How to Manage Car Parts in Tough Economic Times

In the current state of the economy saving every penny is necessary. One of the places where you can save a lot of your cash is by undertaking the day-to-day car repair and maintenance yourself. You would be amazed at how much money you can save not only by undertaking the laborious parts yourself, but also by buying the car parts directly and cutting out the mechanic’s personal profit. Here are some places where you can start:

Changing your auto oil yourself

We have all become a bit used to spending anywhere between $30-80 on an oil change. Even 5 quarts of Synthetic oil can be bought easily in the market for $5-$10. In order to change your own oil, all you need in addition is an oil pan, a filter and oil. It is advisable to have someone walk you through the oil change the first time, but because it is quite simple, you can still do it. Remove the cap at the bottom of the car and drain the oil. Swap out the filter and re-fill. Double check you are full and sealed before restarting the car. Running an engine without oil would be very bad.

Replacing your car’s spark plugs

The average car service includes an oil change, new spark plugs and new air and fuel filters. This might seems basic but the fact is that they are all important. All of the things mentioned above can be done by you without going to a car warehouse. Spark plugs run $1-$10 each and you’ll need one per cylinder. You can pick them up at any Car Parts store and be sure to get a better plug such as Iridium or other premium plug. They’ll be a few more bucks each but you’ll make that up with better performance and gas mileage on the car. Most cars need a basic socket wrench to remove the plug, probably just a 14-16mm size. It’s as easy as unscrewing and screwing in the new one. Newer cars usually have the plugs deeper down so you’ll need an extender on the socket wrench.

Taking out the filters and putting a new one in its place

The biggest mark up in all of auto parts service is in filters. Cars have a bunch of them these days. ‘Wet’ filters include oil filter and gas filter. They are called wet because they filter liquid. These can be picked up at any auto parts house for $1-$5. Save even more and buy them online at a place like www.carpartswarehosue.com. There are also 2 main ‘dry’ filters. The air filter runs $5-$20 and keeps contaminants out of the engine. Many new cars also have cabin air filters which filter pollutants out of your air conditioning system. This will run about $5-$10. My recommendation is to go with brand names on filters. The few dollars in savings will not make up for a busted filter and destroyed engine. Just keep telling yourself the mechanic would have charged you 3 times that.

So during this downturn in the economy, the lesson learned is to buy the auto parts yourself so you can do the service yourself by cutting out the service station. Don’t cut corners on cheap products or unknown brands because that always creates more future expenses than it saves costs. Doing so will also come back to haunt you. Mechanics might be a bit expensive (depending on how you look at it) but they ensure that only good parts are installed in your car.

Wholesale car parts store provides you with a lot of cheap car pars which are necessary in order to save money by cutting the middleman. You can also buy air conditioning compressor here. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service