Gig Harbor Auto Repair

With hotter weather and brutal heat waves becoming more common, the pressure in your vehicle's tires goes up.  After all, heat causes air to expand, and the air in your tires follows the laws of physics. Overinflated tires can reduce your vehicle's traction, cause a hard, punishing ride and make your tires wear out faster; all are important safety issues. Four out of every ten drivers rarely check tire pressure. Some rely on their vehicle's tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) to keep an eye on proper tire inflation.  But it's not designed to do that. TPMS is a safety feature that has been required on vehicles made in 2008 or later, using sensors in the wheels that alert you to tire pressure problems.  That warning can be a light on your dash, a digital message or a readout of the pressure in each individual wheel.  But a study showed that more than 40 percent of drivers don't even know what the tire pressure monitoring light symbol looks like! One looks like a ho ... read more

See if any of these are happening to your vehicle.  You feel it vibrating excessively underneath when it’s running, or you hear strange clunking, grating, or grinding sounds coming from beneath.  Maybe it’s hard to turn your vehicle, or you can hear squeaking when you’re going slow.  Perhaps you feel a shudder when you step on the throttle.   Any of those could be signs that your vehicle’s driveshaft might need lubricating, and it’s important to have one of our technicians check it out. Your vehicle’s engine puts out a lot of twisting power.  That force is called torque, and the driveshaft is the part that handles the job of transferring all that torque from your engine to the wheels.  If it’s a four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicle, it will have driveshafts front and rear.  Some driveshafts have different segments which are connected by couplings called U-Joints.   So that everything can glide along fine ... read more