Tune Up at Johnny's Automotive

A tune-up used to be a specific list of jobs: points, condenser, cap and rotor, carburetor adjustment, timing set with a light and an ear. Those parts are gone. Your engine is managed by a computer that adjusts fuel and spark timing thousands of times a minute, and it does not slowly fall out of adjustment the way an old one did. The word survived. The work behind it changed completely.

What a modern tune-up actually is. On most vehicles it comes down to a short list. Spark plugs, when the manufacturer schedules them. Engine air filter and cabin air filter. Fuel filter on the vehicles that still have a serviceable one. Throttle body cleaning where carbon has built up enough to affect how it idles. And above all of that, inspection and testing: scanning for stored and pending codes, reading fuel trims, checking ignition coils, and looking at what the sensors are actually reporting.

Testing comes first because the same phrase means two different things. A car at 90,000 miles that runs fine needs scheduled maintenance. That same car with a rough idle and a check engine light needs a diagnosis, and handing it a parts list instead would be guessing with your money.

Tell us the symptom or the mileage. Either one is a good starting point. If it is mileage, our ASE certified techs will pull the maintenance schedule for your exact year and engine and tell you what is due, including the things that are not due yet. If it is a symptom, describe it in plain words: rough at a stop, hesitates on the highway, harder to start cold, drinking more gas than it used to.

We test before we recommend, and we send photos of what we find to your phone so you are looking at the same thing we are. Spark plugs get a page of their own, since on a lot of engines they are a job all by themselves.