AutoMD – A Revolutionary Way to Get Auto Repairs
Launching in January, AutoMD bills itself as the most complete and unbiased free online automotive repair resource. It’s goal is to empower car owners with the best and most affordable way to repair vehicles with both do-it-yourself advice and ratings of local repair shops.
The site offers a full suite of information on auto repair. If you’re a DIY mechanic who’s just needing help diagnosing or repairing a problem, it can help with that. Otherwise, if you just want to find a good, reputable shop in your area, it can help with that as well. Including repair estimates and more.
AutoMD offers problem diagnosis for both DIY repair and in narrowing down a problem to get a better estimate from a shop. Using the tool, I found it pretty good at finding the problem when I tried diagnosing my friend’s rattling mini van – getting the diagnosis in just a few questions, which turned out to have been the problem (according to the mechanic who did the repair). The estimate it gave was pretty close, though the mechanic in question was not listed on the site’s directory.
Walking through the DIY instructions for fixing that problem (a loose muffler heat shield), I saw that given the right tools, the fix is a very simple one. A lot of other DIY information is also on AutoMD for everything from oil changes to block gasket replacement and overhauls.
The site is easy to use, as accurate as you could hope, and free. The DIY instructions are lacking some illustrations that might make them easier to use, but overall the site is worth trying if you have car trouble and would like to avoid getting taken to the cleaners.
