Car Repairs You Can Handle

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

No, I am not talking about economizing by changing your own oil–quite honestly, it is a messy, aggravating job that for the cost-benefit of it, it is cheaper to go to a garage and have it done. 

The things I’m talking about are often the “add-on” services at the auto service center.  You know, like when you go in for an oil change and they say, “hey, you know you need a new cabin air filter–it’s an extra $40, would you like us to do it for you?”  Next time, you’ll be able to say, “No thanks, I’ll take care of it” and mean it.

All you’ll initially have to know for the following repairs are what kind of car you have and when it was made. So even if you know just about zero about taking care of your car (or SUV), here are 3 things that you can do all by yourself and save a lot of money:

1. Change your own wiper blades.  You don’t even have to go into an Auto Zone for this one.  Walmart has perfectly good wiper blades in their car care aisle (I believe the inexpensive Emco brand received one of the higher Consumer Reports ratings).  They have a little machine that you punch in your year, make and model of vehicle and it will tell you the correct wiper blade sizes for your car.   Then installing them is not so difficult–you pop off the old wiper blade assembly and put on the new one.  That’s it.  (Time saving tip: don’t try to save money by buying and changing JUST the rubber part–get the whole blade ensemble.)

2. Change your engine air filter. This is another “add-on” service that will cost you at least twice as much as the part costs for about 5 minutes worth of work.  Go to your local auto repair store and tell them what vehicle you have–they’ll get you the proper air filter.  Then pull out your vehicle manual, pop open the hood, and find your engine air filter.  Pop it out and put in the new one.  Done.

3. Change your cabin air filter. Cabin air filters are the ones that clean the air you breathe inside the car.  This is the service that really got me worked up enough to write this blog.  Toyota wanted to charge me $40 to change this filter and I told them to forget it.  I went to Auto Zone, picked up a cabin filter for $18, and it literally took me 2 minutes to change the filter, including the time to find how to do it online.  Cabin filters are usually located behind the glove box; later model vehicles have even made it so that it is even easier to pop out your glove box and quickly change this filter.

These are some very basic items that you can do yourself and not worry that you are going to “break” your car.  In coming months, I will add a few more items!

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

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