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.

The vehicle manufacturer has to trust the dealership to some extent because they cannot follow up on every single car problem from each individual customer. This trust does have its limits though. When a warranty problem is submitted to a car maker for reimbursement it contains several codes that help the manufacturer streamline the processing. This is somewhat like what goes on in a medical field.

What is factory warranty coverage

My factory warranty coverage

A warranty is an agreement by the auto manufacturer to have its authorized dealers repair and/or replace certain car parts if they become defective. This agreement normally lasts until the vehicle has been driven a certain number of miles or a certain length of time (whichever comes first).

Just a few years ago the base warranty was most commonly 3 years 36,000 miles. But increased competition and the different car-makers fighting for customers has increased the base warranty time on many models to five years and 50,000 miles or even 10 years and 100,000 miles. As a side effect this has made the extended car warranty harder to sell and cheaper to obtain.

In order for the manufacturer to honor the warranty or to cover the cost of parts and labor the failure must occur within the time and miles of the promised warranty. Often this is not cut and dry because manufacturers provide several levels of warranty coverage. The two most popular at the time of this writing would be the bumper-to-bumper warranty and the power train warranty.

Power train warranties usually last longer but cover less items whereas bumper-to-bumper coverage will last for shorter periods of time but cover many more items. To further complicate matters sometimes on these warranties the owners might be responsible for a partial payment known as a deductible. Then the manufacturer will kick in any money above this agreed-upon deductible this is not publicized on the commercials and ads like the length of coverage.

Things not covered under factory warranty

Cadillac warranty manual

This is where it gets tricky because a standard car warranty provided by the vehicle manufacturer will not cover many malfunctions. Some of the popular ways out would be to say that the failure is caused by an accident, misuse, poor maintenance or abuse or modifications made to the vehicle by the owner that voids the warranty.

What is covered and what is not covered is outlined in your vehicle’s owner manual. You should always read this section of the manual to refresh your memory before you take your vehicle in for what you believe will be a covered warranty service.

Ultimately whether it is covered or not will be up to the dealership that performs the diagnosis and determines not only what the failure is but the cause of that failure. A failed component due to no fault of the driver or owner should be covered under warranty. But the dealer will have to make that decision.

Is your car problem covered under warranty? You can run it by a dealership mechanic at Just Answer below to see what they think. For more of the latest posts this next link takes you back to the auto repair information blog homepage from this article about automotive problems covered under warranty.

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. There were no pop-ups or warnings from my Norton insight program. There also seemed to be a lot of download-able PDF repair manuals. So once again I searched for a specific vehicle within the very popular General Motors brand.

Figure from Repair manual

Once again I was disappointed that no repair manual was available for my chosen specific vehicle. In fact most of the General Motors information was actually owner’s manuals that were available for download or reprint. Although an owner’s manual does provide some value it is not very helpful for fixing specific auto repair problems.

In the end I wound up with a ton of evil spy-ware and pop-ups. I did not find actual repair manuals for a specific vehicle. I completely understand that people want stuff for free. I like free stuff myself. Let’s be honest with each other and admit that time is worth money. If you spend several hours looking for something that you could get in a few minutes for under $10 isn’t it actually worth the money?

Also for $10 you get a factory quality repair manual with no spy-ware or any other problems associated from the downloading process. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on reference materials take a look at my video about Mitchell’s auto repair online manuals. This is a web based system that you log into. There is nothing to download and there are no hoops to jump through.

You tell me where the free repair manuals are

Mitchell Manuals Online

I’m not saying that you can’t find a car repair manual for free on the Internet. With the vastness of the wild wild web there’s got to be free repair diagrams somewhere. But after a couple of hours of my own personal search I had to stop for my own sanity.

Was my mother right about nothing in life is free? In my opinion the couple of hours that I spent looking for something for free was not only destructive to my computer but was a complete waste of time. So Mom if you’re reading this I say once again that you were right.

This article about free auto repair manuals is just my opinion. Again I’m sure that there are places you can go to get free information. And if you know of a high quality place where you can get free auto repair manuals please leave a comment below this post. Note that any links provided to spamming websites or filled with pop-ups and spy-ware will be deleted!

Thank you for taking the time to visit this auto repair information blog. I do provide free articles for specific car repairs on this blog. But this should in no way be mistaken for free auto repair manuals. I should also mention that this website as well as my other ones contain advertisements that may or may not generate revenue for the individuals that wrote the articles. I blame my Mother for this. She always told me that peoples time is valuable and they should be compensated for it.

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 in front of you the best possible source of information about your vehicle. You can now have access to the same factory auto repair manual that your dealership level auto mechanic uses.

These online programs only supply free auto repair information in the demonstration area.  But if your vehicle is on the random demo your in luck. You can check out the All-Data Free Demo Here.

This web-based system allows for a constantly updated source of auto repair information. The automobile can be a complex and troublesome mechanical device. Certain vehicles may develop similar problems as the vehicle continues to get older. This is why the online car repair manual is far superior to even the best-printed materials.

Inherent problems come to the surface and are documented in technical service bulletins and posted by the factory. The only way to have access to this information is either through the dealership or a repair manual company that offers an updateable database. All-Data is not the only one.

But it is one that I can show you since they offer a demo. I made a video that walks you through a common car repair so you can see just how useful these auto repair manuals can be.

If you repair your own automobile, you can assure that only the work that is needed will be performed. You can also have the advantage of factory insider information in the form of technical service bulletins. Often these documents tell you exactly what is wrong with your car by symptom or complaint.

These Vehicle specific TSB’s can help you learn from the path traveled by many other professional mechanics before you. Addressing the exact same car problem you are having. The idea being that this information helps you work smarter and just might prevent you from replacing a car part that was not needed.

Even though your goal may be to find free auto repair information take a minute to think about the larger goal. Fixing your car right the first time, for less money with increased reliability might be a better value.

I have a lot to say on this car repair subject. See the other posts in this catogory by visiting the auto repair information section of this blog.