Los Altos Auto Repair

Hello Los Altos car owners! This is your friendly educator Cayenne,                                                   Let's talk about alignment. One of the most important parts of preventive maintenance for your vehicle is keeping the wheels in alignment. Poor alignment causes your tires to wear unevenly, which can significantly reduce their lifespan. This means you will have to replace them more often, which can be costly in Los Altos.

It can even damage your suspension system, which is an expensive repair. But even more importantly, uneven tread wear can lead to blowouts on the road, a dangerous and potentially deadly safety risk for Los Altos auto owners and their passengers.

It may not take an accident or bad driving habits to “knock” your tires out of alignment. Tires can go out of alignment with just everyday CA driving. Los Altos road hazards, pot holes, uneven or gravel roads, even the bumps and bounces of normal Los Altos interstates and surface streets can gradually put your sedan tires out of alignment.

So it’s good auto advice to have your sedan's alignment inspected periodically. Your vehicle’s owner’s manual will have recommendations on how often you should get an alignment check: usually every year or two. But if you think your sedan tires might be out of alignment, you should take your sedan into Allied Auto Works now.

When you take your sedan in for an alignment in Los Altos, your personal and trust Allied Auto Works service advisor will start by inspecting the steering and suspension systems. If something is broken or damaged there, it will need to be repaired in order to get good alignment of the wheels.

If all looks good in the steering and suspension departments, the sedan will then be put on an alignment rack where an initial alignment reading is taken. The wheels can then be aligned to the car maker’s specifications. The ideal alignment for any vehicle is set by its engineers and may vary from vehicle to vehicle.

There are three types of critical adjustments that may have to be made to correctly align a vehicle’s tires. The first is called “toe.” This refers to tires that are out of alignment because they point inward or outward at the front of the tire. Think of a person who is pigeon-toed or splay-footed, and you get the idea.

The second adjustment is the camber. This adjustment affects the angle at which the tires meet the road. Think of a solid building in contrast to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The last adjustment is the castor. This adjustment measures the angle of the tire in relation to the front axles. So, a piece of auto advice that just might be good for life as well: keep everything in alignment, and you’ll be able to steer where you want to go in Los Altos.

Cayenne and Allied Auto Works Want You To Drive Safely.

Hi Cayenne here and today we are going to bark about how to make your Sedan last you.     For advice on how to make your sedan last longer, visit us at Allied Auto Works
2073 Grant Road & 1540 Miramonte Ave.
Los Altos, CA 94024
650.968.7227 (Grant) & 650.947.7228 (Miramonte)

These days many people in the Los Altos area are really committed to making their cars last a long time. First thing: you've got to start with what you've got. It'd be ideal if people started with a brand new car, never missed a scheduled service item, paid attention to the severe service maintenance schedule and had regular inspections. But if you've had the vehicle for a while, or bought it used, its maintenance history is what it is; and that's where you start.

Go through the maintenance schedule for your sedan and see what's been done and when. Have your Los Altos service advisor at Allied Auto Works do an inspection and come up with a list of stuff that needs to be done. Review the list and prioritize the work, talk about budget and make a plan to get caught up.

Making a plan is so important. Suppose you go in for an oil change and learn you need your cooling system serviced, a transmission service and are coming up on a timing belt replacement in the next 5,000 miles. You might be pretty overwhelmed.

To make it even more stressful, these are all very important systems that are expensive to repair if there's a failure. In consultation with your Los Altos service advisor, you might decide to take care of the transmission on this visit, set an appointment for the cooling system service next month and get an estimate for the timing belt replacement so you'll be prepared for it in a few months.

Having a plan for taking care of these important services will set your mind at ease.

Until next time, this is Cayenne

Cayenne on the road again so let's bark Tires!   When we shop for shoes, most of us know that we can get two pairs of cheap shoes or one good pair for about the same price. And since the two cheap pairs wear out in about the same time as the good pair, there really is no difference in cost. If you like having a closet full of shoes to match your moods and outfits, then cheap shoes can be what you want. But if you spend a lot of time on your feet, you probably know that cheap shoes can come with an added cost of sore feet and other foot ailments. When you add in the benefits of comfort and protection, the more expensive shoes are actually the better value.

Buying tires at Allied Auto Works in Los Altos is a lot like buying shoes, except that Los Altos motorists' vehicles don’t have changeable apparel and don’t need a closet full of tires to match. Vehicles spend a lot of time on their tires—all the time, in fact—so they need tires that can stand up to the job. Tires are work shoes: they have to deal with a lot of CA road conditions, all while carrying the weight of a vehicle and its passengers.

Bad tires, like cheap shoes, can also be a safety concern for Los Altos area drivers. Tires need good traction, and they need to be strong enough to handle the loads they carry. Vehicles that carry heavy loads or tow trailers around Los Altos need tires with a high load rating, in the same way that you are better off on a rough CA mountain trail with sturdy hiking boots rather than flip-flops.

The best tires on the market are called Tier 1 tires. These are high-quality tires engineered to stand up to a lot of wear while maintaining good traction. They are also the most expensive tires on the Los Altos area tire market, although prices don’t vary much from brand to brand.

Tire chain stores in Los Altos often carry tires with their own brand name. These are private label tires. They are less expensive than Tier 1 tires, but are still a quality product. In fact, many private label tires sold in Los Altos are manufactured by the same companies that make Tier 1 tires. Don’t hesitate to ask your Allied Auto Works tire professional who makes their private brand.

The cheapest tires on the CA tire market are Tier 3 tires. Most of these tires are imported from Asia or South America, and they just don’t have the same standard of engineering behind them that the higher-priced tires have. When it comes to Tier 3 tires, Los Altos folks get what they pay for.

At Allied Auto Works, we sometimes express tire quality in terms of the warranty. In other words, we call a tire a “40-thousand-mile tire,” or a "60-thousand mile tire." This refers to the number of miles a tire will be under warranty. Tires with a higher mileage warranty are made with higher quality rubber compounds and have more tread. As you might expect, they also cost more than tires with low mileage warranties.

Cheap tires often have no warranty at all. However, if you find yourself in a position where you need new tires and you’re really strapped for cash, purchasing Tier 3 tires is better than waiting until you can afford Tier 1. It’s always better for Los Altos car owners to drive on new tires, even cheap ones, than driving on tires that are worn past their safety limits.

That said, if you’re driving on Tier 3 tires, it’s a good idea to budget and plan to buy higher-quality tires the next go-around. Two sets of cheap tires may wear out in the same time as one set of quality tires, but the quality tires actually cost less than two sets of cheap tires. That’s the great fallacy of cheap tires. In the long run, they actually cost more than good tires, and come with significantly reduced performance and durability to boot. Not exactly the best value for Los Altos drivers.

So, some good auto advice for Los Altos auto owners would be to always buy as much tire as you can afford. That way you’ll get the most durability and performance and the most mileage out of every tire. Plus, with a better tire, there’s some peace of mind that comes with knowing you won’t have to purchase tires as often.

Good car care requires checking your tires occasionally for tread wear and road damage. Practicing this preventive maintenance can help you avoid flats and blowouts.

Enjoy the Ride,

Cayenne

What A Beautiful Day so let's bark about Air with me, Cayenne! Air quality has certainly become a hot issue in our modern Los Altos world. We install air filters on our ventilation systems and in our vacuum cleaners. There’s a filter that cleans the air going into our sedan’s engine — so why not one for the air in the passenger compartment?

Foreign and domestic car makers haven’t been ignoring the issue. Cabin air filters are becoming a standard feature on newer vehicles. These filters can clean particles out of the air down to three microns, which accounts for pollen, dust and most pollutants. Mt. View drivers who suffer from allergies or have a respiratory disorder should be a lot more comfortable. And even if you don’t have a medical need for the filter, the cleaner air in your car just might help you breathe better, figuratively as well as literally.

Cabin air filters are still fairly new in Los Altos, so you’ll have to check your sedan owner’s manual to see if you have one. If you do, your routine car care will have to include changing the filter as part of your critical preventive maintenance. The owner’s manual will give recommendations on how often the filter has to be changed, but if the air where you live in CA is particularly dirty or if you’re prone to hay fever, you may want to change it more often.

Your personal and trusted Allied Auto Works tech can also offer suggestions on how often to change your cabin air filter in your Los Altos area. They’re the ones who actually see the dirty filters, after all.

There is no standardized location for cabin air filters. Los Altos motorists can usually find them in the sedan engine compartment or under the dashboard, but they might be somewhere else. So the ease of changing the filter will depend on its location. Some are readily accessible, but others make you wonder how they got installed in the first place. Bring your car into Allied Auto Works and we will locate your cabin air filter for you.

However, if you have a newer sedan, it’s good auto advice to find out if it has a cabin air filter. If it does, you should change the filter regularly. A sure sign that a filter needs to be changed is that the interior of your sedan will start to smell bad. That smell is exactly how some Los Altos car owners discovered that they had cabin air filters in the first place!

Cabin air filters are just one more way we have to stay safe, stay healthy, and stay on the road in Los Altos.

Breathe the air,

Cayenne