Improve your chances of finding a competent and honest mechanic and repair shop. Choose one with ASE certification! A mechanic who earns that certification from the national Institute for Automotive Service Excellence has passed at least one of its challenging exams in the past five years. If the shop itself has an ASE Blue Seal of Excellence, seventy-five percent of its technicians are ASE-certified and at least one of them works in each area of service the shop offers. So make sure the technician doing the specific repairs on your car has that certification, choose a shop that’s been around for at least five years, and check out other consumer’s opinions about their experiences at websites like yelp, Read more

My husband’s 2008 Honda CRV has only gone in for an oil change twice since he’s owned it. It now has 30-some thousand miles on it. I keep bugging him to get an oil change, but he says the manufacturer suggests waiting until the oil indicator light goes on. That light rarely goes on. That happens about every 12-15,000 miles. My dad drilled into me that you get an oil change about every 5,000 miles at least.

To settle our disagreement, I decided to find out what one of the Diamond Certified auto repair experts thinks about that. Richard Cordes, owner of European Sales and Service, Inc., a Diamond Certified company, says it’s a mistake to wait that long. Read more

 AAA Reminds Travelers to Use Their Seatbelts in Cabs and Shuttle Vans

AAA Northern California is reminding summer travelers that seatbelt safety shouldn’t set sail just because you’re on vacation. Sometimes a false sense of safety can set in as vacationers leave their worries behind, and they forget to buckle up in taxicabs and shuttle vans. But the danger of being in a crash doesn’t fade away like a tropical sunset.

“You can leave all your cares behind while on vacation but don’t leave behind your habit of buckling up,” said AAA Northern California spokesperson Matt Skryja. “In the rush to relax, travelers sometimes forget basic safety while riding in taxi cabs and shuttle vans by failing to use their seatbelts. Read more

First my cell phone conks out. I lose all photos and contacts, and no, stupid me, I didn’t back them up. Then my recording equipment stops working and I have no idea why. When I turned on my iPod, all the music had disappeared – no albums, no playlists. I can probably fix this by re-loading all the music, but I was still frustrated by the unexplained and sudden malfunction.

The capper for the week was another type of crash – a hit and run accident. I parked by City Hall while at the symphony and when I drove home, I had trouble steering the car. When straightening out the steering wheel, the car veered off to the right. Read more

If you’re a fan of Car Talk (aka Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers) on National Public Radio like I am, you know how often callers reproduce car noises on the air. You hear everything from “nya, nya, nya,” to “wuuu, wuuu, wuuu.” It’s fascinating to hear the Tappet brothers try to figure out what’s wrong with each car. LOL every Saturday morning.

To help you figure out what’s wrong with your car on your own, these guys have created a Car Talk Noise Emporium at www.cartalk.com/content/features/Noises/.

You’ll find about four dozen car noises there, and when you click on the part of the car the sound is coming from, Read more

I often say that one of the best ways to judge a company’s commitment to customer service is by how they handle things when something goes wrong. An auto body shop I did business with recently passed that test with flying colors.

The damage from a car accident cost more than $3,000 in repairs, and the job took several weeks to complete. Happy to get the vehicle back after so long, we drove right to a car wash. Minutes later, the manager called me over to point out that radiator fluid was pouring out of the vehicle. Nearly everything under the hood had just been almost entirely re-built, including the radiator!

Here’s the happy ending. Read more

Yes, I did a really stupid thing. I lost my car keys – INSIDE my house somewhere. After looking for them for two weeks with no luck, I gave up and zoomed down to my local hardware store to get a copy made of the one and ONLY key to my 1997 Infiniti i30.

This simple transaction made me love this local business even more than I did before. The young man not only made the key in minutes, but he also took some extra time to give me additional consumer advice. Here’s what he said:

#1. Try the new key ASAP. Try it in the ignition AND to unlock the door. Read more