Spring has nearly sprung; are your brakes still broken? The weather is improving daily, so now’s the time to get your daily driver and weekend warrior back to 100%. Getting at those repairs and upgrades early before the summer days and track events are here is critical, whether you’re working on your tow rig or wheel-to-wheel racer. To make it easier on you, we’re bringing you deals on some essential maintenance items. What do you need?
Water and winter weather wreaks havoc on the pavement as rain freezes and expands, breaking up the smooth tarmac into a near match of the moon’s surface. Wheels and tires manage the brunt of the rough terrain, but your dampers and bushings are also put under a fair amount of stress. Each component has a long lifespan, but the abuse that broken roads exert on them will cause them to wear prematurely.
Driving around with the clunks and knocks of worn suspension is OK for a while, but leaving damaged bushings and ball joints in your suspension for extended periods is asking for trouble. Their lack of effectiveness will negatively affect your handling, causing vagueness in steering and a twitchy, unpredictable nature through the corners. It will even affect your tires, potentially causing them to wear out quickly thanks to the rapidly changing alignment specs the worn parts allow.
Don’t let damaged parts cost you even more time and money, replace them during this Spring Brake Sale.
If you aren’t sure why you need to replace the worn pads and rotors on your tow rig, then you probably shouldn’t be towing anything. While your tires provide the grip against the road, the coefficient of friction between them and the road isn’t enough to stop anything, much less a fully loaded truck and trailer. Replacing your pads and rotors on time is the best way to ensure you’ll be safe to and from anywhere you’re headed.
However, there's other brake-related maintenance to do, too. Brake fluid is critical to any car’s stopping power and loses effectiveness when worn. Boiled or heavily used fluid won’t hold up at its advertised temperature any longer, and months of sitting can invite water into the fluid, further lowering its boiling point. That’s a nightmare scenario for any high-performance driver, so take the time now to replace your brake fluid and ensure you can keep braking late for the 2023 season.
Few things are more cathartic in life than the first hellacious burnout of spring. Although, too many of those, and you’ll be smoking your clutch more than your tires. Either way, a fresh clutch and flywheel are lovely, but replacement isn’t the quickest or easiest repair on any vehicle. Getting after it early while there’s still time before events just makes sense, and there’s nothing like getting a discount on parts.
Whether you’re sitting in traffic or carving your favorite canyon road, having maximum confidence in your steering on track is a must. Even at neighborhood speeds, tight steering and a good front-end feel can help you navigate the most intimate parking spaces. The lack of components in a vehicle’s steering system means that each makes up a large portion of the job, but it also means fewer to replace. Inner and outer tie rods are inexpensive, and you can do the job yourself in just a few hours. Why not wipe out that dead spot in transition before it’s too nice to be lying under your car?
Although overlooked by flashier areas of the car, your drivetrain and axles need plenty of maintenance. The CV joints, center support bearings, and giubos within our favorite models are all eventual maintenance items, so they’ll need to be replaced at some point. If you have around 100,000 miles on the odometer and aren't sure whether they’ve been replaced, it would be a great idea to at least take a look at their condition.
Ripped CV joints are a common mess-inducing nightmare but relatively simple to fix. Broken CVs can break off completely, whipping around their respective wheel well and slamming into everything in their range. Cooked center support bearings can seize, and giubos can rip, allowing the drive shaft to damage the chassis. A few minutes under the car with a couple of sockets and some new parts is all it takes to prevent that from happening this driving season.
If you haven’t found what you’re looking for through this handy guide, well, fear not. There are plenty more parts on sale for all sorts of areas of your car. Head over to fcpeuro.com and shop the spring brake sale to finally catch up on all the maintenance that the winter weather has put off.
