You don’t need four-wheel drive to stay safe in snow – but it helps. And there are other ways to get your car ready for cold weather. (Picture © Ford)
With temperatures set to plunge this week, new research reveals how unprepared many drivers are for the onset of freezing weather. With the Met Office predicting snow in some parts of the country, along with the thermometer dropping to -5 degrees Celsius in rural areas, Green Flag shows how to get your car ready for cold weather. Continue reading
Car maintenance such as topping up screen wash isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But there are some things drivers really should be able to do to ensure their cars are as roadworthy as possible.
Filling up the screen wash is quick and easy and it could save your life.
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More car makers than ever are offering fixed price servicing. (Picture © Skoda)
Keeping a modern motor maintained can be surprisingly expensive. Car valuation expert CAP Automotive says even a Volkswagen up!, the car it says has the cheapest running costs on Britain’s roads, will cost £848 over the first three years of its life. Fixed price servicing aims to ensure you know what you’re going to pay well in advance so you’re not hit with a huge garage bill out of the blue. But do such schemes make sense, or are they just another way of extracting more cash from drivers? Continue reading
Buying a new set of tyres for a car is an expensive business that nearly every driver grumbles about. And with over 30 million new replacement tyres sold each year, that’s a lot of grumbling.
Unlike paying for insurance or even buying the car, precious few tyre retailers offer drivers the option to spread payments over a period of time, so there’s little choice but to stump up the cash before you can drive away with new, safe tyres.
I should know. Recently I began to research replacement tyres for our four-year old Mercedes E-Class estate. The difference between the cost of household name premium tyres and budget brands I’d never heard of was staggering. For four new tyres, the largest potential saving between premium and budget was £862.
Puncture repair kits are increasingly replacing spare wheels
For drivers it’s a modern dilemma: to have a spare wheel or not. On the one hand there’s the risk of being one of the 23,000 drivers Green Flag attended in 2013 who were stranded at the side of the road because they didn’t have a spare wheel. On the other there’s the fuel and therefore tax you might save by not carrying the extra weight of a spare wheel that you might never use. Continue reading
Defective tyres can cause crashes. (Picture © TyreSafe)
Latest official figures show that dangerous tyres were a factor in a third of the casualties caused by defective vehicles. Department for Transport statistics revealed that defective vehicles were responsible for 2855 casualties in 2013. Dangerous tyres contributed to 968 of those, or 34 per cent. Continue reading
Researchers revealed cars host numerous potentially harmful bacteria
Our cars are filled with more germs than our houses. And children’s car seats can carry twice as many bugs as the average toilet seat. Continue reading
Franchised garages know their particular brand intimately (Picture © Mazda)
Having your car serviced regularly and according to the maker’s schedule is vital to ensure you enjoy trouble-free motoring. But how do you find a garage that’s going to do the right job for the right price? Follow these tips. Continue reading
Here’s what the DPF looks like (Picture © Vauxhall)
Not many drivers know what a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) is – until it costs them serious money. And replacing one can cost £1000 or more. Green Flag attends a lot of cars that have broken down with DPF problems and they are caused by one primary factor: the DPF is clogged with soot because the driver has ignored the warning lamp. Here’s everything you need to know about the DPF dilemma. Continue reading
Top up your fluids before hitting the road (Picture © Prestone)
The weather drives the breakdown business and the heat of summer provides its own very special challenges for cars and technicians alike. Continue reading
If you care about your car, or more to the point, about how much it will be worth when the time comes to sell it, you need to know about what will devalue it. From smoking inside to letting kids run riot, there are many ways to inflict lasting damage that will put buyers off your motor. Here are the top 10 that drivers would do well to avoid.
shutterstock / Fotosenmeer
Breaking down could make your bank holiday weekend memorable for all the wrong reasons. But the vast majority of breakdowns are avoidable. Less than five minutes spent checking your car over at home could save you the time and potential hassle of breaking down by the side of the road. Continue reading
The £54.85 MOT test is often seen as an annual expense drivers could do without, but it’s an important safety check that must not be ignored.
We’ve already shown how to cut the cost of the test by conducting your own pre-MOT inspection. Another way of ensuring you pay a minimum for your car’s yearly health check is to consider the many locations that can carry out an MOT test today. Here are the options drivers can choose from.
© Falken
While the overall number of road accidents is falling, tyre-related crashes are on the up. Tyre industry experts agree that an important contributor is the lack of maintenance by drivers. Spot checks show the vast majority of tyres are under-inflated by around 15 to 20 per cent. According to tyre giant Continental, this can reduce a tyre’s life by a quarter and increase fuel consumption by 5 per cent. Yet tyre maintenance is remarkably simple and tyres that are correctly inflated are less susceptible to punctures and give improved handling and road holding. Here are some top tips from Steve Howat, general manager for technical services at Continental, on how to look after your car’s tyres.
Gone are the days of taking an engine to pieces and tinkering with oily bits of metal to extract more performance. Now a wide number of specialist companies can reprogram your engine’s Electronic Control Unit. It’s a process commonly known as ‘chipping’. And companies that do it frequently claim the procedure can result in improved performance, with as much as 30 per cent more power and 10 per cent more fuel economy. It typically costs around £200, but is it money well spent?
pandara / Shutterstock
Getting rid of the Saharan dust that periodically blows up from Africa is vital to the future value of your car.
Dust is bad news for a car’s paintwork. Not only does it dull the finish of your once immaculate motor, it can also be very abrasive, causing millions of minute scratches to the surface it’s sitting on. And the duller and less appealing a car’s bodywork is, the less it will be worth when it’s time to sell it.
Cleaning a car involves slightly more than giving it a wipe over with a wet rag. We’ve taken advice from car care experts Autoglym to give you four simple steps that will enable you to return your dust-covered paintwork to its former glory…
Like a check-up at the dentist, your car’s annual MOT test comes round quicker than you expect and can be a painful experience. It can also be more expensive than many drivers anticipate.
Last year, a staggering 40 per cent of the 26.9m cars that took the annual MOT failed. That’s more than 10 million vehicles. Of those, more than 3.5m were pulled up for having dodgy lights, something that could easily have been checked by owners before the test.
Here are the most common reasons for MOT failure (in 2012/2103) and a guide to carrying out your own pre-MOT test to minimise the chances, aggravation and cost of flunking.
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