West Seattle Auto Repair

Fogged headlight lenses are not only unattractive and make your car look older, they also restrict the amount of light that illuminates the road ahead of you which can make for dangerous driving conditions.  As we move into fall and winter, it is important to have the best possible visibility.  Headlight restoration can be a great option for combating reduced visibility. BEFORE - Foggy or cloudy headlight lenses are dim and look old The plastic headlight lenses used with halogen-style bulbs will tend to “cloud” after many years and miles on the road. This haze greatly diminishes the light output, and also makes the vehicle appear to be older than it really is. Headlight Restoration There is a solution to foggy headlight lenses! We are able to clean and polish the headlight lenses and restore them to new condition! Schedule ... read more

Overheated, melted electrical connectors in headlights is a failure that is becoming more common in older vehicles in which the headlights have been configured to be ON when the car is ON. There are safety benefits to having the headlights on and convenience benefits to not possibly forgetting to turn the headlights off, so let’s not quibble about the cause of the failure but come up with a workable solution… Sample Headlight Connectorsphotographed by David Winters During a routine bulb replacement, we may discover melted electrical connectors, which require replacement. If we replace melted materials with the same materials, they are likely to melt again. As an improvement to this repair, we have added to our inventory of parts a heavy-duty electrical connector with larger wires that can be soldered in place to replace the original (melting) plastic connector. This robust connector can handle the heat produced when headlights are on constantly ... read more

Does your car horn sound anemic, worn out, not loud enough? Swedish Automotive now carries Hella brand horns that can be retrofitted to most cars. These horns offer a robust sound, much louder than stock horns. If your horns are worn out or were never very loud to start with, it is easy to upgrade. Just let us know next time your car is in for service. Horns photo provided by flickr user exfordy

While it is always best to replace all 4 tires at once, we sometimes replace only 2 tires due to a blow out or unevenly worn tires. When replacing only two tires we always put the new tires on the rear and the old tires on the front. While this may seem counter-intuitive, please see the attached Pep Boys video for further explanation and illustration of what happens to the handling of your car when the new tires are installed on the front. Video source: pepboys.com