Monthly Archives: March 2015

A Cold Day In St. Peter

Most St. Peter car owners worry about a breakdown or a tire blowout on a busy MN highway but don’t worry too much about failure of their air conditioning system. A breakdown at the side of the road can be a miserable and dangerous affair during Cleveland rush hour, but so can a long ride in a hot minivan.

A lot of St. Peter drivers judge their vehicles’ air conditioning systems as “non-essential” and so may neglect them in favor of repairs and maintenance that keeps the minivan running. But preventive maintenance of an air conditioning system is simple and inexpensive, while auto a/c repair can be very costly in St. Peter.

Saint Peter auto owners should have the refrigerant in their air conditioning system checked regularly to ensure it is adequate and clean. Air conditioning systems often fail because air and water have contaminated the refrigerant. Air reduces the efficiency of the refrigerant, and water can cause rusting of the system’s components. If your refrigerant is contaminated, the system should be evacuated and recharged. This will actually extend the life of your air conditioning system, preventing expensive repairs, and keep it at peak performance.

Inadequate refrigerant indicates a leak in the air conditioning system. Over time, seals in the system can crack, causing the refrigerant to leak out, reducing the efficiency of the system. Replacing these seals will keep your minivan air conditioning system at its best, and, again, will help you avoid more pricey repairs.

At Autotronics of ST Peter, we advise our St. Peter customers to run their air conditioner periodically in the winter. This will keep the seals from drying out and cracking, saving them the inconvenience of this relatively minor repair.

Check with your minivan owner’s manual or with your St. Peter technician for information about how often your minivan air conditioning system should be serviced.

Another piece of good auto advice: if your minivan air conditioner isn’t working or is starting to show signs of breakdown, NOW is the time to get it fixed at Autotronics of ST Peter in St. Peter. Waiting will only increase the chances that you are in for major repairs and an expensive repair bill.

On a final note, if you own an older vehicle, you should check into upgrading the air conditioning system. Vehicles manufactured before 1993 often contained a refrigerant known as Freon. The manufacture of Freon was outlawed in 1993, leading to an ever-dwindling supply, which leads to an ever-steeper price for St. Peter car owners in MN. If your vehicle still uses Freon, you should have it retrofitted to use the new, EPA-approved R134A refrigerant. The retrofit will actually pay for itself by reducing the cost to recharge the refrigerant in your minivan.

Remember, preventive maintenance — of your entire car — will keep you on the road. And, in this case, it will help you keep your cool!

A Cold Day in St. Peter ? Air Conditioning Service at Autotronics of St. Peter

Most St. Peter drivers worry about a breakdown or a tire blowout on a busy MN highway, but don’t worry too much about failure of their air conditioning system. A breakdown on the side of the road can be a miserable and dangerous affair during St. Peter rush hour, but so can a long ride in a hot vehicle.

A lot of St. Peter drivers judge their vehicles’ air conditioning systems as “non-essential” and so may neglect them in favor of repairs and maintenance that keep the vehicle running. But preventive maintenance of an air conditioning system is simple and inexpensive, while auto a/c repair can be very expensive.

St. Peter drivers should have the refrigerant in their air conditioning system checked regularly to ensure it is adequate and clean. Air conditioning systems often fail because air and water have contaminated the refrigerant. Air reduces the efficiency of the refrigerant, and water can cause rusting of the system’s components. If your refrigerant is contaminated, the system should be evacuated and recharged. This will actually extend the life of your air conditioning system, preventing repairs, and keep it at peak performance.

At Autotronics of St. Peter, we advise our St. Peter customers to run their air conditioner periodically in the winter. This will keep the seals from drying out and cracking, saving them the inconvenience of this relatively minor repair.

Check with your vehicle owner’s manual or with your friendly service advisor at Autotronics of St. Peter for information about how often your vehicle air conditioning system should be serviced.

Autotronics of St. Peter
111 Jefferson Avenue
St. Peter, MN 56082
507.934.9290
http://autotronicsstpeter.com

What is That? Check Engine Light Service At Autotronics of ST Peter

Okay. You went to your local St. Peter car wash and while your minivan was under the dryer, the check engine light started flashing. Panic! What did you just do? Something is seriously wrong with the minivan! You head for the nearest St. Peter service station, but on the way, the check engine light stops flashing, and just glows red. Hmm. Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem. You decide to wait until payday to take your minivan in to get serviced. In the meantime, the check engine light goes off. What? You decide the light must be faulty, or that when it comes on it doesn’t mean anything, or that it’s just in your minivan as some sort of scam to get you to pay for unnecessary expensive repairs. You’re glad you didn’t take your car to the St. Peter repair shop and resolve to ignore that engine light in the future.

Whoa! Let’s look at what really happened. Your minivan was under an air dryer. Your air intake sensor measured too much air running through the engine. It sent its report to the engine computer, where a warning was triggered: there shouldn’t be that much airflow when the minivan engine is idling. This is a serious problem that could cause permanent engine damage. Warning! The check engine light starts flashing, letting you know you need to take immediate action to prevent that damage.

You drive out from under the dryer, and the air intake sensor sends a new message to the computer. The computer realizes that everything is normal and tells the check engine light to stop flashing. The minivan doesn’t need immediate attention; but there was a problem, and it should be checked out by your service advisor. After a few days the computer senses that the problem is gone, so it turns off the warning light.

You may think this story illustrates the uselessness of a check engine light, but you should remember that a computer can’t think for itself, it can only follow its programming. It doesn’t know the difference between a car wash air dryer and a serious malfunction in your minivan engine. That doesn’t make it useless. It just means you have to be the smart one.

Being smart doesn’t mean ignoring your minivan check engine light. It lets you know when something is wrong, and you can prevent a lot of damage to your vehicle by paying proper attention to it.

Your engine computer is constantly collecting data about what is going on inside your minivan engine. It knows what parameters are normal, and when a reading may indicate a problem. It uses the check engine light to let you know when something isn’t right. It then stores a code in its memory that a service professional can retrieve that indicates which reading was abnormal.

The technician uses this code as a starting place to find out what’s wrong with your minivan. It’s like going to the doctor with a fever. The fever is the reading that is abnormal — your temperature is too high — but the doctor still has to figure out what’s causing it. It’s probably an infection, but what kind? Sinus infection? Appendicitis? Flu? The problems and their solutions are quite different. But a fever also tells a doctor what’s NOT wrong with you. Fevers don’t accompany stress headaches, ulcers or arthritis, so there’s no sense in testing for those conditions.

Your St. Peter technician responds to a trouble code in your minivan’s computer in the same way. The code doesn’t say exactly what’s wrong, but it does give the technician a good indication of where to start looking —and where he/she doesn’t need to look.

Now, you wouldn’t consider diagnosing yourself with a serious medical problem; good medical advice — unless you’re a doctor. So you shouldn’t consider trying to diagnose your vehicle’s troubles by yourself; good auto advice — unless you’re a trained mechanic.

There are cheap scanners available on the market and some St. Peter auto parts stores offer to read trouble codes from your minivan engine computer for you, but these are really not good alternatives to taking your vehicle to a qualified service center such as Autotronics of ST Peter in St. Peter. Your engine’s computer has both short-term and long-term memory, and there are some codes that are specific to a particular make of vehicle. Cheap scanners can’t read an engine computer’s long-term memory nor can they interpret manufacturer – specific codes. That’s why manager Arvin Vander Plas at Autotronics of ST Peter spends a lot of money on high-end diagnostic tools.

It’s as if you had a choice between a doctor who had a tongue depressor and a thermometer and one who had all the latest medical diagnostic equipment on hand. Honestly, which would you choose?

Getting your codes read at your Cleveland auto parts store isn’t really a money-saver, either, unless you’re a trained mechanic. You’ll end up with a code that tells you a symptom. What usually happens next is that the Cleveland parts store sells you something that directly relates to the symptom. It may or may not fix the problem. It’s actually cheaper to just go to the Autotronics of ST Peter in St. Peter and get things fixed right the first time.

Remember, a fever can indicate a sinus infection or appendicitis. An antibiotic may be okay for that sinus infection, but it won’t help your appendicitis. Is it really wise to wait around to see if the antibiotic helps when you might have appendicitis?

Part of good car care is knowing where you can get a problem fixed, and fixed right. Preventive maintenance goes a long way to keeping you out of the repair shop, but eventually, we will all have a problem that needs fixing. Let’s do it right the first time at Autotronics of ST Peter. In the long run, it’s actually the less pricey choice.