About Car Fix Advisor

What this site is

Car Fix Advisor is a blog, and the line under the logo, Fix it right, first time, is the whole editorial brief. New articles go up when they are ready, and everything we have published stays available in the blog archive.

We started publishing after realising that the useful information about car repair and maintenance existed, but only in the heads of people who had no reason to write it down. Car Fix Advisor writes it down.

Where we stop

We are not the right place for advice tailored to your exact situation. Car Fix Advisor publishes general guidance, and the difference matters more than it sounds.

Where the articles sit

• DIY Repairs. Common repairs you can carry out at home, with the tools, sequence and mistakes explained in the order you will actually encounter them.
• Diagnostics. Reading symptoms, fault codes and the things a car does before it stops working, explained without assuming you have a workshop manual.
• Maintenance. Scheduled service intervals, fluid changes and the checks that prevent the expensive repairs rather than just delaying them.
• Buying a Car. What to look for, what to walk away from, and the questions a seller will not volunteer answers to unless you ask them directly.
• Parts and Replacements. Understanding what you are buying when you order a part: OEM versus aftermarket, where the quality difference is real and where it is not.
• Tools and Garage. Which tools are worth buying for a home mechanic and which ones you will use twice and regret. Honest about storage, cost and the learning curve.

Each piece sits under exactly one heading. Readers arriving from search mostly land in diy repairs, diagnostics and maintenance, so those sections get looked after first.

How this is paid for

Hosting and research come out of the same pocket that buys the things we write about. That keeps the running costs honest and the pace slow.

How an article gets made

We write from notes taken while doing the thing, not from a summary of other summaries. Where we are unsure, the page says so in plain words.

Nobody has editorial input except the people whose names are on the articles. That includes anyone who has ever sent us money.

How claims get checked and how money is disclosed is written down separately, on the editorial policy page.

Who is responsible for this

You can see who wrote what, and you can see everything else they wrote. That is deliberate, because it makes a bad article expensive for the person who wrote it.

Warren Holt, Founder and lead mechanic. Warren ran a independent repair shop for twenty years before deciding that the most useful thing he could do was explain, in plain terms, what he was actually doing and why. He started this site after too many customers arrived having been told the wrong thing by someone who should have known better.

Sandra Park, DIY and maintenance writer. Sandra learned to maintain her own car after one too many repair bills she could not verify. She writes for people who want to understand what is happening before they hand over their keys, and she is honest about the jobs that are genuinely better left to a shop.

Greg Malone, Diagnostics and parts writer. Greg specialises in modern car electronics and has spent years explaining fault codes to people who have never used a scanner before. He writes about diagnostics, parts selection and the electrical systems that most DIY guides still treat as a black box.

Telling us we are wrong

Point at the sentence. Write to info@carfixadvisor.com or use the contact page. Factual errors are fixed quickly, and when a correction changes the conclusion of a piece we say so at the foot of the page rather than editing quietly.