SUMMERTIME TUNE-UP FOR YOU AND YOUR CAR

TUNE UP YOUR CAR (AND YOU!) FOR SUMMER!

Written March, 2002, for Gannett's DESERT MAGAZINE

     It’s been a year since I wrote a column about prepping your car or truck for the brutal summer months here in the Coachella Valley, home to Palm Springs and about 450,000 full-time resdients. A lot has changed since then. The name of this magazine for instance! The radio station I’m on locally (we’re on KPSI Sunday mornings --- shameless plug) and even the weather seems to have made a cosmic change.

      For instance --- what the heck happened to winter this year? As I write this piece the first week of March, we’ve had virtually no rain in the Valley and it doesn’t look as if this coming month is going to bring any downpour of biblical proportions.

     In a sense, this is good for all us vehicle owners. Our recent moderate winter means we can be a bit more at ease about the internal state of our sports cars, minivans and SUVs.

What’s truly treacherous for vehicles are rapid and big changes in temperature and humidity. These changes affect parts of your car we don’t normally think about (all the rubber belts and hoses, for instance). But with our very temperate conditions these past few months, and the lack of rain, we still to be on-guard for problems, but might find we’re replacing fewer parts than usual after a tougher winter.

But there are still several critical things we need to check before summer gets here in all its blazing glory.

First, your vehicle’s battery. I don’t care how long the warranty is on your battery or how long the guy at the store told you it would last. In the desert, cut that time in half. A mechanic at any big gas station, repair shop or dealership can test your battery with a special instrument in just a few minutes. If you need a new one, buy one, and do not cheap out on this purchase.

As mentioned, all rubber belts and hoses in the engine bay need to be checked by a technician. Rubber tends to rot from the inside out, so it’s difficult for a novice to tell if a hose is about to blow. If you’ve got more than 40,000 miles or three years or so on your vehicle’s belts and hoses and they’ve been through that many desert summers, do not cheap out on this test and replace (if necessary) either.

This next one is easy: Replace your air filter. Remember those winds we had the last week of February? How you woke up with sand in your teeth the next morning? Imagine what that same dirt and sand does to your vehicle’s air filter. You may not want to, but I like to replace the stock air filter element with a filter from a company called K&N. Their filters are easily removed and cleaned whenever you feel like doing it (like right after a wind or dust storm) and they’ll last the life of your car with regular cleaning.

Maintaining the air, oil and gasoline filters clean and like-new are the easiest ways to keep your modern car or truck in tip-top running condition, offering the best performance, mileage and lowest emissions.

We should all have our vehicles professionally cleaned and detailed, inside and out, once a year. This is the time of year to do just that. A moderately good detailing should cost about $50. If you want to just visit the local car wash, try to find one which uses rags, not brushes, and concentrates on handwork, not machines, to prep, clean and maintain the surface.

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