Pink Garage

Hey everyone, buy a shirt today to show your support, grab your phone and take your best selfie wearing the shirt while working on your car to enter our contest. 1st place gets a $100, 2nd place $50 and 3rd $25 visa card. More details to come. Here's where to buy it. www.booster.com/pinkgarage

Nothing is set in stone yet but we are über excited about the posibility of working alongside AV Dream Center. This would give us a location for our outreaches and allow us to help women without them having to leave their own garage! Pray for this potential partnership as we work out the details! Thank you! Http://www.facebook.com/avdreamcenter

Thank you, Brenda Perttula, for the share! This is incredible! Actual statistics about how women get treated unfairly by auto shops and dealerships! This woman got sick of it and started taking classes at her community college. Such a great read! http://www.washingtonpost.com//the-auto-industry-discrim/

The car show was a success! We saw a lot of cool cars and even cooler trophies. Check out the lamp made out of a motorcycle chain that young lady won from the raffle! The highlight was meeting a couple who run another nonprofit that supplies hope to our community by giving out groceries, providing games for the kids, and so much more! They invited us to partner with them and we couldn't be more excited about the opportunity. Check them out here: www.avdreamcenter.org We will let you know what we end up doing with them!

Pink Garage t-shirts are in the works as I type and will be available for purchase Sunday, June 14th both online and at a few local churches over the next few weeks. Each shirt will be only $15 and will help us pay for filing the necessary paperwork to become a bonafide nonprofit. Get a shirt, put it on, take a selfie while working on your car and enter our contest for a chance to win a Visa gift card! More details to come about that when the shirts go on sale. For now, you can ogle this preview. Let us know what you think!

We're paying a local car show a surprise visit tomorrow! There will be awesome cars, yummy food and fun games for everyone! Stop by our booth to test your car part knowledge, try to win some candy and show your support of Pink Garage! Word on the street is there will also be a host from a new TV show there to check out the cars! It's actually pretty exciting, even if it probably won't be Jeremy Clarkson. We can't wait to see you all there!

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!

Okay, time to get controversial! 'Cuz here's something your mechanic may disagree with! Just because your car is considered "high mileage" DOES NOT necessarily mean you need to put "thicker" oil in it! Newer cars (really, as early as the 80s, even) have dramatically smaller oil passages and bearing clearances (compared to an old Chevy 350) to improve fuel economy. A heavier weight oil (10w-40 or 20w-50) is not necessarily thicker, but it travels slower, especially through s...mall spaces. Most mechanics recommend a heavier weight with the assumption that the high mileage engine has worn bearings that need a thicker oil to take up the space the bearings used to occupy. Which is good thinking on the surface! But... If your engine has smaller oil passages leading to the bearings, the oil may have a harder time getting to the bearings in the first place. Your engine will have to work harder to pump the oil there, decreasingly fuel economy, and potentially starving your engine of oil, especially at startup or in colder weather. SO! It really is best to pay attention to what your oil cap says, especially if it recommends 0w-20 or 5w-20! If you do have a lot of miles, go with a high mileage blend oil. If you still doubt that oil's capability to work in your janky engine, or if you're actually burning oil (blue exhaust), you could go with a weight higher. But I can't recommend you go with anything too much "thicker" than that! See more

Repair shops don't make money off of oil changes, so suggesting you change your air filter is a quick and typically surefire way to make a buck off of you. Problem is, lube techs are put under enormous pressure to "check" a lot of things on your car in a VERY short amount of time while trying to complete your oil change quickly. A lot of times, they will say your air filter needs to be changed even when they haven't actually looked at it. Keep track of how often you get yo...ur air filter changed. Most manufacturers recommend you do it every other oil change (every 6,000), but this is to keep your car running at OPTIMUM efficiency; truth be told, you can usually get away with going longer than that depending of course on where you live. Here in the AV we've gotta be mindful of the dust! If you live on a dirt road, you may want to change your air filter even more often than what the manufacturer recommends! We always encourage women to take control on their vehicles. If you can use a screwdriver, you can probably change your car's air filter. YouTube is, oddly enough, a great resource. In the coming months, Pink Garage will be hosting a Women's Car Care Clinic to show you how it's done!

Okay ladies (and gents, as the case may be!), we are handing the mic over to you! Got a car question? Shoot us a message and we'll post it with an answer! We will keep it anonymous if you'd like. Don't be shy! We're here for YOU!

Don't assume that the person helping you knows what they're doing! One time a gentleman offered to help me jump another woman's car. I knew perfectly well what I was doing, but I guess to appease him or whatever, I let him take over. He nearly hooked up our batteries backwards (positive to negative)! I had to grab the booster cables from him and do it myself. Pink Garage is going to offer workshops that teach women how to take care of themselves and their cars in emergencies, like jumping a battery and changing a flat. Please continue to like and share with your friends to get the word out! In the meantime, arm yourself with knowledge; read your manual, look it up online, or YouTube how to properly jump your car's battery!

It's all about leverage... Car Throttle Muscle