Daytona Beach Auto Repair

Your engine is like a finely choreographed dance. All the parts have to work together. If the timing is off at the ballet, dancers crash into each other and fall down. It the timing is off in your engine, it may not run at all. One of the most intricate dances in your engine has to do with the combustion cycle.Your vehicle engine has cylinders in which a piston travels up and down. At the top of the cylinders are valves that open to bring in the air and fuel. And there are valves that open to let out the exhaust after the fuel has been burned. Call Honest-1 Auto Care at 386.898.0774 for answers about your timing belt, or drop by our Daytona Beach, FL, service center on 2325 S Ridgewood Ave. It's critical that the values be timed to open and close at precisely the right time in the combustion cycle, or the engine will run poorly or not at all.The timing belt is responsible for rotating the ... read more

Imagine you've left Daytona Beach and you're up in the arctic on a dog sled.Your dog team is pulling straight and true. You can cover a lot of ground quickly. Now imagine what would happen if one or two of the dogs wanted to go their own way and were pulling off to the side.That would slow you down. You would have to work harder to keep the sled going where you want it. The dogs are all working as hard as before, but you're covering less ground for the same effort.You're wasting kibble.The same is true of your vehicle when the wheels are out of alignment. That wheel that's pulling to the side is dragging down the rest of the vehicle; so you push a little harder on the gas pedal to keep up your speed. You're wasting gas.So have your wheel alignment checked at least once a year. It is important to get it checked right away if you feel the vehicle pulling to one side.Sometimes we Daytona Beach residents bump a curb or hit a pothole and knock our wheels out of alignment. An accident c ... read more

Daytona Beach drivers want their tires to last as long as possible. Two ways to extend tire life are wheel balancing and tire rotation.When wheels are out of balance, they wobble and vibrate. That makes the tires wear in a cupping pattern. If a front wheel is out of balance you'll feel it in the steering wheel. If it's a rear wheel you'll feel it through your seat. To fix this, your technician at Honest-1 Auto Care puts weights on your wheels to balance them out.That brings us to tire rotation. The front tires on a vehicle wear out faster than the rear tires. As they push through turns, the shoulders of the front tires wear down. So rotating front and rear tires allows them to all wear at about the same rate over the life of the tire.Proper tire inflation will also help Daytona Beach folks' tires last longer. Underinflated tires wear more on the shoulder and may even overheat. This could cause tire damage or a blow out. Overinflated tires wear too fast in the middle.Fo ... read more

Most Daytona Beach residents have experienced a flat tire. You know it's inconvenient and a pain. Our tires are important. Keeping them in good working order isn't just a big safety issue for Daytona Beach drivers – it also has a financial impact. With high FL gas prices, we've all heard about the importance of keeping proper tire pressure to save on gas. In addition, proper inflation promotes even tread wear so your tires last longer.  There's another danger with under-inflated tires for Daytona Beach residents. Low tire pressure puts added stress on the structure of the tire itself, causing it to break down prematurely. Also, under-inflated tires generate more heat which also reduces tire life. So get those slow leaks fixed quickly – don't just keep adding air every few days. You want to avoid tire damage. Daytona Beach residents should only hire qualified tire professionals to perform repairs - we have a whole team of them at ... read more

Why are wheel bearings for Daytona Beach vehicles important? It's simple: your wheel bearings keep the wheels on your vehicle. In today's Honest-1 Auto Care post, we'll discuss more about wheel bearings and how you can make sure they can do their very job while you drive around Daytona Beach, FL. Wheel bearings are pretty simple parts. They're made of high quality steel and are engineered to last 100,000 miles (160,000)  or more if properly cared for. The bearings do two jobs: First, they allow the wheel to freely rotate with as little friction as possible. Second, they support the weight of the vehicle. For example, if your car weighs 3,600 pounds (1600 kilogram), each wheel has to support approximately 900 pounds (400 kilograms). That's a lot of heavy lifting over those long distances.Even though wheel bearings are pretty straightforward, they need to be in near perfect condition to do their job for Daytona Beach vehicles. The bearings are packed with heavy grea ... read more

A while back, the Cash for Clunkers program was all over the FL news. Daytona Beach people could trade in their old vehicle for a new one that got better gas mileage and receive a government rebate. A lot of Daytona Beach motorists had so-called clunkers that they wanted to keep. They're good commuters, grocery getters or toy haulers. They enjoy that fact that they're paid off, or soon will be. They would gladly like to keep their vehicles for 200,000 miles (320,000 kilometers) or more – as long as it's economical to do so. There are plenty of Daytona Beach drivers whose vehicles are running after 150,000 or 200,000 miles (240,000 or 320,000 kilometers). We can learn from what they're doing to keep our own vehicles on the road in FL.The Daytona Beach drivers of high-mileage cars often report a common denominator of never skipping an oil change. That may sound a bit un ... read more

Just as our bodies need clean air to function properly, your vehicle engine needs clean air to operate efficiently. Let's go egghead for a minute. For every gallon of gas we burn driving on Daytona Beach streets, 20 pounds of carbon dioxide comes out the tailpipe. Question: how can a gallon of gas that weighs a little over six pounds produce 20 pounds of carbon dioxide?The answer is that the carbon comes from the gasoline, but the oxygen comes from the air. You see, it takes about 12,000 gallons of air to burn a gallon of gas in your engine. Clearly, your vehicle needs a lot of air to keep going in Daytona Beach. A lot of clean air is best. You've seen the pictures of people in Japan wearing face masks. They want some kind of filter to keep unwanted pollution and germs out of their lungs. Well, your vehicle also works better when its internals are clean. When your vehicle air fi ... read more

Today we want to talk to Daytona Beach drivers about timing belts. They're something that many drivers don't know much about and yet your vehicle won't run if it's broken – and it could cause many thousands of dollars damage if it does break. A broken timing belt is usually a tale of woe. Even though timing belt replacement is scheduled in the owner's manual, it's not the kind of thing that most Daytona Beach area auto owners remember because it's not well understood.Let's review what a timing belt does. As most know, the engine's power is generated in the cylinders. A piston rides up and down in the cylinder. During the first down stroke, an intake valve at the top of the cylinder opens and air and fuel is drawn into the cylinder. Then the piston returns to the top, compressing the fuel and air mix. At the top, the spark plug fires, igniting the fuel, pushing the piston down in the power stroke. As the piston once again returns up in the final stroke of the cycle, an exhaust va ... read more

  How do Daytona Beach drivers know if an odometer is telling the truth?Well, back in '86, Congress passed the Truth-in-Mileage Act to protect FL consumers against mileage fraud. It says a FL seller must certify the mileage reported is the actual mileage.To have your odometer checked in Daytona Beach, FL, stop by Honest-1 Auto Care: Honest-1 Auto Care2325 S Ridgewood AveDaytona Beach, FL 32119   If it isn't, the seller must say why; for example, maybe the odometer is past its mechanical limits. Some older odometers only go to 99,999 and then start over at 0. Or, the odometer has been tampered with, broken or replaced.If the seller tells you the mileage isn't accurate, there's not much chance of putting a good number to it. And there's the unscrupulous seller who claims the reading is true, but it isn't. What can Daytona Beach vehicle owners do?You can go to www.CarFax.com, where, for a small fee, they'll g ... read more

Today we want to talk about a system in our vehicles – the cooling system. It's one of those things that Daytona Beach auto owners don't give much thought to until it fails and then they're stranded by the side of a road in FL.Cooling systems fail more often than any other mechanical system – usually because of neglect. Don't you hate it when something breaks and you could have done something to prevent it?The good news is that if Daytona Beach drivers take care of their cooling systems, they can keep working for the life of their car.Here at Honest-1 Auto Care in Daytona Beach, we emphasize preventive maintenance services like replacing your coolant according to the factory schedule. But the various parts that make up the cooling system need attention too. The major components of the cooling system are the water pump, freeze plugs, the thermostat, radiator, cooling fans, the heater core, the pressure cap, the overflow tank ... read more