Albany Auto Repair

How To Get Your Car Ready For Back-To-School   It’s that time of the year again. School shopping, getting your kid signed up for classes, and getting everyone ready for another school year.    You don’t want to deal with car trouble too! Sometimes breakdowns happen, but there are a few things we can do to help keep that to a minimum.   Getting your car ready for the extra Back-to-School duties is important. The miles that usually come with school duties, or a new teen driver can put stress on your automobile.    You can start by washing your car. Not only will it be nice to have a clean, fresh car to start the school year off with, but it can help you identify issues you may not have noticed.    Along with washing it, you can replace wiper blades and fill the windshield washer fluid. You also want to make sure that you have a good roadside emergency kit and a good spare tire with the proper air pressure.   The rest of ... read more

Fuel system cleaners are more important than ever before with how complex modern fuel systems are these days.   That’s why we teamed up with BG Services to bring you the best chemicals to service your automobile!    Today we are going to talk about their Fuel System and Intake Services. The reason these services are needed is because carbon can build up in the upper part of the engine because most engines have the fuel injected directly into the engine cylinder vs fuel being injected into the upper intake like they used to be. Even then carbon would build up but not as quickly. When carbon builds up your engine can start to run rough, get poor mileage, and even loose power. Also the fuel we use matters. Some fuel can be pretty dirty and also build up junk in the fuel system.   The Platinum Fuel Service is designed to take care of this issue. By dissolving these build ups and deposits and burning them though the engine. This service is great for breathing ... read more

Why Does My Car Shake When I Brake? Usually that's caused by an issue in the brake system, which we discussed earlier in THIS BLOG. Warped brake rotors are usually the cause for a shake while braking. The reason a brake rotor becomes warped can be a few things. Holding your foot on the brakes for long periods of time, pushing very hard on your brakes, or even overloading your car or truck's weight rating can all cause excessive heat in your brake pads and rotors, which in turn warp your steel rotors.  What does warped mean? Normally a brake rotor is a nice flat surface that allows your brake pad to clamp down smoothly when braking. When excessive heat builds up on the rotor, the flat surface starts to form waves. Those waves are what we refer to when we say, “warped” rotors. Now when you step on the brake, the pads and rotors start to shake because the surface isn’t flat anymore.&n ... read more

New automobiles have so much technology in them, that it is very hard to find out what is wrong without needing some special tools. One of the tools commonly used is a scanner. As cars have advanced, so have the tools used to repair them. Before computers and advanced circuitry made its way into cars and trucks, a simple multimeter and a test light took care of most electrical issues in a vehicle.   Those days are long gone! Multimeters and test lights are still valuable tools, but they aren’t going to help with any computer issue. The nice thing about having so many computers in automobiles is when a scanner is used it can help speed up the diagnostic process.    When something goes wrong with the electrical system of a modern car, sometimes it will send an error message to the dash, but sometimes it won’t. That's where a scanner comes in. Scanners will help read error codes, clear error codes, and help a technician pinpoint a faulty sensor, wiring i ... read more

There are a lot of components that may cause your car to run poorly. It can be something simple or something deep within your engine. The heart of every car and truck is the engine.    The engine is what everything else in your car depends on to get from point A to point B. It is what makes the power to turn your wheels and send you down the road. Engine performance is measured by horsepower and torque.    Horsepower measures how quickly power is created, and torque measures how much power is made. And no, one horsepower is not equal to one horse.    Some people purchase their car based on those two performance numbers and usually enjoy their vehicle for more than just a mode of transportation. But even if you don’t care about the performance of your engine, you still need it to run properly; that’s why maintenance is important.    Oil, air, and fuel filters, along with fluid changes, are vital to keeping your engine running fo ... read more

Why does your A/C System keep failing?   Well there is probably a leak! The AC system in modern automobiles can get pretty complex but they all have some of the same fundamental components.    When a leak occurs it can be extremely hard to find. Thankfully we have some special tools to make that easier. On this 1997 Ford F-250 we had a leak that didn't show up with dye and the leak started all the sudden for the customer.   We started by hooking up our AC Servicing Machine to the truck to recover any feon left in the system and then put the system under a vacuum to test for leaks and see how big the leak is.   We were able to detect that there was a leak and it was rather large. But with visual inspection we couldn’t find anything. The customer let us know that nearly the entire system had been replaced last year.    We then filled the AC system with environmentally safe Nitrogen Gas and used soapy water in a spray bottle to cover ... read more

We have a lot going on, just like everyone else  2023 is hectic! So we do several things to help keep the ball rolling and our ducks in a row.   One of the reasons we have become one of the Top Shops in the country is that we set goals and plan to get there!   In the picture are a bunch of magnets and a whiteboard. Nothing too fancy, but it allows us to plan out everyone's day. That way, we can be as efficient as possible with our tech's time and yours!   As always, plans change; for example, if you can't make your appointment after all, that's ok because we can move the jobs around on this board, so there's no wasted time.   Goals are an essential part of our culture as well. We are constantly striving to improve our processes and abilities. Keeping track of where we have been and where we are going allows us to build a roadmap to success.   We also use a few pieces of software to keep track of your repair progress and notify ... read more