Automotive News & Information - Tom Quirk Automotive

Does your car continue trying to move forward after you’ve put it into park? You may have a transmission issue that needs to be addressed. Here’s what you should know, from the experts at Tom Quirk Automotive in Albuquerque, NM.

At Tom Quirk Automotive in Albuquerque, NM, maintaining your fleet and keeping your business reliably on the road is our primary focus. As trucks wear out, and they always do, you will inevitably be faced with this dilemma - “Should I fix this truck, or replace it with a new one?” This isn’t always an easy question to answer. As your fleet specialists, our team here at Tom Quirk Automotive is here to help you decide.

Unless you are confident in your abilities as an automotive mechanic, there is really only one rule when purchasing a flood-damaged vehicle: don’t do it. Unfortunately, sometimes sellers aren’t particularly straight-forward with their used cars. Many will try to hide the fact that it’s been damaged by floodwaters at all or try to convince potential buyers that the car is in fact fine. “It has gone months with no issues” or “technically it is flood-damaged but” are two red flags, and while it isn’t impossible for a flood car to be fine, it’s altogether a good idea to stay away.

transmission fluid being poured into car

In theory, you shouldn’t have to add fluid to an automatic transmission. However, if your transmission is leaking, even slightly, at some point you’ll have to. Here’s what you should know, from Tom Quirk Automotive in Albuquerque, NM.

No matter what type of fleet vehicles or commercial trucks you maintain, the fuel system on your diesel is an integral part of keeping you on the road. Gas systems are pretty simple - there’s basically just a pump that pushes gasoline to the injectors. Diesels are a bit more complicated.

If you drive a luxury or performance vehicle, you’re an owner of a reliable machine. Still, occasionally problems do arise. On vehicles like these, with so many electronics, a dead battery is a common issue. At Tom Quirk Automotive we want to keep our customers informed, here’s how to jump-start your vehicle safely.

In the diesel world, "blow-by" is a term you're bound to run across at some point if your line of work involves diesel-powered vehicles of any kind. What is blow-by, what causes it, and how concerned should you be? At Tom Quirk Automotive in Albuquerque, NM, our fleet maintenance and diesel technicians see it on a regular basis. Here we'll take a quick look at blow-by, correcting it, and preventing it.

What is Blow-By? - Diesel blow-by is a term that describes an event of lost compression into the crankcase. Blow-by occurs whenever a burnt or unburnt fuel and air mixture escape from the cylinder and past the piston rings and into the crankcase. In a perfect world, the piston would be sealed tightly in the cylinder, able to move up and down but keeping all the air and fuel and exhaust that enters or exits the cylinder during the combustion process out of the crankcase. As you'll see, this perfect world doesn't exist, but it is important to minimize the amount of blow-by in a diesel engine.

At Tom Quirk Automotive in Albuquerque, we understand all too well the importance of changing your oil regularly. Three to five thousand miles sounds like a lot, but it doesn’t really take that long to rack them up. The busier you are, the more you probably drive, and the more likely you are to forget it’s time to change your oil. Here are some reasons to pay attention to your oil changes, and help you better understand why oil changes are so important.