We started TheFixCar.com because most automotive advice online is either recycled from someone else's recycled advice, or written by people who have not had grease under their fingernails in years. The garage does not lie, and neither do we.
There is a particular kind of article we got tired of reading. It answers the question in the headline, sounds confident, and then falls apart the moment you are actually under a car with a wrench in your hand, because the number it gave you belongs to a different engine. We write the other kind.
How we argue about an article before it goes out
Every piece here goes through the same set of questions. They sound pedantic written down. They are the difference between advice that survives contact with your car and advice that does not.
- If we cannot open the source, the number does not go in. Not “widely reported”, not “most mechanics say”. If we quote a torque figure, a resistance range or a clearance, someone here has opened the document it came from and read the sentence around it.
- A bulletin about one engine stays about that engine. Manufacturers publish procedures for specific vehicles, and the fastest way to damage someone's car is to quietly promote one of those into a universal rule. When we quote one, we name the vehicles it covers.
- We say what a test does not prove. A solenoid that clicks on the bench has proved its coil works and nothing else. A wrench that clicks at the right torque has not proved the thread is sound. Half of diagnosis is knowing where a good result stops meaning something.
- If the title promises numbers, the page has numbers. A heading that says piston sizes and a page that only explains why piston sizes are complicated is a broken promise. When we genuinely cannot find verifiable data, we change the title rather than pad the section.
- Safety advice gets the conservative answer. Brakes, steering, wheel retention, fuel leaks, anything holding a car off the ground. We judge the worst reasonable outcome, not “the car still moves”.
Where we are so far
- 88articles published
- 5specialists writing
- March 2026first article
Twenty-eight of those are symptom guides, twenty-four are specifications, eighteen are maintenance procedures and fourteen cover safety. That split is deliberate: a symptom page proves the fault is what you think it is, a maintenance page walks the repair, and a specs page carries the numbers the repair needs. On the topics we have finished, those three link to each other, so you can start anywhere and get to the part you actually needed.
What we cover
Diagnostics and fault codes, scheduled maintenance intervals, specifications, symptoms that need attention now versus symptoms that can wait, and the money side of keeping a car on the road. If a topic changes a decision you are about to make about your car, we want it covered properly.
Our standards
- Accurate or corrected. Factual errors get fixed and noted. When something changes, a recall, revised specifications, new data, the article gets updated rather than abandoned.
- Honest about difficulty. If a repair is genuinely hard, or a symptom could point at something serious, we say so plainly. Nobody is helped by a job described as easier than it is.
- No undisclosed commercial interests. We do not take payment to change a recommendation. Affiliate relationships are disclosed.
- Accessible without being dumbed down. First car or twentieth, the goal is the same: enough to make a good decision, and enough to know when to stop and call someone.
The team
Our contributors are ASE-certified technicians, diagnosticians, fleet maintenance specialists and experienced service professionals. Each writes inside a defined area rather than covering everything: brakes and driveline, engine and diagnostics, electrical and charging, tires and wheels. You can read their backgrounds on the editorial policy page, and every article carries the byline of the person responsible for it, with the date it was last checked against its sources.