Comprehensive guide to daily car maintenance

1. To drive a car, you must learn to repair a car and to learn to find "faults" yourself

During the use of a car, it is inevitable that something will break down. For experienced drivers, they can usually find the problem in one step. And most people are often helpless when faced with failures. Now let’s learn to find faults yourself.

Vehicle failures can be roughly divided into three parts: first, circuit failure; second, oil circuit failure; third, driving system failure, such as steering, braking, transmission parts, etc.

Among them, circuit faults are divided into high-voltage circuit faults and low-voltage circuit faults. In actual use, about 60% of vehicle faults are circuit faults and 30% are in the oil circuit. Most of these faults can be eliminated by yourself. Only about 10% are caused by driving system failures. These failures are mechanical failures. Most vehicles can still drive when they occur. You should go to the nearest authorized repair station for repairs.

When you encounter a fault while driving, firstly, don’t be anxious, and secondly, don’t rush to take action. First, check the status of the relevant fault indicator light. Calm down, analyze the phenomenon of the malfunction, and ask a few more questions about why? There are two ways to judge and distinguish oil circuit faults: first, whether the engine stalls suddenly or slowly while driving. Sudden stalls are mostly caused by circuit faults; while slow stalls, or the vehicle keeps "jumping", are mostly caused by oil circuit failures. Fault. The second is "test fire". If there is no central high-pressure fire or split-cylinder fire, it is a circuit failure. If there is a high-pressure fire, the problem is in the oil circuit. Most mechanical failures are accompanied by abnormal sounds, which change with the speed of the vehicle. The sounds disappear when the vehicle is stopped, and are not directly related to oil circuit failures.

Use the "paragraph-by-paragraph negation method" to lock the "focus" on a specific place, first find out what type of fault it belongs to, and first check whether the external environment is abnormal. For example, whether the wires are open or short-circuited, whether the connection parts are loose, whether there is a burning smell from the wires in the engine, whether there is any oil leakage in the oil pipeline, etc.

It is worth reminding that most of the current new cars are "electronic injection" cars, which use electronically controlled combustion and have fewer faults, which is opposite to the failure probability of old carburetor cars. What needs to be remembered is that if a circuit failure occurs in an EFI vehicle, a special computer tester is often required to detect it. Drivers should not do it themselves to avoid damaging the circuit program.

2. Carbon deposit cleaning is very important. Analysis of automobile carbon deposit prevention skills

1. Use clean gasoline

Impurities in gasoline are the main components of carbon deposits. , so the tendency of gasoline with high cleanliness to form carbon deposits is weaker. However, it should be noted that high label does not mean high quality. The label only represents the octane number of the oil and does not represent the quality and cleanliness.

In order to ensure the cleanliness of gasoline, some car owners will add gasoline detergent to gasoline. This can effectively prevent the formation of a carbon deposit layer on the metal surface, and can gradually activate the original carbon deposit particles and slowly remove them, thereby protecting the engine from damage. However, you must be careful when adding gasoline detergent. If you add fake and inferior products, you will get the opposite effect.

2. Do not idle for a long time

A long idling time will take a longer time for the engine to reach normal temperature, and the evaporation rate of gasoline will be slower after it is sprayed on the back of the valve. , carbon deposits also arise from this. At the same time, when idling frequently, the air flow entering the engine is small, so the flushing effect on carbon deposits becomes very weak, which will promote the deposition of carbon deposits.

3. Pay attention to the timing of stalling

For cars equipped with turbochargers, do not stall immediately after driving at high speed or climbing a hill. Run at idle speed for 10 minutes before stalling. Cars equipped with turbochargers form carbon deposits several times faster than ordinary naturally aspirated cars.

It is recommended that car owners do a disassembly-free cleaning of the air intake system every 20,000 to 40,000 kilometers under the condition that routine maintenance is met, that is, using special equipment without disassembling the engine. Method: Clean carbon deposits from the vehicle's air intake, valves, oil lines and other parts that are prone to carbon deposits.

3. Five tips for DIY car repairs

Many car owners have had the experience of being "hacked" while repairing their cars. In addition to losing money, their precious spare time is often also lost. It all depends on repairing the car. The following five aspects will teach you how to DIY repairs by yourself, which can save you money and have a lot of fun.

1. Do-it-yourself minor repairs

There is absolutely no need to go to a 4S store for things like changing an air filter or installing a light bulb. You have to wait in line for hours and even take a ride. The labor charges are high, and I can finish it all by myself if I have the time. Therefore, I should have given myself some tutoring on basic car knowledge like this. Parts such as brake light bulbs are consumables. As long as you carefully study the simple structure of your car's taillights, you can buy a light bulb for 5 yuan on the street and replace it on your car yourself.

2. Go to the quick repair center for maintenance

Generally, family cars need to replace the engine oil and filter every 5,000 kilometers. If they have to go to the 4S store to replace them every time, it will be time-consuming and It takes effort and money. Therefore, for this kind of work with no technical content, you can safely leave it to the community quick repair shop. If you are not confident about the engine oil and other raw materials provided by the store, you can go to the 4S store to buy a bottle of engine oil, and then go to the quick repair shop to spend 10 minutes to solve the problem. In this case, you will only have to pay a labor fee of 20 yuan at most, and you can also get a detailed inspection of the chassis and tires by a repairman for free.

3. Go to the 4S store for diagnosis of difficult and complicated diseases

Today’s cars are equipped with complex electronic systems and precise mechanical components. When encountering major faults, it is definitely not the best choice. Side stalls or auto parts stores can solve the problem. In order to attract customers, nowadays 4S stores basically provide free fault detection, so you can go to several 4S stores to detect the root cause of the fault first. If the answers given by several stores are consistent, then the problem can basically be determined. It's there. But you don’t have to rush to pay for repairs at this time. If the repair process is not complicated, you can buy parts from the 4S store and then go to the auto parts city to find a repairman to replace them.

4. Major repairs still require professionals

Cars are precision machines, and you can still count on those "guerrillas" for minor problems, but if you really encounter a major failure, you still have You have to go to a professional 4S shop. That is to say, for repairs involving engines, gearboxes, chassis, computers and other components, you must choose a 4S shop for repairs.

5. Don’t blindly follow the original parts

Take a German car as an example. The plastic box outside the air filter in the air intake head section costs more than 200 yuan in a 4S store, while in an auto parts city Sub-factory parts costing 80 yuan each are everywhere on the street, and the quality is not bad. Like plastic parts, even if the ones from the auxiliary factory are not as durable as the original ones, your car will not break down immediately. At worst, you will have to spend 80 yuan to replace it; the plastic box of the air filter is not the core mechanism of the car, and if there is a problem, it will not As for causing permanent damage to your car; key components such as brake pads, oil pipes, belts, etc. must not be used from sub-factories, because the quality of sub-factory parts is unreliable after all. If there is a problem with these key parts, it will save a small amount of money. What a big loss.