Automotive News & Information - Ponci's Diesel Center

Automatic transmissions aren’t easily understood outside of specialists like those at Ponci's Diesel Center in Fortuna, CA. While it would be impossible to teach you enough to make you a transmission expert in a series of articles, what we can do is give you the fundamental knowledge you need to have a good idea of what your transmission is doing, and how it works.

If you drive a lightweight car, truck, or SUV, the torque converter you have installed is probably just fine. For those of you with more heavy duty applications, like high horsepower setups or towing rigs, the stock converter may not be enough. At Ponci's Diesel Center in Fortuna, CA, we can help with that.

Once your engine is installed, you’ll want to keep it running right. Ponci's Diesel Center in Fortuna, CA has you covered. Sometimes, engines just wear out - however, most of the time they meet an early demise as a result of improper maintenance. Keep your engine running like new by maintaining it the way your technician recommends.

It doesn't matter if you are driving a car or truck, jeep or SUV, a diesel 4x4 or a classic when those dash warning lights go off the first thing you do is think "how bad is it?" and "how much will it cost me?" followed quickly by "when was my last service visit?"!! Driving your vehicle longer safely is all about getting it serviced based on what your vehicle manual recommends and these warning lights are alerting you to a situation that requires your attention.

While not all warning lights are a sign that disaster is imminent, no warning indicator light should ever be ignored!

When you are having trouble with your car or truck starting and you open the hood up to take a peek to see this....you'll see what an overly corroded battery looks like. This happens naturally over time on vehicle battery terminals. If you are like 99% of normal Fortuna drivers, you don't check your oil or your battery so you don't keep an eye on the amount of corrosion that's building up on your car or truck battery. Here at Ponci's Diesel Center, we do and there are solvents that we can use here in the shop during a battery maintenance service that will help slow the corrosion process but nothing that can prevent it 100%. Way before it gets to this point, we will be suggesting you consider replacing the battery.

Exhaust issues are extremely common, no matter what type of car, truck, or SUV you drive. At Ponci's Diesel Center in Fortuna, CA, we can get your exhaust back in shape in no time.

Exhaust issues tend to be neglected, and we get that; there are just other parts of your vehicle that you'd rather focus on. Besides a clogged catalytic converter, there isn’t much risk of damage from a bad exhaust system - it negatively affects your gas mileage, and the sound is annoying, but other than that, it’s an issue many people learn to live with.

Here at Ponci's Diesel Center in Fortuna we often do diagnostics and sometimes the problem is obvious after hooking the car up to the computer and reading the codes. However, sometimes it isn't obvious during a test drive or after hooking it up to all those computer programs! You know there is a problem and a Check Engine Light is on with the fleet customer telling you the car has been having issues starting and the light has been going off and on depending on several factors. No pattern, no simple answer but the problem becomes obvious when you start following the "threads of the issue" thanks to all that ASE Technician training.

Your car data owned by manufacturers now

Newer Vehicles Generate as Much As 25GB of Data/Hour according to McKinsey. Now That is Extremely Interesting! It is also daunting as we now need to know "what data" right? You also want to know where it is going if anywhere and who owns the data? All interesting questions that we never thought about. Just get in and drive, choose a destination and if a light goes off in the dash you call us here at Ponci's Diesel Center to schedule an appointment. We want our Fortuna drivers to be informed as always and able to make their choices based on having facts. This is a big change in the automotive-truck service industry and it really has not hit the news at all, so it is up to us to get you up-to-date and informed. Here are the facts and where you can find more information!