Showing posts with label car repair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label car repair. Show all posts

Jan 3, 2011

Wheel Alignment

This clip contains clear explanations of wheel alignment, toe, camber and caster.

It also recommends that you should get your car aligned after rotating the tires, which makes sense. But if the interval is pretty short (say 7,500 miles) then it's not very practical to keep up with that routine.

The more often a technician touches your car, the more risk there is of human error. And wheel alignment is, in my experience, one of the procedures that has a high chance of not getting done right the first time, resulting in having to bring the car back for corrections. It's hard to get it just right.

So unless the car pulls to one side or is imbalanced, or there is evidence of uneven tire wear I wouldn't worry about getting an alignment each time I rotate the tires. Also, be sure to account for the effects of road crowning when checking alignment.


Dec 30, 2010

How to Change A Timing Belt

This is one of the more lively yet informative clips. Scotty Kilmer walks us through the process of replacing the timing belt on a Toyota Camry. The front wheel skid with the motorcycle in the intro is pretty impressive too.

Note he mentions a good idea of turning the engine over twice using a “cheater bar” before starting the engine with the new belt to check for correct installation (because a four stroke engine requires two full revolutions to complete a combustion cycle).