Owning a vehicle does come with its perks and challenges. While your car makes it easier for you to get around instead of relying on the local transportation, it could have a high maintenance cost if you are guilty of having the following bad driving habits. 

Keeping your foot on the clutch when not needed

A clutch is an integral part of a car with manual transmission. If you are in the habit of keeping your car in gear at a stop signal or resting your foot on it while driving, you may want to reconsider doing so. Pressing your clutch while it’s in gear means you are pressing three different components; the bearing, the spring and the diaphragm into each.

This practice wears out the clutch way before it completes its lifespan. Same goes for when you are resting your foot on the clutch while driving, you are cutting its life short which is eventually going to put the strain on your wallet as being a major component, a clutch is not cheap to repair or replace.

It literally takes a second to put the car into gear. So, you could save yourself a lot of trouble by being more attentive the next time you are out on the road.   

Leaving the car in gear instead of handbrake

You might have seen videos of people running behind their vehicles due to a failed handbrake and somehow we all find such videos amusing but that’s the last thing you would want to experience yourself.

You might believe that leaving your car in gear can make up for your faulty handbrake but that’s not true. Driving a vehicle with weak or no handbrake is unsafe to begin with and using your gear in its stead is only going to make it worse.

When you leave your car in a gear on a slope, the entire weight of the car falls on to the gear box which is not designed to consistently handle such loads. It costs a lot less to replace a handbrake than the entire transmission system. 

Playing with your steering wheel while the car is parked

When was the last time you saw kids fiddling with a steering wheel in a parked car? While it might seem like a fun activity for kids, it could be damaging for your tires and we all know car tires in Kuwait don’t exactly come cheap.

Frequent use of brakes while driving downhill

Driving downhill is a tricky business especially if you are not indigenous to a mountainous or hilly area. One thing you should not do while driving downhill is excessively use your brakes. Keeping your foot on the brakes in such situations would cause them to overheat which could result in brake failure.

Keep your car in a lower gear while driving downhill to prevent it from gaining high speed while going downhill. 

Letting your tank run empty before refueling

Your fuel tank is one of many components that are not visible on the outside but your car cannot simply drive without them. Luckily we have the fuel gauge inside the car to tell us how much fuel is left in the tank. It’s a good practice to refill the tank once the warning indicator lights up. 

There are several reasons that you should do so. Firstly you can never know for sure how far the reserve fuel would take you before your car comes to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Secondly, your tank has all sorts of impurities and debris sitting at its bottom. Letting your tank run almost empty means when the fuel is pumped into the engine the debris particles end up choking and damaging the engine. 

Ignoring suspicious sounds

It’s not uncommon for a car to produce strange sounds as it ages but a lot of times ignoring these sounds could lead to a bigger problem. Whether it’s a creaking sound coming from the suspension or some strange engine noise, get it checked at the earliest to avoid mishaps on the road.

Continental Tires Kuwait always encourages its customers to maintain and care for their vehicles to avoid expensive repairs and trouble on the road.