Maintenance

A throwout bearing is used on vehicles with a manual transmission.

Disc brakes are more modern and effective than drum brakes, which date back almost to the beginning of cars themselves.

While it’s tempting to squeeze in as much gas as possible when you fill your tank, filling it past the pump’s first automatic shut-off can damage your car to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

Run-flat tires can be driven on — at least for a short distance — even if they lose all their air pressure.

A flywheel is a heavy disc attached to the end of a rotating shaft that helps smooth out the engine’s power pulses and store energy through rotational momentum.

Actuators work behind the scenes in vehicles to convert energy into a physical action or force, and they perform a variety of performance and convenience functions.

Each type of tire has strong points and weak ones, and none is probably ideal for every situation or time of year, so it pays to know their strengths and weaknesses.

The “L” was a staple position in early cars with automatic transmissions (which date from the 1940s), and it had some very practical purposes back when brakes weren’t as good.

The radiator is a key component of the cooling system whose main responsibility is to cool the mixture of antifreeze and water that circulates throughout the engine.

Defrosters clear condensation from windows and melt frost, ice and snow. They work differently depending on whether they are for the windshield or the rear window.