When it comes to organization, we all think of spring, right? It’s time to introduce a new concept – fall organization! Especially fall garage organization. If you’re lucky enough to have a garage, you’ve probably been using it all summer to store things like outdoor items, kids’ toys, and a bunch of other junk. But you’re going to want to keep your car in the garage during the winter, right? And if your garage is totally full of stuff, you can’t put your car in it. So, here are my tips for organizing your garage in preparation for the cooler days ahead!

First, take your car out of your garage (though if you can fit it in, you’re already several steps ahead). Then, take everything out of your garage that is just lying on the floor and put it in your yard or driveway. If you have broken stuff, junk, or just plain old garbage, chuck it to the curb!

Now that you’ve weeded out the trash, look at what else you have. Check out your storage in the garage – it might be time for a makeover! If you have shelves in your garage, go through them. Consolidate, throw out the trash, dispose of old materials like paint safely, and see what you’ve got. If you don’t have shelves but have room for some, go pick some up!

A handy way of organizing what you have is with hooks (in addition, of course, to the aforementioned shelves). You can hang almost anything from hooks – chairs, bicycles, hoses… you name it, you can probably hang it from a hook. Everything else should fit nicely on your shelves! If you have larger items that just can’t go one of those places, clear out a specific space for it.

Next, sweep that floor. Who knows how long it has been collecting dust, dirt, and little bits of things. Sweep it all out the door and start fresh! If you have a shop vac, you can really get into the crevices.

The final step is to put everything back, but using the shelves and hooks you (hopefully) have or installed. And voilà! A clean, organized garage that you can park in with ease. If you have questions about car care in the colder temperatures that I mentioned above, come to Fiore Toyota and ask our professionals how best to take care of your vehicle. Maybe it’s all-season tires, maybe it’s a fresh wax and wash before the first snow. Whatever it is, they can help!

Driving in the dark is something that a lot of us really don’t look forward to doing. Especially if our night vision is failing us, driving at night can not only be an inconvenience, but a dangerous venture. If driving at night is unavoidable, however, here are some tips and tricks for driving at night that’ll keep you safe as well as the other drivers on the road.

First, if you’ve ever bought “night driving glasses” that are tinted and marketed as aids for driving at night… well. Throw those right out, because the most they’re doing is impairing your vision even further. You need as much light to reach your eyes as possible, because when it’s dark, you can’t see! Light is the magic ingredient to seeing things better, even at night. The only glasses you should be wearing while driving at night are your regular prescription eyeglasses.

If you have problems with the headlights of approaching cars, especially when you’re on a two-lane road, a good trick is to watch the white line on the side of the road as the oncoming car passes you. This will help make sure that you stay in your lane and not burn your retinas with the bright light of the oncoming car, especially if the driver has forgotten to turn off their high beams.

Speaking of high beams, you should use yours whenever you can. If there is a car in front of you, either on your side of the road or on the opposite side, you shouldn’t have them on… but if you’re alone on the road, high beams are your friends any time of year. Just make sure that you turn them off if you encounter another car on the road!

Finally, if you truly cannot drive at night, arrange a ride for yourself if you know you’ll be out of the house past sunset. If that fails, public transportation or a taxi are good choices. Otherwise, plan your schedule so that you will not be in danger of having to drive at night, or have a friend with you who can drive if they need to.

We hope these tips help you! If you are more of a video person, check out this one about driving safely after dark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WbYpgn6T4c

Using our turn signals is something we don’t really think about a lot. However, we tend to notice if someone else on the road with us is not using theirs properly. From leaving the blinker on and not actually needing to turn or merge to not actually using the blinker at all, even when turning or merging, we notice. And in my case, yell at the other driver (because they can totally hear me from my car in their own car. Totally). This definitely isn’t productive… but I am addressing this blog to the members of our driving community who are a bit more… let’s say lax about their turn signals. This one’s for you!

Why do we not use our turn signals? This is a question that haunts us constantly, especially when we’re driving. Sometimes it’s because nobody is around, so it seemingly doesn’t matter if we use them or not because nobody is there to care. But the problem with this is that not using your signals in this type of situation starts you on a habit of not using them that will carry over into higher-traffic situations. It’s easier to do something all the time instead of picking and choosing when to do it – especially if that thing is turn signals.

Another reason is that it’s just a right turn. Left turns are much more important, apparently, and so right turns just… don’t need to be signaled. This is still wrong! No matter which way you’re turning, you should be using your signals. Even if you’re in a dedicated turning lane. Even if there’s nobody behind you. Use that signal!!

The turn signal is actually one of the most important safety features on your vehicle. Sure, your dealership or car maker might not have marketed it that way, but trust me – your blinker is one of the main ways that you communicate with other drivers on the road. Without it, nobody would have any idea where you are going or what you intend to do. So use that puppy! I don’t know how to stress that enough! If your blinker is broken, remember that you can always come to Fiore Toyota and have the professionals here take a look at what’s wrong. We’ll get you back on the road in no time!

Have you ever stepped into your car and smelled a smell? A smelly smell? A smelly smell that smells…. smelly? Okay, I kid. But really, have you smelled anything odd in your car and then somehow, some time later, you need to take your car in for repairs? There’s no mystery involved – smells in your car can indicate that there might be something wrong with your engine. Read on to see what five of those smells are and could mean!

You Smell: Sulfur

What It Is: When you smell sulfur in your car all the time, you can pretty much assume that it’s gear lube leaking from the manual transmission, transfer case, or differential housing. There are sulfur compounds in the oil that serve as extreme-pressure lubricants for the gears in these parts, and after being in use for a few years this stuff can get kind of gross. Look for stinky puddles of oily, viscous stuff under your car. If you see this, you should take your vehicle into the shop.

You Smell: Rotten eggs

What It Is: Your catalytic converter is having some issues and is putting hydrogen sulfide into your exhaust. It could either be a fuel injection problem, or your cat is failing. This is, unfortunately, a pretty expensive repair. But if you smell the rotten eggs when your car is not running, you should probably check for something inside the car. Like a rotten egg.

You Smell: Maple syrup

What It Is: Coolant! Coolant has ethylene glycol in it, which smells sweet but is definitely toxic. If you’re smelling it, that means there’s a leak somewhere in your system. You should take your vehicle in to get looked at, though this is a pretty easy fix.

You Smell: Hot oil

What It Is: Well, it’s hot oil. But the oil is getting hot because it’s leaking onto the exhaust manifold, which is hot when your engine is running. It’s not a pleasant smell by any stretch of the imagination, so take a look around your engine and keep an eye out for smoke. If you can find the leak, try to stem it, then take your car into the shop ASAP.

You Smell: A gas station

What It Is: Unless you’re at a gas station, you shouldn’t smell this. It’s literally straight up gasoline, which should be inside your car and not outside of it. If your car is older (i.e. before 1980) then you might smell this pretty much every time you turn your car off, but if your car is newer than that, the smell of gas means that you’ve got an issue. This could be a leak from a fuel injection line or a fuel tank vent hose in your engine.

The nose knows, as they say, but if you don’t know exactly what it knows you’re out of luck. Hopefully, this list helps you know what your nose knows, which is the first step into saving money on car repairs. If you have an issue that you can’t fix yourself, take your vehicle to Fiore Toyota – our professionals will be more than happy to help you figure out what’s going on and fix it for you.

Toyota is changing the world! I mean, we already know that a Toyota changed your world – because Toyota vehicles are totally awesome – but the company itself is actively Changing The World. And that’s not a nebulous statement, either. Toyota has been recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the top 10 companies that are changing the world. How, you ask? Read on!

Toyota has been listed as number 8 out of 50 companies on the list because of their strategy to reduce carbon emissions and their introduction of the Mirai, the new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, to the mass market. This is huge! Using hydrogen instead of gasoline cuts emissions and makes the Mirai one of the greenest vehicles out there. The hydrogen fuel cell is also way more sustainable and can contribute to a greener future for the world. That’s definitely world-changing, right?

Because of Toyota’s track record with awesome hybrid vehicles, this isn’t the first time the company has made this list. This is actually the second time in three years that Toyota has made this list. Of course, the list has only been around since 2015, but Toyota’s on a solid 2-out-of-3. You can’t shake a stick at that! Especially because according to the Shared Value Initiative, who helps create this list, companies rarely appear more than once… but not every company is Toyota!

Hopefully, Toyota will work even more on sustainability in vehicles. There will always be work to be done in terms of healing our environment, and we can’t just give up cars. We need them too much! Toyota looks at that and says, “okay, sure, but how can we make this better?” That’s how we got the Prius, and that’s how we’ll get whatever comes next after the Mirai. Here’s to a greener future with Toyota!

Check out the article from Toyota here!

Driving while distracted is one of the deadliest things you can do as a driver on the road – and the worst offender is texting while driving. According to the FCC:

• Over 8 people are killed and 1,161 are injured daily in incidents reported as distraction-affected crashes in the United States.

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that in 2015, there were 3,477 people killed and an estimated additional 391,000 people injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers.

• At any given daylight moment across America, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving, a number that has held steady since 2010.

• In 2015, the National Occupant Protection Use Survey reported that handheld cell phone use continued to be highest among 16-24-year-old drivers.

These sobering statistics can be avoided, or at least ameliorated, through some simple steps you can take to impress upon people, especially new drivers, that texting while driving is dangerous for everyone on the road, including the driver.

Tell new drivers that they should not be using mobile devices, like cell phones or music players, while behind the wheel. Taking your eyes off the road for even a split second can kill – and with drivers taking their eyes off the road for an average of five seconds while texting (the equivalent of driving an entire football field) there’s a lot that can happen in even a short amount of time.

Don’t text and drive yourself! If you are trying to lead by example and show a new driver good habits while driving, you should practice what you preach and put the phone down.

There are solutions to staying in touch when behind the wheel that are much less dangerous and leave your hands and eyes open to driving, such as Bluetooth® and voice-activated controls. However, any distractions while driving should be avoided at all costs. If you know that you are easily distracted, do not talk on the phone or text when driving. Make sure that everything, like music, is set up before you start moving so that you will not have to adjust when on the road.

Staying safe on the road is one of the most important things you can do for not only yourself, but for the other drivers on the road with you. Teach others about how they can stay safe and not distracted, and practice those lessons yourself.

FREEDOM! SWEET SWEET FREEDOM! Or so your newly licensed teen thinks! Here’s the thing, I want my teen to be independent just as much as she does, well almost as much as she does, but I also want to make sure she is safe and sound and making good decisions. I know that I have to cut the umbilical at some point, but it’s hard to do when she’s asking for the keys and all you can see is a sweet 4-year-old with red hair and skinned knees walking out to the car. While I don’t want to be a helicopter mom, I do want to lay down some new driver ground rules to try to keep her safe. I’ve listed a few of my rules I enforce and hope they will be helpful to you too.

1. Focus on the Road!

While the advances in technology have been extremely beneficial in many ways, technology also serves as a distraction that can prove to be very dangerous. In fact, distraction is a major factor in teen car crashes. Research done by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety showed that 6 out of 10 teen crashes involve driver distraction. That number alone is enough to want to cut up my daughter’s license.

2. Limit the number of passengers in the car

Much like the issue with technology, having large groups of friends in the car with them while they drive provides added distractions. Talk to your teen about why it’s important to limit the number of friends they have in the car with them and how they should handle a situation when multiple people are pressuring them for a ride. Some states have legal restrictions on the number and type of passenger a new driver can have in their vehicle during their first and second years of driving, so look up the laws in your state.

3. Set clear consequences for traffic tickets

When it comes to having a teen, in general, making the lines plain and clear is extremely important. This remains true with driving rules. If your child knows the exact consequence for things like traffic tickets, there will, in theory, be less conflict between you and your child and they will be less likely to want to inflict those consequences upon themselves. Make sure they know how traffic violations affect their driving record and their future driving, outside of the consequences you create.

4. Make buckling up a must

Really stress the importance of buckling up. It can literally be the difference between life and death, so make sure that your teen is buckling up every time they drive.

5. Say “no” to drinking and driving
Talk to your teen about the real dangers of driving under the influence or of getting in the car with someone who’s been drinking. While I certainly don’t condone underage drinking, I want my daughter to get home alive, and not attempt to drive while under the influence for the sake of hiding it from me. For every parent, this issue is a bit touchy and each will handle it differently, but for me, I try to stress a “no questions asked” system. If my daughter needs to get home I will not hound her with questions, I won’t yell, I will just pick her up and get her home safely.

6. Limit driving at night
Driving at night is riskier than daytime driving for all drivers, and even more so for new drivers. A whopping 53% of teen crash fatalities occur between 6PM and 6AM, notes Teens in the Driver Seat, which is one reason many states set nighttime restrictions for new drivers. Low visibility and glare from oncoming headlights make it difficult for any driver to see at night, regardless of their level of experience.

“Measuring Changes in Teenage Driver Crash Characteristics During the Early Months of Driving.” Measuring Changes in Teenage Driver Crash Characteristics During the Early Months of Driving | AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, www.aaafoundation.org/measuring-changes-teenage-driver-crash-characteristics-during-early-months-driving.

It’s a beautiful summer day- the sun is out, the birds are chirping. Everything is peaceful and calm. UNTIL a quick glance at your dashboard in your peripheral vision alerts you to a symbol lighting up. Darkness descends upon your day. The check engine light is on. BUT WHY?! Don’t panic! We’ll walk you through a few things you should do when your dash tells you it’s time for a checkup on your engine.

Why is the darn light coming on in the first place?

It’s perhaps a bit misleading to call this light the check engine light as the light can be activated by a number of issues that don’t necessarily have to do with your engine. In fact, this light is also called the malfunction indicator light (MIL). Basically, the light is activated when a car’s on-board diagnostics (OBD) system detects a problem with the performance of some of the car’s major components. Depending on your car’s year, make, and model the OBD will be looking for different warning signs.

The top 5 reasons a check engine light might activate. You could need to:

1. Fix a loose, damaged, or missing gas cap

2. Replace your oxygen sensor

3. Replace your catalytic converter

4. Replace your massive airflow sensor (MAF)

5. Replace your spark plugs or plug wires

So, how do you figure out what the real problem is? Your best bet is to get your vehicle checked out as soon as possible. While having your MIL light on isn’t usually anything to panic about, it shouldn’t be ignored either. By dealing with the issue immediately, you will likely save yourself from a more expensive trip to the service center.

So what do you need to do? When the MIL is activated, the car’s computer memory stores a “trouble code” specifying the problem. By translating this trouble code,  your mechanic can pinpoint the problem and make the necessary repairs. To do this, an electronic scan tool or diagnostic computer is used to read this code. While you can certainly do this on your own, for the most accurate diagnosis of what is going on with your car, you really should go to a professional. The Technicians at Fiore Toyota will be more than happy to help you out and get your car back in pristine shape.

So when your check engine light comes on, don’t panic. Get it checked out before it becomes something you really need to worry about. By fixing the little things early, you are helping to stop the bigger things from happening.

We all have that one friend that we are a wee bit hesitant to get in the car with because they suffer from a bit of road rage. If you didn’t read that sentence and picture one of your friends immediately, you are lying. For some there is a root cause, such as hanger, causing the road rage, and for others, they simply do not possess patience. Sometimes we have no idea why they are enraged, we just know that once the car is in drive, all bets are off.

In my case, my friend suffers from a healthy combo of hanger and lack of patience. We’ll be driving along, enjoying a lovely ride when out of nowhere, a rogue elderly couple enjoying a beautiful afternoon drive is going 10 in a 35 and our simple conversation about what we’re going to get for lunch can quickly turn into a very colorful string of phrases not appropriate for pleasant conversation.

If you can relate to any of what I have described above, here are a few tips to survive the drive with your road-raging friends.

1. Always have a snack on hand. I typically pick something small and light, quick enough to temper the immediate hanger, but not so much that they no longer want to eat lunch. My go to light snack of choice is a Snicker or other such chocolatey treat. It’s hard to scream at other drivers when I have unceremoniously shoved a snickers bar in your face.

2. Be ready with a Spotify playlist or song that you know the driver finds soothing or enjoyable. There is nothing like car ride karaoke to distract the driver from their rage, but not the road. It’s the perfect balance.

3. Tell your angry friend how pretty they are. This works on men and women. Tell that dude that he is the prettiest man whose face shines with the light of 1000 selfie filters and he’ll be hard pressed to not be at the very least distracted from his road rage. Also, he’ll probably feel so darn good about himself that the rage will be forgotten!

4. If all else fails, hold on to the handle above the front passenger seat (assuming you’re sitting up front and your friend isn’t driving you around like a limo driver) and hope for the best.  

Keep it safe out there, friends. Road rage isn’t something to be taken lightly, so if you or someone you love suffers from road rage, please do everything in your power to keep the situation calm and collected. If your car is stressing you out, stop by Fiore Toyota and we’ll help you find a car that keeps you feeling zen. We’re all just trying to live out there, so try to find your happy place. If you can’t we’ll help you find one.