30,000 miles in What's Happening

Ever since I bought my truck about two years ago I’ve been taking it dealer that I bought it from to have the service work done to it. I’ve never really done anything like that before. Usually I would just do the service work myself.

This place has it set up so easy and efficient; you literally just pull up to the garage door at your appointment time and the door opens up automatically. You drive right into the garage, hand them the keys and wait in the waiting room for them to finish. Aside from being extremely convenient , you also have to think: who would be better at working on Nissans than the actual Nissan Dealership?

To save a little bit of money I decided to do my 30,000 mile service myself. Immediately when I popped the hood I noticed that my battery terminals were extremely corroded. They had green build-up piled all over them! The metal bracket that holds the battery in place was starting to corrode. It didn’t look like what you would expect to see on a truck that is just under two years old at all.

This is something that should always be inspected when you are working on the your vehicle. It takes only a few seconds to look at your battery and see if there is any build-up on it.

The build up is caused from the acid fumes in the battery venting out. It’s common and nothing to worry about until you let it get too bad. If left on for too long without cleaning it - it can cause major problems with corrosion and even worse: your electrical system. Some cars experience it more than other, some not even at all.

I need to start doing a better job taking care of my truck. I kinda took for granted that it was so new and that the dealer would let me know if anything needed to be done with it. I started getting too complacent.

It sounds corny, but as I was working on it today, it was a good bonding experience. For a minute I thought about how pathetic It was of me to hand my truck off to another person to work on while I read magazines and drink coffee in the lobby.

What kind of man does that? Only an incompetent and pathetic one, I thought.

Humans have such a unique relationship with their vehicle. Some people might think that it is silly, but I think it is warranted to some degree. We rely on it for so much. We rely on other things in life just as much, but they are not nearly as intricate. Vehicles require that thousands of different parts work together in harmony. We are responsible to keep that happening. I think that’s what helps create that unique bond.