Gig Harbor Auto Repair

When it comes to preventive maintenance and car care, most Gig Harbor drivers know how vital it is to check their brakes. But brakes are more than just brake pads and shoes. There are a lot of components in the brake system, and they all need to be in good working order. The pads and shoes are known as the friction materials in the brake system. They push together, providing friction, which stops the vehicle. It's no wonder they have to be checked regularly for wear, and that brake pads and shoes need to be replaced periodically. Brake pads/shoes gradually wear out, but that doesn't mean your braking gradually becomes less effective. The pads are engineered so that they maintain good braking until they wear too thin to provide adequate friction. At this point, they need to be replaced. But your braking system also has mechanical parts. These pistons and springs can also gradually wear out or get gummed up by oil, dirt and other road spatter ... read more

When Gig Harbor drivers talk about vehicle safety, they think of tires and brakes. But do we think about our windshields? Isn't the ability to see a prime safety factor when it comes to driving around Washington? Yet we often don't even notice our windshields until we can't see through them, or until our wiper blades fail. It's estimated that around 46 million people are driving with wipers that won't keep their windshields clear during a storm - that's 46 million people with impaired vision during a storm. For safety's sake, Gig Harbor motorists need to change the way they think about wiper blades. Most of us, 78% in fact, only change our wiper blades after they fail. In other words, we don't get new ones until the old ones become a harmful safety hazard. Instead, we Gig Harbor motorists need to make wiper blades an important part of our preventive maintenance routine. Wiper blades should be changed twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. In Wash ... read more

Most cars and trucks have automatic transmissions, yet a lot of Gig Harbor drivers only have a fuzzy understanding about what a transmission does.Think back to the last time you rode a bike in Gig Harbor. You started out in a lower gear and shifted to higher gears as you went faster. Down shift for hills, stuff like that. Think of your legs as the engine - there's an ideal speed you can pedal and you change gears to leverage the work you're doing. Lower gears for power on hills or for starting out. Higher gears for more speed. That's what the automatic transmission does - it automatically starts in lower gears and shifts up to higher gears to go faster on Washington interstates. And automatically shifts back down to climb Gig Harbor hills, pass or start up again. Car, truck, SUV automatic transmissions have certainly gotten more sophisticated in recent years. They have more speeds than before: the base is four spe ... read more