Preventive Maintenance

Everyone wants a reliable vehicle to drive, but not everyone thinks about preventive maintenance. After all, the preventive maintenance cost money and not everyone like to spend money “unnecessarily” I am quoting the word unnecessarily because I would like to put emphasis that us as consumers do not appreciate the benefits of preventive maintenance when we think about our vehicles. We might think it is not necessary to replace certain components because we don’t see any wear. As consumers, we recognize the need to change the engine oil and filters because we see them dirty, the change of spark plugs because fuel consumption increases and we notice lack of power. But when we are considering belts and hoses, we don’t justify their replacement because we don’t see any wear.

Most of us learn to replace belts and hoses the hard way, when one of these fail. We are now left with an overheating engine, a battery not charging, hard steering wheel or engine coolant leaking.

The grand majority of the belts and hoses start failing from the inside out. The material of the belts and hoses begins to harden and becomes fragile; they develop tiny cracks that eventually cause the hose to split open and the belt to break.

These types of deterioration could be check by just pinching the hose close to either end and if you feel spongy or cracking, the hose has experienced internal degradation and it would need to be replaced.