Daytona Beach Auto Repair

The primary job of the serpentine belt is to provide vital traction to spin the accessories. As the belt wears it loses some of its grip and the accessories may not spin at best speeds. For example, if your alternator doesn’t spin fast enough, the battery will not completely recharge while you’re driving and you could end up stranded with a dead battery. In short, a worn serpentine belt will stress all of the accessories it powers leading to premature wear and possible early replacement. When as little as 5% of belt material is lost, the serpentine belt cannot provide the proper traction for the accessories. Your thoughtful Honest-1 Auto Care service specialist can survey your belt for excessive wear and replace your serpentine belt system if it’s excessively worn. Give us a call

Call Honest-1 Auto Care to make an appointment to check your transmission in Daytona Beach. 2325 S Ridgewood Ave Daytona Beach, FL 32119 Do you have any plans around Daytona Beach FL for the weekend? Maybe you and some friends and are taking the boat up to the lake. Maybe you’ll be having a lot of fun water skiing and doing a little fishing. You got the boat all ready. It’s all gassed up. You packed lots of snacks and the cooler’s stocked – ready to go. How about your tow vehicle? It has plenty of gas and you’ve even vacuumed it out, but is your auto maintenance up to date? Stop and think. You’ll have some heavy traffic on your way out of town. Hilly terrain as you get to the lake. Some dirt roads – and it may be hot weather. And all the time you’re going to be towing around several thousand extr ... read more

Every Daytona Beach vehicle owner has to purchase tires at some time or another, so it’s a good idea to understand what the choices are. The best seasonal performance is achieved by purchasing tires to match the season you are driving in. Summer tires are designed for hot temperatures. The tread is engineered for good traction on dry or rainy FL roads. But the rubber compound in summer tires gets stiff when temperatures drop below 45°F, and snow and mud can pack into the tread, reducing the traction of the tire. Winter tires are designed for good traction on snowy surfaces. The tread actually throws snow off of the tire as the wheel turns. The rubber compound in a winter tire is soft so that it will remain flexible at Daytona Beach temperatures below 45°F. At higher temperatures, however, the softer rubber wears down rapidly. All-season tires sacrifice some of the extreme performance of summer or winter tires, but they maintain adequate traction in either type of Daytona Beach weathe ... read more

Today Honest-1 Auto Care is talking about the proper fluids for your vehicle. It’s become more complicated with changes in automotive design and manufacturing. It’s not that people in FL are confused as much as they don’t realize how much things have changed in recent years. Let’s take engine oil. Twenty or thirty years ago, there were just a handful of different weights of oil. The weight of an oil is a scientific measure of its properties, particularly its viscosity or thickness. It was common in those days to use a lighter weight oil in the winter when it’s cold outside. That way the oil would be able to splash around inside the engine and protect the parts before it was fully warmed up. And a heavier weight oil would be used in the summer. The thicker oil wouldn’t thin out too much in the summer heat and vaporize in the engine. Modern valve trains have become very complicated with more moving parts and small passages than ever ... read more

There is a clear and vocal demand in Daytona Beach and nationally for a reduction in air pollution and our dependence on fossil fuels. This is what is driving the FL market for alternative fuel vehicles. There are a number of these vehicles on Daytona Beach area roads today, and many more being developed. Yet each of these vehicles has its own advantages and disadvantages. Daytona Beach car owners should learn what these advantages and disadvantages are before running out and purchasing one of these alternative fuel vehicles at your nearest Daytona Beach dealership. Daytona Beach motorists should carefully research the car care before buying an alternative vehicle, as it may or may not coincide with the standards for gasoline vehicles. You should look at costs and fuel efficiency as well: these vehicles may help save our environment here in Daytona Beach, but that might not represent a savings to your wallet. You’ll need to decide what you can a ... read more

A vehicle’s suspension system is tough. It can last for years and tens of thousands of miles for Daytona Beach car owners. But it can be damaged quickly by hitting a pothole, curb or rock, and it can wear more quickly if you frequently drive off-road or on bumpy roads. A workhorse vehicle — one that hauls heavy loads — is also going to be hard on its suspension system. Because the useful life of your suspension system contains these elements of unpredictability, it is important for Daytona Beach auto owners to have them inspected periodically. Worn, broken and missing parts can be identified during an inspection. An ineffective suspension system will reduce the driver’s control over a vehicle, so when it is damaged it frequently leads to the worst kind of vehicular damage — dangerous and costly accidents. The suspension system is composed of springs and shock absorbers (or shocks). Springs suspend the weight of the vehicle above its axles. They allow the ... read more

Everyone in Daytona Beach, FL knows we are advised to go to our Daytona Beach dentist twice a year.  Oral-conscious Daytona Beach residents have a teeth-cleaning and examination. Once a year, we get x-rays to look for problems that can’t be seen with the naked eye. When our dentist is done, he/she tells us what was found – “Everything’s fine, see you in six months.” Or “You’ve got a small cavity starting, let’s schedule an appointment to take care of it.” By the time you leave, you have a plan for addressing any necessary issues. This system works so much better than waiting for a painful problem before going into the dentist. Small problems are fixed before they turn into big costly problems. And you avoid those huge bills. If Daytona Beach folks understand the wisdom of using this system for handling dental care, why do many resist when facing the same system for our essential car maintenance? Following th ... read more

Everyone in Daytona Beach, FL knows we are advised to go to our Daytona Beach dentist twice a year.  Oral-conscious Daytona Beach residents have a teeth-cleaning and examination. Once a year, we get x-rays to look for problems that can’t be seen with the naked eye. When our dentist is done, he/she tells us what was found – “Everything’s fine, see you in six months.” Or “You’ve got a small cavity starting, let’s schedule an appointment to take care of it.” By the time you leave, you have a plan for addressing any necessary issues. This system works so much better than waiting for a painful problem before going into the dentist. Small problems are fixed before they turn into big costly problems. And you avoid those huge bills. If Daytona Beach folks understand the wisdom of using this system for handling dental care, why do many resist when facing the same system for our essential car maintenance? Hone ... read more

Here’s an interesting statistic for our drivers in Daytona Beach, FL: Only thirty percent of car batteries make it to forty-eight months. And the life expectancy varies by where you live. It ranges from fifty-one months in extremely cold areas to just thirty months in extremely hot climates. Why is that? It turns out that it’s our modern cars with all their electric accessories that are to blame. Things like, GPS, DVDs, and entertainment computers are keeping pickup batteries from maintaining a full charge. The longer a battery goes with a low charge, the sooner it’ll die. It’s clear that you Daytona Beach drivers need to recharge your batteries. This is the job of the alternator. The problem comes when the car’s demand for electricity is high and we are driving in stop and go conditions or short trips around Daytona Beach or De Leon Springs. The alternator just can’t keep up. The result is shortened battery life. So wh ... read more

Today’s vehicles are safer than they’ve ever been. Design and construction techniques provide tremendous protection in an accident. Your airbags are part of a very sophisticated system of sensors and computers called the Supplemental Restraint System – or SRS. These sensors are all over your vehicle, detecting things like where passengers are sitting, how much they weigh, as well as the speed and direction of an impact during a crash. All of this information is feed into the SRS computer that determines if and when an airbag or airbags should be deployed. An airbag has to be inflated very quickly in order to protect vehicle occupants. The inflation is basically the result of a controlled explosion: a violent event in itself. That’s why the SRS computer will only deploy an airbag in life threatening circumstances where an airbag will actually be of help. Deploying an airbag in the wrong circumstances could do more harm than good. Hard, direct side and front impacts ... read more