Why Car Care Info
is Important to Me

You're probably wondering who's writing all this car care info stuff and why. Well, It's a long story, but here goes.

When I was a kid, back in the 50's car care was the furthest thing from my mind. Bicycle care on the other hand was pretty important since my bike was my major mode of transportation.

My father on the other hand was a hard working blue collar employee of a power company in the tri-state area of Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas. Money was usually tight so we never had a new car until I was a teenager.

I can remember some of the really crappy cars we had. Since the only car care we could afford was the DIY kind, all to often my dad could be found out in the driveway working on whichever particular car we had at the time.

The first new car we ever had was a bright red 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. My dad was quite proud of that car and spent a lot of time making sure it was properly washed and waxed on a regular basis.

One of the most memorable times of my life was a trip to Oakland, California to visit my grandmother. That new Volkswagen played a central part of that memory. Our entire family piled into that little Volkswagen and hit route 66 out of Joplin, Missouri.

Now, when I say my whole family I mean it. My dad drove, I rode in the front seat, my mother rode in the back seat on the passenger side and my brother and sister rode in the back seat with her. Then there was my other sister. I don't remember how old she was, I just remember her spending a lot of time laying in the cubby hole behind the back seat when she wasn't sitting on somebody's lap.

Part of the luggage was in the trunk, which in the old Beetles was actually in the front of the car, and the rest was strapped to the top. We looked like the "Grapes of Wrath" going down the highway!

During the trip my father, being the adventurer he was, decided he wanted to get across the Mohave Desert during the middle of the day. Of course the car had no air conditioning and it was air cooled at that.

Had I been privy to some car care information about air cooled engines at the time I might have been tempted to inform my father of the possibility that an overloaded, air cooled Volkswagen being driven across a desert in the middle of the day might just overheat and leave its passengers stranded out in the middle of nowhere.

Some how the car and all its passengers survived that day. I'll never forget the seat belt buckle being so hot it actually burned my fingers when I touched it!

Any way, as I grew up, had my own kids and struggled trying to fix my own crappy cars, I developed an interest in how they work. I was never more than a mediocre "shade tree mechanic" but I always liked working on them and have had some interesting ones.

My first one was a 1957 MGA with side curtains and a rag top. I could have used a good foreign car care information guide for that car. Among other things it was a cold natured beast and often required a squirt of starting fluid into the carbureators and a push down the street to get it started on a cold morning. Despite its quirks it got me where I needed to go until I wrecked it going around a curve way too fast on a country road.

I also owned an Austin Healey Sprite for awhile, and several other old cars. I was able to buy my first new car when I was arount 36 years old. I was a First Lieutenant in the Air Force, recently married to an Air Force Captain and we had money to burn, or at least we thought we did. We bought a new Saab, kept it for 6 years and 110,000 miles.

That was the car on which I tried to replace the heater on/off switch. I thought the dash had to be removed to do it. In doing so I shorted out some wires with a screw driver and ended up having to take it to a repair shop to trace down the short in the wiring.

That costly little fiasco could have been prevented if I would have had access to the proper car care info. Believe it or not, I learned my lesson on that one. A lesson I encourage you to follow. Unless you really know what you're doing, bite the bullet, loosen your wallet a little and let the pro's fix it.

I've been out of the Air Force now for 23 years, doing other things. I still have an interest in cars (we have a 1986 Corvette and a 1965 Corvair Monza)and have always believed that it's important to take care of them and use the best products I could afford.

In 2000 I bought a Harley Davidson Fat Boy and became acquainted with synthetic oil because the research I had done convinced me that synthetics were the best lubricants for today's vehicles.

I stumbled upon a website about AMSOIL Synthetic Lubricants, started using them and really liked the benefits and features such as extended oil change intervals, better fuel economy and less engine wear. Over time I came to believe these products were indeed the best lubricants I could buy anywhere.

Sinced I was retired and frankly getting a little bored and lazy, I decided to become an AMSOIL Dealer. After about five years I started Freedom Lube, Inc. with another local AMSOIL Dealer so our local community would have a place to learn about the benefits of and use AMSOIL products.

Over time Freedom Lube, Inc. morphed from a lube shop into an automotive service center offering general automotive repair as well as lube services and car care information designed to keep our customer's vehicles safe and reliable.

Due to other commitments the shop was sold in March of 2010. It still offers AMSOIL products and is owned by another AMSOIL Dealer.

Since I don't have to oversee the daily operation of the shop I'm now able to devote more time to developing this website as a means of bringing car care info to the general public and pursue some other business endeavor you can check out through the links on the bottom of the page.

If you would like to comment on the website, have any car care information you would like for me to share on the site, or any suggestions for more car care subjects just click on the "contact me" link on the NAV bar on the left side of the page.

P.S.Thanks for checking me out. I'll be posting more car care information on a regular basis so come back often!

Thom WoffordOwner and President of Freedom Lube, Inc.
Wichita Falls, TX

P.S.S. My other business ventures.

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