 Earl Glanshaw, Farmer here at Township Chevrolet. We're just going to shoot a quick video on winter maintenance. The alike it or not folks, winter's coming so great time of the year to get your car ready for the winter season, great time of the year to do it. Some of the stuff you can do it on your own, some of the stuff you might want to get us to do but we're just going to go over a quick overview of the main things you kind of want to check and kind of go from there. So first things first, we'll start underneath the hood, simple things like checking your air filter, making sure it's not dirty. Obviously wintertime you're dealing with lots of dirt roads if you're out traveling and touring the island or even going across when you had a chance and there's dirt roads and you got sandy beaches and stuff but you're going to pick up that dirt and dust going to get in things like your engine air filter and cabin air filter. Things that are pretty easy to check you can do yourself. Also while you got the hood open here you can do things like check your fluids. Antifreeze here is one of the most important especially going into wintertime. You're looking for antifreeze that's good to a certain strength so you're looking at like minus 40 degrees roughly is where you want to be. You can buy a checker at any of the parts places that you can actually all it does you put it in sucks up the fluid level to a certain line, little needle comes up and tells you exactly where you need to be and where your antifreeze is at. So most bottles have a low and a high mark you want to be somewhere in between there depending on the temperature of the engine and just remember if you do have to add some to it you definitely don't want to open this up when the engine's hot you kind of want to wait till it cools down because it is pressurized. Another fluid that's easy to check is your brake fluid same thing high and a low mark there it's a reservoir that's in there so as your brakes wear out obviously you're a bit of fluid drop because it's got to take up that extra space that's in the calipers in the brake system so move along here to the battery. Obviously the battery is going to work real hard through the winter months your cold cranking amps are really important. All your batteries usually have a cold cranking amp listing on there. You do need a battery tester to actually test that that's something we have here. I'll get Phil to kind of show you guys what that looks like and kind of show you where you want to look at that on your batteries so it only takes a few minutes to test. If you're coming in to get a health check or something like that done here that's something that we do check especially this time of year and while you're doing that something you can check yourself is you want to just make sure your battery connections are good and clean and all your battery cables are tight. One thing you can check too if you're not due for an oil change is check your oil level make sure it's good. Most cars don't have transmission dipsticks anymore so that's something that has to be done in the hoist but if you don't see any leaks on your driveway or where you park your car changes are your fluids good it should be in there but it's a good time maybe to look at mileage wise and see what you're at for getting a service done maybe your transmission or even your differential or some of your other fluids need to be changed so the winter's like the hardest time of the year on our vehicles because of the heat cycling you're going from a dead cold engine at minus 20 and then you're running it up to 200 degrees or higher in some cases and it's really hard on all the fluids and it's hard on all the mechanical parts on the car so it's really important that everything in your car is kind of tuned up and ready to go. One other thing obviously that we're going to be looking into is tires whether you run your all seasons or whether you run your winter it's a great time to either check your all seasons make sure your tread depth is good you're gonna have a lot of fluctuations in temperature coming into winter months so you want to make sure that your all your pressures are good maybe look at a rotation if you're leaving your seasonals on make sure if you're dealing with a front wheel drive vehicle you want those the better tires the thicker tread at the front of the vehicle so a rotation is always good it's always a good time to to kind of look at your tread pattern see what it looks like make sure your tires are wearing good you don't want anything it's cupped or scalloped you can check the tread depth you can buy a tread depth checker I'll get to fill the chutes on up on the screen there there's actually a wear bar indicator on the tire and when it gets to that point on your tire the tire won't pass safety inspection so in most cases I recommend kind of changing those tires before you get to that wear bar that's kind of that's the real danger point so it all comes down to how heavy your car is how wide your tires are obviously the wider the tire the more tread depth you need because you're gonna be riding on top of those services like slush and water hydroplanning is more of a concern stuff like that you can also check to make sure it's a good way to check yourself if your alignment in your car is good if you're getting tire wear on the inside of the outside or you're getting some you know weird patterns on the tire like cupping your scalloping it could be an indication that your car needs an alignment it's always a good time of year if you're coming in any way to get any of these health checks done or getting your service work done it only takes a few minutes to put it on the machine and actually check your alignment if it's good fantastic keep rolling on but if it's out obviously it's a great time to get it to get it done wiper blades another thing you know the weather is always hard on wiper blades going into the winter season you want to keep those windows clean you get a lot of road salt coming off the off the car in front of you a lot of mist and slush and all that stuff and freezing rain so you want those wiper blades good self great time to check the wiper blades so those are all things you can kind of check yourself great time to go around make sure all your bulbs are working in your car you know you can't see your brake lights when you're driving so great time for get someone out with you start run your lights for you check high beams and low beams and check your brake lights third brake light make sure all that stuff kind of working and if doing any of that stuff doesn't interest you you can definitely bring it in give us a call here in the service department or you can make an appointment online for a health check and we kind of go we go from bumper to bumper and we do a bunch of checks check your fluid and your brakes all that stuff so there's a few checks you can do yourself and like I say if you don't want to definitely make an appointment with us best thing to do tire season it ends up being one of those things where everyone wants to get them done at the same time so all of a sudden the first no fall hits you're calling around to your garage you're calling here looking to get it get it us to get that done for you and we're telling you it's two or three weeks out because we're so booked with appointments so a great time to call now or go online and book your appointment out there's there's nothing wrong with booking in a month or a month and a half out jot it down your calendar give yourself a reminder on your cell phone and you know you've got your appointment set so no matter what the weather's doing we can definitely get that done for you so this has been another edition of tech talk any comments or concerns drop it down below and we look forward to seeing you