Allen Auto Repair

LUCAS residents know that engines need to burn fuel to operate. Fuel is pumped from your fuel tank to your vehicle engine where it is squirted—or injected—into your engine's cylinders. This is the function of the fuel injectors.There are two ways to inject fuel into an engine. Fuel needs air to burn, so in the first method, fuel is injected into a port and allowed to mix with air—before it is drawn into the cylinders. In the second method, fuel is injected directly into the cylinders and mixes with air after it enters the vehicle engine.Direct injection engines burn fuel more efficiently than conventional vehicle engines. Some models can deliver the power of a V8 with the economy of a V6.For example, in one family of engines, the conventional version (a V6) delivers about 250 horsepower. The direct injection version delivers over 300 horsepower and gets about the same gas mileage. The turbocharged version delivers 350 horsepower.Why ... read more

Most vehicles have automatic transmissions, yet a lot of LUCAS drivers only have a fuzzy understanding about what a transmission does. Think back to the last time you rode a bike in LUCAS. You started out in a lower gear and shifted to higher gears as you went faster. Down shift for hills, stuff like that. Think of your legs as the engine – there's an ideal speed you can pedal and you change gears to leverage the work you're doing.Lower gears for power on hills or for starting out. Higher gears for more speed. That's what the automatic transmission does – it automatically starts in lower gears and shifts up to higher gears to go faster on TX roads. And it automatically shifts back down to climb LUCAS hills, pass or start up again.Vehicle automatic transmissions have certainly gotten more sophisticated in recent years. They have more speeds than before: the base is four speeds, five is very common. At Craig's Car Care Inc, we rou ... read more

Few of us ever drive somewhere without encountering some pretty rough roads, and it's amazing how well our vehicles are able to smooth out the ride. Thank your shocks and struts. The two parts are similar.  Some cars have shocks in the rear, and struts in the front.  Others have struts all around.  A shock absorber uses a cylinder filled with gas or liquid that's connected to your vehicle's frame and axle.  When your vehicle encounters an imperfection in the road, the shock dampens the motion.  A strut is essentially a shock absorber mounted inside a spring and can support more weight than a shock by itself. Shocks and struts take a lot of punishment and wear out.  When they do, your tires are not contacting the road as much as they should, and that can result in a bumpy, unstable ride. Worn-out shocks and struts also transfer the impacts of road imperfections directly to your vehicle's body which can cause further damage to other parts. You can tell when ... read more

There are a lot of drivers in LUCAS who are due for a differential service, but had never heard of a differential before.With front-wheel drive being so common in TX these days, the differential is just taken care of during a transmission service, so most LUCAS folks don't even have to think about it. And rear-wheel drive differentials don't need to be serviced for years, so it's understandable that it's not something on the top of your mind. It's not uncommon for people in LUCAS to not know they have a differential, let alone know that it needs service.To better understand what a differential does, think about a track at any TX high school. There are lanes marked off on the track. For the longer distance races, the starting lines are staggered. The starting lines for the outside lanes are ahead of the starting lines for the inside lanes. That's to compensate for the longer length of the outside lanes. Staggering the starting lines means that each runner has the same ... read more