Sluggish. Squealing. Unreliable. Vibrating. If any of these descriptors fit your vehicle’s recent behavior, it just might be trying to tell you something – like it’s time for a tune-up.
Today’s vehicles differ significantly from their decades-old brethren that required a tune-up every 10,000 or 20,000 miles. With newer vehicles, it’s increasingly common for manufacturer-recommended service intervals to stretch to 100,000 miles before certain maintenance items, such as replacing the spark plugs, should be completed.
At Martin's Garage in Shippensburg, PA, we have seen our fair share of preventable engine failures. Frequently, engine disaster could have been avoided if the driver had known beforehand what the warning lights or gauges on the dashboard indicated. While some dash lights are fairly benign, others indicate imminent trouble. This guide from Martin's Garage in Shippensburg, PA will prepare you for the next time your vehicle shows you a warning you shouldn’t ignore.
At Martin's Garage in Shippensburg, PA, we’ve got every answer to your transmission questions and needs, and answers to a lot of things that fall outside of that realm as well. Today, we’re talking about the ABS light - an issue that plagues many modern drivers at some point or another.
Whether you drive a Ford, Chevy, or Ram diesel truck, your tires are an important aspect of the way your truck performs. At Martin's Garage in Shippensburg, PA, we’re here to keep you in the loop on what type of tires are out there for you, and what your tires say about the condition of your truck.
Some vehicles come with either "all-wheel drive" (AWD) or "four-wheel-drive" (4WD), and you may have wondered if there's any real difference between those terms. Cars only have four wheels, after all, so when "all" of them are doing the driving, that's four-wheel drive - isn't it? The logic makes sense, but AWD and 4WD have actually evolved into technical terms that refer to distinct mechanical systems. Whether you're shopping for a car or your needs repairs, you'll want to take an educated approach, so let's walk through the ins and outs of each system.
The operation of your transmission depends on your hydraulics. Even if that sounds like a foreign language to you, at Martin's Garage in Shippensburg, PA, we speak the automotive language. We want you to understand what we're talking about, so here are the basics of the hydraulic functions behind your transmission.
At some point, while waiting for your tank to fill up, you’ve probably wondered what the difference is between the choices of gasoline at the pump. Typically, you see three buttons, with a number between 85 and 98, in ascending order and ascending prices. These numbers are octane ratings, which you probably know; but what is an octane rating, really?
When driving around town, your vehicle's engine needs clean air to burn the fuel – and it needs a lot. In fact, a typical vehicle needs about 216,000 gallons of air for every tank of gas. All that air passes through a filter that catches the dust and dirt. Eventually, the filter gets completely full, and because the filter can only hold so much, dirt starts getting through. At Martin's Garage in Shippensburg, we want to help you get the best air quality in your vehicle, but first, we want to explain the process of where this dirty air is going.
