Category: Auto care

Wheel Bearing
Auto care

Wheel Bearing Guide – Faulty wheel bearings dangerous to drive

Generally speaking, wheel bearings don’t require a lot of maintenance. However, this does not mean that they will last a lifetime. Let’s take a closer look, how it works? What is its duration? And what can be done to prolong it?

Wheel bearings – what are they? How do they work?

As the part that attaches the wheel to the axle, the wheel bearing plays a critical role in the wheel assembly. Ball bearings or tapered bearings are made from steel balls held together by a ring of metal. They enable a wheel to move efficiently with minimal friction. A wheel bearing endures various forces, including gravity, acceleration, cornering, and braking, and as a result, must be repaired or replaced when they malfunction.

Wheel bearings last how long?

It is estimated that wheel bearings last between 136K to 160k kilometers. A wheel bearing’s lifespan is more dependent upon the quality and the operating conditions relative to the design.

What causes wheel bearings to fail?

Wheel bearings fail for the following reasons:

  • Incorrect installation – the inappropriate tool, like a hammer or impact wrench, can damage the wheel end bearing’s exterior as well as its interior, which will lead the bearing to prematurely fail. Also, using old parts like nut, split-pin, seal, or bolt can cause the early malfunctioning of the wheel bearing. These kinds of practices can cause wheel bearings dangerous to drive and can result in a car accident.
  • Inadequate roads or impact damage, which includes driving through potholes, bumping up against a speed bump, or crashing into curbstones, may cause damage to wheel bearings.
  • A low-quality bearing – wheel bearings are continually exposed to high pressures. A low-quality wheel bearing may not be heat-treated properly, which can lead to premature wear and tear.
  • Driving conditions – a vehicle’s wheel bearings can fail if dragged through deep water or mud. Despite the seals, water, dirt, dust, or road salt could pass through into the bearings, contaminating the grease and causing bearings to wear down.

When your wheel bearings are wrong, what are the symptoms?

wheel bearings dangerous to drive

Wheel bearings that need repair exhibit the following symptoms:

  • Sound:

It usually increases with acceleration or during a turn as a roaring, humming, or growling noise is produced.

  • When the vehicle is in motion, there is a loud whining or grinding noise.
  • If the road is uneven, there is a clattering.
  • A loose steering wheel or one with a lot of play (vague steering);
  • As the vehicle turns or moves at different speeds, the steering wheel vibrates;
  • a problem with the ABS. An ABS issue can manifest itself if the integrated ABS sensor fails.

Wheel bearing replacement

The installation of wheel bearings of the present generation is more accessible than the installation of previous generations, provided that it is installed correctly. You can purchase the wheel bearing from any online site like  https://arospeed.com/ or from your local store. Tools should be used appropriately, and torque values should be respected for maximum effectiveness, performance, and safety. To ensure that your wheel bearings are correctly fitted, we recommend taking your car to a mechanic with the appropriate skill and equipment.

changing vehicle oil
Auto care

What You Need to Know About Changing Your Vehicle’s Oil

You have probably read about articles about how many times you should change your car’s oil many times. However, there is much more to an oil change than how often you change it.

If you need to change your car’s oil. You should buy the oil from Car Smart because they have every type of oil you could possibly need.

You need to change your car’s oil because it becomes contaminated and inefficient after using the car for a long time. The clearance between different parts of a vehicle leads to mixing of oil and fuel which contaminates it.

The evidence that your oil is contaminated is that it will turn black. Your filter will not be able to clean the oil after a certain distance.

The following is what you should know about changing your car’s oil.

 Oil Viscosity

Oil Viscosity

The viscosity of a liquid is essentially it resistance from flowing. Therefore, fluids that flow freely like water are highly viscous while molasses have low viscosity.

The viscosity of oil in your vehicle has a significant effect on its performance. Higher viscosity oil offers more protection when hot, but on the other hand costs you power and mileage. Lower viscosity oil offers more horsepower and gas mileage but there is less engine protection as oil flows between different parts.

Many vehicles have a recommended oil which determines its viscosity but some do not. Therefore, when changing your car’s oil, you will have to carefully choose the oil viscosity.

Mileage

Many drivers adhere to the 3000-mile oil change rule which has been around for so long it is obsolete for most vehicles. The 3000-mile guideline was created for old cars with very different characteristics to those we see today.

Many experts agree and will tell you that the rule is not applicable today. The reason it works is because it is not likely to have an adverse effect on your car.

Cars today have more tolerance so you should check to see how much mileage your car allows before an oil change. For most modern cars the mileage ranges between 5,000 and 10,000 miles.

Conventional or Synthetic Oil

Synthetic oil is not a new thing and it has been in use for over a decade. The reason that conventional oil still exists is that it is cheap to extract from crude oil and it still works.

Synthetic oils are better because they have less impurities and a more uniform molecular structure. These characteristics make synthetic oil more consistent and durable offering better flow and protection for your engine at varying temperatures.

Synthetic oil costs more than conventional oil. On the other hand, it allows for longer intervals between oil changes. You should consult your vehicle manual to find out which is the best for your car.

Your Oil Filter

No matter how closely you follow the oil change guidelines on your car’s manual, it will not matter if you do not change your oil filters. Even the very best of synthetic oils will quickly accumulate contaminants if you don’t change your oil filters.

Therefore, when changing your oil, it is crucial that you evaluate the state of your oil filters. You should view it as a cheap and easy preventive measure.

Car Maintenance Schedule
Auto care

How Frequent Should Be the Car Maintenance Schedule

The advice of following a strict car maintenance schedule and getting the car oil changed in every 3,000 miles has been going on since ages. Some alternatively suggest getting it changed after 7,500 miles or after crossing the first three months of ownership.But along with these suggestions parallel goes the debate among experts, about how frequent should actually be the service schedules, or from the other end, how long can the intervals between schedules be stretched.The debate doesn’t end here. Questions keep popping up whether these schedules should be based on mere time span or after crossing a certain mileage, and then, how to quantify them?

The Reason Behind the Debate

The fact that there are so differing opinions regarding the car maintenance schedule has some really viable reasons behind that are best explained by the experts we spoke to at the Orlando Hyundai dealer showroom.

The first among them is that, there is no straightforward answer to the question pulled up here. This is because every vehicle sustains a certain amount of wear and tear, depending upon the usage ratio of certain components used in comparison to others like oil, air filters, brakes, accelerators, tires, wipers, etc. Among these while some of the components canget worn out with use, others can wear off because they are directly related to the functionalities of the other. For example, each time the brakes are applied, it gets a step nearer to the requirement of getting new pads and next to them, the rotors.

On the contrary, there are some components that actually start malfunctioning when they are used less. the best examples of such components are the car batteries, engine, tires. If you are making your car travel lesser than 10 miles a day, they are most likely to experience engine related issues or an unresponsive transmission struggling to get the operating temperature. A car battery left idle for months will automatically get discharged and will be shortening its life span.

Orlando Hyundai dealer

Which Car Maintenance Schedule Is Ideal to Follow

If you have been using cars for many years, you must have heard about the common complaint raised about the mechanics that they urge for unnecessary maintenance. But it cannot be logically true. Rather a regular maintenance will help the car owners by preventing their cars from getting major service issues on the road. But it will increase the work load for the mechanics and won’t give them any special profit, as mostly these maintenance services are covered either by the manufacturers or the insurer. But if your car suffers a major damage, there are chances for them to quote much higher a price for the repair, that can gain them some good amount of money.

A key to choose the ideal maintenance schedule is the one firstly recommended by the manufacturer and henceforth from the service center with whom you have already had a good experience last time.

The Verdict

What every expert of the Orlando Hyundai dealership unanimously agreed to is that, following a strict maintenance schedule is always important to keep a vehicle in good shape.

Auto care

Differences between lift kits and leveling kits

The most common question is if a lift kit is going to level their truck?. In this article, we will try to answer it as well.

By the way, more articles about leveling kits for Ford F150, Toyota Tacoma on autokwix.com

Leveling kit 

So when it comes to a leveling kit versus a lift kit it’s relatively self-explanatory. But it can get kind of confusing because there are different sizes for leveling kits and that’s kind of where some of that confusion comes in.

So, if you’re buying a leveling kit, in general, that just lifts the front of your truck. It’s just affecting the front of your truck

Most commonly you’re buying a leveling kit it’s gonna be a spacer that goes on either at the top or the bottom of your strut and that’s going to bring the front of your vehicle up.

Trucks from the factory come with something called rake. If you load the bed by installing a leveling kit what you’re doing is bringing up the front of the truck so it sits level with the rear when you’re unloaded

Typically, a leveling kit is gonna be 2 or 2.5 inches or 3 inches. It depends on the truck and then which kit you buy.

For the leveling kit, you don’t get any extra components, like upper control arms, unless you buy them separately

You have to be careful if you’re really stretching the boundaries and you find like a 3-3.5 inch leveling kit because you’re really gonna be pushing those front-end components and causing unneeded stress on the front-end of your truck.

Lift kits

Now, when it comes to a, lift kit, that’s gonna be something that affects both the front of your truck and the rear of the truck. If you buy a 6″ lift kit – you, usually, either will get a 6″ strut spacer which goes on the top of strut in the front. Or you’ll have a complete placement strut and that brings the front of your 6 inches

Note! In that same 6 inch kit in the rear, you’re probably only going to get a 4-inch block. The reason for that is the factory rakes the front has gone up 6″ and the back has gone up poor but because from the factory it came with that extra 2″ they now sit perfectly level.

Do you remember the question we started with? “Does my lift kit level a truck?” Depending on options you can buy (about 2500$) a 5.5″ or 6.5″ PDS, for example, that brings the front up about 6.5″ and then you have the option in the rear to get a 4.5″ block for a 5.5″ block. So, if you get that taller block it’s gonna bring back some of that factory rake and go up higher in the rear.

 one of the guys that I was talking to an Instagram had a Toyota I think was a Tacoma you went out and measured the distances between the ground and the bottom of his wheel well he said the front was thirty-five and the rear was 37 so he’s got that two inch difference he wanted to know if I buy a three inch level what will happen front and rear and four by a three inch lift what will happen in front of them so

Real world example

For example, you have a Toyota Tacoma 35″ (front)and 37″ (rear)

With the 4-inch leveling kit if you add that 3″ to the 35″ = and you will get 38″ in front and you still set at 37 in the rear so you have a little bit of squat

If you were to buy a 3″ lift kit that’s gonna give you the 3″ in the front (38″ in total) in a one 1″ block in the rear – which also will bring that up to 38″.

It’s really just simple math:

  1. measure from the ground to the bottom of your wheel well
  2. add on the size of your kit
  3. an then you can figure out where you’re gonna be sitting at and then the rear

you can do the same thing you can use the just simple math by taking whatever size the block is and adding that to the rear of your truck and that’s about where you’re gonna sit so that should answer those

How leveling kit combines with coilovers?

What happens if you switch from 3″ leveling kit to 2″-2.5″ coilover? If that will give 5-5.5″ lit?

The way leveling kits work is that spacer on top of your stock strut assembly, so if you switch out to a coilover you should be removing that spacer. The coilover then would give you 2.5″. In his case, he had a 3″ wants to replace it with a 2-2.5″. You will decrease your truck in this case.

You can add a coil over to your leveling kit, however, it’s not recommended because those leveling kits don’t come with new control arms or all the other parts you need to correct the angles. Because as you go up with the truck you’re changing the geometry of your front suspension which causes more stress on those front-end components

If you were to try to add a coilover to get on top of your 3″ leveling kits to get about 5-5.5″ of lift you’re gonna really stress the front of your truck and we definitely do not recommend stacking lift components that are gonna be something you want to avoid

 

Auto care

How can you improve your vehicle’s efficiency?

The vehicles’ fuel efficiency is not only beneficial for you but for and your light weighted pocket but also for the betterment of the environment, for which you may not actually have to switch your vehicle for a hybrid one either, all you need is a little information and a heads up. Vehicle maintenance is one of the most important chores you have if you own a vehicle although none of us happen to follow a schedule regardless. Actually, to all of our surprise, it was found out that a vehicles which is properly maintained with a schedule, there is a 30% less fuel consumption chance. With that being said, let us move on to how to improve the efficiency.

Tire pressure

Tire health is extremely important since the vehicle stands upon it, if not taken good care of, the rolling resistance can increase. A good tire is checked off it’s tire pressure about once a month at the least. An under inflated tire tends to burn more fuel, by a 5% to be exact.

Vehicle Idling

A vehicle left to idle for more than a minute can have huge effects on their fuel efficiency because this act is able to consume approximately either a half a gallon or a full gallon of fuel every hour. However the modern engine is more efficient in consuming less fuel during the act of restarting the engine rather than idling.Additionally, if you wish to warm up your engine naturally, you should just take the vehicle for a drive rather than idling.

Carry less load

Yes, believe it or not, this is yet another way to efficiently utilize your fuel consumption and emissions as well. Make a proper list of what you might need on a journey and what is absolutely unnecessary. Carrying extra loads will only bring you down in this compartment. For example, an extra 100 pounds on your vehicle will be reducing your vehicle’s fuel economy by a solid 1 – 2%.

Steady driving

Driving in a steady way, will avoid the excess of fuel consumption because continuous speeding up and slowing down consumes extra fuel. It also tends to avoid tailgating. Not to mention how unsafe the act can be.

Cruise Control

Using the cruise control can help you preserve about 6% of the fuel consumption, especially wjile on the highway.

Do not revive the engine

Reviving the engine is a bad choice, especially once when the engine has been switched off completely. This act is absolutely unnecessary because it causes the wastage of fuels as the oil washes down from the cylinder wall on the inside. This is harmful for the upcoming start up, the walls of the cylinder will dry out instead.

Apparatus

Another efficient way to minimize the fuel consumption is by the use of RaceME.  RaceME is performance tuner for dodge ram 6.7 cummins only. It improves performance, reduces fuel consumption, extends engine life, and does not warrant installation. With the help of this, you can even cause a dpf delete 6.7 cummins in a case of an EMP, which would be the destruction of almost all of our electronic devices. This can be carried out of engines which combust g=hydraulic oil, transformer oil, vegetable oils and even the old engine filtered oil, in case if the dpf is removed.