Virginia Beach Auto Repair

It feels like summer just  started, but back to school is just around the corner.  Are you, or someone you know, going to begin shuffling children between school and school activities? Are you yourself taking night classes, or someone in your household going off to college? Here are a few tidbits to consider: Probably the most important item you can do is maintain your vehicle. Keep in mind that just because your vehicle passes its safety inspection(Virginia State Inspection), that doesn't mean it's properly maintained. Several maintenance items include: brake fluid, transmission fluid, engine coolant(antifreeze), power steering fluid, differential and transfer case fluids, windshield wiper fluid, and in some cases other fluids. Pay attention to your owner's manual and have the scheduled maintenance performed in a timely manner and your car will reward you for it. When was the last time your vehicle had a DMA(digital maintenance advisory) performed? This is a go ... read more

Did you ever try to define a labor hour? I’m not talking about time ticking away on a clock. I’m referring to the actual time spent on a repair vs. the labor guide’s suggested time.Any tech will tell you that a labor hour can stretch to half a day if a lot of research is involved. Conversely, it can last 15 minutes if you know what you’re doing. Most labor guides typically don’t take into account how much research, diagnosis and equipment setup is neededf or a given job — not to mention the time it takes to recover your 10 mm socket that just fell down into the engine compartment. Even with all of the technically advanced diagnostic tools professional mechanics have at their disposal, there are still people who can’t understand why diagnostic time should be included in the labor estimate, even though it’s not part of the R&R for the component. On the other hand, there are the stopwatch aficionados who count the seconds of every repair ... read more