Car care and maintenance: six tips for teens

Many teens know little or nothing about the basics of auto repair, an AutoMD.com survey finds. Since preventative car maintenance is important for safety, here are easy do-it-yourself auto repair and care tips for teens – and their parents: 

4. Don’t let your car run low on fuel

Most of today’s vehicles have fuel-injected engines that rely on in-tank electric pumps that use gas to cool and lubricate its components. Driving your fuel-injected engine frequently on fumes could cause hundreds of dollars in repairs, and leave you stranded on the side of the road. A good rule of thumb – keep the fuel level above a quarter tank to keep your car running well, and to avoid running out of gas!

Did you know? You don’t need to use the highest grade of gasoline for your car’s engine to perform its best. The variation in quality between different grades of gasoline today is very small, so don’t waste your money by filling up with premium gasoline unless your owner’s manual says specifically your car requires it.

4 of 6

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.