Kelowna Auto Repair

As engine technology advances, recommended oil change intervals have gotten longer. High quality oil in a well-engineered engine has led to extended intervals.Here’s the problem: With longer oil change intervals, it’s extremely important for Kelowna drivers to follow them closely. Back in the day of 3 months or 5,000 kms, if you went an extra month or an extra thousand kms, your oil was still fresh enough that it didn’t have time to build up much sludge.But if your recommended interval is 12,000 kms and you go over another thousand, you’re getting into heavy sludge territory.Kelowna area motorists absolutely need to follow recommended intervals very closely. And don’t forget your severe service schedule. If you do a lot of stop and go driving, short trips around the Kelowna area, drive in dusty or polluted conditions, hot or cold weather, or haul heavy loads, you’re driving in severe service conditions. Is your dr ... read more

Wiper blades that may seem like a pretty mundane topic, but think about how important your vision is: We protect our eyes. If we need contacts or glasses, we take care of them too. And, well, wiper blades are critical to our vision when we drive around the Kelowna area.We really ought to think about wipers as part of an important safety system. We should think about maintaining safety not just responding when our wiper blades fail: how many times have you been caught off-guard in Kelowna by the first storm of the season with a streaky windshield you can barely see out of? Or with no washer fluid.Wiper blades live outside the vehicle, exposed to heat and sun in the Kelowna summer and cold and ice in the Kelowna area winter. It’s no wonder that they get dry, brittle and torn. We recommend changing wiper blades twice a year, before they’re so damaged that they don’t work. If you replace them in one of your spring and fall oil changes, you should always have wiper bl ... read more

Batteries are a huge part of modern life. I mean, how many battery chargers do you have?Of course, our purpose here is to talk about your car battery. When people come into A Plus Automotive and need a new battery, they’re really not that happy about having to spend the money. But the fact is that 70 percent of batteries don’t make it for 4 years.There are some things that you can do to extend the life of your battery. First, keep it clean. If you see it getting dirty or greasy, let us know and we can clean it off. A dirty battery runs hotter and that shortens its life. If your battery terminals are corroded, let us take a look at that too. We can clean them, and if the corrosion has gotten into the battery cables, we can replace them.Also running your battery way down is bad for it. Things like, running the headlights or watching a DVD player with the car turned off can deeply deplete your battery. The typical battery can only take about 10 of those deep cycle depletions b ... read more

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Most people in the Kelowna area may not know much about transfer cases, but if you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, you’ve got one. It makes sure you have power available for both the front and rear axles. For example, if you have a rear-wheel drive SUV, power goes to the rear wheels until you need 4-wheel drive. That’s when the transfer case steps in and transfers some of the power to the front wheels as well. You might use a shift lever to go into 4-wheel drive, or it could be a button on the dash or it might even go into 4-wheel drive automatically, depending on your vehicle.The transfer case is serviced by periodically draining its fluid and replacing it with fresh fluid. We also check for leaks and damage. Transfer case fluid cools and lubricates the gears, chains, bearings, shafts and other parts. Over time, the additives in the fluid wear out and it doesn’t protect as well. Also, bits of metal and clutch material wear off and contaminate the fluid. There isn ... read more