I take care of my own car maintenance including checking and correcting tire pressure. There is exactly one gas station in my world that has free air.
I was driving a more senior (in her late 80s) friend around on errands recently. She lives neat that station so I stopped and put air in. She was shocked that I do that myself. She said she’d driven for over sixty years and never done that herself. I expected the next thing she said to be that her late husband had done it. She said that she has always just driven it to the tire store she used and asked them to check it and they always did.
Which made me wonder if that’s common practice for the over 80 crowd. It conjured visions of the “men from Texaco” with gleaming uniforms, standing at the ready and wanting nothing more than to do tiny jobs that bring in no money for sweet little old ladies.
My son is old enough to check and fill the tires. If he’s with me I’ll let him, but I don’t put off doing it myself…yet.
I’m another one who had to demonstrate a tire change to be able to borrow Dad’s car.
Note to self: remember to check tire air pressure. Knowing how isn’t the same thing as remembering to do it.
Yeah, much more likely with bike tires. Although the only time it happened to me was just after getting a tire replaced. The jerks replaced a 80-90 lb tire with a 45-50 lb tire without mentioning it. So that’s what “a ringing in my ears” sounds like.
Yes, I check my own tires and add air when needed. I’m a bit lax about checking the spare on the underside of the vehicle though. I also check and top off fluids as needed; I leave fluid changes to a shop that’s better equipped for fluid handling and disposal than my garage.
Only one of my vehicles has sensors for the fluid levels and tire pressures; they actually irritate me a bit. The only fluid level I can’t check is the wiper fluid – the tank is so far down in the bumper that it’s impossible to see the level even by looking through the cap. I have to wait for the little sensor to alert me; even then, I’m plagued with little nuisance alarms when the level isn’t quite low enough. A quick stop or sharp bump will briefly flash a message, but it resets before I have a chance to read it. And the tire pressure sensors work great, except the message center doesn’t tell me which tire is having an issue.
I fill my own. But, I don’t do it as regularly as I should (especially in Athens, GA), so sometimes I forget how to work the machine. When I lived in Baton Rouge, one of the local gas stations had air pumps that were free, one only had to tell the person at the counter to activate the pump. There, I did check the pressure regularly (and used those services).
I have the same issue with the tire pressure gauge, Jeep’s Phoenix. Would it have killed them to at least put in an arrow pointing which side of the car was down? But at least I have it. I can’t imagine how often I drove around on low air in the old days, since I didn’t check as often as I should have.
I have always driven hand me down cars. My dad was always insistent that I learn at least the basics of car maintenance, even if I didn’t do it myself, so I could check and make sure they did it right. I am happy to let them do the oil change because I am quite sure I would just make a big fat mess everywhere, plus it’s really really hard to get under my car, since it’s pretty low to the ground. But this little baby is my first new car ever and it deserves all the extra care anyway.
I check my tires, rotate my tires, change the oil, change light bulbs, etc. I also do my own brakes in both car and motorcycle. I have changed engine mounts and intake manifold gaskets. I have busted out the Bondo and gotten rid of a three-foot long crease in my door that the previous owner of my first car made. Installed car alarms. With some electrical, I wind up calling for help, but I am there to hold flashlights. And, sometimes I have to call the hubby to use muscle on something that I can’t budge.
Women can do anything. You just have to start with the assumption that women can do anything.
I put air in my own tires, especially when fellow motorists honk and go “Hey lady!” gesturing at my low tire. The challenge of accomplishing tire-filling has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with having a big enough stash of quarter dollar coins on hand to operate the air machine. Word to the wise.
Once in my college days when I was filling a tire it exploded in my face. Loudest damn thing I ever heard in my life. No injury apart from ringing ears for the rest of the day.
My granny taught me how to do the air and also how to jump start a car. My granny is awesome. Oil and wiper fluid I just worked out. I tried to change a tyre once (in a snow storm in the Pennines!) but I’m not strong enough.
