Drat that car! You go out and curse that car every morning, praying with one hand on the wheel and the fingers of the other hand crossed that the blasted thing will start and will actually chug its way all the way to your office. Maybe it is time for you to do a little car problem troubleshooting. There are two major ways you can do that.

If you are someone who likes to do most things for themselves, then you can do some of your car problem troubleshooting. If you have a working knowledge of car care tips, then you might know where you are going to start but if you are totally without a clue it might be a matter of doing a number of small repairs, one at a time so that you can rule out each of these parts. For instance, with your difficult to start car, you might say “battery.”

You go to the store and buy a new battery and watch while the sales staff comes out and pop it right in there. The next morning you walk out there, get in and start the car. Now, if the car starts right up then your car problem troubleshooting is over and done with it and successfully at that. On the other hand, if your car still goes chug, chug, clunk- you have to continue on the process.

How long will you go with your part by part car problem troubleshooting? That might depend on your own sick and twisted need to do this yourself, even though you are not at all qualified or trained to do so.

If you don’t want to spend the time or the money going piece by piece under your car’s hood then it is time for you to give it up and call a garage. The people in the first group are gasping at the expense about right now, but let us remind those folks that their hit or miss car problem troubleshooting has been costing them money. It has been costly in terms of the part they have bought and then found out that they did not need as well as the money to go back and forth to the car parts store. Factor in the time you have wasted and the expense goes way up. Out of sheer charity, we won’t factor in the humiliation factor of admitting that you just don’t know anything about cars at all.

There are some parts that go bad but mimic the behavior of others that have gone- car problem troubleshooting is not always cut and dried, even for an expert mechanic. But, even the greenest and newest of new mechanics can tell you that blindly replacing parts in hopes of accidentally repairing your issue will not get you anywhere except to the ATM to get more money for car parts that might or might not be to blame.