#PartsAccessories

Owning a pickup truck has plenty of benefits (like making you very popular with your friends when they’re moving), but everything you have sitting in your truck bed is exposed to the outside world. That means weather, thieves, and even just falling out in the wind on the highway. To protect your truck bed, you need a tonneau cover. A cover that sits over the bed, usually mounted to the sides of the bed, keeping everything out of the weather and out of sight.

When you’re going camping, on vacation, or taking a road trip, expanded cargo capacity is almost a necessity. You don’t want to drive an oversized (and priced) vehicle all year for a few weekend trips! Plus, no matter how large your vehicle is, there’s a good chance you can’t fit everything you need when you’re traveling. That means you’re forced to pick and choose what gear you need to leave at home. The solution is a cargo carrier. A basket that mounts to your trailer hitch and lets you load even more gear that won’t fit inside your ride.

If you need more cargo carrying capacity for your car, there are a lot of practical options for you that can be installed right on your car’s roof. When looking for the best roof cargo carrier, you need to first figure out what kind of cargo you’re going to be carrying. Not all cargo carriers are the same and there are different products out there for different purposes: there are travel bags, roof baskets, and cargo boxes.

If your car came from the factory with halogen or HID bulbs, you’re going to need to replace them or upgrade them down the line. Both of these bulb types lose light output over time; thus, even if they’re functional, they aren’t performing like new. When it comes time to replace them, why go with the same lighting solution when there are better options? The LED light technology that illuminates the newest models can work with your older car too.

Not everyone has the luxury of parking their car in a garage, and to maintain your car’s appearance (and resale value), you need to find the best car cover for it. That’s why we take a look at the best car covers available today, explaining their features and what they have to offer. It may appear that most are the same, but you’ll want to pay close attention to the material they’re constructed from and how many layers it offers. Some car covers aren’t recommended for outdoor use, while waterproof covers for your car offer additional straps and buckles to protect it from the wind. A good starting point when choosing a car cover is determining how often you’ll need to use it outdoors, since you’ll need additional features, like heavy fabric, additional layers, and waterproofing, to make sure it offers ample protection. It’s not just dust and dirt you’re keeping out, but getting protection from rain, snow, and even hail, sap, bird droppings, and accidental scratches. Covering your car also provides some theft deterrent, as a thief first doesn’t know what’s under the cover; then has to make a disturbance getting it out of the way. 

When it comes to maintenance items on your vehicle, one of the most important components you need to pay attention to are brake pads. Having high-quality brake pads could save you from getting into an accident, and they should be replaced regularly. Unfortunately, shopping for the best brake pads can be cumbersome and tedious, with hundreds of options available in the market that cover a wide range of prices.

A charged battery is a happy battery. Keeping your car’s battery properly charged is essential to long life and reliability. When you drive, your car’s charging system keeps your battery topped up. However, if your vehicle sits for an extended period, the battery will slowly drain and discharge. A car battery left in a state of discharge can begin to deteriorate in as little as three days. This is also true for motorcycles, quads, or anything else with a rechargeable lead-acid battery. Once the voltage drops, the life of the battery drops with it.

You’re likely aware that in order to keep your vehicle running in great shape, you’ll need to replace the spark plugs from time to time, but what about the spark plug wires? These wires are responsible for transferring high voltage pulses between the distributor and the spark plugs in order to ignite the air/fuel mixture in the corresponding combustion chamber. Some modern vehicles have distributorless ignition systems, which have the spark plug wires connecting each coil pack directly to one or more spark plugs, whereas others are of a coil-on-plug design that removes the need for wires entirely (but that’s another story).

Your car’s carpeting faces numerous hazards every day and unless you want to damage your flooring and decrease your resale value, you need floor mats. Floor mats protect your carpets from moisture and other damage from salt, mud, sand, kids, coffee — whatever mess you can think of.