If you drive a performance or luxury vehicle made by manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes, Subaru, Land Rover, Porsche, etc., you’re probably no stranger to state of the art electronics, sensors, and control systems. At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center, our technicians have the right knowledge, ability, and equipment necessary to keep your car or SUV in top-notch condition.

At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, we know how irritating an issue with your car, truck, or SUV can be, even if it doesn’t immediately affect your vehicle’s performance. One such problematic issue, the excessively loud radiator cooling fan, is a common plague many automobile owners will experience.

There are many parts and systems outside of the car’s transmission that is equally as important as the parts and systems inside the transmission. Without them, the transmission won’t do much. There’s no way to transfer power from the engine to the shafts, disengage it to shift the gears, or power the differential without them. Just in case you need us, at South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD, we can help keep your transmission in top shape, but here’s what you need to know.

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 Middletown 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 South Mountain Collision & Auto 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. 

At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD, we know that transmissions are witchcraft to most people. More often than not, if major damage has occurred, it’s a lot more time and cost-effective to just replace the entire unit and get a fresh start. Our trained technicians at South Mountain Collision & Auto Center want to keep you informed so you are aware of what to look out for.

At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD, a big part of our job is helping you make decisions that are right for you, your car, truck or SUV. When it comes to replacing a transmission there are a lot of options out there, and we’re here to help you make the right choice. Our technicians can help you decide based on your budget, vehicle and lifestyle. We're here to get your car going again and earn your business in the future.

Manual transmissions are generally more reliable than automatic transmissions. They don’t have as many parts, aren’t as complex, and can take a lot more abuse. However, if an issue is allowed to persist, more and more damage to surrounding components on your manual transmission will occur. South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD can help you take care of your car as soon as you notice a problem.

Transmissions are complex pieces of equipment. Systems and components rely heavily on one another, and everything needs to be in working order for proper function. When one thing fails, there’s a snowball effect, and malfunctions and damages begin to occur. What can you do to make sure you keep it working? At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD, we want to help when you need it, but we also want to teach you how to maintain your vehicle on your own. Good maintenance is the single largest contributing factor to how long your transmission will last and how well it will continue to work. Here are a few key points on maintenance from the South Mountain Collision & Auto Center technicians.

If your car, truck or SUV is experiencing major engine issues, the technicians at South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD have you covered. You hear the engine knocking when it decides to start? Is there smoke pouring from your truck’s exhaust pipe? Whether you’re burning oil, your engine is on it’s last leg or has simply given up altogether, we can help. And if you’re not sure what you need, we can help with that too.

The turbo on your diesel pickup truck is a precision-engineered component. As a result, proper maintenance is essential to keep it going strong, and South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD is the place to do that. At tens or even hundreds of thousands of RPM, keeping everything in good shape is absolutely necessary. Fortunately, turbos don't really require any special maintenance - they just make the maintenance you do all the more important.

When driving around town, your vehicle's engine needs clean air to burn the fuel – and it needs a lot. In fact, a typical vehicle needs about 216,000 gallons of air for every tank of gas. All that air passes through a filter that catches the dust and dirt. Eventually, the filter gets completely full, and because the filter can only hold so much, dirt starts getting through. At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, we want to help you get the best air quality in your vehicle, but first, we want to explain the process of where this dirty air is going. 

Is your Cummins, Powerstroke, or Duramax diesel a four-wheel drive? At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD, our goal is to help you maintain your four-wheel drive so that it can last you for years to come. Our professional technicians at South Mountain Collision & Auto Center are here to make sure your truck stays ready for anything.

At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, we understand that safety and driving comfort are largely dependent on truck maintenance. Driving in the rain can be a hassle, especially if your vehicle isn’t prepared.

Ride quality is an essential part of your driving experience. At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, we strive to keep your car, truck, or SUV as smooth and comfortable to drive as the day it came off the lot. Your shock absorbers play a huge role in ride quality; here’s what you should know.

At some point or another, it’ll happen to you. You leave your headlights on, your battery finally fails, or for some other reason, you don’t have enough juice to start your car. Don’t call a tow truck just yet, though...South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown has the info you need to properly jump start your car.

The operation of your transmission depends on your hydraulics. Even if that sounds like a foreign language to you, at South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD, we speak the automotive language. We want you to understand what we're talking about, so here are the basics of the hydraulic functions behind your transmission.

If you drive a vehicle with more than a few miles on it, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed an occasional drip underneath it that leaves spots wherever you park. Identifying what is leaking from your car will help you determine whether or not it’s a cause for concern, and what to do about it.

There are seven liquids a car can possibly drip: oil, gas, brake fluid, transmission fluid, gear oil, water, and coolant. How do you tell the difference? This article aims to help your know-how.

Repairs are costly and we all want to avoid them including our team here at South Mountain Collision & Auto Center!  It's our job and we take it seriously.  Here, it is all about keeping your car or truck serviced and looking for problems "before" they happen to avoid those high repair costs and ensuring you avoid any breakdowns when it's hot outside or cold outside as either is a problem for our Middletown drivers!  Nobody can forsee a flat tire or blowout due to running over a nail, but we can avoid some of the regular issues we see all the time such as....

At South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD, our goal is to help you understand your transmission a little better and keep your car, truck, or SUV reliably on the road. If you ever hit the key and your engine fails to turn over, whether it’s once a month, once a week, or every day, you’ve got the beginnings of an issue worth dealing with.

Something will go wrong with your car, truck, or SUV eventually. The important thing is knowing what to do, and how to deal with it. Just knowing what to do in a situation often means the difference between a quick repair and thousands of dollars worth of work. If you see steam coming from under the hood, it’s important to deal with it appropriately and quickly. Here’s what’s going on, and what to do, from South Mountain Collision & Auto Center in Middletown, MD.