If you're looking to extend the life of your used vehicle, follow these simple 10 steps:
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- Make your vehicle’s owner’s manual your friend
- Understand how much you should warm up your car
- Never ignore warning lights
- Protect your vehicle from the sun
- Keep an eye on the oil and coolant
- Maintain the tire pressure
- Choose your driving habits
- Eliminate short trips as much as possible
- Understand what maintenance is required for brand new vehicles
- Keep a clean car
Considering all that's going on with the automotive industry in 2022, one of the most common questions that we receive from our readers is how to extend the life of your newest vehicle?
Many people are holding on to selling their cars considering the increased car prices, although there is a surge in gas prices. Most people don't want to sell their cars and get stuck looking for a very expensive vehicle. That’s why tons of them are always looking for recommendations on maintaining their cars and how to prevent major breakdowns during this time.
There are plenty of recommendations out there, and some of them might work, but others might not. So, you got to be very accurate about what type of information you use when it comes to maintaining your used vehicle, so you don't overdo what's needed. But, at the same time, you do not underestimate what's required from you.
Our team conducted an in-depth review of all available recommendations on how to extend the life of your used vehicle. As a result, we provided you with a narrow list of the 10 most important recommendations you have to keep up with that don't deal with sudden breakdowns prematurely.
How to extend the life of your used vehicle?
Automotive experts understand the stress that many drivers face now, and that's why they continuously walk into statistics and review studies to check for the best recommendations on how to extend the life of your used vehicle and prevent major damages from happening.
Let's take a look at some of these recommendations but keep in mind that there is no single recommendation for preventing car problems. In other words, you will face certain car issues between now and then, but these recommendations aim to delay these problems as much as possible until it's the right time for these car parts to fail.
1. Make your vehicle’s owner’s manual your friend
Many drivers have never touched their vehicle’s owner’s manual and don't understand how valuable information is in this manual. Most of them rely on what the mechanic says, and sometimes they fall into certain situations where the mechanic is just trying to make some money pure
For example, a very common myth is that you have to change your vehicle's oil once every 3,000 miles. However, according to experts and based on many vehicle owners’ manuals, you don't necessarily have to do so, and you have to follow what your manual suggests for you.
Therefore, make the user's owner’s manual your friend and try learning about one or two things every now and then until you understand the overall picture of your car. For example, familiarize yourself with the required regular maintenance that you must perform every certain interval.
By maintaining their little maintenance, you prevent sudden damages and, in some scenarios, prevent voiding your vehicle's warranties chili if your manufacturer requires performing this maintenance on time.
There are tons of other information you can find in the manual, and you can't go through them all at once. That's why we recommend that you divide it into chunks and review one or two things at a time.
2. Understand how much you should warm up your car
The second thing you should keep in mind is balancing how much you should warm up your car versus how fast you can drive it. Unfortunately, many drivers still are stuck in the old days when you had to warm up your car for a long time.
However, that's not the case nowadays, especially with more modern cars. However, this does nothing, just that you can drive your car after a cold stop immediately. You need to avoid overstressing your car after cold starts because you want to give the vehicle some time for fluids to run through the pathways and for things to get warmed up enough for you to drive your car.
3. Never ignore warning lights
Warning lights are just ways for your vehicle to communicate with you and bring your attention to internal problems. Ignoring warning lights is never a good idea whether your car is new or very old fear
In many instances, all the word experts found that if you took the warning light seriously immediately, there's a very high chance that you can fix the problem without needing to install new components. Therefore, your repair costs will be much lower. But, on the other hand, if you decide to ignore warning lights like a check engine light, there's a very high chance that you will deal with catastrophic outcomes like a complete engine failure.
Therefore, you want to take every warning light seriously, but you don't necessarily have to panic because that will not help you at all. All you have to do is familiarize yourself with some of these warning lights and understand one or two things at a time on each warning light and what does it mean. This way, you get yourself a sense of how critical the problem is and whether you can drive your car a couple of miles until you receive their pair shop or whether you have to tow it instead.
4. Protect your vehicle from the sun
Suppose you're driving in sunny areas and parking your car a lot outside. In that case, it is important to consider that sun might impact your vehicle's overall performance and could impact the overall value.
Therefore, consider investing in some vehicle covers to prevent overheating. More importantly, consider investing in colors that do not allow sun rays and UV radiation from getting into the internal upholstery. If the damage the turn in your car, it could drop the vehicle's value.
Sometimes the radiation might even cause some damage to the paint cover and therefore, if you know that your vehicle is going to be sitting in the sunlight for extended times, check with your mechanic about certain types of clothes or waxes that could protect your car from the sun and the UV radiation.
5. Keep an eye on the oil and coolant
While there are tons of fluids in your car that you should maintain, the most important flaws are that you must keep up with our oil and coolant.
Both oil and coolant are responsible for cooling down the engine. However, suppose you don't have the right quantity and quality of each. In that case, you can easily deal with engine overheating that damages the engine, which means significant repair costs.
You must maintain that exact amount of oil and coolant, but you also have to flush it out when needed. Overtime reviews, these fluids break down and become ineffective in cooling down the engine, which means your vehicle will run like it doesn't have oil or humans.
The best thing to do is to keep an eye on some of the warning lights on the dashboard that could indicate a low coolant level or a low oil pressure, which is the warning lights related to the amount of oil in your engine compartment.
6. Maintain the tire pressure
Your tires are the first components interacting with their road, and you got to maintain the best pressure for each season. For example, you could understand that the air inside the tires expands and shrinks depending on the external temperature. Your vehicle’s owner’s manual should have recommendations about the pressure level we should maintain for every season.
We mentioned earlier that you should keep an eye on your manual and make it your friend. Otherwise, you won't know any details about how much pressure you should maintain in the tires to ensure the best vehicle performance.
7. Choose your driving habits
Did you know that your driving habits play a major role in how long your vehicle can serve you? Yes! For example, there are many instances where your brakes might fail because you hit them hard and engage them incorrectly.
Similarly, suppose you're driving a vehicle with a manual transmission. In that case, your driving habits become the most critical factor that could damage the manual transmission completely if you're not engaging it properly.
Therefore, we highly encourage you to review your good driving habits. However, sometimes we don't feel that we're driving our vehicles wrong, and that's why having somebody next to you might help you by providing you with some advice about your driving style.
8. Eliminate short trips as much as possible
Shorter trips are one of the biggest car killers. When you drive your car for a short distance, you don't allow the vehicle to warm up enough, and the engine doesn't reach its peak performance. Furthermore, you will use more fuel than you should, and you will deal with other complications that will significantly reduce your used car's lifetime.
Therefore, if you're still wondering how to extend the life of your used vehicle, you should eliminate short trips as much as possible.
9. Understand what maintenance is required for brand new vehicles
If you're driving a brand-new car, this is a different story. We're also clear with all the problems deal vehicles will face after hitting the 100,000 miles or probably 200,000 miles. However, when we buy brand new vehicles, we get excited about them, and we don't consider that they will face some problems in no time.
Therefore, it is critical once you buy your new car once you put this huge investment to understand what exactly you need to do and when. For example, you might want to change the vehicles' oil at a frequency different from the comment oil changes frequencies. There are other things to keep in mind, so check with your manufacturer or the vehicle’s owner’s manual for more details.
10. Keep a clean car
Finally, it's important to keep your vehicle clean as much as possible. This does impact not only your comfortable or the driving experience but also impacts your vehicle's value.
For example, if you ignore cleaning your wheels after driving down a salty road, you will sacrifice the wheels, and rust might attack your car's wheels and the other components. Therefore, cleaning your vehicle is no longer a choice that you have to decide on based on your mood. Instead, you must understand what could happen when you don't clean your vehicle during critical conditions like extreme salts on the roads during the winter season.
Also, it's important to clean the vehicle's interior because if you take some of the dirt out fast, you avoid getting them stuck on the upholstery. You will have an easier cleaning process than waiting for this dirt to stick on the upholstery and making some stains.
How to extend the life of your used vehicle: Final thoughts
Considering the increased car prices nowadays, people are now looking for ways to extend the lifetime of their used vehicles. This way, they don't have to deal with major car problems when they can't afford to buy used or brand-new vehicles.
This article provided you with ten simple tips to help you maintain and extend the lifetime of your car. We highly encourage you to go through all the tips and implement as many of them as possible if you don't want to deal with car breakdowns prematurely.
However, if you get to a point where your vehicle fails or if it needs significant repairs, one of the best ways to do it is to sell your car and use its value to buy a better car. But, of course, if used cars are expensive now, you can still make a good amount of money out of your car even if it's broken because many people are looking for parts replacements.
If you're struggling to sell your broken car, we highly encourage you to reach out to Cash Cars Buyer who’s willing to buy your car no matter what!
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All it takes you is to:
- Describe your car’s type and condition
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To learn more about our process and our teen, you can reach out to us by calling us at (773) 791-4363 or visiting our home page click on the free instant online offer.