How Can You Tell There’s a Problem with Your Car’s Muffler?

Your car’s muffler doesn’t do much, right? Not so fast. It turns out that your car’s muffler is a big part of the exhaust system and it’s a part that can seriously affect your car’s performance. HRS AutoCare has this advice for recognizing issues with your car’s muffler and what it might mean for you.

Gas mileage is a big indication that there are some performance problems somewhere. Those issues could be in the engine or they can be elsewhere, like in the exhaust system. Your car’s engine needs all of the various systems and parts to be operating at peak efficiency in order to operate at peak efficiency itself. Failing to do that means that it burns more gas than it should, which is evident in poor gas mileage. The best way to be able to keep up with gas mileage is to track gas usage yourself. Apps can make that a lot easier.

Your car’s muffler has a distinct purpose in the exhaust system. It is designed to literally muffle the sounds produced by your car’s engine because combustion is a seriously loud process. If your muffler outright fails, you’ll hear a difference in noise levels immediately. For more slow declines in function, it might take you a little longer to start to notice that your car is a lot louder than it used to be.

You never really want to smell exhaust fumes inside the passenger area of your car. If you are, that’s not a good sign. It’s also an indication that there’s likely something going on with your muffler, if not elsewhere in the exhaust system. Exhaust is bad enough to smell, of course, but if you’re smelling gasoline at all while you’re driving, that’s extremely dangerous. You shouldn’t drive your car if you’re smelling gas itself in the passenger compartment. It’s much safer to have the car inspected and make sure you know what’s causing the problem and get it fixed before driving again.

Suspect that you’ve got something going on with your car’s exhaust system or with the muffler? Give us a call at HRS AutoCare in Nicholasville, KY. We can thoroughly troubleshoot the issue for you and determine what’s causing the problem. Then we’ll give you a complete plan for getting the problem fixed.