Guest post: Tips for automotive quick fixes and parts
Chances are at some point in your automotive life you’re going to break down. When that happens you probably will need a part (Or few) to keep your method of transport in running shape. The first thing to do should the worst happen is try to remain calm. I choose to perceive a breakdown as it happens as the furthest time it can possibly be before it happens again. Quirky huh? The point being, it isn’t the end of the world. Sadly, a lot worse things will happen to you during the course of your life, so try not to get so worked up about an automotive failure. So chin up! The following article is aimed at trying to keep the costs down and you on the road.
1) Welding
If you’re anything like me, you cannot weld. I would probably end up burning off the top of my fingers, so I cannot say it is something that has ever appealed to me. Which is a crying shame because it could save me a boatload of money. Recently I noticed my car sounded a little louder than it usually does. No, that was an understatement. It sounded like it had irritable bowel syndrome and it had just been to a mexican all you can eat car buffet. Luckily I passed a scrap yard on the way to my work, just a regular car breakers. I decided to pull over. But before I took my flatulent car into the shop, I googled exhaust prices + fitting on my phone, as I had a pretty good idea that was the cause of the problem. $107, was the general price of just the part. Anything I could haggle below this base price was a bonus. So anyway, I ask them politely to inspect the problem, they hoist the car up and as predicted it was the exhaust. I ask for the cheap option of just pasting it back together…It was a long time til payday. They say no, I start to expect their well drilled sales pitch to start picking apart my car and finding faults with it that were fictional. To my surprise they say they’ll just weld it back together…what’s more for free! Welding is a lot less time consuming than taking the part from the car, attaching a new one and all the other rigmarole that comes with calibrating a new exhaust. Maybe your experience won’t be as fortunate as mine, regardless, welding a broken part will always be cheaper than buying a new one unless you work in the trade.
2) Scrap
The first point had no influence on my decision to list this as item number two. Personally, I have had a few good experiences with Scrap car breakers. When I first started driving, I do what all young overzealous drivers do and crash into an ambulance. Really. I crashed into an ambulance. The car was in very bad shape but luckily there was no one in the back of the ambulance at the time! I needed to fix this before my parents found out, they would kill me. I had a minimum wage job at the time, so I had to get these parts dirt cheap. Armed with the determination of a boy you didn’t want a severe spanking and an almighty case of earache, I filled in a form on the world wide web listing the parts that were necessary…and there were a few. I had numerous calls from scrap yards, so many I could be ruthless with my haggling. Generally most people quoted £400 + Delivery and not colour matched, way too much for my crappy salary at the time. Cut a long story short, I managed to get all my parts delivered and with primer for a measly $137. Strangely they sent two lots of all the parts I needed too, crazy.
3) Polish
You’ve had your car a few years, you’ve bumped and brushed your fair share of inanimate objects and the time has finally come to get a new lick of paint. Unlike painting your house, car paint jobs should be exclusively left to the professionals. But perhaps there’s a cheaper way that you can get your car looking showroom standard once more. A great deal of scrapes don’t penetrate ALL of the layers of paint that your car has, and if that’s the case, you’re in luck. My friends, swear by products used to just touch up paintwork. The way products such as T-Cut works is by finely sanding down the blemished paintwork to uncover the untouched layer that is beneath. So with a little elbow grease you could save yourself anywhere upwards of $500+!
Written by Benet Thomas
