Author: John Palmer

Is My Car Roadtrip Ready?

Ah, the road trip. Is there anything more iconic in western culture? While this was once a uniquely American tradition born of the post-war infrastructure and economic boom, today, all over the developed world, this has become a popular way to spend holidays, and among many young adults, a rite of passage and discovery.

Road trips can be a lot of fun, and you can still carry a piece of home in the form of your car. Unlike flying or trains, you can stop where and when you want, and choose your own path anywhere. With friends or family, it can be even more fun (or a nightmare if you have small children).

But, before you get out your road atlas (or should I say your GPS these days), and start packing coolers and luggage for your trip across the country, you need to stop and ask yourself a very important question: is your car road trip ready?

You may feel a bit dismissive of this question – your car runs just fine as you drive daily to work, on errands, and everything else. You put hundreds of miles on your car in a month’s time if you commute, and you take good care of it. It can handle a road trip surely.

It probably can. But do you really want to take that chance? After all, the mileage you put on your car normally is in short spurts of back and forth from home to other places. A road trip involves hours of constantly running the engine, stressing the systems, and wear on the tires. You can probably run pretty fast for ten feet, and easily run a mile in a week’s time in these short bursts. Could you run a mile in one go? Most of us would hang our heads and say no.

On top of this, if your car breaks down in your home region, while you may need a tow, civilization and your bed aren’t far away. When you’re states away, possibly in the middle of nowhere, well.

#1 – Fluids

First thing’s first, let’s make sure our fluids are all in proper order. Oil should be fresh and topped off, wiper fluid, transmission, and power steering fluids, coolant and antifreeze should all be fresh and full. Spare fluids should also be packed in the trunk or somewhere if your voyage is a particularly long one.

#2 – Wiper Blades

Unless you just replaced your wiper blades recently, or they really check out in a smear test, you will want to put fresh ones on. Who knows what kind of varied weather you will cross on your trip? You want visibility in all weather.

#3 – Tires

This one can be tricky because it depends on the season and your destination. If you’re going to a snowy place, such as up in the mountains, but it’s warm and sunny for most of the trip, you may need snow-ready all-season tires, which do exist. Carrying four extra tires is kind of impractical. Make sure your tires are new and ready for a long trip as well.

#4 – Brakes and Shocks

Test your breaks and shocks, to be sure everything rides smooth, and that your brakes are responsive but also not oversensitive. You will cross varied terrain and varied traffic conditions if your trip is long and varied. You will want your brakes and shocks/suspension to be optimized and ready for smooth and safe driving no matter what.

#5 – Battery

How old is your battery? If it’s a couple of years old, you should flat-out replace it. You should make sure it’s reliably holding a charge, and proper voltage from the alternator is sustaining a charge. Nothing is more horrifying than getting back in your car at a rest stop in the wilderness at night, and your car won’t turn over.

#6 – Tune-Up

A tune-up is always a good idea if you’re traveling far. This will address belts, timing, gaskets and other things that, while working fine for now, maybe ready to fail when the car is run hard for extensive distances.

#7 – Indicator Lights

Sometimes called “dummy lights” or “idiot lights”, these are various dash lights that say things like “service engine soon”, tire pressure indicators, and various fluid readouts. If you know nothing is wrong, but these lights are still going off, sensors may be out of whack, or bigger issues in need of a mechanic’s diagnosis may be present.

Safety and reliability are key to a safe and memorable road trip. These simple preventative measures take little time, little money, and can save you a world of grief. To learn more tips like this, fill out our contact form today!

Get Your Car Ready For The Summer

Whenever winter is around the corner, you hear a lot about getting things ready for it. This maybe your home, yourself, or your car. And, it makes sense. Winter may be majestic, but it’s really hard on most manmade things, and on mankind as well. Ensuring safety on the road, and proper running in harsh conditions is a serious concern and well worth the time to see to.

But, with summer arriving, shouldn’t there be more than just removing your winter prep? Summer has its demands too, with the heat, the rain in many areas, and the dustiness of things when it’s dry. Are there optimizations to be made for summer driving?

The short answer to this is “absolutely”. However, this depends on your area, and what your summers are like. In temperate places, it’s partially rainy, hot, somewhat humid, but also very dusty at times. In desert climates, it’s scorching and very, very dusty. In tropical places, it’s muggy and rains daily. Thus, on top of the general things we’ll be looking at today, you may need to take some specific measures depending on where you live.

So, let’s go over a list of things you should do no matter what, to get your car ready for summer. Your car and your wallet will thank you in the long run!

Step 1: Tire Change

You put snow tires on your car for winter, if you have strong winters, right? Well, these tires aren’t hazardous to drive in summer, but it’s kind of pointless and wasteful. Summer tires exist, which handle the expansion of the air, and the hot road better, but more likely than not, you’ll probably be putting all-season tires on because few places have homogenous, predictable climates that span a whole season.

Summer tires are costly, and if you do this, it will mean you’re changing tires probably four times a year to account for places with more robust autumn or spring seasons. All-season tires are a good, sane solution for average car owners.

Step 2: Wiper Blades and Fluid

Be it rain, dust, bugs or all of the above, summer is a time when you’re going to get a lot of obtrusive crud on your windshield. A fresh set of wiper blades and topped-off fluid will have you adequately prepared for safe summer driving even if you live in the south, where love bugs are the nemesis of clean cars everywhere.

Step 3: Check Your Brakes

Whenever the temperature trends change, brake checks are a smart idea. Thermal expansion can affect brake fluid flow, brake shoes and internal mechanics. In the summer, this can make brakes jam or be unresponsive, or result in a loss of traction. The thing is, over-sensitive brakes can be as bad as insufficient ones. Meaning to just slow down, and resulting in a slam on your brakes, could get you rear-ended or even worse.

Step 4: Tune-Up

A long and grueling winter means a tune up is in order most of the time. This will ensure that everything is calibrated properly, nothing is coming undone, and nothing is worn down. Even if your vehicle felt like it was running fine before summer arrived, you’ll be working systems in summer that you didn’t.

Step 5: Coolant and Oil

When seasons change, a change out of oil is always a good idea, as you can ensure the levels are appropriate, temperatures haven’t degraded the oil, and you just have fresh oil altogether, which is always a good thing.
Your coolant is also important, especially in summer. You will have used less coolant actively during winter, even if you run the heat, and some of it may be lost to evaporation or leaks that the cold caused, which can lead to some serious issues once summer rolls around.

Step 6: Air Conditioning

Oh yes, check your air conditioning before it gets too hot. The systems could have jammed up during winter, or freon lost. You may be due for a recharge, or to have adjustments made (which will be remedied during the tune-up, if you know to point the need out).

You don’t want to discover on a sweltering day, that your AC was on its last legs, and has died on you.

Step 7: Wash Me

Finally, wash your car, to rinse off the grime of winter, and clean out your interior and swap out the winter mats for summer ones.
To learn more smart auto tips like these, fill out our contact form today!

How To Avoid Blind Spot Accidents

When driving day to day, we all see our fair share of accidents. Depending on how busy the area is, and how populous, these of course increase. Sometimes, it’s weather-related. There are a lot of accidents in wintery weather for example, but often, you see a lot of these in fair weather.

Mistakes can be made, and negligence can get the best of even the most careful person over enough time. Surely, though, this can’t account for how many accidents we see throughout a month or year, could can it? Well, in the most direct sense, no, but in a broader sense, yes. Negligence in the way of preventing blind spot issues is one of the biggest contribution to the number of accidents that tend to happen. A lot of these are the less fatal accidents, though serious accidents can indeed occur as well.

Today, we’re going to take the power out of blind spots by properly understanding them, and learning how to mostly overcome them.

Special Mention: New Technologies

Before we get into what causes blind spots and how to prevent them in more conventional ways, new technologies do merit a mention for their inevitable elimination of this issue altogether in the not-so-distant future.
We live in an age where cameras being integrated into dash displays make for far safer backing up, parallel parking and other risky maneuvers. This technology is already aiding in blind spot prevention in some makes and models of vehicle, and will almost certainly become a standard by the end of the next decade.

For now, though, we need to understand how to prevent this problem the old fashioned way, because a lot of accidents could happen before this tech becomes a prerequisite!

How Blind Spots Work

So, what exactly causes blind spots? The problem is that there exist directions where a driver just can’t entirely see. Without the technology mentioned above, or the car somehow being completely transparent material, there will be areas in the rear to your left and right you will not be able to see properly.

The problem is that you may not be able to see vehicles pulling out, merging into traffic, or occupying adjacent lanes you want to cross over into. This results in side swiping, vehicles cutting one another off and being rear-ended, and a slew of other unpleasant events where drivers think they’re entering a wide open space that … isn’t so wide nor open.

Reducing Blind Spots

Believe it or not, reducing blind spots isn’t that hard to do, and just involves some proper mirror alignment, and some attentive driving practices (ones we were taught, but abandoned in complacency).
First, your mirrors. Your side mirrors should frame the rear side window of your vehicle in the corner, which will give you more of an external view. Your rear view mirror should perfectly center the rear back window of your car which, combined with the newly-aligned side mirror views, will give you a significantly-improved sense of the space to the side and behind you. You will still have a little bit of questionable space, and judging just how close adjacent lane traffic really is, can still be a little tricky, however.

When driving, you will want to inspect the lane through your window if possible, before pulling over into it. If the weather permits leaning a bit out of the window (albeit not ridiculously so) to get a fleeting but unfettered view of the lane, do so. Do not rely solely on your rear view or side mirrors if possible. It’s also best to give some time after turning your signal on, to be sure anyone aware they’re in the way passes you or slows down to become visible from behind, and invite you into the lane in front of them. Impatience is a killer on the road.

Blind Spot Accidents

So, what kind of accidents are you at risk of, if you don’t take the appropriate measures? Here are just a few of the nastier ones:

Neck and back injuries.
Glass-related injuries.
Ejections.
Whiplash and wrist injuries.
Seatbelt-induced injuries.
Concussions.

Depending on what happens in an accident, of course, things can go from bad to worse, involving running off the road, more vehicles in a pile up, the sky is the limit. Don’t take the risk – adjust your mirrors and change lanes with proper care! To learn more safe driving practices like these, fill out our contact form today!

What Are The Pros & Cons Of Electric Cars?

How many hallmarks of science fiction (post-1950) are shown in vehicle innovations? For as long as most of us can remember, we’ve seen flying cars, self-driving cars and yes, electric cars as emblems of a more advanced and always forthcoming future. Here at the end of the second decade of this century, we at last find that in fact, all of these things are indeed real.

Self-driving cars make Google headlines daily, and their adoption into mass use is inevitable before this century’s end for sure. Flying cars are also being tested, but are likely to never be something everyone has in their driveway for a host of different reasons.

Where does this leave electric vehicles? Well of course, it’s no secret that electric vehicles not only exist, but have for some time been available on the consumer market. In fact, there have been consumer electric concepts many times over the past several decades, just many weren’t tested or ever known in the US for reasons we’ll get to in a minute.

Pros of Electric Cars

Environmental: While you’re not emission-free with an electric car (most electricity supplied to charge them is produced by burning fossil fuels), you’re having a much lower impact on the environment with an electric car.
Less Expensive to Power: Gasoline is ridiculously expensive when you do the math. Yes, electricity isn’t cheap either, but it’s far cheaper than gasoline. This is why gas generators, even in a pre-green society, were never used for more than emergencies. Thus, recharging your electric car will now, and forever, be far cheaper than pouring gas into a tank.
Cheaper Maintenance: Electric cars are complex, but they have a lot fewer obtuse mechanical parts than a traditional internal combustion engine. The motors, control systems and power supply are remarkable pieces of advanced technology, but they’re longer-lived, and less physically complex to repair, replace and maintain.
Tax Deductions: The government, after dragging its feet for some time, has taken it upon itself at last, to positively reinforce green practices. In the past, their sole contribution to environmental activism was negative reinforcement through regulation and EPA enforcement. Tax deductions are available when electric vehicles are used, though these vary from state to state.
Safety: The power supply and electric motors involved in these cars are lighter than an internal combustion engine and gas tank, which means a little bit of this lost weight can be given to reinforcing the integrity of the car. Not all of the weight can be shifted (more on that in a moment), but still. On top of this, there’s nothing severely volatile and combustible present by way of motor oil or gasoline, which means in severe accidents, these are less of an issue or hazard.

Cons of Electric Cars

Now, let’s look at why these benefits haven’t propelled the electric car into the mainstream, and rendered traditional gasoline vehicles obsolete.

Not Completely Green: We mentioned this in the benefits section, but it merits repeating – you’re still contributing to a carbon footprint if the electricity with which you charge this vehicle was made by burning fossil fuels.
Range Limitation: This is a problem with batteries really. You can’t get as far on a charge as you can on a tank of gas. This is because battery technology to hold the amount of energy for long journeys, while being light and small enough to be carried on said journey, is a checks and balances challenge not yet overcome.
Recharging Problems: Recharging is a problem in two ways. One, you need a special charging station for your vehicle, you can’t just plug an extension cord up at a gas station and pay them a fee to do so. These are few and far between in most of the world, outside some major cities. It also takes an absurdly long time to charge, upwards of hours.
Cost: Of course, because of the niche demand, prices haven’t lowered much on this technology for now, making it more expensive than gas vehicles, as well as less convenient.

The old conspiracy that big oil suppresses electric vehicles is mostly a myth, and while they have a lot of benefits, the limitations for now make them more of a novelty than something ready to be the new norm. To learn more about this and things like it, fill out our contact form today!

Should I Get Multiple Estimates for Car Repairs?

After your car has been damaged in an accident, you may believe that you are required to get three or more estimates. Your insurance company may then require you to go to the shop that gives you the lowest estimate. Sometimes the auto body shop and the insurance company have worked out deals where they use cheaper products in order to save the insurance company money. The fact is, in New Jersey, you have the right to take your car to the shop you choose regardless of which offers the lowest price. There are situations when getting multiple estimates may be helpful and these tips can help you determine if it is necessary.

When to Get Multiple Estimates

If you don’t have a relationship with an auto body shop, getting more than one estimate is not necessarily a bad thing. However, there is no need to get three or four estimates in order to get an average cost to repair your car. In fact, getting too many estimates could delay getting your car repaired and will take up a significant amount of your time. One reason to get an additional estimate may be because the first estimate you got seems excessively high or extremely low. In that case, you may want to get what is essentially a second opinion.

What is an Estimate?

An estimate is simply a rough total of what the auto shop believes it will cost to fix your car without disassembling the vehicle completely. The best way to describe an estimate is as a “best guess.” Estimates are notoriously inaccurate at predicting the actual final cost. When you get more than one estimate, each shop uses a different method for determining the cost of repairs. One may provide a quote that covers fixing a damaged part while another may include total replacement of the part. In addition, the lowest estimate is not necessarily the best option as the shop may use inferior parts, may not take the steps to match paint properly or may cut corners to get the repair completed at the low price.

Other Factors

A good repair estimate should factor in the quality of the paint as well as good parts. It should include the number of hours it will take to get your car fixed right the first time. It should provide a general idea of what it will take to get your car back on the road. However, a technician cannot accurately predict the cost of a repair until they begin working on it. Additional damage could be discovered after they remove body panels and other damaged parts. At that time, they should contact you to let you know of any additional parts or labor that will be required. You can then notify your insurance company who may agree to the higher cost of the repair if the shop can demonstrate the additional costs are necessary.

OEM Parts

Original Equipment Parts (OEM) are those that were used in your vehicle by the manufacturer. There are cases when a repair shop will have to use non-OEM parts. If your car is older, OEM parts may no longer be available and, in some cases, there is very little difference between OEM and non-OEM parts. In New Jersey, the repair shop must list non-OEM parts as part of the estimate. In addition, the non-OEM part must be sufficiently and permanently identified on the part. It must also be visible after the part is installed if at all possible. Non-OEM parts must be at least equal to OEM parts and must come with a warranty of reasonable duration and coverage.

Choosing the Right Shop

It may be tempting to simply take your car to a chain auto body repair recommended by the insurance company. Keep in mind that many insurance companies have negotiated lower prices with some of these shops who often use lower quality parts and cheaper paints in order to get your car fixed faster and at less cost. This boosts the bottom line of the insurance company but provides you with a repair that may be inferior to a local body shop.

When you bring your car into Elmer’s Auto Body for an estimate, we work as hard as possible to give you a repair cost that will be as close as possible to the final bill. We will inspect your car to be sure that when you leave our shop, you will be driving in the safest car possible. If your car has been damaged in a collision, schedule an appointment today with Elmer’s Auto Body by calling or filling out the easy online form.

Should You Increase Your Insurance Deductible to Save Money?

When trying to save money on car insurance, many people look at raising their deductible to make premiums lower. It is true that the higher the deductible, the lower your premiums may be but a high deductible also means your insurance covers less when you have a claim. If you are considering a raise in your deductible to lower your premium costs, there are some tips you should follow to be sure the change actually saves you money.

How Much Do You Have Saved?

If you have a significant amount of money in savings, raising your deductible to the maximum amount possible could save you a considerable amount in premium costs. For example, if the maximum deductible you can choose is $5,000 and you have more than that in a savings account, you could cover the cost of the deductible with your savings should you be involved in an accident. In addition, you can add the premium savings to the amount you set aside each month to grow your savings account faster.

How Much Will You Actually Save in Premiums?

The next thing to look at is how much you will actually save in premiums. Is it worth saving $30 per year if you will need to come up with $1,000 should you be involved n an accident? In most cases, the higher your premium, the more you will save if you increase your deductible. You also need to determine if you are in a financial position to handle the higher deductible. If you would be unable to pay the deductible, saving a few dollars a month in premiums would not be beneficial.

How Often Do You File Claims?

If you rarely ever file insurance claims, you may be able to afford a higher deductible should something happen. Raising your deductible may result in additional savings because, for every year you don’t make a claim, the saved premiums can go in your pocket. If you have made several claims, your premiums may be fairly high. Consider negotiating the deductible with your insurance rate to get the best discount on your premiums.

Higher Deductible Discounts

Although every policy and insurance company are different, the average savings you can see when you raise your deductible is between 5 and 10 percent. The higher you raise the deductible, the more you save. With some policies, if you raise your deductible from $200 to $500 just on collision and comprehensive, you could save as much as 30 percent and if you raise it to $1,000, you could save as much as 40 percent.

If your vehicle has been damaged in a collision, schedule an appointment today by calling or filling out the easy online form.