Wilmington Auto Repair

What do mud, bird droppings and frost all have in common? When they’re covering your windshield, they can temporarily obscure your view of the road, leaving you driving blind.  And when you can’t see the road clearly ahead of you, it can be really scary.  That’s one of the reasons it’s important to maintain your windshield cleaning system, which includes your wipers, blades and washers.  They’re three vital components that work together to ensure you’re clearly seeing what’s going on with the road and drivers around you. Your wipers are doing the physical work on the surface of your windshield’s glass.  The rubber or silicone is what touches the surface of the glass, and after time and exposure to the elements, wiper blades can get brittle, lose their flexibility, rip and tear to the point where they simply can’t clear the glass.   What holds the wiper blades close to the glass is important, too.  Conve ... read more

It’s always a good idea to keep your cool, and that’s especially true when it comes to some components of your vehicle.  One is the engine.  It’s hot under that hood thanks to the mini explosions that are occurring in the internal combustion engine when it’s running.  Your vehicle has a cooling system which takes the heat out of the engine by moving a liquid coolant to a spot where the heat can escape (the radiator).  The part that keeps that coolant moving is the water pump, which could probably be more accurately called the coolant pump since water is only one component of the fluid that does the cooling. If the water pump fails, your engine can overheat quickly, and that can cause significant and expensive damage to your vehicle.  Water pumps can be driven by belts (mechanical) or electricity (electric). Your vehicle’s manufacturer recommends mileage intervals when you should consider replacing your water pump even if seems to b ... read more

One of the hardest working components of your vehicle is its transmission, shifting gears up and down when you need it to.  The transmission is vital to your vehicle driving properly, and if you start to see signs of problems in it, it’s best to have them fixed earlier rather than later. (Since nearly all new vehicles have automatic transmissions, we’re leaving manual transmissions for another time since their issues are different.) One sure sign your transmission has a problem is when you notice it’s not changing gears like it used to.  Or perhaps you observe when it does change gears, they slip when you are driving.  Gear change problems could be as simple as something wrong with your transmission fluid, but it could be more serious, so get this one checked out soon. Another trouble sign is when you feel your transmission shaking and vibrating as you’re accelerating, decelerating or trying to maintain a constant speed. Hearing odd noises when yo ... read more

When you are comfortably headed down the road, you may not realize how many of the imperfections in the driving surface are being smoothed out, so you hardly feel most of them.  You can thank your shock absorbers for a lot of that comfort, and it’s important to make sure you keep your shocks in good shape. Newer vehicles have shock absorbers in the back wheels with another shock absorbing assembly in the front which may also have a spring component as well, called struts.   Shock absorbers not only keep your vehicle traveling smoothly and comfortably, but they also contribute to its stability.  Increased stability will help you be able to handle sharp turns and sudden stops more easily.  Shocks also prolong the life of your tires because they’ll grip the road more tightly.  And a nice side benefit of that is your tires should last longer.   After months hitting a lot of bumps on uneven road surfaces, eventually your shock absorbers will start t ... read more