Life at the top of the freeway
The commute down and back
For a city commuter, the day starts on the freeway: past Hahndorf and Stirling, through the Heysen Tunnels and down into Glen Osmond, then the long climb home in the evening. Steady highway kilometres pile up quickly, so on a commuter car the odometer usually reaches the next service before the calendar does.
Cold nights at 360 m
Mount Barker sits at 360 m, and on clear winter nights it can drop below 0 °C. RAA says cold cuts a battery's output and thickens engine oil, so the engine needs more power to start. That's why a battery that coped all summer can give out on the first frosty morning.
Hot afternoons with a load on
January regularly nudges 30 °C, with one or two days over 40 °C each year. Climbing back up the freeway with a trailer or a full car on one of those days is the hardest work a cooling system does all year. Radiator and cooling repairs in Adelaide covers what gets checked.
New car, new subdivision
Bought a new car along with a new house in Martindale or Waterford? Its services can be done in town by a qualified independent mechanic, and work done to the maker's schedule and specifications doesn't by itself void the warranty.
A mechanic who comes to the house
A mobile mechanic can handle plenty in the driveway: a service, a new battery, a car that won't start on a frosty morning. It saves a tow down the hill for something small. Brake machining, gearbox work and anything else that needs a hoist still goes to a workshop.
Hills blocks often slope. If yours does, say so when the mechanic rings, because they'll want the car on level ground before they lift it. Mobile mechanics in Adelaide has more on what can be done on the spot.
Our take
We'd fold a battery test, a coolant check and a look at the brakes into the autumn service, before the frosts and well ahead of the next hot spell. The freeway shoulder is a bad place to find out any of them was on the way out.