Top Reasons to Never Perform Your Own Car Repair

The cost of car repair can easily be hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on what you need repaired. With the plethora of videos on YouTube and the ease of shopping for parts online, you might be tempted to learn how to do the repair yourself to save some money.

After you’ve been in an accident, you might not try to replace your own windshield or replace a body panel, but you might be tempted to fix the paint or replace the bumper. Whether you are having engine trouble or you have some body damage from a fender bender, it’s always best to call a professional for car repair in Cincinnati.

Here are a just a few of the reasons why you should never perform your own car repairs:

You Can’t Get the Right Parts

Performing car repairs isn’t always as easy as heading down to your closest automotive store and picking up the parts. Some cars require special parts that even professional technicians have to order from the manufacturer. Even the dealer doesn’t always have the right parts on hand.

Ordering these parts isn’t as easy as going online or searching ebay for them. Some suppliers will only sell them to dealers or qualified automotive technicians. If you can’t get the right parts, you can’t fix the car properly. Not all vehicles will accept interchangeable parts. Some cars require specific parts to achieve specific performance. Failing to use that parts will either cause your car not to run or it will lead to big problems later.

You Can’t Perform the Work to Factory Specifications

Automotive technicians receive specialized training and have years of experience making car repairs. Even they have to get specialty training to fix certain kinds of vehicles. As an amateur, you just don’t have the skills or experience to make repairs to the factory specifications. No amount of videos or online tutorials can help you get past that.

The more sophisticated your vehicle, the more important it is for it be repair to factory specifications. However, even beaters should have work performed to this level to ensure top performance and to lengthen the life of the car.

You Can’t Match the Paint

You can buy a paint repair kit at many automotive stores or through online retailers. These kits purport to make fixing small scratches and chips easy, and they include the paint and all the materials you will need. However, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to truly match the paint of your car with the kit.

Today’s paint finishes comes in a wide range of colors, many of which are special to the manufacturer. The paint colors are combined with special finishes, such as pearlescent or glossy. The results are achieved through a mix of paint additives and coatings. Some paint jobs even have a bit of sparkle to them. Take a close look at your paint: You are likely to see slight traces of glitter mixed in.

You cannot replicate these finishes on your own. The best case scenario is that you’ll get the color right but the repaired area will seem flat against the rest of the car. The worst case is that the repair will look worse than the damage. It is also very difficult to get a smooth finish when you apply the paint. Even if you could get the paint to match, you’d likely end up with lumpy paint that visibly stood out from the surface.

Leave the paint repairs to the professionals. They’ll be able to perfect match the paint so that no one would ever know that it was repaired.

You Could Cause More Problems

You may try to do a simple oil change, but you try to loosen the wrong nut and you accidentally cause a leak of some other essential fluid. Or maybe you are trying to replace a spark plug but you slip and cut a wire. There are hundreds of things that could go wrong when you’re under the hood, and many of them can put you and your car in danger.

Don’t take any chances. Hire a professional for your car repair so that you can be sure the work is done right. You won’t have any costly accidents, and you won’t be putting your safety at risk.

You Could Miss Problems

If you are looking up how to perform car repairs, you are likely trying to correct a specific problem. Why is your engine rattling? Why aren’t your headlights coming on? Why are your brakes squealing? You find the information on how to replace your brakes or to change a belt and you think the problem is solved.

What you might not realize is that there is an underlying electrical problem causing your headlights to short out, or that it’s not just an old belt that’s causing the rattling, but that you also have a cracked manifold. Because you don’t have the extensive training and experience that a professional does, you are more likely to overlook problems. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know.

A professional experienced in car repair in Cincinnati can diagnose your car to discover all issues contributing to the problem. That way, the repair will take care of all lingering issues so you don’t have to head back in another month or so for more repairs.

You Could Void Your Warranty

Your warranty can help you save thousands of dollars by covering the cost of certain repairs. If you attempt to repair something that is not covered by your warranty, you could still void your warranty. In many cases, your warranty requires that you have your car serviced at the dealer or by another authorized service provider. Failing to abide by the terms of the warranty can void it.

By trying to save yourself some money on repairs that the warranty doesn’t cover, you could end up costing yourself thousands of dollars on repairs that the warranty should have covered. Don’t risk this valuable coverage. Just take your car to a professional.

You Could Make Your Car Weaker

Attempting to repair body damage to your car could leave it weaker and less safe. For example, you may have what appears to be a simple dent in one of the side panels or the fender or bumper. Instead of taking the car in for repair, you just pop the dent out from the other side, either using your hand or using a mallet or other tool. The panel may look as good as new, so you think the problem is solved.

However, that panel could now be structurally weakened, and the next time you are hit in the same place, the damage could be much worse. You could also become more seriously injured because the car does not provide you as much protection. A professional can evaluate the damage and can replace the panel completely, ensuring that the car is just as strong as the day you bought it.

Never risk your safety or the value of your car by attempting to perform repairs yourself. Always seek out professional car repair in Cincinnati such as the experienced technicians at McCluskey Chevrolet. We performed the highest quality work using the best parts and meeting factory specifications.