Car Maintenance Sunday at the Rowland Family Garage

By Brian Rowland on June 12, 2014

Project: Car maintenance with Valvoline products
Vehicle: Chevy Silverado, Chevy Camaro and Toyota Sequoia
Author/Owner: Brian Rowland
Level of Difficulty: Easy

We’re a three car family: My wife has an aging Toyota Sequoia with more than 100k miles, I have a relatively new Chevy Silverado, and we also have a 1969 Camaro that’s a “rolling restoration” that I enjoy driving whenever possible. We also have two young sons, Matt and Josh, who need to learn about cars and how to be smart with (my) money.

As the Minister of Transportation at our house I want to instill a common value of “never pay someone to do something you can do yourself.” This is why we started “Car Maintenance Sundays” where we pick various maintenance jobs on the cars to keep them in good working order. The DIY spirit is alive and well in our garage and we put on our grubby clothes and climb under and on top of the cars to make sure everything is in top shape.

The boys really enjoy helping and I think that they are getting good at the basics. Staying on top of basic car maintenance is great but you also have to put quality products into your vehicles – for me, I’ve trusted the Valvoline family of products to get the job done right.

Here are some pictures of our most recent Car Maintenance Sunday:

I hadn’t driven the Camaro as much as I should have, so she was a little hard to start. A couple squirts of Valvoline Starting Fluid and she turned over in a breeze. I always keep a bottle on the shelf just in case.

After we got the Camaro turned over, we switched to checking the coolant levels in all three cars – it’s getting hot in California, so we try to do this every month. Staying on top of the basic fluid levels is easy if you check regularly. Matt and Josh love helping and never run out of “What does that do?” questions.

Next up was a quick oil change on the Sequoia. The kids have lots of activities so we are constantly driving to school, practices and such. Since we would sure like to get another few years of service out of the SUV I like to use Valvoline High Mileage Synthetic Blend – I’ve been using it with great results since the car turned 75,000 miles. Josh, my oldest, is a pro at this job now.

And that was it, in less than an hour, we were able to make sure our cars stay on the road (and out of the shop), spent some quality time with our kids away from technology, and taught them basic life skills they’ll (hopefully) use for decades to come. After a quick trip to the recycling center to drop off the old oil the boys are looking forward to our next Sunday garage adventure.