Two Safety Tips To Keep in Mind When Performing Car Maintenance

If you often perform maintenance work on your car, here are some tips that should help you to carry out this work in a safe manner.

Put on safety gear before handling your car battery

Most car batteries contain sulphuric acid, a highly corrosive substance which can cause severe burns if it comes into contact with a person's skin. When a battery is new and in good condition, this acid is safely stowed away inside the casing.

However, some of this acid may leak out onto the battery's exterior case if the front of your vehicle (where the battery is located) sustains a forceful impact, or if you accidentally overcharge the battery.

This is why, if you need to perform maintenance work on your car battery (for example, if you need to top up its supply of distilled water or wash off the white, powdery substance on the terminals that forms when an acid leak occurs), it is extremely important to take steps to protect yourself.

In this situation, putting on some basic safety gear before you carry out the maintenance work is essential. You should, for example, wear a pair of thick, non-absorbent work gloves; these will prevent any acid that is seeping out of the battery from getting onto your hands and burning them.

Additionally, you should also put on a pair of safety goggles; wearing these will ensure that, should any droplets of acid splatter whilst you are handling the battery, they won't land in and severely damage your eyes.

Take precautions when performing maintenance on your vehicle's undercarriage

If you want to visually inspect and perform maintenance on your car's undercarriage, you will need to use a car jack. This tool will raise your vehicle up from the ground so that you can slide underneath it and do the work you want to do.

However, if you make a mistake when using a car jack, the vehicle could crash down and crush you. As such, it's important to take some precautions when using this item.

Firstly, make sure that you park your vehicle on a completely flat surface and that you apply the handbrake before you begin; this will prevent the car from shifting whilst the car jack is attached to it.

This is important as if the car slides away from the jack whilst you are underneath it, the jack could tip over and the car could come crashing down on you.

Secondly, never rely solely on the car jack itself to keep the vehicle in an elevated position. You should also use jack stands on the four corners of your car; these will keep the vehicle balanced and stable whilst you are working underneath it.

If you don't use them along with the car jack, the car will be far more likely to shift and subsequently fall downwards when you are lying below it.