How a car repair manual can save you money on your next repair bill
The economy is one thing you can’t trust and that is why you should think about saving money at all times. The quickest way to do that is to try and reduce your expenses. Yes, you can’t cut down on food and clothing but you can cut down on car maintenance and repairs. Not in a way that you completely absolve yourself of the responsibility but by maintaining and repairing your car yourself.
Maintaining a car is easy but when it comes to repairing work you are looking towards a mechanic to do the job for you. What if there is a better way? A way that is hard but rewarding in the long run? The answer lies in a repair manual.
Importance of a Repair Manual
Factory service manuals are designed to give you all the information there is about a vehicle. This guide talks about assembling, disassembling, repairing, and rebuilding everything inside your car from one end to the other. It allows you to make repairs that you would have usually refer to the mechanical workshop. Things like changing the engine oil, replacing the alternator, fixing the timing belt, and changing the headlight bulb are all repairs that people uselessly spend money on. A car repair manual teaches you to make all these repairs so that you save money and spend it on something else.
Not only this, but a car workshop manual can also teach you valuable things about your car that you wouldn’t have normally known such as the valve timing, piston sequence, and more. If you are a car enthusiast or a DIY mechanic such information is priceless and can only be gathered first hand by personal experience. Giving the car over to a mechanic will solve the problem but it will cost you money and you will not learn anything new.
Save on Labor Costs
A large chunk of the costs you incur at a mechanic’s shop is the cost of labor. Let’s take basic tuning as an example. The mechanic will use a fuel system cleaner to wipe out any carbon deposits and sediments from the fuel components. Then he will spray some throttle body cleaner into the throttle and check the spark plug response. If need be, he will open up the top of the engine and replace the spark plugs. If you take into account all the work done, you will be able to see that there is nothing in this whole process that you can’t do yourself at home.
For this basic tuning process, the mechanic will charge you $50 – $200. This price is still dependent on the use of parts. However, looking closely, if you perform the whole operation yourself, you will save a large chunk of this money. Not only that, but you will also be able to use the saved money to afford better quality parts for your car. Therefore, it is evident that paying for labor is like leaking money from your pockets.
Safety For The future
The money you save from doing repair work at home can easily be added to a small fund that you can use in times of great despair. Perhaps, you can use it for modification work or use it to enhance the cosmetic appearance of your car. No matter the case, becoming a DIY mechanic can save you precious dollars that you rather spend on your car or yourself.