There is a good reason you can count on your car to start throughout the Wonder Lake winter that is swiftly approaching. You have an integrated charging/starting system under your hood with parts and mechanisms that work together to ensure your car will start when you want it to. There is one primary reason that system might fail you sometime this winter.

The system generally fails because someone has attended to the charging/starting system as diligently as they should have. We all know that winter rolls around in Wonder Lake this time of year. Due diligence means that you’ll have your charging/starting system checked before the worst of winter arrives. But, some of us put it off. Some even neglect to check their charging/starting system altogether.

If you go out and start the car today, the car starts. So, what’s the problem? Better to ask ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ The answer is plenty, and you really could find yourself stranded on a Wonder Lake road, or worse, a road some distance out of town.

The charging/starting system under your hood includes wires of different gauges. It includes switches, relays, fusible links, regulators, and stators. These parts connect and control the main ingredients of your charging/starting system.

The major parts of the charging/starting system on your car are the battery, the alternator, and the starter. In most cars, the charging/starting system also depends on belts to drive a pulley on the front of the alternator thereby creating the electricity that runs and the car and charges the battery.

The unfortunate truth is that the parts of a charging/starting system can break or wear out. Your battery has a pre-determined life expectancy. That doesn’t mean the battery will wear out and stop working at 11:32, and 12 seconds, on December 29, 2017. Rather, the life expectancy of your battery is a general rule. When the time approaches your confidence in the battery should wain.

Starters and alternators also wear out, as do pulley belts. When their time is up, their time is up. If their time is up when they’re still in your car, you could find yourself calling for a tow.

The way to avoid a tow brought on by a failure in the charging/starting system is to have your car checked out before that happens. A qualified auto repair shop in the Wonder Lake area can check your car and tell you if the parts of your charging/starting system all have plenty of life in them or if one part or another is liable to let you down … on a cold and barren Wonder Lake road in the middle of winter.