Keeping Up on Regular Maintenance
Whether you do the work on your car yourself or pay someone else to do it, it’s important to make sure you keep up on the regular maintenance needed on your vehicle. Scheduled maintenance is scheduled for a reason, and that is to keep your car in good running condition. Usually Ford parts are pretty reasonably priced, so regular maintenance is affordable — but not doing it can be quite costly, depending on how much damage you cause.
For example, one of the most important things that needs to be done regularly is replacing the timing belt. Many modern cars have timing belts instead of chains. This allowed car manufacturers to design the engine more efficiently, but it also means that the belt has to be changed periodically to prevent it from snapping. Most engines are interference engines, which means that if the timing belt snaps the pistons will smash the still-open valves, sometimes even with enough force to warp the head.
A timing belt is fairly expensive, although the work required to change it can be costly. Still, it’s not nearly as expensive as replacing the head or rebuilding the engine if the timing belt breaks when you are driving down the road! Most likely, if this happens you’ll simply be going around to Fort Worth auto dealerships, looking for a new car — it makes more sense to buy a new one than to dump nearly the same amount of money into fixing the old one.
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