THE JOURNAL
Service intervals that are actually right for this climate, what tread depth means before it becomes a fine, running costs per kilometer, and how to read a history somebody hands you.
Eight millimetres when it is new, 1.6 millimetres when it is illegal. Almost everything that matters happens in between, and most of it happens in the last third.
Read the articleA modified car is worth what you can prove and what the next owner can undo. The three tests that decide which side of the ledger a mod lands on.
The dash readout flatters and single tanks lie. The full-to-full method, the rules that make it accurate, and what a falling number is telling you.
Every car carries its identity in several places. How to read a VIN, where the number lives, what must match, and the tampering signs that end a deal.
Pads wear silently, then squeal, then grind. What each sound means, the numbers behind pad and disc wear, and how to check both through the wheel.
Heat, dust and stop-start traffic are not what the manual assumed. What actually determines your interval.
Most inspections check the metal and skip the paperwork. The order to read a history in, and the gaps that end a negotiation.
Work it out from your own economy and today's rate instead of a national average that describes nobody.
A filter that looks fine can already be costing you. When cleaning helps, and when it quietly does damage.
What a report can and cannot tell you, which findings are priceable, and the questions that separate them.
Which papers matter over a car's life, and why keeping them together is worth money at the end of it.
Enthusiasts documented builds properly long before anyone called it a record. Where that practice breaks.
Corrections are new entries referencing the original, and both stay visible. Why, and what it costs.
How to behave at a meet, how to shoot someone else's car, and why the unwritten rules exist.
