August is Mike’s Month for car care tips, or what we here at Ken’s Automotive call Mike’s “Words of Wisdom” or just – Mike’s WOW! Mike is the Manager of Ken Scales Automotive, and he’s been with Ken Scales Automotive for more than 20 years. One of his [many] specialties is drivability diagnostics, and he’s pretty OCD about the maintenance of your car. His motto? “If you can’t drive it for over 200,000 miles – you’re doing something wrong!” So we thought we’d share some of Mike’s WOW’s – words of wisdom on how to maximize the life of your car because, frankly, we’re tired of listening to him ourselves. Here’s Mike:
“Hi, folks. Let me just say first off that nowadays the average age of a car on the road is nearly 11 years. Yes, the economy has been slow so people are hanging onto their cars longer, but the real truth is that every year cars are being manufactured that are more durable and reliable than the year before. And that means that for cars built in the last twenty years – or as long as I’ve been working here at Ken’s – they’ve been built to last at least 200,000 miles if you take care of them the right way. I know that most of our customers are pretty sick of me harping on regular maintenance over and over again, but I can’t help it – it’s the bottom line around here and it’s my life’s work! Now, to me this is hard to believe but – I swear I still have customers that ask me how often they should change their oil. I say, “Regularly,” and people ask me what’s “regularly?” Honestly folks, if you look in the glove box of your car, there’s generally a book in there that says something like – “Manual.” Open the book and look inside. Strangely enough, inside that book there’s usually some writing, and everyone of these books I’ve seen actually has a chapter called “Maintaining Your Car,” or something like that. It varies from car to car, but it’s in there. Honestly, you’d be amazed, if you just read those words they will tell you exactly what to do and when to do it in order to maintain your car! What’s more – if you actually do what they tell you to do in the manual, you’re car has a really good shot at making it through a lot of years of pretty carefree driving. As a matter of fact – I can pretty much guarantee that – if you buy that car when your kids are little and keep it on that maintenance plan right there in that book – you can give it to one of them when they go off to college. Seriously. Let them fight it out which one gets it, though. And if that manual gives you trouble, no worries, just bring it on in here to Ken’s, we’ll take care of it for you!”
