While your car might not have the mess of cables you’ll find underneath you desk, it has recently become a home for more technology than it is prepared to handle. Here’s how you can keep those stray chargers, audio cables and whatever else under control so you’re not fighting wires while trying to concentrate on the road.
If you like the look of the ambient light kits that come with many cars today (or just need a bit more light for seeing inside your glove box), modder KonaStar shows us one way to do it yourself with some LED lights.
Whether you choose to buy your next vehicle with cash, or you’ve just paid off a financed vehicle, having the title in your hands doesn’t mean you’re free and clear — that vehicle may be all yours and not the bank’s, but it’s still going to cost you in maintenance and repairs if you want to keep it running smoothly. Take the money you would have spent on a car payment, or what you could afford as a payment if you had financed and stash it away in a maintenance fund, so when you do go to the mechanic, the bill won’t be hard to swallow.
If you accidentally lock your keys in the car and don’t have your wedge and metal rod handy, you can often unlock the car from the outside using nothing but your shoelace.
It’s one thing when your mechanic tells you that there’s an urgent problem that needs to be fixed on your car; it’s another when they give you a high-pressure sales pitch to get a costly transmission flush. You can save a lot of money by skipping the optional extras, and paying attention to your vehicle’s maintenance schedule and history instead.
A used-car warranty can be a tangled mess of options, but Popular Mechanics has put together a list of everything you need to know if you want the extended coverage through a manufacturer warranty or a private dealership. Most importantly, they provide a good way to decide whether you need the warranty or not.
It has likely happened to all of us: we’re casually opening the door of a car when another car or bike comes whizzing past, nearly hitting the door because they didn’t see it opening. Instructables user milesfromnelhu recognised the problem and decided to fix it by spray painting a warning strip on the inside of the door.
Buying used can be a great way to save money on a great vehicle, and whether you’re pro-used car or anti-used car, you can’t debate the fact that used cars lose a great deal of their value within the first few years of ownership. Nowhere is this especially true than with used luxury vehicles, which lose much more of their value over the first 5-6 years than an economy vehicle does over the same period.
You’re driving home from work one day when the worst nightmare for a car owner happens: the ‘check engine’ light pops on. It comes without warning and with no explanation. For most drivers, this means a trip to the mechanic, but it’s not difficult to diagnose (and sometimes fix) yourself.
One of the dozens of buildings on Ford’s Detroit campus is the Research And Innovation Center, which tests proposed vehicle designs. As you’d expect, it has a motion capture studio and a stack of other tech gear. What you might not expect is that is has an in-house barber.
