Monroe Auto Repair

The tire is such a commonplace item -- it's on every car, every truck, every bicycle, every aircraft. It's easy to not give the tire a second thought, but like every other technology, the tire has an interesting history of advances and failures. In the 19th century, carriages and wagons used steel strips for "tires" on their wheels, with the punishing sort of ride that you'd expect. In later years, they were shod with strips of natural rubber, which was an improvement but was still problematic. Solid rubber still rode pretty rough, and the natural, uncured rubber would get gummy in hot weather and shrink and harden in cold temperatures. Charles Goodyear was able to help with the invention of vulcanized rubber, but the modern tire was still several years off. By the 1880s, the bicycle was becoming much more popular, and in 1888 Scottish engineer John Dunlop was watching his son struggle with the bone-shaking ride of his tricycle. He then devised the first-ever air-filled ... read more

You go out to your car, start it up, pull out of your parking space and see a puddle of...something...where you were parked a moment ago. This is never a good feeling. What could it be? Fortunately, some automotive fluids are dyed different colors to make this a little easier to narrow down. Does it appear to be water? Were you recently running your A/C? Chances are that's just condensation from the A/C system, which drips out through a rubber tube and is perfectly normal. No worries there. For years, antifreeze was dyed a bright green to make it easy to identify. Today, other antifreeze formulations can be colored pink or orange, but it's still not hard to figure out -- antifreeze has a sweet-ish, unmistakable smell due to its ethylene glycol content.Gasoline is a pale yellowish or orange color, and also has a distinct smell that you'll recognize right away. Gasoline evaporates quickly and may feel cool on your finger if you dip it into the puddle. It's also, of course ... read more