How much does it cost?

Nothing, nada, zip, zilch, the big goose egg, it's free as in beer. It's free today, it'll be free tomorrow.
The only service we charge for is classified links, which is a shortened URL that you choose designed to fit within a newspaper classified column or liner ad so you can highlight the great care and work you've put into this vehicle. We think that since we're helping you sell your car at a higher price, we should get a little in return. All we ask is $5 a month to cover the extra bandwidth costs we incur. This link will also work on craiglist.org and many other for sale sites.

What types of vehicles can I track?

The short answer is what can't you track here: trains. Everything else we're pretty sure we've got covered. Cars and light trucks, OHVs (off-highway vehicles, aggressive 4X4s), bigger trucks, like dump trucks, tractor trailers. Motorcycles and dirt bikes, ATVs and amphibious vehicles. Boats and personal watercraft. We're even working on something for airplanes, to be released in the very near future. Locomotives are the only thing available at this point in time that we're not planning to do anything with. But that could change. Contact us if you don't see something you'd like to track. BTW, items like lawn and farm tractors, ditch witches, backhoes should be listed under 'Other Equipment'.

How do I determine difficulty?

1. Modification or maintenance item that requires no tools.
2. Oil change for most vehicles, other jobs requiring basic hand tools minimal instructions that can be performed someone with no experience.
3. Maintenance that requires minimal disassembly of a given part, such as a automatic transmission filter.
4. Maintenance requiring disassembly of a major component, often a torque wrench is needed for reassembly, such as a water pump. Anything from 1-3 that requires minor fabrication of parts and/or tools.
5. Advanced tweaking, such as changing valve springs, anything that can be done by a novice with good directions and mechanical"common sense". Requires major fabrication of parts and/or tools.
6. Requires significant disassembly of a major component, where previous experience in areas 1-5 are needed, i.e. changing a timing chain.
7. Requires specialty tools, significant knowledge and time are required, such as rebuilding an engine. Weekend wrenchers should seek assistance from a more experienced person for these types of jobs. However, most can probably get by with good instructions and patience.
8. Requires specialty tools and advanced knowledge of components involved, fabrication of components and significant amounts of time are required. These types of jobs are not recommended for the shade tree mechanic or weekend wrencher.
9. Requires 1-8, precision machining tools and skills.
10. Extremely difficult for many reasons: space, time, tools, skill and risk of injury. An example of this type of job is tank tread repair while driving in combat. Most people prefer to pay someone to do this.

Ratings are designed to give other members an idea as to how a product or business performed to the claims or customer expectations. Also, to gauge how difficult a project is for a DIY mechanic. These ratings play a big part in this community, without them we aren't able to provide as helpful information as we want to.

• Difficulty rating is how difficult was it to perform a given action on a scale of 1-10 or is represented on a graph, a small green bar is easy, more difficult the bar gradually turning red or a long bar with solid red at the end. Please click Difficulty rating for a detailed explanation. Leave this set to the default if a business or friend is doing the work.
• Product rating is how well the product actually did what it claimed to do. This is on a scale of 0-10 or 0-5 stars.Many people have installed a product that claimed to significantly increase horse power, but only gave a little. Others do exactly what the claim and some do nothing.
• Job rating is how well a business did what you asked them to do. Also on a scale of 0-10. Average job is roughly a five, stellar job, a 10, a lousy experience, either customer service, price or job satisfaction is a zero. You can leave this set to the default if you did the job yourself.

You can always change the rating later if a product worked initially, but then stopped working or broke a few weeks, even years later. If it didn't live up to the product claim, change the rating. If a few months down the road, the new part falls off because the business didn't fasten it correctly, change the rating. If initially you though the service was horrendous, but a day or two later they made good on it and you are now satisfied, change the rating.

You can make changes to any log entry for up to 30 days after the record is created. After that time, you may only change the difficulty rating, product rating, job rating and add comments. You can not delete comments after they have been submitted.
The reason for this is simple. A part can go bad at any time. Sometimes, it's covered under warranty, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you may find a better way to install the part or may find a better alternative. You should always be able to make a note to that effect. Also, a hypothetically, shop does work for you, returns your car and everything is working just fine. A month and a half later, the part you paid good money to have this shop install fails. This sometimes happens and may or may not be indicative of this shop's work. Depending on how they handle the situation, you may have changed your mind as to how good of a job this company did for you.

Can I use directions to the mod I made to my car on my web site?

Absolutely! As long as the url is a link to the directions and is reasonable. Some free hosts require ads on the page and we don't mind if you have links from that page to other pages on the site. The key word is reasonable. If links are found to be invalid (404 page not found) or spam type links they will be removed. Writing legitimate directions and stuffing the page with ads or links to other sites is frowned upon and may also be removed. The decision is solely our discretion.

I don't have a server. Can I put the directions on this site?

Maybe. We haven't determined a demand for that service yet, so use the contact us form, include the directions and we'll see what we can do.

Can I link to my vehicle log from my site?

Of course. There is a slight difference between what you see in your log and what your visitors will see. Public visitors will not see your name under the owner field. Other members do not see the owner field for vehicles that do not belong to them. This is only included if you wish to distribute copies of the maintenance log with your name on it, mostly when you sell a vehicle.
All you have to do is go to your vehicles list, click "Complete Log" and copy/paste the URL into your web site manipulation program or interface as a link. If you are selling your vehicle, please create a classified link.

Top	Difficulty Defined	Rating System	Vin Info	Changing log entries	Changing vehicle information
	Special Offers	Personal Info	Remove Vehicle	Directions URL	Can I convert my paper log?
	Everything Else	This is free?		Can I link to my log?	What types of vehicles can I track?

Why do you need my VIN number?

The VIN number is how other people who may buy a vehicle you've owned can find that information. For instance, you are planning to buy a used vehicle from a dealer. You can run a Car Fax history on the vehicle to find out if it has had major problems, such as a wreck, totaled/flooded, recalled. However, minor information, such as maintenance history can not be found. That's why created this site, in addition to giving community information such as frequency of repairs on a model or effectiveness of a modification.
Also, if you lose your password, this is one of the fields we may use to verify your authenticity, so it is very important. This is not the only field we may use and the method to recover your password is changed often to keep your data and records secure.

Can someone find me based on my VIN number?

No. If you sell, trade or salvage a vehicle, henceforth "release" a vehicle, the person searching for that VIN number will only know what maintenance was done to that vehicle. When you release a vehicle, all connections to you and that vehicle are deleted.

What else can I learn from my VIN number?

A lot. Depending on the manufacturer, not only does the VIN uniquely identify your vehicle, it can also tell you all factory installed equipment, where it was manufactured, and in some cases, even the original color code. For more information we recommend reading the VIN guide

I sold my car, how can I remove it from my vehicles list?

Log in. Click 'My Vehicles' on the left hand navigation. Click the vehicle you sold. When the page loads, click 'Add Log Entry'. Under the Category menu, select 'Miscellaneous'. Under Procedure, select, 'Private Sale', 'Trade', 'Theft' or 'Salvage' as appropriate. Click 'Continue'. Fill out all appropriate information, some doesn't apply. Leave those blank. Click 'Submit'. You'll then be asked to confirm that you are indeed removing the vehicle from your list. Click 'Yes' to confirm this. Voila! All connections between you and the car are removed from our system. If you did this by mistake, we hope you supplied your vin. If not, contact us to get it back in. If you did enter your vin, just add a vehicle and specify the vin. Our system will find it and connect the previous log with the 'new' vehicle you added.

Top	Difficulty Defined	Rating System	Vin Info	Changing log entries	Changing vehicle information
	Special Offers	Personal Info	Remove Vehicle	Directions URL	Can I convert my paper log?
	Everything Else	This is free?		Can I link to my log?	What types of vehicles can I track?

Why do you need my birth date, gender and zip code?

We are working with sponsors to give our users birthday specials, that range from free service and/or parts to significant discounts on service and parts. We'll send you an email about a week before your birthday with a coupon for these offers. By knowing your zip code and the vehicles you own we can narrow down these offers to the ones that apply to you. There's no point in us telling you about a motorcycle or boat special if you don't own one, nor is it any good to send you a free offer for service at a business in Maine if you live in Washington.
No sponsor will ever contact you with information that we give them. We do not sell, rent, lease or trade email lists. We dislike spam, junk mail and telemarketers with a passion. We don't want it, why would we send it your way?
Lastly, by knowing a little about our community members, age, gender and location we can better serve this community.

Tell me more about the Special Offers available to me by being a member.

We constantly work with our sponsors to give you opportunities to save a little money. Sometimes, allot of money. We won't send you crap, like viagra ads or the latest money making scheme. We don't want it, why would you? About one to two weeks before your next scheduled service or birthday, we'll send an email with a summary of offers from our sponsors that apply to the vehicles you own and the area you live. We've included in our agreement with our sponsor that any coupons, certificates or discounts must be "no strings attached", meaning you won't have to give up your email address for spam, or buy a vehicle from a dealer to get the free or discounted service. You only pay for what is in the certificate.
Some certificates, like birthday specials and senior discounts may require you to show your driver's license to confirm your age or recent birthday.

Can I convert my old log from paper, Excel, or a database to this system?

Absolutely! We recommend starting with one vehicle, enter the entire log and move onto the next vehicle. The order you enter the information does not matter as long as the dates and mileage are included. You can "fudge" the numbers, as many people will only write the date or the mileage in a vehicle log, but don't if you can avoid it. It's ok if you only wrote down the thousands of miles/km/hours, but in the future, enter the exact mileage so our system can more accurately determine when your next service is due.
If you've got the log in an electronic format, Contact Us with the details, file type, version, layout or format of the data and we'll see what we can do to "plug" the information in automatically for you.

What are classified links and can these really help me sell my car?

Classified links are a simple short URL that can be placed in a print or online classified to highlight you're car's excellent maintenance history.
Click here more information or to purchase a classified link

I have a question that isn't answered here, or I'd like to suggest a feature

We want to hear from you! All you have to do is ask. Click Contact Us, fill out the form, make sure the email address you are using works and ask away. We try to accommodate all reasonable requests. Also, you may have a request that someone else already asked for, if so, we're working on it, but asking again will increase the priority so you'll see it sooner.