Boulder Auto Repair

All new passenger vehicles on our Boulder CO roads now have tire pressure monitoring systems – TPMS for short. They are designed to alert you if your tires are under inflated. Since they are fairly new, a lot of people have questions about TPMS. First off, the most important thing is that you still need to check your tire pressure every week – or at least every time you gas up. The TPMS system alert comes in when your tire is twenty percent below the factory recommendation. So if the recommended pressure is thirty five pounds per square inch, the TPMS warning won’t come on until the pressure is at twenty eight pounds. That’s significantly under-inflated. Enough to raise safety concerns. The worst is tire failure. A severely under inflated tire can overheat and fail. Also, handling degrades to the point that you may not be able to ... read more

If you’re reading this article in Boulder, CO, then you probably care about your car and how it runs. Even though you care, there is still that moment of dread when your service technician tells you the manufacturer recommends some additional service. Your heart beats a little faster, your blood pressure rises. You worry about spending more money than you had planned. And you worry that if you say “no”, you might be harming your family car or risking your family’s safety.At the risk of sounding like your dad, you really should have done your homework. Service recommendations are in your owner’s manual. But it is not like you want to keep your family car auto maintenance schedule on your nightstand for bedtime reading. Cars are complicated machines and it takes some effort for Boulder auto owners to keep them running well. That is why car makers have ... read more

Under-inflated tires waste gas for lots of folks in the Lafayette area. Think how hard it is to walk in sand – you just have to work harder because of the resistance. When your tires don’t have enough air in them, their rolling resistance is dramatically increased and it simply takes more gas to get from Boulder to Lafayette. Always check your tire pressure when you gas up at one of our local Lafayette service stations. If they’re low – even just a little bit – bring them up to proper pressure. There’s a sticker on the inside of your driver’s door that gives the manufacturer’s recommended tire pressure. And don’t rely on your tire pressure monitoring system to alert you to when you need more air. The TPMS system is set to warn you when pressure drops twenty percent below recommendations. That’s severely under inflated and you needed more air a long time ago. And if you have a sl ... read more

Have you ever had an experience like this in Boulder CO? You drive through the one of those automatic car washes. When you get to the end, where the dryer is blowing, your check engine light started flashing! You fear the worst, but within a block or two, the light stopped flashing, but stayed on. By the next day, the light was off. You wonder; “What was going on?” Well, it’s actually a good lesson in how the Check Engine light works. Your air intake system has a sensor that measures how much air is coming through it. When you went under the high-speed dryer, all that air was blasting past the sensor. Your engine computer was saying, there shouldn’t be that much air when the engine is just idling. Something’s wrong. Whatever’s wrong could cause some serious engine damage.Warning, warning! It flashes the check engine light, to alert you to take immediate action. It stopped flashing because once you we ... read more

One Boulder automotive service issue that doesn’t get much attention is driveline service. Drivelines don’t get talked about very much around Boulder, but they’re very important. First let’s define what the driveline is: Taking a small step back, the power plant is comprised of the engine and transmission. The driveline starts there and includes all of the components that transfer power from the transmission to the wheels. That’s not really a lot of components, but they handle the full force of the engine. Without the driveline you’re not moving. So we need to take good care of it. The driveline components differ depending on whether your vehicle has front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, all wheel drive or four wheel drive. For purposes of our discussion, we’re going to have to over simplify a bit.Let’s start with front wheel drive. The point where the tran ... read more