Gilbert Auto Repair

High AZ gas prices have hit most of our budgets here in Gilbert. If increased fuel costs are consuming a bigger portion of your budget, you may be tempted to skimp in some other areas – like scheduled maintenance. According to AZ news reports and industry studies, you're not alone. Nine out of ten personal vehicles on the road have at least one maintenance or repair item that hasn't been . Some of these items are serious safety concerns. Others are just more likely to affect the cost of operating your vehicle. In this area, we can take a lesson from professional vehicle owners in the Gilbert area: fleet owners and operators like trucking companies and Gilbert delivery services. Because their livelihood depends on it, they have gotten scheduled maintenance down to a science. And the last thing they skimp on is regular maintenance. Why is that? Well, for one thing they know that routine maintenance prevents repairs and costly breakdowns. They also know t ... read more

Answer: Well, the dirtier your fuel system is, the bigger the improvement you’ll see in performance and fuel economy.  But don’t wait until your engine is running poorly, you’ve wasted hundreds of dollars in gas or maybe even damaged your fuel injectors and catalytic converter.   Look, gasoline is a petroleum-based product and will leave some residue, gum and varnish along the way.  Some of that can find its way into your fuel injectors and interfere with their job.  The fuel injectors do just that – inject fuel into your engine.  They spray a precise amount of fuel, at a precise time, in a precise pattern, at a precise pressure.  When they are dirty this precision just isn’t possible.  So, your engine can run rough.  Also, carbon deposits build up on valves and in the combustion chamber.  Fuel economy suffers and performance is degraded.  These poor conditions allow excess unburned fuel to pass out thro ... read more

There are a lot of misconceptions about fuel grades – and by fuel grades I mean the octane rating. With names like “Standard," “Super," “Plus," and “Premium,” it’s no wonder that people associate the octane rating/grade with quality. Octane ratings are expressed as a number that typically ranges from 87 to 91 at the pump. The number does not mean “better” but rather signifies the appropriateness of a particular grade of fuel for a particular engine. Octane is a measure of gasoline’s ability to resist igniting before the spark plug goes off. Gasoline and air are compressed in the engine’s combustion chamber. When the pressure reaches a certain point, the gas will spontaneously combust. You don’t want that to happen; you want the spark plug to ignite the fuel at precisely the right time. When the gas combusts prematurely, the piston will try to go down while it is still being pushed up by the crank sh ... read more