The costs of putting off auto repairs
Nobody likes unpleasant and costly surprises, and when they occur during a visit to the automotive repair shop, they typically wind up on our top 10 list of Things We Don’t Want to Have to Worry About Right Now. But for almost all vehicle maintenance and repair items, there are costs to putting things off until farther down the road.
Brakes: Good and reliable repair shops will always provide an indication of how much material is left on brake friction items during almost any routine service. If you’re a regular customer and they have a rough idea how far you travel between visits, they’ll usually provide a recommendation and estimate when the brake linings are low enough that they won’t make it to your next appointment.
It’s possible you’ll incur more parts and labour fees if you let things go until the pads wear away completely and start to grind into the discs. At that point, the calipers that activate the brakes will have their pistons extended past their maximum travel, which often causes them to seize.
By then you’d also have noticed your vehicle’s braking performance had greatly degraded, leaving you at risk in an emergency stop. And by the way, when brake pads get extremely thin, they lose almost all of their resistance to heat, leading them to wear at a much faster rate compared to when they were new and thicker.
Fluid leaks: If any type of vehicle is leaking hydraulic brake fluid and the owner can’t afford to fix it, it should be taken off the road and parked until the repairs can be made. Most brake-fluid systems have very small capacities, and the leak rate will vary depending on how often the brake pedal is applied. When you run out of fluid, you run out of brakes — enough said.
Leave an engine oil leak unattended and you risk major damage to the engine’s internals. Put off a powersteering leak and you risk permanently damaging the pump when the fluid runs too low. Say ‘Later!’ to a coolant leak and you face the possibility of major engine damage from overheating.
If your ride has a transmission-fluid leak and it loses enough of it, your trip will come to a sudden stop.
Air conditioning repairs: This category of repairs is probably the most deferred because it’s often expensive and in almost all cases the vehicle can be safely and reliably operated without them. But if you leave an A/C system devoid of refrigerant gas (and the lubricant it carries) for more than a few months, you risk having the compressor seize, along with any moving valves in the system. This can often more than double the cost of the original repair.