One of the most important things that comes with owning a car is having access to the cars owners manual.

I would like to dedicate this article to walking you through how to use your cars owners manual.

What if I do not have one?

With the ways car manufacturers hide things on newer vehicles, I highly recomend if you do not have one to do a Google search and either print one out and carry it in the car or better yest find a place you can order one. It will be worth it's weight in gold.The cost is minimal and the first time you can not find that fuse that runs the tail lights that blew out, it will have paid for itself.

Why do I need it?

Your owners manual has all kinds of information in it from where to find and identify the fuse boxes to how much oil the motor holds, what size tires the car calls for, and when to perform scheduled maintenance.

It is literally loaded with just about all you need to maintain a vehicle, right down to how to reset your radio's clock after you accidentally left the headlights on and the battery went dead. ( Oh how many times have I been there. )

Also, have you ever tried to figure out how to reset that darn oil change reminder light? All the info is in the manual.

How do I use it?

In the back of the owners manual you will find an index that has a bunch of keywords in alphabetical order.

Say you want to find the fuse box look up the keyword " Fuse box" and it will give you the page number.

This information is priceless when you are sitting in a gas station in the middle of the night and you have no dash lights and can not for the life of you figure out where they put the darn fuse.

Also, I swear today's car manufacturers have a contest on who can hide the access to the darn tail light bulbs. and how do you get that 3rd brake light bulb out anyway.

As you can see, having a manual is a very important part of being prepared for the unexpected.

What else should I carry in my car?

I will be covering this in a future article so stay tuned. One quick tip: always have a good flashlight in the glove box. You will thank yourself sooner than you think. How many times have you said if only I had a light.

Being prepared for the unexpected will give you piece of mind and when something does go wrong, you will at least be able to have some options.

Feel free to share this article and leave any questions or comments below.

Happy Driving!