Tag Archives: car repairs

Time to Recharge Air Conditioning again?

Dual zone AC control head

As we enter another car air-conditioning season many drivers are turning on the AC only to be greeted with waves of hot air. When this happens drivers want to feel the cool breeze as quickly and cheaply as possible. That is what this article is about. Do not miss the 2 helpful videos below!

For people that have slow freon leaks it’s not the first time the system stopped working. For these motorists it’s time to recharge air conditioning again. Often it’s a financial situation that stops us from pursuing proper diagnosis and repair.

Other times it’s fear that if we go into a shop they will find large and expensive repairs. Both of these situations are valid concerns that I completely understand. Air-conditioning repairs can easily become an avenue to take advantage of customers!

Look, I know lots of auto repair shop owners that are not only honest but talented. But the reality is it’s not always a bed of roses when you need automotive service. When you have time I wrote a good article about air-conditioning rip-offs that you may find helpful if you plan on taking your vehicle in for repair. Continue reading →

Is it Covered Under Warranty

Leave a reply

Is my car problem covered under warranty is one of the common questions I receive here at the auto repair information blog. In most cases this is a question that I can only shed some light on because ultimately whether it is covered under warranty or not is unfortunately a question that the dealership has to answer.

crankshaft position sensor

As an example let’s say the crankshaft position Sensor has failed on your vehicle and it wouldn’t start. Parts and labor including towing would be covered under the base factory warranty. But what if external damage is what caused the problem to the car part.

External damage is considered an accident and not covered under the base warranty. Example: The factory will not be responsible if the automobile fell into a sinkhole and this broke the crank sensor. It would be considered an accident. This means that it is really up to the dealership to determine what has caused the part to fail and whether it will be covered under warranty.

Although many dealerships are honest about this I have worked for a few that were not. I have seen service advisers more interested in how much money that particular customer has spent at the dealership in prior visits and use this to decide what failure code would be entered in the claim. Continue reading →

Free Auto Repair Manuals

4 Replies

Paid for auto repair manual

Is there such a thing as free auto repair manuals? I receive several e-mails a day asking me to send free car repair manuals for specific vehicles. Of course I do not have any or the right to send copyrighted material for free (And I don’t) but it is a good question.

My mother always told me that nothing in life is free. But since I have seen advertisements for free car repair manuals around the net I decided to check into it and see if my mother was wrong.

There are several websites that state they have free repair manuals for your individual vehicle. I went to a couple of these websites to check it out for myself. I spent a couple of hours visiting several different locations with mixed results.

At one of these locations I typed in the year make and model of the vehicle I was looking for service procedures and diagnostic tree charts for. It brought me to a page that said click here to download. When I clicked on the button a pop-up was generated.

The box that opened up stated that I would have to jump through some hoops to get what I wanted. There were six necessary steps that needed to be completed before I would receive my free download. The first step was to join an Internet movie database that had some type of contract. The other five steps also included signing up for scary long-term agreements.

Is there any free auto repair manuals?

The next site I went too seemed a little better. Continue reading →

Free Auto Repair Information

1 Reply

auto-repair-mechanic Sometimes Diy auto mechanics will spend a lot of time looking for free auto repair information. I mean who doesn’t like free. But what if all that time spent brings poor quality information and poor results.

Personally I would rather spend a few bucks to receive the best possible information and know at least my time and effort was heading in the right direction. Let me give you a quick example of this scenario.

Free auto repair information forums

I use to go to the popular automotive forums and try to help people with their auto repair questions. I noticed a common trend about these free car forums. A lot of people dispensing advice may mean well, but in some cases, the advice was very poor and in some instances harmful to the vehicle.

It was also very hard for the Diy auto mechanic who posted the specific question to pick out a quality answer from the massive amount of responses. The problem with using this method is that the people responding to your car repair questions may not actually be knowledgeable about the subject at hand.

But what if you did not need outside help because you had Continue reading →