Automotive News & Information - A-Ford-Able Auto Repair & Tire Service

Once you know what's in your transmission, and what’s connected to it, it’s much easier to understand how it works. Let's take a look at how it all comes together. At A-Ford-Able Auto Repair & Tire Service in St Augustine, FL, we want to make sure you know how your car works so you can keep it in great condition.

Did you know that airbags weren't mandatory safety equipment in passenger vehicles until 1997? Now, you'll find them in well over 100 million cars and trucks on the road. Since their invention, airbags, along with the seat belt, have played a major role in reducing the number of injuries and deaths in traffic collisions.

Are you considering upgrading to a better transmission on your classic? A-Ford-Able Auto Repair & Tire Service in St Augustine, FL can help. If you drive something old, there’s a good chance it has fewer gears than you’d like. With all the 6 and 8 speed transmissions on the road today, it’s hard to imagine that just a few decades ago we were getting by with just 2 or 3 gears. These days, there are some simple swap options - here are some things for you to consider.

Have you always wondered what a spark plug does? Our team here at A-Ford-Able Auto Repair & Tire Service is here to help you out. It's simple in theory but does quite a lot of work for such a small piece of equipment. Your spark plug forces electricity to arc across a gap like a bolt of lightning at high voltage and fits into your engine's cylinder head, where it “sparks” to ignite the fuel and creates combustion within your engine. Without it, you wouldn't be able to drive your car or truck.

Injectors are a primary component on any diesel engine, old or new. Whether you drive a Chevrolet, Ford, or Dodge pickup, clean and fully operational injectors are an absolutely essential aspect of maintaining an efficient and powerful engine. At A-Ford-Able Auto Repair & Tire Service in St Augustine, FL, we offer a variety of injector solutions, from cleaning them, to diagnosing problematic injectors, to replacing them.

In the diesel world, "blow-by" is a term you're bound to run across at some point if your line of work involves diesel-powered vehicles of any kind. What is blow-by, what causes it, and how concerned should you be? At A-Ford-Able Auto Repair & Tire Service in St Augustine, FL, our fleet maintenance and diesel technicians see it on a regular basis. Here we'll take a quick look at blow-by, correcting it, and preventing it.

What is Blow-By? - Diesel blow-by is a term that describes an event of lost compression into the crankcase. Blow-by occurs whenever a burnt or unburnt fuel and air mixture escape from the cylinder and past the piston rings and into the crankcase. In a perfect world, the piston would be sealed tightly in the cylinder, able to move up and down but keeping all the air and fuel and exhaust that enters or exits the cylinder during the combustion process out of the crankcase. As you'll see, this perfect world doesn't exist, but it is important to minimize the amount of blow-by in a diesel engine.

The hydraulic system in your transmission is responsible for telling the mechanical components what to do, and when to do it. In order to better understand how your transmission works, it’s important to understand the mechanical components of it.

If you drive a vehicle with a manual transmission, you know that clutch replacement can be an expensive and time-consuming job. A-Ford-Able Auto Repair & Tire Service in St Augustine has some tips to keep your clutch replacements as infrequent as possible.