Italian tune up

The New Year upon us… and children are done opening their gifts from Christmas. I’m sure you got what you wanted for Christmas but what did you get for your car… or should I put in another way, what could you do for your car? For me, I usually spend a day or two thoroughly cleaning my car. Turning the cabin inside out, cleaning the trunk of all the stuff I forgot to throw or I didn’t know I still had. Put the car on jack stands and clean the wheels and the wheel wells. Clean the engine bay. If budget permitted, I would have it done professionally. And a tune up. A big problem with doing this kind of cleaning is after all that’s been done to the car, I dare not bring it out and drive it. Why? Because it’s too clean! Crazy… right?

But there is some logic to that dilemma. I keep the car clean because I usually go for an early morning run after New Year’s day. I wake up at around 5 am and make my way to the SLEX. But before this, I make sure I put a bottle of fuel system cleaner into the fuel tank. Making a run on the highway at around 100 or 120 kilometers per hour at a constant speed is just about right. On the way back, the car feels a bit different already. The carbon deposits inside the engine are beginning to loosen up. Tapping on the gas and shifting around 4,500 revolutions per minute brings your engine to life. If there still not that much traffic, I can still do another run, this time being a bit more aggressive on the gas pedal. This is something like greeting the New Year with firecrackers, although I would prefer hearing the engine on the highway.