Gig Harbor Auto Repair

If the fuel system in your car, truck, SUV is dirty, you will be hurting your gas mileage and losing performance as you drive around Gig Harbor, Washington. Unless they drive a vintage car, Gig Harbor motorists have fuel injectors which need to be properly maintained. That is why your car, truck, SUV owner's manual has a schedule for cleaning your fuel injectors and other parts of your fuel system. Your friendly and courteous service advisor at Mackert Automotive in Gig Harbor has the tools and chemicals to do the job right. Mackert Automotive uses a process that gives your car a deep, professional fuel system cleaning. The particles, gum and varnish that build up in your fuel system are removed so that it can run cleanly and efficiently. After a professional fuel system cleaning at Mackert Automotive, you'll notice more power, improved fuel economy and reduced exhaust emissions.AutoNetTV strongly recomme ... read more

Hello Gig Harbor motorists! Let's talk about alignment. One of the most important parts of preventive maintenance for your vehicle is keeping the wheels in alignment. Poor alignment causes your tires to wear unevenly, which can significantly reduce their lifespan. This means you will have to replace them more often, which can be costly in Gig Harbor. It can even damage your suspension system, which is a costly repair. But even more importantly, uneven tread wear can lead to blowouts on the road, a dangerous and potentially deadly safety risk for Gig Harbor auto owners and their passengers. It may not take an accident or bad driving habits to "knock" your tires out of alignment. Tires can go out of alignment with just everyday Washington driving. Gig Harbor road hazards, pot holes, uneven or gravel roads, even the bumps and bounces of normal Gig Harbor highways and surface streets can gradually put your car, truck, SUV tires out of align ... read more

Today, we are talking about your PCV valve. The PCV Valve is a little, inexpensive part that does a key job for Gig Harbor car owners. PCV stands for Positive Crankcase Ventilation. The crankcase is the bottom area of the engine that holds the oil. When the car, truck, SUV engine's running, fuel is burned to generate power. Most of the exhaust from combustion goes out through the exhaust system. But some exhaust blows by the pistons and goes into the lower engine, or crankcase. These hot gases are about seventy percent un-burned fuel. This can dilute and contaminate the oil, leading to damaging engine oil sludge. It can also cause car, truck, SUV engine corrosion, something we see occasionally at Mackert Automotive. At high speeds on Gig Harbor freeways, the pressure can build up to the point that gaskets and seals start to leak. Back in the old days, auto makers simply installed a hose that vented these ... read more

Custom wheels are one way that Gig Harbor folks express themselves and personalize their car, truck, SUV. But they aren't as cheap and easy as sticking decals on your back window. There are several important factors need to be considered, including cost, the fit of the wheel, modifications that will have to be made to the car, truck, SUV, how the new wheels and tires will affect the operation of the vehicle, your driving habits, and, of course, the style of the wheels. Most Gig Harbor drivers start with the last factor: the style of the wheels. But that should be the last thing we choose. When considering custom wheels, you should first carefully consider your budget. Some wheels may require expensive adjustments to your car, truck, SUV suspension system, brakes, or traction systems. You need to know what you can afford before you start shopping in Gig Harbor or get your heart set on a particular type of wheel. There are ... read more

There's not much we can do about the price of gas in Gig Harbor Washington, but we do quite a bit about how much we use as we're driving on our Gig Harbor streets. Our driving habits can dramatically affect our fuel economy. The first thing we can do is watch the ‘go-pedal'. Hard acceleration just sucks the gas. Gently leave stop lights and plan lane changes so you don't need to floor it. That can save you hundreds of dollars a year. Go a little slower on the freeway to Gig Harbor. Once you're going more than sixty-five miles an hour your fuel economy starts to drop dramatically. Leave early so you don't need to rush to be on time. And cruise control is your friend - steady speed uses less gas. Plan errands ahead. Make fewer trips by combining errands. Hey at current gas prices, a lead-foot might as well be a gold foot

Scratching your head? Don't worry, if you don't know what a differential is - you will in a moment. That fact is that if you drive a car anywhere in Gig Harbor, Washington, you have a differential. Whether your vehicle is front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive or four-wheel drive, you have a differential. Some Gig Harbor auto owners might even have two or three. Not surprisingly, a differential's job is to compensate for differences. Specifically the differences in wheel speed when turning. For instance, imagine taking a corner near your Gig Harbor, Washington home. Your inside wheel has a shorter distance to travel than the outside wheel as you turn the corner. That means that your outside wheel has to turn faster to keep pace with the inside wheel. The differential allows the wheels to turn at different speeds while still providing power to your vehicle. Without a differential, Gig Harbor auto owners' tires would scrub and hop along the pavement during turns like the e ... read more

At Mackert Automotive we hear from a lot of people who are excited about the new diesel engines that will soon be available in passenger cars and SUV's. But our Washington friends are often curious about the preventive maintenance requirements. People may not know that diesel engines have long been used extensively in Europe and Asia. In fact, in some markets, there're nearly as many diesel powered passenger cars as there are gasoline. Here's who's announced or is expected to announce new diesels for North America: BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and Subaru. Of course, the US auto makers will be expanding their diesel offerings as well. Diesels will become a very big deal here in Washington. You may ask, why has it taken so long getting to Washington and North America? There are a bunch of reasons like fuel tax policies and such, but the biggest hurtle was that Washington diesel fuel had a high sulfur content - too h ... read more

There's a reason we use the word "diagnose" when we talk about fixing cars in Gig Harbor. Figuring out what's wrong with your car, truck, SUV has a lot of similarities to figuring out what's wrong with someone who is ill. Vehicles are a mass of complex systems that can produce a variety of symptoms when something goes wrong. As with human diagnoses, a specific symptom may be indicative of a number of problems, and figuring out the specific cause takes training and experience. Sometimes the diagnosis of your car, truck, SUV's trouble comes down to a matter of trial-and-error. This can be frustrating for Gig Harbor motorists because time and money are on the line. You may feel you should only be paying for repair work. Of course, you only want to pay for the right repair - and a proper diagnosis is part of getting it right. Like at the Gig Harbor doctor's office - some of what you pay for is the doctor ... read more

A fuel injector is a valve that delivers fuel to a vehicle's engine. It has to deliver the precise amount of fuel, to precisely the right place, precisely when the engine needs it. The fuel also has to be mixed with air before it can burn in the engine. Fuel injectors are engineered to spray fuel in a specific pattern into the engine. (The pattern varies by engine type and design.) In order to achieve these spray patterns, the fuel must be pressurized. The pressure in a fuel injection system varies depending on its type. Many gasoline engines use port injection systems, which operate with a pressure of 60 pounds per square inch. Newer direct injection systems operate at 10 to 30 times that pressure. Some diesel passenger vehicles have fuel injectors that operate at 30,000 pounds or more per square inch. Vehicles have one fuel injector for each cylinder in the engine. Your vehicle's control computer constantly monitors the engine and various sensors in the ve ... read more

How do Gig Harbor car owners know if an odometer is telling the truth? Well, back in '86, Congress passed the Truth-in-Mileage Act to protect Washington consumers against mileage fraud. It says a Washington seller must certify the mileage reported is the Actual Mileage. To have your odometer checked in Gig Harbor Washington, stop by Mackert Automotive: If it isn't, the seller must say why; like maybe the odometer is past its mechanical limits. Some older odometers only go to 99,999 miles and then start over at 0. Or, the odometer has been tampered with, broken or replaced. If the seller tells you the mileage isn't accurate, there's not much chance of putting a good number to it; And there's the unscrupulous seller who claims the reading is true, but it's not so. What can Gig Harbor drivers do? First, you can go to www.CarFax.com, where for a small fee, they'll give you a comprehensive vehicle histo ... read more