Posted by Jim

Even though the weather has been mild recently, the frosty days will soon be upon us and you’ll want to be sure your car is up for the less-than-ideal driving conditions it will surely encounter.

Historically, preparing your car for winter meant changing the coolant, replacing the thicker summer engine oil with a slicker “thinner” oil, and checking your battery water levels. You may also have installed winter (or studded) tires.

Through the years, technology has made our vehicle fluids, batteries and tires more versatile. They no longer need to be changed with the seasons, but few auto experts have stepped up to inform consumers that the idea of “winterizing” your car has changed.

Here’s how we recommend you ready your car for winter:

• Inspect the tire tread and overall condition. Is there sufficient tread for the car to gain traction in the snow? Are the tires wearing evenly across all treads (and all tires)? Are there any bulges or cracking in the sidewalls or treads? If your vehicle performs poorly in the snow and your tires are in good condition, you may want to ask your service advisor if a set of winter tires would help.
• Ensure all fluids are up to par (clean) and topped off. This is actually important for all seasons, but now seems like an ideal time to prevent a breakdown (in arctic temps) caused by dirty or low fluids. Inspect the condition and level of your coolant, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, and engine oil. While fluid colors vary, you essentially want them to be clear or translucent. Any fluid that is thick and opaque most likely needs to be flushed. Reviewing your maintenance schedule can serve as a guide, or seek a professional opinion from your technician or service advisor.
• Test the freeze  protection of the coolant. While you’re checking the condition and level above, this test is important enough to warrant its own bullet point. Over time, coolant looses its ability to resist freezing. A quick litmus type test can tell you if the fluid needs to be flushed for lacking the protective qualities you need to survive winter.
  
• Conduct a full load test on the battery. Your favorite auto technician can handle this for you and can fairly accurately predict if your battery will be able to crank the engine on those bone-chilling January mornings.
• Replace the windshield wiper blades. As we reported in a recent post, about 90 percent of our driving decisions are based on what we see, and even though we’ve all experienced the frustration and fear of not being able to see clearly during a storm, an estimated 46 million U.S. motorists have wipers that can’t adequately clear their windshields. Let’s take a more proactive approach and replace them before they stop cleaning the windshield.
• Protect the paint. To keep your car looking good year after year, this is also an ideal time to have it detailed. A protective wax or coating will be applied to the clearcoat, protecting it from the harsh effects of road salt, snow, ice and rain.

At Star Auto Authority, we automatically inspect all of the above with every visit, except for the battery load test. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, use this as a guide to ensure trouble-free winter travels.

About 90 percent of our driving decisions are based on what we see, and having a good pair of windshield wipers is extremely important—especially as we head into the dark, snowy days of winter.

Even though we’ve all experienced the frustration and fear of not being able to see clearly during a storm, an estimated 46 million motorists across the nation are driving with wipers that can’t adequately clear their windshield. In fact, more than 75 percent of drivers only change their wiper blades after they function so poorly that they become a safety hazard.

Wouldn’t it be better if we took a more proactive approach with our wiper blades? Instead of waiting until our windshield is smeared with road salt and slush from passing vehicles, let’s begin to consider wiper blades an important safety component that need to be replaced before they fail.

Your wiper blades live outside in extreme temperatures from freezing cold to blistering sun. Over time, they become hard and brittle, and then they tear. They also lose their flexibility and just don’t clear the windshield effectively. Severely worn wiper blades can even scratch your windshield. That may require replacing the entire windshield—a big cost for such a little part. While you can certainly purchase and install replacement blades yourself, we can provide quality replacement blades for you. They cost about the same as they would at the store, except that we install them for free.

To stay ahead of the storm, so to speak, you really only need to replace your wiper blades twice a year—in the spring and the fall. Given the low cost, it seems like a prudent investment. Because we live in the snowbelt, you may even want to purchase special winter blades in the fall. Winter blades are designed to resist freezing and do a superb job of keeping your windshield free of snow and ice.

Here a couple of additional cold-weather tips:

• When the car has been sitting for a long time and the windshield has frozen, don’t use your wipers to clear off snow and ice. Doing so can just shred your blades and may even damage the wiper motor, a much more costly investment than a few minutes out in the cold with your ice scraper.
• Remember the washer fluid! Like peanut butter and jelly, wiper blades and washer fluid should rarely be separated. Even though we will top off the washer fluid for you at Star Auto Authority during service, it is a good idea to keep some extra fluid at home and an extra bottle in the car if you’re taking a road trip.
• Always use windshield washer fluid. It offers helpful de-icing properties, and plain water—even that fancy bottled kind—just doesn’t cut it. It can freeze in the fluid reservoir or on the windshield itself, making things worse. In addition, water won’t do as good job of cleaning your windows.

So follow these tips to keep your windshield clear and your eyes where they belong—focused on the road ahead.

The weather forecast is finally promising warmth and relief this weekend , but a brand new crop of potholes is likely to pop up as a result.

This will come as really bad news to one client, whose 2002 BMW 325 recently required $5,800 in repairs after it struck a pothole near Irving Park Road and I-90/I-94 in the city. The pothole jarred the vehicle so abruptly and severely that the car suffered extensive damage:

• The passenger side head airbag deployed, and replacing it took several hours because we had to remove the headliner and several dashboard trim pieces. (The photos to the right show the deployed airbag.)
• The airbag control module (computer) needed to be replaced, along with the right side impact sensor for the airbag.
• The steering rack was bent and had to be replaced. (This isn’t a component you can repair.)
• The pothole destroyed a wheel and two tires. And not surprisingly, the wheel alignment was knocked out of whack. To return it to specified limits, we had to modify the strut mounts on both sides of the car.

Fortunately, the client’s insurance company paid a substantial portion of the repair bill. And while this is a highly unusual case, we urge you to be on the alert for potholes eager to dish out a dose of damage.