The Importance of Spring Maintenance on Your Vehicle

Winter is coming to an end and the heat is back in our beautiful province. The arrival of spring also means for many a good tidy-up. Did you know that your car could also benefit greatly from spring car care?

Your Honda dealer in Montréal presents you with the most important steps of the spring maintenance of your vehicle, a process that could buy you many more years with your car.

First step: Tire Change

In Québec, it is essential for your safety and the safety of others to drive on winter tires during the cold season.

The contrary is just as important. If you use your winter tires year-round, they will wear out very quickly. If they wear out and lose their grip, they become useless.

It is therefore very important to change your tires in the spring. In Québec, March 16 is the minimum date to remove your winter tires. Of course, it is difficult to recommend doing it so early.

As we see every year, it is not uncommon for snow and ice to stay a little longer or return after a week’s absence during the month of March.

The Joys (and Necessities) of a Clean Vehicle

Sand, calcium, salt, and a lot of other dirt: these are winter realities you can’t escape.

Once the cold season is over, there’s no better time during the year to give your vehicle a thorough cleaning from the inside.

Car carpet cleaning should be a priority, as they will have suffered the most during the winter. However, just because it’s the place where dirt is most evident doesn’t mean it’s the only place to wash.

Take advantage of your spring cleaning for car seat cleaning, as well as the dashboard, and other nooks and crannies of your vehicle’s interior.

While an in-depth cleaning of the interior will give you a lot of pleasure when it is complete, cleaning the exterior is also as essential.

This is because salt and sand can cause some pretty serious consequences for your car. For example:

• Damage the suspension

• Rust the exhaust system

• Harm wheel-alignment

• Cause corrosion on the bodywork

• And many other severe problems.

It’s important to take your vehicle’s exterior cleaning seriously. Use high end car care products and make sure you don’t miss any spots.

If you do this yourself, you can use a garden hose to clean under the vehicle and protect your suspension.

Fluid Check: An Essential Step

There’s no doubt about it: your vehicle works harder in winter. That’s why it’s so important to check the various fluids that keep your vehicle running smoothly. Here are the main ones:

• Windshield washer fluid

• Engine oil

• Coolant

• Brake fluid

• Transmission fluid

These last three are not as important: in general, it is not necessary to change them every year. To learn more about these fluids, you may want to use the Honda Maintenance Calculator.

The windshield washer and engine oil, however, are a little more important to check in the spring.

For one thing, winter windshield washer fluid isn’t as effective when spring arrives. Switching to spring and summer windshield washer fluid will help you maintain better visibility throughout the warmer seasons.

Oil change should be done once every 6 months. Winter splits the year in two, making it easy to spot two good times to do it during the year: once before and once after winter.

This step ensures that your engine will stay in top shape for a long time.

Car Maintenance: A Great Way to Save Money

Sometimes it can be hard to think about the long term. All those maintenance products and parts replacements don’t come cheap.

But these expenses will help you save a lot more money in the future.

Take oil change, for example. This is a way to maintain your engine, since oil collects dirt and particles that can affect the performance of your engine.

Changing the oil frequently will prevent a defective engine in the future, a repair that could be extremely expensive, or even force you to shop for a new vehicle.

So, it is important to always keep in mind that the expense of maintaining your vehicle represents a significant savings in the future.