An Oil Change Starts Auto Responsibility

When you turned sixteen, seventeen or maybe even eighteen you finally got your driver's license. You got your driver's licenses and began driving your parents' or grandparent's car to school and back and to the occasional dance, movie, or friend's house on the weekend. I don't know if you remember, but you were constantly told by the adults who paid the car notes and insurance for those vehicles that needed to help take care of it if you wanted to drive it. You were told to wash it on the weekends; you were told to use some of your allowance or mall job money to pay for gas; and you were told about cleaning out your fast food containers, backpack and friends each day. They even asked you to help with a home oil change or two and several tire changes. Your family was trying to prepare you for the responsibility of car ownership with the repetition of some of the basics.

An oil change is just a part of those necessary things that adults are required to have performed on their vehicle in order to maintain their transportation. An oil change is the most frequent maintenance that comes up throughout your car's life, so you have to take it seriously. As a responsible adult, the easiest way to keep up with your car's fluid checks, replacements, and other inspections and repairs, without anyone reminding you, is to keep it on a calendar. When you stay even a little organized you can take your car to the nearest professional garage for full service. The performance of regular maintenance also keeps you out of those dreaded moments of sudden sounds, movements, and breakdowns that cause undue stress.

Your parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, whoever taught you how to drive and let you borrow their car, were only trying to prepare you for supporting and caring for your own property. They had already learned from experience that regular maintenance of self and property is how you keep them both in tip top condition. You can't just get in your car, cross your fingers and go everyday and expect it to keep going on year after year. The longer you wait between fluid changes, replacements, and other forms of preventative maintenance the more the old lubricants, drying containers, and corroded oils the more damage can be done to your vehicle from the inside out. Oil changes, professional inspections and tune ups are required, but they can only happen when you take it seriously. Your family will be proud.