Tips on Quicky Car Repair Techniques

Water Dispersant spray is some of the best stuff ever made for automotive use. About twice a year go around the vehicle and just apply a spritz to the ignition lock, the door latches, the door hinges and don't forget the hood hinges, the hood latch mechanism, hatch back hinges and latches or the tailgate. This type of penetrating oil is also very useful for soaking a stuck bolt or nut, softening tar and adhesives and the remains of bugs of the car body.

Sometimes you find you have a need for a fuse that has blown, you don't have a replacement and what was a minor annoyance has suddenly become something of an emergency. Have a close look at the fuse panel. Look for a system like the gauges or radio that has a similar value fuse and yank that fuse out and put it into the slot where you need it. It won't hurt things for the short time you will use it until you can replace it. The main thing here is that you do not want to use a fuse that is smaller in value than the one you took out. A larger value fuse is ok but you want to replace it as soon as possible. The fuses are important, and the value is important as well. You will find the value of the fuse imprinted on the fuse itself and usually next to the slot the fuse came from. Put in too small a value fuse and it will blow in a short time if not instantly. Whereas a larger value fuse may not blow in an otherwise healthy circuit, but it is possible it may not blow at all if it should need to. Thus creating a fire and damage hazard.

Has your rear window defroster stopped working? If you go to your local auto parts store you can ask for a repair kit. This kit is a tiny little bottle with an applicator brush inside. The mixture inside is a combination of a conductor like powered copper and an adhesive. After insuring that the fuse to the defroster hasn't blown you want to inspect the grid on the rear window. Look for scratches and missing pieces in that grid. This grid is placed on the window in a parrallel circuit pattern. This means that even if one or several of the grid lines is broken the other intact grid lines will still work. The job of the grid of course is too heat up and melt frost, ice and snow from the glass. When you find a suspect spot in the grid as you inspect it line for line and end for end, just dab a little of the repair paste in that spot. Go over all the lines and when finished you can use a razor blade tool to dress up any out of line smears that may have occurred. Let it all dry and hopefully you will have repaired the problem.

Chrome cleaner. It is not just for chrome anymore. Ever notice how those nice clear headlight lenses get scarred up over the years or turn yellow? You can remove those minor but annoying scratches using chrome cleaner. Use a soft cloth and dab the cleaner on the cloth and methodically working top to bottom scrub that lens. That chrome cleaner contains a very mild abrasive and it will wear down the plastic and erase those scratches. But use care here, you do not want to use any sort of power drill or any other powered rotary tool. Those lenses are thin and you can burn through one quite easily.You may have to go over each lens a couple times to remove the scratches. When you are satisfied with the results use a soap and water mix to wash all traces of the chrome cleaner off of the headlights. Then apply a wax that offers ultraviolet light protection. This will help in stopping the lens from turning yellow.