If you’ve ever been to the Island of Maui, you’ll know that the only way to get around the island is by car. In preparation for our 8-day trip, I initially booked a minivan through Turo. If you’re not familiar with Turo, it is a car sharing app that allows you to rent vehicles from other users—think of it like Airbnb for cars. As we got closer to the trip, I shopped around a bit and found that I could get a minivan through Hertz Car Rental for almost half the price of what I booked on Turo.

Installing sound deadener in your car is a pretty extensive project that can provide you with a number of benefits. However, applying sound deadener in your car can be a very involved project and is not for the feint of heart. It involves taking much of the interior of your car apart, and applying multiple layers of sound deadening material to the body of your car. If you have the patience and are careful when removing and installing your car’s interior, it may be worth the time and effort for a certain level of noise reduction.

Ever since I was finishing up my previous project car, I’ve been keeping my eye out for a new project to work on. One morning before going into work, I found a 2004 BMW 330XI with a 6-speed manual that was newly listed on Craigslist. I reached out to the owner, but didn’t hear anything back right away which is not uncommon.

When you’re in a situation where one tire gets damaged and it can’t be repaired, you might ask yourself: can I replace only one tire on my car? The answer is usually no, but in one case it is acceptable to do. You can safely replace only one tire (rather than two or all four at a time) is if all of your tires are relatively new and they have not lost more than 4/32″ of tread depth from when they were new. Most new tires will have a tread depth of about 10/32″ to 12/32″.

When you install new brake pads, which are typically replaced at the same time as new brake rotors, it’s a good idea to break-in the brakes using a “bedding” procedure. A bedding procedure involves a series of controlled stops in order to transfer an even layer of brake pad material onto the new rotors. The reason why you want to do this is to prevent uneven “pad transfer”, which can cause you to experience wobble or vibration while you depress the brake pedal.

If you’ve ever experienced your rear view mirror sagging or simply rotating downwards on its own, it’s likely due to the mirror socket no longer holding the ball mount in place. Most of the time, there are these plastic teeth that hold the ball joint in place and when these plastic teeth break off, there is no longer enough force holding the ball joint securely. As a result, the rear view mirror starts to sag and slowly move down on its own. This can be an annoyance as you constantly have to put the mirror back up, only to have it rotate down again and again.

If you have missing emblems whether they fell off or were stolen off your car, you’ll probably have some “ghosting” left behind that you could use as a template to install the new emblem with. You may also have an emblem that pops into a grommet in a hole in the panel so you don’t have to worry about placement. But what if the emblems are designed to be stuck directly into the panel? What if you’re repainting your car and therefore have no way to know where exactly to stick the emblems?

Essentially you have two main floor mats you can go with: OEM Honda All-Weather Floor Mats or Aftermarket ones. In my opinion, you should always go with custom-fit floor mats, which are the majority of the ones available on the market; these normally go for $100 or more. The universal fit ones may cost less than $100, but they simply won’t fit well and won’t offer very good protection. So I believe it’s a must to go with custom-fit all-weather floor mats. You won’t be short of options when deciding amongst the OEM and aftermarket options.

Fortunately, if you are buying or selling a vehicle and there is no title, it is still possible to complete the transaction although you will need to follow a few additional steps (including a visit to the DMV.) Please note that this pertains to the DMV process in California, but may be the similar to other states in the US. Generally, you’ll need to complete two DMV forms: Reg 227 & Reg 262.