Everyone knows your car needs regular service, but why? Is it just a scare tactic to keep customers spending their hard-earned cash with their local garage, or does a car genuinely benefit from that regular health check? You need to make sure your car is spic and span to be driven around any area in UK be it Yorkshire, Scotland or busy roads of London.
Let us look at five important reasons why your car needs regular servicing.
Safety First
A serviced car is a safe car. A serviced car has had the filters changed, burnt-out fuses replaced and the screen-wash reservoir topped up. All of these features are small, but significant – often without their true impact ever being realized by the drivers. After all, being able to wash that squashed insect out of your eye-line does not automatically compute to your being able to see the erratic behaviour of the driver in the slow lane in time to anticipate his swerve into your path and slow down – thus avoiding a multi-car pile-up complete with injuries, fatalities and, at best, endless inconvenience and delays to your trip.
Maintains Value
Regular services maintain the value of your vehicle and this can boost your finances in three ways. Firstly, it keeps your car in great condition so you do not have to pay out for spares and labour. Secondly, a good service record ensures that you can get the top price for your car should you decide to sell it or trade it in. Finally, a careful record can help you to save money on your insurance policy – no small thing for many drivers. Insurers believe, with reason, that drivers who ensure they stick to the recommended service plan are more likely to be cautious and careful drivers – who will then not have any need to make a claim on their policy!
Economical
Getting your car regularly serviced is actually a saving in the long run. It can be hard to tell yourself this when you are scraping for enough money to meet your basic expenses and have enough left over for the service, but the cost of a service, with all the preventative actions that are performed during its commission, is almost nothing when compared with the cost of repairing or replacing your car following a breakdown of some kind.
Banish MOT Test Blues
Aligning your annual service (assuming you only drive enough to need one service per year) with your MOT test is an excellent way to make sure you sail through your MOT without any major or minor fails. The MOT test is a legal requirement, and checks for items that are often automatically covered by a major service. While services are not required by law, they can keep your car in a suitably roadworthy condition – which is required by law, as certified by the MOT certificate – so if you can persuade yourself that your annual service is as necessary as the MOT test, so much the better for your chances of success on MOT day.
If your vehicle is left for long periods of time, it can be worth having it checked out before any long drives, just to make sure that nothing untoward has occurred. A trusted garage for booking your car servicing in Pontefract is Reg Greenwood.
Keeps Your Car in Good Nick
As well as keeping your car legally compliant, a regular service keeps your car in great condition too. Small blemishes and faults are taken care of long before they have an impact on your driving, and well before they are serious enough to cause a raised judicial eyebrow, should the police pull you over during a road-block. The regular replacement of the various filters, clean or new spark plugs, and sharply tuned and responsive brakes are all signs of a car that is looked after. Not only will this deter thieves and vandals, who are attracted to shabby or dirty premises and cars alike, but it will reassure other road users that you are a safe and responsible driver: and they will treat you as such! Throw in some Private Number Plates as well, and you have made your car not only look great, but unique as well. If you want to get noticed by other petrol heads when driving around, these are certainly ways to do so.
Now you know why you really should get your car serviced regularly, make sure you know how often this should happen. Drivers who clock up a lot of miles should get a service done twice a year, or six-monthly, while those who are more fair weather drivers should adhere to an annual service.
