Rockville Auto Repair

Safe MD travel starts with preventive maintenance and good vehicle care at Auto Clinic Care. But there are other things Rockville residents can do to prepare for emergencies on the road. Here's some auto advice that can help you plan for emergencies, and just may save your life — or someone else's.First, Rockville auto owners should consider keeping an auto emergency kit in their vehicle. The kit should contain items that will allow you to deal with common emergencies on the road.Some items you should carry in your vehicle include jumper cables (or a booster box), flares, a flashlight and some basic hand tools. Other useful items include gloves, two quarts of oil, some antifreeze, water and everything you need to change a tire. You might also consider a can of tire inflator, which is a great temporary fix for minor flats.But taking care of your vehicl ... read more

Safety should always be an element of your vehicle care. So even if you don't care about how your vehicle looks, you should practice preventive maintenance to protect yourself — and other Rockville drivers — on the road. And good safety starts with good brakes.Brakes need a regular inspection. There are  parts that wear out or wear down, and it's best to replace them before you have serious problems. Of course, if you are having trouble with your brakes, NOW is the time to fix them. If your brake warning light is on, that's a good sign that you need your brakes checked. You can also tell something is wrong with your brakes by the feel of the pedal or unusual sounds while braking. If the brake pedal is low, feels spongy when you press it or is hard to push, that indicates a problem with your brakes. If you hear squealing, grinding or clunking noises when you brake, that can also indicate serious problems. If vibrations accompan ... read more

A generation ago, Rockville drivers seemed to be more inclined to keep their vehicle's preventive maintenance on schedule. One reason for this may be that vehicles back then were a lot less reliable than they are today. Taking your vehicle in to your Rockville shop every year or two for repairs seemed to be a good reminder to keep the oil changed.For example, almost everyone in Rockville used to take their vehicles in for regular tune-ups. Vehicles had mechanical ignition systems, which meant ignition points, spark plugs and coils had to be replaced and the timing adjusted every few years. As long as the vehicle was in for a tune-up at Auto Clinic Care, the vehicle was inspected and you took care of any needed repairs at the same time.Today's engines have electronic ignition systems and engine control computers. Spark plugs can last for up to 100,000 miles/160,000 km. Vehicle reliability has vastly improved in the last few decades, and surveys report fewer p ... read more

All Rockville service advisors know that without the alternator, the battery will go dead in a few miles. The serpentine belt may also run the pumps for both the power steering and power brakes. And on many vehicles, the serpentine belt powers the water pump. The water pump circulates coolant through the engine to keep it within normal operating temperatures. (On some vehicles, the water pump is powered by the timing belt instead of the serpentine belt.) So you can see the serpentine belt does a lot of work. And it if breaks, it affects a lot of systems. That's why your vehicle manufacturer and your service advisor at Auto Clinic Care have recommended that it be changed every so often so that it doesn't fail.Your friendly and knowledgeable Auto Clinic Care service advisor can perform a visual inspection of the belt to see if it has any cracks that signal the belt could fail soon and will measure the a ... read more

Rockville residents' vehicles have to operate in a wide range of MD temperatures which requires the engine coolant to be able to perform 'no matter what.' Think for a moment about the environment where the coolant does its thing. Very hot, high pressure, corrosive...And all the while, it has to protect the components of the cooling system from corrosion. These components are made from steel and aluminum, plastics and rubber. The coolant has to be formulated to protect against corrosion for all of these different materials. That's why vehicle manufacturer’s recommend different types of anti-freeze for our Rockville, MD, vehicles.There are several different 'families' of anti-freeze available to us here in Rockville. Your owner's manual will tell you what kind you should use. Of course, the automotive professionals at Auto Clinic Care will know the right kind for your vehicle.It's important to stay on top of this because coolant system failure is the most common mec ... read more

So you take your vehicle in for maintenance and the pro at Auto Clinic Care tells you that you ought to change your oil more often. What? You followed the maintenance schedule – but you take a second look at that “severe service” schedule and see some of the following: 1. Most of your trips around Rockville are less than four miles/six and a half kilometers.2. Most of your trips are less than 10 miles/16 km when outside MD temperatures are below freezing.3. You don't do a lot of MD freeway driving, so you drive at low speeds most of the time.4. You drive in an area with a lot of pollution, dust, dirt, mud or slush.5. You frequently tow a trailer, haul heavy loads around Rockville or use a car-top carrier.6. The weather in your area can get very hot or very cold.Surprising, isn't it? Severe driving isn't quite what you'd envisioned.Ask yourself: "Which auto service schedule should I follow?" For some of us, it's obvious. But for most of us, i ... read more

Good vehicle care for us Rockville residents has always meant taking our vehicles in every spring and fall for a check-up. Vehicles needed routine maintenance to prepare them for the changes in weather. Today's vehicles aren't quite as sensitive to seasonal changes. Older vehicles required different weights of oil for summer and winter. But today's engines can run on the same oil all year. Both the engines and the oils have been improved.Antifreeze—or coolant as it's also called—protects the engine from both freezing and hot temperatures and thus is required by the engine year-round. Modern coolants don't have to be changed as often as they did in the past, but your owner's manual has a recommendation for when it should be replaced to extend cooling system life.Getting a spring and fall checkup at Auto Clinic Care in Rockville for your vehicle is still good auto advice.First of all, there is a lot of preventive auto maintenance involved in pr ... read more

What type of technology do you use? Do you prefer an 8-track tape or an iPod? When it comes to winter tires, much of Rockville driver's perception dates back to when 8-track was the best way to listen to the Bee Gees.Twenty years ago in MD, winter tires differed from highway tires only in their tread design. MD drivers called them snow tires back then, and they had big, knobby lugs that were designed to give good traction in deep snow. They had the same rubber compound as regular tires and they weren't very good on ice, packed snow or wet MD roads. They were not even very good on dry roads. They really helped in deep or loose snow, but they did a poor job the rest of the time. They were loud and rode hard. People couldn't wait to get them off in the spring.Then all-season tires started to appear in Rockville tire shops. All-season tires are really a compromise between summer and winter performance. They have acceptable hot weather ride and tread life and can get MD drivers through mild ... read more

Have you ever had an experience like this in Rockville, MD? You drive through the one of those automatic car washes. When you get to the end, where the dryer is blowing, your Check Engine light starts flashing!You fear the worst, but within a block or two, the light stops flashing, but stays on. By the next day, the light is off.You wonder; "What was going on?" Well, it's actually a good lesson in how the Check Engine light works.Your air intake system has a sensor that measures how much air is coming through it. When you went under the high-speed dryer, all that air was blasting past the sensor. Your engine computer was saying, there shouldn't be that much air when the engine is just idling. Something's wrong. Whatever's wrong could cause some serious engine damage.Warning, warning! It flashes the Check Engine light to alert you to take immediate action.It stopped flashing because once you were out from under the dryer, the airflow returned to normal. Now the eng ... read more

Have you ever seen a ballet performance? Have you wondered how all of those dancers manage to travel all over the stage jumping and twirling and never crash into each other? That's the job of a choreographer.Our auto engines are also highly choreographed. Pistons travel up and down inside cylinders. Valves at the tops of the cylinders open to let air and fuel in or exhaust out. These valves have to open and close at precisely the right time or the engine will run poorly if at all. The movement of the valves and pistons must be in harmony with each other. This choreography is the job of the timing belt or timing chain.Timing belts, or chains, rotate the shafts that control the opening and closing of the valves. Timing chains are metal and durable enough that they may never need to be replaced.Most vehicles, however, use a timing belt. Timing belts are tough and flexible, and considering the work they do, they last a long time for Rockville auto owners . But they do wear out. If the ... read more