Rockville Auto Repair

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