Create A Personalized Car Maintenance Schedule: Save With Custom Care Plans

While it is important to follow the manufacturer’s car maintenance schedule to keep your warranty coverage intact, that might not be enough to keep every vehicle running at its best.

After all, every driver is different, and so every car maintenance schedule will be different, too.

Read on to learn a few of the factors that can influence your car maintenance schedule, or contact your local TIRECRAFT to create a personalized plan today.

Different Drivers Have Different Car Maintenance Schedules

To illustrate how different driving habits can impact your car maintenance schedule, let’s talk about how short trips add extra wear and tear.

Some drivers live close to everything they need—their families, their work, their friends, and their favourite shops are all just around the corner, so they typically only drive for a few minutes at a time. This is very convenient, but all of these short trips can have a serious impact on your vehicle and optimal car maintenance schedule.

For starters, repeated short trips can increase your oil change frequency. Engine oil is a thick, slow-moving fluid that needs to heat up to work its best. Heat helps engine oil flow freely, so it can lubricate your internal components more efficiently. Heat also helps your oil rid itself of contaminants, such as moisture and combustion byproducts. But if you only make short trips with your vehicle, it may never reach its optimal operating temperature, which means contaminants are never “evaporated” out of the oil.

Short trips also demand more of your battery, since start-ups demand a lot of energy, and your alternator cannot recharge your battery if you’re only running the engine for a few minutes at a time.

Suppose two cars travel 5000 kilometers. One does it in a single marathon journey, only stopping for gas, while the other takes 2500 2-kilometer trips. Although the total distance traveled is the same, these drivers’ car maintenance schedules would look very different.

The marathon driver has minimal starter wear, the battery is fully charged, and the oil has been at its optimal operating temperature the entire time. In contrast, the start-and-stop driver has put 5000km into their vehicle without ever reaching the oil’s optimal operating temperature or giving their battery much time to recharge, and they’ve had to start their vehicle 2499 extra times!

Make no mistake: the odd short journey poses no problem, and it won’t make any difference for your car maintenance schedule. But if you’re spoiled with a quick commute, and most of your after-hours drives are short-and-sweet, you will need to change your oil and check your battery much more often than the average driver.

Some other factors that can affect your car maintenance schedule include:

• Road conditions—Rough roads eat up treads and take a serious toll on your steering and suspension system.
• Heavy loads—Heavy loads force your brakes to work harder and put more weight on your tires, which can accelerate tire pressure loss and tread wear.
• Choice of products—For example, tires wear at different rates, which is why they come with different tread life guarantees. Additionally, synthetic oils last much longer than traditional oils, so your choice of product will drastically affect your recommended service interval.

Create A Custom Car Maintenance Schedule: Contact TIRECRAFT

If you want to create a custom car maintenance schedule, get in touch with your local TIRECRAFT—it’s 100% free, and with 300+ locations around the country, help is easy to find.

Once we learn a bit about your vehicle, driving habits, local road conditions, and weather, we can create a custom service schedule that’s tailored to you, so you only pay for what you need, and no service needs go unmet. And we can help you stick to it, too, providing automatic service reminders and making it easy to cross off your entire to-do list under one roof.

Ready to get started? Your local TIRECRAFT is standing by to help!

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