Regular tune-ups are part of maintaining a car to keep it in top shape. If you don’t want to end up looking for someplace to sell your junk car, you better start figuring out how to take better care of your car.
One indicator that there’s a problem with your car is if you’ve been experiencing frequent stalls for the past few days (or weeks). If that’s the case, you don’t need to panic — your car is just in bad need for a tune-up.
If you don’t have the money to go to a car shop to have your engine fixed, here are simple to-do steps you could follow in order to fix your car yourself. These are minor tweaks you can do on the system to improve your car’s performance and stop those annoying stalls.
With this know-how, you won’t need to sell your junk car at the slightest problem you encounter.
Diagnose Your Problem
A car stall is usually caused by a fuel or electrical problem. If your fuel gauge shows that you have enough fuel and the car still stalls, it’s either you have a leak in the fuel system or your car’s battery is shot and you don’t have enough electrical charge to ignite the fuel.
If your car stalls when you’re travelling along steep slopes, it can be an indicator that your fuel filter is clogged. If that’s the case, you will simply need to buy a replacement for the filter.
Among other tune-ups you can do is adjusting the timing of your car. This is the fix you need if your car stalls even when idle.
If your car model has a distributor, you can change its rotor, plugs and wires. This can help if your car has an electrical problem. Cars that sputter off after the engine is switched off indicate that the engine is a carburetor type with an idle speed adjustment set too high.
Fixing It Up
You can do any of the minor tweaks to your car’s engine and parts yourself. Once you have correctly identified the source of your car stalling problem, you can now make the necessary adjustments to fine-tune your car.
However, if you have already changed your car’s electrical wiring and plugs, or replaced your fuel filter and the problem persists, this might indicate an uncommon problem which might be causing your car to stall. If that’s the case, you’d be better off approaching mechanics who know their way around a car. In fact, most modern car models are computer-controlled, and tune-ups might require specialized care and handling.