To celebrate National Car Care Month, Openbay has hosted a photo contest – #CarCareBoss – asking people to submit photos proving how well they maintain their vehicles.
We caught up with Vincent, our first winner, who posted his #CarCareBoss photo (below) on Instagram, to talk about his cars.
Where do you live and what do you drive?
I live in Bellevue, Washington, and I drive a BMW Z4. I also have a late 80s Toyota Supra that I work on. It’s easier to work on the older stuff, where the technology is more familiar because it’s been around for a long time. It’s not my daily driver, so if it’s half broken, that’s ok. Hobby, but the Z4 is my daily driver.
How’d you come to hear about Openbay?
I play around with a lot of apps that deal with cars, so maybe Facebook knew that. I saw an ad for Openbay on Facebook, kind of dropped right in front of my feet, so I tend to look at that stuff, and downloaded Openbay.
Do you use any other apps, related to cars?
Uber, Luxe for parking, and Gasbuddy.
I’ve been looking into Automatic; I like the idea that the product can be integrated with my car, as well as with home-automation stuff.
Where do you service your vehicle?
I just picked up the Z4 used last year. Prior to this, most of my cars were Japanese, and I’d tend to do all own work in my garage at home. Now that I’ve got a German car, I don’t feel as confident doing this stuff myself. I like to find BMW specialty shops to handle general service needs, like brakes and oil change.
I’ve been trying to use some of the social media apps to look up reviews, like Yelp, or Google, or Facebook Places. I like seeing the prior experiences people have had.
Most recent shop I went to had done some direct marketing – they’d put coupon fliers under all the BMWs’ windshield wipers. It was good timing, because I’d needed my brakes done. I kind of stumbled upon them, to be honest.
With my other cars, I used to do the work myself, but would bring them into the dealership for the regular service intervals, at 30K or 60K miles.
Do you have any car-care tips worth sharing?
Lots of people, when washing their cars, take just one pass over it. Doing it in a more methodical way will keep it clean. I like to separate washing it panel by panel, so you don’t get junk all over the car.
Also, I do the wheels separately, again, because I don’t want that wheel gunk mixing in with the other stuff when washing the rest of the car.
Living in the Pacific Northwest, it rains a lot, so clear coats can take a beating. So I like to have my car waxed. Even if you don’t do it yourself, I like to bring my car for a professional detail at least once a year. It gives a nice protective coat, and can even prevent you from needing to wash the car every week, or it means you can just get a light wash to remove the surface dirt.
For those who wax their own cars, it’s important not to wax over a dirty car, because that could damage it. Also use the right products. There are some “wash + wax in one” products, and that defeats the whole point – that’s essentially waxing the car while the dirt’s still on there.***
When you’re ready to repair or maintain your vehicle, do it through Openbay, where you can compare, book and pay for auto repair near you. Drive safely!