Menu

Car Maintenance You Shouldn't Try at Home


About Me

Car Maintenance You Shouldn't Try at Home

In a troubled economy, many people look for ways to cut costs by doing household tasks themselves. Some automotive jobs can be done fairly easily at home, particularly if you know something about cars. However, taking on the wrong job on your own will only cost you more time, stress and money in the long run. My name is Jill, and I want to tell you about which car maintenance tasks you can safely tackle on your own and which really do require some help from a pro. I'll break down the needs of a typical car and tell you exactly why you might need to ask for help sometimes.

Maintaining Emergency Communications On Road Trips

During long drives across the country, you may encounter stretches of land that lack landmarkers that are familiar or areas too far away for friends and family to come help. Smartphones offer a lot of ways out of bad situations, but you'll need to plan a bit further ahead in case of service outages and drained batteries. Take a look at a few road trip planning points to keep yourself safe on the road and make sure you'll be able to get all the help you need.

Extending The Useful Life Of Your Smartphone Batteries

Smartphones have obvious uses in a road trip emergency, such as the basic call features to get in contact with help, as well as the ability to look up local information. Hotels, local garages and food directions are just a few taps away...if your phone lasts long enough. 

The relatively short power span of smartphones is well known, and that short duration becomes even shorter if you're looking information up on the Internet or with a mobile map. To extend the life of your mobile lifesaver on a phone, it's a good idea to pack extra batteries and a charger.

Packing batteries for emergencies isn't as simple as throwing them in your car. Excessive heat or direct exposure to sunlight can cause the battery to explode--although the actual explosion is more like a pop and fizz. You'll need to keep the batteries in a dark, solid case and out of direct light to keep temperatures as low as possible throughout the drive.

The charger needed is a specific battery charger, which allows a battery to dock inside your phone. With this standalone charger, you won't have to take the battery out of the phone to start charging the battery.

Outage Area Mapping

Cellular signals can fail for any reason. Maintenance can take down entire neighborhoods or city areas, while unplanned mishaps can cause an entire cellular network to go down in a region. There are also cellular deadzones where no cellular signal exists. You'll need to plan around these areas to be safe. 

Use a map of available cell phone signal areas to plan your trip. Look along the length of your trip for areas that are marked for outages as well as no access at all, and make a note of when you'll be driving through areas of no coverage. Although unlikely, you need to know how far you are from available signals in case your car breaks down in an outage area.

As you make plans for getting in contact with others during an emergency, make sure to keep a towing service like Big Valley Towing in your contacts. Speak with a towing services professional to discuss towing rates, area availability and easy ways to contact towing services in the event of an emergency.