality of a vehicle’s brakes. That [...]

VIDEO: Mercedes-Benz E-Class commercial features malfunctioning car

Mercedes wardrobe commercial malfunction — Click above to watch video
The voiceover for Mercedes’ “Ignite” commercial for the new E-Class starts with “It is, quite simply, the most advanced automobile we have every created.” However, during the start-up sequence before that voiceover, the actual commercial begins with a warning light: when the driver turns the car [...]

BREAKING: Early Camaro SS manual transmission failures reported, factory hold issued

2010 Chevrolet Camaro – Click above for a high-res image gallery
Sporadic reports have begun popping up in the Camaro5 forums about issues with V8-powered SS models equipped with the manual transmission. It seems that doing a hard launch or using the launch control system occasionally results in a broken output shaft, a serious failure that [...]

VIDEO: Toyota dealer employees caught snooping through customer vehicle, watching porn

Have you ever had the feeling that the service guy at your local dealership is rummaging through your things? Perhaps even a few quarters are missing. A guy named Jason knows all too well about dealership employees going through his stuff – on two different occasions, Jason noticed that things were missing from his Toyota [...]

STUDY: Majority of highway fatalities caused by deficient road conditions

What would you think to be the leading contributor to fatalities in car crashes here in the States? Failure to use seat belts? Speeding? Drunk driving? Think again. According to a new study commissioned by Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), the leading cause of highway fatalities is deficient road conditions. In fact, the [...]

STUDY: UK police officers confuse diesel and gas pumps four times a day, cost taxpayers ??1 million

British police have an expensive problem. It’s not crime and it isn’t corruption, it’s much worse. The £1 million problem is stupidity. Over the course of three years, UK cops have on 4,709 occasions put the wrong fuel in their police cruisers. That’s an average of four cars damaged per day, with damages of £6,500 [...]

Volvo’s new Safe + Sound Coverage Plan covers everything but the kitchen sink

Lost in the bevy of numbers that is the Autoblog monthly sales report is the fact that Volvo just isn’t selling very many cars in the U.S. any more. The Swedish automaker only sold 5577 units in May, and the downward trend started way before the automotive market hit the crapper. Given the sad state [...]

Smart offering 2008 ForTwo owners a transmission upgrade?

Smart ForTwo – Click above for a high-res image gallery
If you poll owners (and reviewers) of the Smart ForTwo you’ll find one consistent gripe: the transmission. The automated manual gearbox herks, jerks and is about as dynamically pleasing as petting your dog with a broom.
Apparently, Smart is listening, and in addition to tweaking the [...]

Andrew J. Feustel: Astronaut, Hubble mechanic, car guy

Sometime today, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis are scheduled to begin fitting the Hubble telescope with three new gyroscopes. But why does Autoblog care? Well, apart from the fact that the whole mission is super cool, one of the galactic grease monkeys wielding a wrench today will be Andrew J. Feustel. He’s one of [...]

AutoMK Maintenance 201: Brake pad replacement, Part II

In the first half of this particular write-up, we showed the basic process of replacing the front rotors and pads on a VW Jetta. Now we’ll go ahead and hit the rear brakes, since the car is already up in the air and we’re already covered up to our elbows in grease and brake fluid. [...]

Car service in less than an hour?

Here’s a policy we’d like to see made standard across every border.
Al-Futtaim Motors has promised full-car service on all Toyota and Lexus vehicles within 59 minutes. The policy started last month on the 15th and will end 59 days later on August 12th. Unfortunately, the service only applies to vehicles within the United Arab Emirates [...]

AutoMK Maintenance 201: Brake pad replacement, Part I

While many aspects of maintenance can be put off until the odometer rolls past 100K, odds are that you’ll be doing some work on your vehicle’s brakes long before then. Vehicles continue to get heavier and our highway speeds are ever-increasing, both of which put an incredible amount of strain on even a modern braking [...]

Texas team wins at Ford/AAA Auto Skills Challenge

A team from Paris High School in Texas took the top spot in this past weekend’s Ford/AAA Auto Skills Challenge. The goal of the yearly competition, which pits the top 50 two-man teams against each other, is to accurately diagnosis and repair a vehicle that has been deliberately disabled. The teams are given a maximum [...]

Top 100 Most Reliable Cars in the U.K.

Warranty Direct is an auto warranty company in the United Kingdom that decided to put some of its raw data to good use in a comprehensive reliability index that ranks the country’s 100 most reliable vehicles according to their frequency of failure. The Honda Accord tops the list and Japanese manufacturers produce no less than [...]

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