Gardena Auto Repair

  TIPS TO HELP EXTEND YOUR CAR’S LIFE   The average price to purchase a new car is estimated at $38,000 in the U.S. and with yearly rising prices for ownership that does not even include maintenance, there's a reason most vehicle owners tend to keep the same car for at least 11 years. The modern vehicle is already engineered to last long as long as it is maintained properly.  Components of your vehicle can be serviced to prevent major repairs which is the name of the game. At a minimum, you should follow the factory scheduled maintenance. According to Consumer Reports, the average lifespan of today’s cars is about eight years or 150,000 miles. As a professional in vehicle maintenance, we often wonder why manufacturers make claims that transmission fluid is a lifetime fluid and boast this fact, while the factory warranty ends anywhere from 36k to 60k miles? How can you claim the guarantee at a lifetime and only cover you to 60k miles? We ... read more

California Wildfires Continue, Why is it Important to Change Your Cabin Air Filter   With fires continuing to burn in California it's a good idea to inspect your cabin air filter and have it replaced if needed; smoke and debris caused by forest fires can severely affect your cabin air filter. Changing your filter is simple yet an important service that helps clean the air inside your car.  The purpose of the cabin air filter is to prevent dirt, dust and pollen from entering the vehicle cabin through the air vents. Whether you have the A/C on or the heater, when your vehicle is equipped with a cabin filter, the air from the outside flows through this filter, filtering the air you and your passengers breathe. When the filter becomes dirty, and clogged it reduces the ability to filter the air you breathe. A "plugged up" filter will prevent air flow which will cause the air conditioning to get cold effectively, not an ideal situation especially wh ... read more

California Smog Check How to Prepare Your Vehicle For the Test If you're a registered driver in Los Angeles, the California Emissions Program or SMOG Check is very strict compared to other states, customers often ask us how they can get their car ready to pass the smog inspection. Despite the fact California has some rules that are very questionable regarding this test, we're going to cover a few areas that we think will be the most useful. Testing Procedures: The state of CA there are 2 tests. One is called the BAR 97 which is performed for every vehicle that has a model year before 2000. BAR 97 requires the vehicle to be test on a dynamometer which is when you see the car on the rollers and the drive wheels spinning. They are testing the vehicles emission output at 15 MPH and then again at 25 MPH. In addition to the emissions test, the technicians are looking for anything tampered, broken, aftermarket parts, ignition timing, fuel cap test, fuel tank pressure test, and they will eve ... read more

The Importance of Maintaining Your Vehicle's Transmission Fluid Let's start with the basics to explain what the transmission does. The transmission is responsible for transferring the engine power to the wheels of the vehicle, while it is separate from the engine; the engine and transmission operate together to make your vehicle go forward or backwards. Automatic means the gears shift on their own and manual means the driver must manually select the proper gear at the proper speed for efficient movement. Transmissions are very complicated internally and have a lot of moving parts. In this post we will focus on automatic transmissions. Vehicle owners tend to fear transmission failure because they are very expensive to replace, however when properly maintained they usually have very few problems. The average well maintained transmission should be able to last 150,000 to 250,000 miles but due to different driver habits and commutes this is not always the case. A good example fo ... read more

Can You Trust Your Auto Repair Shop? A common question that seems to come up often in Google search and even comments on social media networks, consumers are talking about whether or not they can trust their auto repair shop. The automotive industry has a bad reputation when it comes to trust, with little to no regulation to govern how businesses are conducted, it is unfortunate that there are still people out there that will take advantage of customers with no shame. The best advice we can give you when choosing a mechanic is to do some thorough research so you have some values and expectations of how you should be treated. There are some really good automotive service and repair businesses and then there are ones that are not so good. There is a wide range and it all depends on what you are looking for. Here are the top qualifications that come to mind: 1.) Reputation is everything when it comes to automotive service and repair. A good reputation is key because our customer&rsquo ... read more