You might consider your car servicing routine to be a completely separate entity to your daily commute facing the horrors of London’s M25 or the intricacies of the low congestion zone, but in fact, having a good car servicing process can help to make your daily commute much more enjoyable. Let’s have a look at how the two can blend together before you book your next service.

Regular Visual Checks

Make regular visual checks a consistent part of your daily routine; walking around the vehicle, checking the tyres, looking for chips and scratches in the paintwork, and ensuring that the fenders, number plate and bumpers are firmly fixed in place. These checks should never take longer than ten to fifteen minutes, and they will help you to realise when problems do begin to arise. It is hard, for example, to know exactly how, where and when your back brake light got broken if you haven’t really paid it any attention for a couple of weeks – which, in turn, can mean that you have been driving illegally for up to that time.

Avoid Breakdowns

Having your car serviced regularly ensures that your car is always in good condition, and this helps you to avoid breakdowns while you are getting to or from work. Even if you are fairly mechanically minded, you will not be able to check your own vehicle as thoroughly as your local garage who has the full complement of tools and equipment with which they examine your car during its full service. Access to an inspection pit, wheel balancing and tyre alignment software and more are all invaluable tools that will help your mechanic help you to be safe and comfortable during your daily commute – they can’t do anything about London’s (or other major cities, like Birmingham and Manchester) heavy traffic and constant jams, though.If you are planning to book your next car servicing in London, please call DAT Tyres on 020 8969 3030.

Keep Tyres in Good Condition

Pay extra special attention to your tyres, as they are the only point of contact that your car has with the road. Good quality tyres do make a tremendous difference to your commute, offering a quieter, more comfortable drive, with less resistance coming through the steering wheel to your hands. Budget or poor quality tyres can be noisy which can be surprisingly exhausting, especially on longer drives, and they can develop weak spots and faults more readily than the carefully designed and beautifully manufactured premium tyres which are made with your comfort and your car’s efficiency in mind.

Avoid High Traffic Areas (If You Can!)

But perhaps the best way to ensure that your car servicing is painless and your commute is more enjoyable is to avoid very high traffic areas if you can. This can mean asking your boss for a staggered start time: coming in earlier and leaving earlier, or arriving an hour later and lingering at your desk while the worst of rush hours happens outside to other people. Or, you can find something more circuitous to your work, perhaps parking a little further away and walking the remaining distance, which is good for your health, getting those all-important steps in. If you can manage this, your car will benefit tremendously from a reduction in the wear and tear caused by stop-start traffic which is good news for your next service; the engine will not threaten to overheat as cars can do when they are left running while barely moving, and – perhaps most important of all – your mood will be dramatically improved. That’s not a bad result for a simple tweak to make your commute more enjoyable!