Boulder Auto Repair

You may have found yourself in the following situation: You go to get your oil changed and the service adviser at John’s Auto Care recommends you get a new engine air filter. You say yes, but because you didn’t know what an air filter is or what it does, but you were too embarrassed to ask. First of all, you did the right thing by getting a new one. And, you should never be too embarrassed to ask for more information from any of our John’s Auto Care staff. It’s your money and you have a right to understand what you’re paying for. Let’s review what an air filter does: Air is the focus of this discussion. What is the air like outside in Boulder right now? Can you see any smog? Is it full of pollen? How about dust? Anyone in CO with hay fever can tell you that there’s plenty in the air that you can’t see. Well, it’s the engine air filter’s job to clean that air before it goes into your engine, to mix with the fuel and be burned ... read more

One might say the most challenging part of being an automotive service technician at John’s Auto Care in Boulder CO is diagnosing a problem before it can be fixed. Cars are made up of a bunch of complex systems. There usually could be a number of reasons for any given symptom. So it’s challenging to track down the actual cause of the problem. And it can be frustrating for the vehicle owner because it can take time and money to get to the bottom of a problem. If it’s not something obvious, it’s easy for the customer to focus on the fixing and not the diagnosing. Let us introduce you to something we’ll call Customer Detective Work – that is helping your Boulder CO technician find clues to what’s wrong. We start with the detective basics: What, Where and When. Play along with me. You come in to John’s Auto Care and your car is making a funny sound.Do you see where we’re goin ... read more

So you’ve bought a used car in the Boulder area. How do you know what you’re getting? It is hard to know what you’re getting because people in the Boulder area sell cars for different reasons. Think about why you’ve sold cars. Did you just want something new or were there problems that you wanted to run away from. Maybe it was a little of both. Used cars with 25,000 to 35,000 miles on them are often lease returns, corporate program cars or vehicles that have done duty in rental fleets. We feel pretty confident because they’re newer and may still be under warranty. But how well have they been maintained? If you plan on owning a car for a long time, you’ll keep up on the maintenance so that you can avoid expensive repairs down the road. But, if you know you’re only going to have the car for two or three years, you may not be so committed to maintenance. It would be easy to think that skipping an oil chan ... read more

The energy from exploding fuel is what powers your engine. But some of the vapors from the explosions escape into the lower part of the engine, called the crankcase. The crankcase is where your engine oil hangs out. These gases are about 70% unburned fuel. If the gases were allowed to stay in the crankcase, they would quickly contaminate the oil and turn it to sludge. Sludge is one of the biggest enemies of your engine, clogging it up, eventually leading to expensive failures. Also, the pressure build up would cause seals and gaskets to blow out. Therefore, these gases need to be vented out. Gasoline engines used to simply have a hose that let the poisonous fumes vent out into the air. In 1963, the federal government required gas engines to have a special one-way valve installed to help reduce dangerous emissions. Diesel engines are not required to have these valves. The positive crankcase ventilation, or PCV, valve routes crankcase gases through a hose and back into the air intake s ... read more

We would like to give you an update on some of the things happening in automotive fluids. You know, cars are becoming more sophisticated everyday – and fluids such as, oil, coolant and transmission fluid are becoming more specialized at about the same pace. The do-it-yourselfer has to be pretty careful so that they do not actually harm their vehicle with the wrong type of fluid. That is why so many CO car owners rely on the advice of their service consultant to not only get the correct family of fluids, but to suggest the formulation that is best for their car and the way they drive. Let’s start with engine oil. If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed a number of new oil weights on the scene in the last several years. Modern engines are built to much tighter tolerances and have very complicated valve trains. The oil must be thin enough to lubricate complicated parts when the engine is cold. The weight of an oil is expressed in terms like 20-W-50 or 5-W ... read more