News & updates

What your vehicle earns, and what it keeps: income, profit and net per km

If you drive for a rideshare app, deliver, tow, or rent out a boat or a trailer, you know what you earned last month. Few people know what the vehicle took back. That gap is the number that decides whether a job is worth taking. Income is its own entry. Add log entry, and the first section of the list is Revenue: Rides, Deliveries, Rental, Hauling & towing, Mileage reimbursement, Tips, or your own item under + Other. Several items can share one entry, a day's rides and tips together. Amount and date are all it needs; odometer, place and notes are optional. An entry is either revenue or services, never both, so earnings and spending stay apart. Reports puts them side by side. Pick the period from the top bar (last 3, 6 or 12 months, year to date, all time, or custom) and any mix of vehicles. With income logged you get Income, Spent and the Net tile: Net profit, Net loss or Break-even. After 1,000 km of readings, Net per km. Income per day shows a day on average and per day worked. The trend chart draws two bars per month, Spent and Income; tap the legend to hide one. What to do with the number. Net per km, next to the rate an app pays you per km, is the whole business in one line. A monthly net that keeps slipping is the early sign that a vehicle has become expensive to keep. It stays yours. Income never travels when you transfer a vehicle, with no toggle to get wrong. It is in your export, and in the report PDF whenever it is on screen; the service-history PDF leaves it out unless you switch Include income on.

One shop visit, one entry: every service with its own cost

A visit to the shop comes back as one invoice with four lines: oil and filter, tire rotation, cabin filter, a bulb. Most logbooks make you choose: one entry with a made-up category and the grand total, or four entries with four guessed prices. Both lose something you will want later. The entry reads like the invoice. An expense entry in Maintano holds every service done that day. Pick each one from the list, type its cost beside it, then add tax and other fees once at the bottom. The total matches the receipt to the cent, and each service keeps its own price for the reports. The list knows your vehicle. Services are grouped the way a shop thinks: Engine & Oil, Tires & Wheels, Brakes, Fluids & Filters, Battery & Electrical, and so on, with a search box on top. An electric car does not see oil changes. Missing something? Add your own under + Other in any section; it is saved for next time and you can rename it. Date and reading once. One date and one odometer reading cover the whole visit. A higher reading updates the vehicle's mileage, which is what your mileage reminders project from. It closes the loop with your reminders. Save the entry and the app finds the reminders that match its services: Done, remind again; Done for good; or Not yet. Each completion is written down. The Completed group on the Reminders screen lists what was done, when, at what reading, with a link back to the entry. That list is the answer to "when were the brakes last done?", and it builds itself. Income is its own kind of entry, kept apart from spending. That is the next post.

Your proof of insurance, on the vehicle, on your phone

The question comes at the worst moment: a roadside stop, a border, a rental counter. "Can I see your insurance?" The paper card in the glovebox is the one that expired in March. One tap from the vehicle. On the vehicle's page, the photo carries an Insurance pill. Tap it and the card opens full screen, bright, and stays on until you dismiss it. It works offline: no sign-in, no network, no searching. Adding it takes one photo. Photograph the card or scan it, up to four pages. The app reads the insurer, policy number and dates on the phone itself, shows each one as "Detected — tap to confirm", and keeps only what you confirm. Nothing is sent anywhere to be read. If the card names a VIN, the app checks it against the vehicle's. Before it expires. When you save a card with an expiry date, the app offers a reminder for that day. Take it and the usual notices arrive 30, 15 and 5 days ahead, so the card on your phone is never the stale one. What it never does. The card stays in the app's private storage, never in your photo gallery. It is not in the service-history PDF, the report PDF, the Ask AI file or the export, and it never travels with a transfer: when a vehicle changes hands, the seller's card for it is removed. On Pro it is backed up with your account and nowhere else. One honest line, which the app shows too: many places accept proof of insurance on a phone, but not all. Keep the paper card in the vehicle as well.

Receipts that survive: photos, the document scanner, and PDF invoices

Thermal-paper receipts fade. Leave one in a glovebox through a summer and it comes back blank, right when a warranty claim or a buyer asks for it. The photo you take the day you get it is the copy that lasts. Five per entry. Every expense entry holds up to five images: the shop receipt, the parts invoice that came separately, the inspection sheet. Tap Add a receipt and choose how it gets in: • Take photo: the camera, then crop and rotate. • Scan document: the phone's document scanner flattens a receipt lying on the counter, straightens it and trims the edges. It appears when your phone has a scanner. • Choose photo: a picture already on the phone, through the system picker. Maintano never asks for access to your photo library. • Choose file: a PDF invoice from an email. Each page becomes one receipt image; the PDF itself is not kept. A longer scan or PDF keeps its first pages up to the five slots, and tells you so. Nothing is read, nothing is uploaded to be read. A receipt is a picture. The app does not scan its text and does not send it anywhere. On the free plan it is stored on this phone; Pro backs receipts up with the rest of the logbook, so they come back on a new phone. Where they show up later. Every receipt is in its entry, and in the service-history PDF: a Receipts appendix prints each one again at full size, numbered, so the buyer or the warranty desk sees the original and not a thumbnail. The habit that makes it work: photograph the receipt before you leave the counter. Date, reading and services take twenty seconds. The photo is the part you cannot redo later.

Back up your records in one tap

On the free plan your records live on this phone only, so the phone holds the only copy. An export is how you keep a second one. • Open Settings and choose Export data. Maintano makes one .zip file: your records as spreadsheets, and every photo. • Save it somewhere a lost phone can't take with it: your email, a cloud drive, or a computer. • On a new phone, choose Restore from export in Settings and pick that file. Export again after a busy season, so the copy you keep is current. Settings shows the date of your last export. Your phone's own backup helps too, with one difference. On Android, the backup to your Google account carries your records but not your photos, because its size limit is easily passed by a garage full of receipts. Setting up a new phone straight from the old one carries both, and so does iCloud Backup on an iPhone. An export carries both, wherever you keep it.

What travels when you transfer a vehicle

Transferring a vehicle hands its service history to the next owner. Before anything leaves your account, you see what goes and confirm it. • Always included: the vehicle's details, its service history and reminders, and the place names and addresses you typed on them. • Your choice: receipt photos and notes. Either can be switched off before you confirm. • Never included: the vehicle's insurance card, and any income entries. Those are yours and stay with you. Before you transfer, check your addresses. If you typed an address you would rather keep to yourself, such as your home, edit that entry first. Once the other person accepts, the transfer is final. The Privacy Policy at maintano.app/privacy has the full list under Ownership transfer.

Selling your car? How to hand the buyer its full service history

Give the buyer the records in a form they can check and keep: every service with its date, the odometer reading, the shop and the cost, and the receipts behind them. There are three ways to do it, and they work best together. All of this applies to a motorcycle, an RV or a boat just as much as to a car. 1. The paper trail. Gather the receipts and the stamped service book, sort them by date, and hand them over with the keys. It costs nothing and every buyer understands it. Its weakness is that it is only as complete as your glovebox: thermal-paper receipts fade, and a folder cannot be searched. 2. A vehicle history report. A CARFAX report shows what has been reported to it: accident and damage records, registrations, and the services some shops send in. Many buyers pull one anyway. It cannot show the oil changes you did yourself or the work done at a shop that does not report, so it complements your records rather than replacing them. 3. Your own logbook, passed on. If you kept the history in Maintano, there are two ways to hand it over. • Share service history. On the vehicle, open the menu and choose Share service history. You get one PDF: the vehicle, a summary, every log entry, the reminders, the service locations, and every receipt printed again at full size. Email it, message it, or print it for the viewing. It is free, and the insurance card is never in it. • Transfer ownership. The buyer gets the vehicle itself in their own Maintano app: the service history and the reminders, plus the receipt photos and notes unless you switch them off. You give them a code that starts with MTN-, read aloud or shown as a QR code. It works once, expires after 7 days, and you can revoke it until it is redeemed. The buyer needs only a free account, and you keep a read-only copy of the records. The insurance card and any income entries stay with you. Transfer needs Pro on the seller's side, and once the buyer accepts, it is final. If you delete a vehicle and pick "Sold it" as the reason, the app offers both of these before anything is deleted. Read it the way the buyer will, first. Share the PDF to yourself before you send it. Addresses you typed on entries travel with the history, so if one is somewhere you would rather keep private, such as your home, edit that entry first. Hand the history over before the buyer decides, not after. A buyer who can read the car's past has one less reason to doubt it.

VIN lookup: enter the VIN and the app suggests the vehicle

Type or scan a VIN on Add vehicle and the app suggests the year, make and model, for example 2020 Acura MDX SH-AWD A-Spec, and where it can, the powertrain. Accept it, change it, or ignore it. It also works when you add a VIN to a vehicle you already have. Where the answer comes from. vPIC, the public decoder run by NHTSA, a US government agency. It knows vehicles sold in North America best; for others it may suggest only the make, or nothing at all. What is sent. The VIN and nothing else. It goes straight from your phone to NHTSA; it does not pass through our servers, and no name, email or record goes with it. If you are offline, nothing is sent and you can still save the vehicle. Details are in the Privacy Policy at maintano.app/privacy, under Looking up a vehicle by its VIN.

The service list, and adding your own services

A log is now a visit. Pick every service done from the list, give each its cost, and add tax and fees once at the bottom. The entry reads the way the invoice does. The list is grouped (Engine & Oil, Tires & Wheels, Brakes, and so on) and searchable. It follows the vehicle: an electric car does not see oil changes, and a boat does not see tire rotations. Missing a service? Tap + Other in any section and name it. It is saved for next time, it syncs on paid plans, and you can rename it later. What we learn from it. The name of a service you add is included in usage statistics, after the app cleans it on your phone to remove anything that looks like personal details. We use those names to add the most common ones to the built-in list for everyone. Turning off usage analytics in Settings stops this. The Privacy Policy at maintano.app/privacy says so under Usage analytics and crash reports.

Places are now something you type

The map and the place search are gone from the app. A place on a log or a reminder is now two things you type: a name and, if you want, an address. As you type the name, the app suggests places you have used before; pick one and both the name and the address fill in. Why: the map services do not allow an app to keep the places they return, and we would rather follow their terms than work around them. What happens to your old entries: place names stay exactly as they were. Map pins saved by earlier versions are removed when the app updates; the name and any address you had are kept as text. The Directions button on a reminder still works: it opens your maps app with a search for the place. The Privacy Policy at maintano.app/privacy describes what a place is and where it goes.

The maintenance checklist: what it is for, and how to get it later

When you add a car, SUV, truck or van, the app offers a list of common maintenance reminders. It is for anyone who is not sure what a vehicle needs and when: a starting point, so the first reminders are there without typing each one. What you can do with it right then. Everything is checked to begin with. Uncheck what you do not want, tap the pencil to change when an item is first due, then tap Add. Or tap Skip and come back to it later. It is a reference, not your vehicle's schedule. The intervals are typical for that kind of vehicle. Your owner's manual has the ones for yours, and a reminder you add is your own: change it or delete it any time. Gas and electric. The list follows the vehicle's powertrain. An electric car gets a different list from a gas one, with no oil changes on it. If you skipped it. Open Reminders, tap the ⋮ menu, and choose Maintenance checklist. Items already in your list are greyed out, so you never get duplicates. Motorcycles, RVs, boats and the other vehicle types get their checklists in later versions. The Terms of Service at maintano.app/terms say it plainly under Not maintenance advice: Maintano keeps your records; it does not tell you what your vehicle needs.

Release 39 is here

A new version of Maintano is out on the App Store and Google Play. Here is what changed, one line each. Over the next few weeks we will explain the bigger ones, one post at a time. • Log a whole shop visit: several services on one entry, each with its own cost, plus tax and fees once. • A service list to pick from, grouped and searchable, and your own services when yours is missing. • Reminders name a service, are grouped by when they are due, and keep a list of what you completed. • A reminder can hold a place, pre-filled from your last visit, with one-tap directions. • A maintenance checklist to start a new car, SUV, truck or van's reminders from. • Tell Maintano whether a car is gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid or electric to see the services that fit. • VIN lookup: enter or scan the VIN and the app suggests the year, make, model and powertrain. • Keep your proof of insurance on your phone: one tap from the vehicle's photo, works offline, and the app reads the details off the card for you to confirm. • Reports: pick the time range from the top bar and any mix of vehicles, with new distance, energy and reminders-completed cards and charts for where the money goes. • Log income (rides, deliveries, tips) in a Revenue section kept apart from what you spent, with profit or loss in Reports. • Share Reports as a PDF; service-history PDFs now carry a letterhead and print every receipt full size. • Ask AI: send a vehicle's records to ChatGPT, Gemini or any AI app you use. • Scan receipts flat, or attach a PDF invoice; each page becomes a receipt. • Places are typed now: a name and an address, with suggestions from the places you have used. The map is gone. • Service dates, due dates, owned-since and registration dates stay on the day you picked, in any time zone. • A fresh look: deep-teal bars, clearer cards and fields, in light and dark. • The odometer you enter when adding a vehicle is saved as its first log. Privacy changes The map and place search are gone, so a place is text you type, and nothing about it goes to a map service. A typed place name and address travel with a vehicle when you transfer it, as part of its service history. Entering a VIN sends that VIN, and nothing else, straight from your phone to NHTSA, the public decoder run by the US government. The insurance card stays on your phone, and in your account's cloud copy on a paid plan; the app reads its text on the phone, saves only what you confirm, and never puts the card in a transfer, a PDF or the file prepared for Ask AI. A service you add to the service list is included in usage statistics by name, after the app cleans it on your phone; the analytics switch in Settings stops that. The full wording is in the Privacy Policy and the Terms at maintano.app. We'll explain each of these in the coming weeks.

How much does my vehicle really cost, and is fuel economy getting worse?

Your true running cost is everything you have paid to keep the vehicle on the road, fuel included, over a period long enough to average out the big bills. Fuel economy is measured from one full tank to the next, and a steady decline is one of the earliest signs that something needs attention. The Reports screen in Maintano answers both questions from the logs you already keep. It needs no setup, but it does need data: a few months of entries before the totals mean anything, and a couple of fuel logs before economy appears at all. What "total spent" includes: every log entry with a cost, whatever the category. Fuel, oil changes, tires, brakes, repairs, parts and accessories, cleaning, registration and insurance all count, because all of them are what the vehicle costs you. Pick a time range, the last three months, six months, a year or all time, and the total updates. Below it, the breakdown by category shows where the money goes, which is usually a surprise: fuel and insurance tend to dwarf the maintenance most people worry about. The breakdown by place shows which shops you spend the most with, for the entries where you saved a place. How fuel economy is worked out: economy is distance divided by fuel, and the only honest way to measure it is between two fills to the top. When you log a fuel stop with the volume, the cost and the odometer, and leave "Filled to full" switched on, the app has a measuring point. The next full tank gives it a distance and a volume, and from there it reports your average economy as MPG or L/100km, following the distance unit you chose in Settings. A partial fill still counts its fuel and its cost; it just is not a measuring point, so economy waits for the next full tank. Why the trend matters more than the number: your economy will always differ from the brochure figure, and it swings with the season, the load and the route. What should worry you is a drift. Economy sliding down by ten percent or more over a few months, on the same kind of driving, points to something fixable: under-inflated tires, a clogged air filter, a dragging brake, worn spark plugs, a stuck thermostat, or a roof box you forgot to take off. Caught early, each of those costs less than the fuel it wastes. Check it yourself: • Open Reports and set the time range to the last six months. Note the total, then open the category breakdown and find your biggest line. • Look at the Fuel card. It shows the average economy, the average price you paid per litre or gallon, and how many fills that is based on. If it says economy appears after two fills to full, you know what to do next. • Have more than one vehicle? Tap the vehicle chips at the top to switch between them or view them together, and compare which one is actually costing you more per month. • Look at the same numbers again in three months. The comparison is the report. Log the next three fill-ups with the volume and the odometer, and come back. The first economy figure appears after the second full tank, and the third gives you a trend worth reading.

Why do my brakes squeal or grind, and when does brake fluid need changing?

A high-pitched squeal usually means the pads are close to worn out, a grinding noise means they already are, and brake fluid needs changing on a time schedule, typically every two to three years, no matter how little you drive. How pads wear: every stop scrubs a little friction material off the pad against the disc. Most pads carry a small metal tab that touches the disc when the material is nearly gone, and that tab is the squeal. It is designed to be annoying, because it is your notice period. Some vehicles use an electronic sensor instead and show a warning light. Motorcycle pads often have a wear groove or line moulded into the material instead of a tab; when the groove is gone, so is the pad. Grinding is different. A harsh metallic grind on braking means the friction material is gone and the pad's steel backing is cutting into the disc. Stopping distances grow, the disc is being destroyed, and the repair bill is growing with every stop. Drive gently to a shop or have the vehicle collected; this is not a "next month" job. A pedal or lever that pulses under braking, or a steering wheel that shudders when slowing from speed, points to a disc that is no longer flat, usually from overheating. It can often be machined once; otherwise it is replaced in pairs. A pedal that feels soft or sinks slowly, or a lever that comes back to the grip, is never "just how it feels". It means air or moisture in the system or a leak, and it needs looking at today. Why fluid has a time limit: brake fluid absorbs moisture from the air through the hoses and seals. After a couple of years it can hold enough water to boil under hard braking, and boiling fluid turns into vapour that compresses, which is the moment the pedal goes to the floor. Water also corrodes the pistons and lines from the inside. Because moisture creeps in whether you drive or not, the interval is measured in years, not distance. The same applies to hydraulic brakes on motorcycles, ATVs and bicycles, and to the hydraulic clutch on many of them. Trailers with hydraulic surge brakes have a reservoir too, and it is the one everybody forgets. Check it yourself: • Look through the wheel spokes with a flashlight. On many vehicles you can see the pad's friction material against the disc. New pads are roughly 10 to 12 mm (about half an inch) thick; most manufacturers call for replacement around 3 mm (an eighth of an inch). Check the inside pad too, as it often wears faster. • Listen with the windows down and the radio off. Squeal on light braking means the wear tab; grinding means stop; a clunk means something loose. • Open the hood and find the fluid reservoir. Fresh fluid is nearly clear or light amber. Dark brown fluid is due for a change regardless of the date. A level that keeps falling means a leak or very worn pads, since the fluid follows the pistons out as the pads thin. • Test the pedal when parked. Press firmly and hold for thirty seconds; it should stay put. A pedal that keeps sinking needs a shop. • Check the drums. Many trailers, older vehicles and some rear axles still use drum brakes; the shoes are hidden, so they need a periodic inspection instead of a glance. Log the pad thickness on each axle whenever the wheels are off for a rotation or a tire change, and the date of every fluid change. After two or three entries the wear rate is visible in the timeline, and "when will the brakes need doing" becomes a date you can plan around rather than a noise you react to.

Does a service history increase resale value? What to keep, and how

Yes. A complete, dated service history with receipts is the strongest argument a private seller has, and it works the same way for cars, motorcycles, RVs, and boats. A vehicle whose past a buyer can read is easier to sell and harder to argue down. The good news is that keeping one takes seconds per service. What a buyer is really asking is "has this been looked after?" A folder of receipts answers it better than any description. It proves the oil was changed on schedule, shows which shop did the brakes and when, and turns "new tires recently" into a date, a brand and a price. A vehicle with no history is priced as if the worst was skipped, because the buyer cannot tell. What to capture for every service: • The receipt itself. Photograph it the moment you get it, before it fades or ends up in a glovebox. Thermal-paper receipts turn blank within a year or two, so the photo is the copy that survives. • The date and the odometer or engine hours. Together they are the timeline. A reading with every entry also feeds your reminders and reports. • Where it was done. The shop's name, and the location if you might need to find it again for a warranty claim or a comeback. • What went in. Part numbers, the oil grade and quantity, the tire size and brand. The notes field is for exactly this, and future you will thank present you. • The cost, even when it was zero. A warranty repair or a recall still belongs in the history, and "free" is worth recording. Check it yourself: open Maintano, pick the vehicle in your Garage, and add a log entry. Choose the category, set the date and the reading, then tap "Add a photo of the receipt" and take the picture right there. Type the shop name in the place field, or find it on the map so the location is stored with the entry. Add the part numbers in the notes and save. That is the whole routine, and it is faster than filing the paper. Start with the next service, not the whole past. Log it with the receipt and the reading, and the history builds itself from there.

How long does a battery last, and how do you test it before winter?

A 12-volt starter battery lasts about three to five years, and age matters far more than mileage. The reliable way to know where yours stands is a load test, which most parts shops and garages do in minutes, often for free. Why winter? A cold engine needs more current to turn over, and a cold battery can deliver less of it. A battery that started fine all summer can fail on the first frosty morning, which is why the check belongs in the autumn, before the first cold snap rather than after it. This applies to every vehicle with a starter battery: cars, SUVs, pickups, vans, RVs, motorcycles and snowmobiles, plus the house batteries in an RV or boat. Hybrids and electric vehicles still carry a small 12-volt battery for the electronics, and it ages the same way. The warning signs: a slow, laboured crank; headlights that dim at idle and brighten when you rev; a battery or charging warning on the dashboard; electronics that reset their clock or settings; a rotten-egg smell or a swollen case, which means stop and replace it now. Any of these on a battery older than three years is a strong hint. Short trips are the quiet killer. Starting the engine takes a large gulp of charge and the alternator needs a good twenty to thirty minutes of driving to put it back. A vehicle that only does five-minute errands slowly drains its own battery, and the same happens to a motorcycle ridden once every two weeks or an RV parked between trips. Stored vehicles fare worst of all: the alarm, the clock and the computers keep drawing a little current every day. Check it yourself: • Ask for a load test. A garage or parts shop connects a tester that measures how the battery holds up under a starter-sized load. It gives you a health percentage, and it is the only test that predicts a cold-morning failure. • Read the resting voltage. With a cheap multimeter, after the vehicle has sat for a few hours: about 12.6 volts or higher means full, around 12.4 means three-quarters, and 12.2 or below means it needs charging and possibly a closer look. A battery that keeps reading low after a proper charge is on its way out. • Look at the terminals. White or blue-green crust is corrosion, and it adds resistance exactly where you need it least. Disconnect the negative first, scrub with a wire brush and a paste of baking soda and water, rinse, dry, reconnect positive first, and coat the terminals with a little grease or terminal spray. • Find the date. Many batteries carry a sticker with the month and year of installation or manufacture. If yours has none, the invoice from your last battery change is the answer, which is where a logbook earns its keep. • Storing a vehicle? For a motorcycle, snowmobile, boat, jet ski or RV going into storage, either connect a maintenance charger, sometimes called a tender, or disconnect the negative terminal. A battery left flat through a winter is usually ruined by spring. Log the battery you have now: the install date, the size and type, and the load-test result each autumn. From then on the age question answers itself, and a battery that tests weaker each year tells you to replace it on your schedule instead of the weather's.

Should a maintenance reminder go by date or by mileage?

Set a date when the service ages the part regardless of use, set a mileage target when the service wears with distance, and set both when your manual says "whichever comes first". Maintano fires the reminder on the first one to arrive. Most service intervals are really two limits. Engine oil is the classic case: a distance and a number of months, because oil degrades sitting in a warm engine even when the vehicle is parked. Brake fluid, coolant, timing belts and inspections are the same. Which one wins depends on how you use the vehicle, and that is why the app lets you set either or both. By date is right for the things that expire on the calendar: brake fluid, coolant, the annual inspection or registration, winter tires on and off, the battery check before the cold months, and the antifreeze check on a boat or RV going into storage. A trailer or a bicycle, which has no odometer to speak of, lives entirely on date reminders. By mileage is right for what wears with distance: oil and filters, tire rotation, brake pads, spark plugs, belts and chains. On a boat or a jet ski the same idea runs on engine hours, and Maintano tracks those instead of distance for vehicles that meter that way. Both is what the manual usually means, and it is the honest choice for oil on a vehicle you do not drive every day: the short-trip commuter reaches the months first, the road-tripper reaches the distance first, and the reminder catches whichever it is. How does Maintano know when a mileage target is coming? It learns from your odometer readings. Every log entry that carries an odometer, whether it is a fuel stop, an oil change or a quick mileage update, becomes a dated reading. Once it has readings at least a week apart, the app works out your average daily distance from the real numbers and projects when the target will arrive, so the notification lands before the deadline rather than on it. Until then it uses the estimated daily distance you typed when you added the vehicle. Readings always beat the estimate. If it has been a couple of weeks since the last reading, the app nudges you for a fresh one, because an estimate is only as good as its newest number. Check it yourself: • Open your owner's manual and find the maintenance schedule table. Each row shows a distance, a time, or both, and that is exactly how to set each reminder. • In Maintano, open Reminders and tap +. Choose the vehicle and a title, then set a date target, a mileage target, or both. • Look at the vehicle's card in the Garage. A reminder with a mileage target shows how soon it is due, projected from your readings, and that estimate sharpens with every reading you add. • Log the odometer whenever you fuel up or service anything. A couple of readings a month keeps the projection honest. When a reminder is due, the notification opens the app, and you complete it there: tap the empty ring on the reminder card, or take the offer that appears after you save a log that matches. Either way you choose whether to be reminded again at the same interval or to call it done for good, and the same sheet can create the log entry for you. Set one now for the next service you already know is coming, and the app keeps count for you.

What tire pressure should I use, and when are my tires worn out?

The right tire pressure is the one printed on your vehicle's placard, not the number moulded into the tire's sidewall. Tires are worn out when the tread reaches the wear bars, or when they are simply too old, whichever comes first. Why the placard and not the tire? The sidewall number is the maximum the tire can safely hold. The placard is what the vehicle's engineers chose for that weight, that suspension and that handling. On cars, SUVs, vans and pickups it is a sticker on the driver's door frame or inside the fuel flap. On motorcycles it is usually on the swingarm or chain guard, and always in the manual. Trailers and many RVs are the exception: they run close to the tire's rated load, so the placard often matches the sidewall maximum. Bicycles print a range on the tire, and the lower end is for comfort and grip. Under-inflation is the expensive mistake. A tire running below its placard pressure flexes more, runs hotter, wears its shoulders and burns extra fuel on every trip. Over-inflation wears the centre of the tread and reduces grip in the wet. Both shorten the tire's life. Check it yourself: • Check cold: before the first drive of the day, or after at least three hours parked. Driving warms the air inside and adds pressure, so a warm reading always looks better than it is. • Check monthly, and before any long or heavily loaded trip. Pressure falls with the weather too: about 1 PSI for every 10 °C (0.07 bar per 10 °C, or 1 PSI per 18 °F) the temperature drops. • Use your own gauge. The gauges on station air hoses are often inaccurate. Do not forget the spare, and on a trailer or RV, every tire on every axle. • Find the wear bars: small raised strips running across the bottom of the main grooves. When the tread surface is level with them, the tire is at the legal minimum in most countries (about 1.6 mm, or 2/32 of an inch) and should have been replaced already. Winter tires need roughly double that to work in snow. • Track the depth: a tread depth gauge costs very little. Without one, stand a coin in the main groove, note how much of it disappears, and compare the same spot next month. The change is what you are watching, along with any difference between the inner and outer edges, which points to alignment or pressure. • Read the age: the last four digits of the code on the sidewall are the week and year the tire was made (for example 2322 is the 23rd week of 2022). Rubber hardens with age, so many manufacturers advise replacing tires around six years old even with tread left, and ten years is a common hard limit. Trailer, RV, boat-trailer and classic-car tires usually age out long before they wear out. Rotation and alignment: on cars, SUVs, vans and trucks, rotating the tires at every oil change or roughly every 10,000 km (6,000 miles) spreads the wear evenly and is the cheapest way to make a set last. Motorcycles and single-axle trailers have no rotation pattern. Get an alignment checked when the vehicle pulls to one side, the steering wheel sits off-centre, the edges wear faster than the middle, or after a hard pothole or curb strike. Whatever you find, log it: the pressures you set, the tread depth at each corner, and the odometer at every rotation. Next month you will be comparing against a real baseline instead of a memory, and a slow leak or a fast-wearing corner shows up long before it becomes a roadside problem.

Oil changes explained

Engine oil does three jobs at once: it lubricates moving parts, it carries heat away from the hottest corners of the engine, and it holds the soot and metal particles that wear produces. Over time it thins, gets dirty, and loses the additives that protect against corrosion. An oil change is the single cheapest way to add years to an engine, and skipping it is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make. How often? Follow your owner's manual. Most manufacturers give two limits, a distance and a time, and the rule is "whichever comes first". Short trips, towing, dusty roads, and very hot or very cold climates all shorten the interval. If your vehicle has an oil-life monitor, trust it, and have it reset after each change. Which oil? The manual specifies a viscosity grade (something like 5W-30) and a quality standard. Any brand that meets both is fine. Mineral, semi-synthetic, and full synthetic differ mainly in how long they last and how they behave in extreme temperatures; synthetic usually allows the longer intervals. If you have to top up, use the same grade. While the vehicle is up on a lift or on stands, these are worth doing or checking in the same visit: • Oil filter: replace it every time. Old oil trapped in a dirty filter contaminates the fresh fill. • Drain plug washer: a fresh crush washer prevents the slow leak that leaves spots on the driveway. • Engine air filter: hold it up to the light. If you can't see through it, replace it. • Cabin air filter: cheap, quick, and the reason your vents smell the way they do. • Other fluids: top up coolant, brake fluid, power steering, and washer fluid, and note anything that was unusually low. • Tire rotation and pressure: rotating at every oil change is the easiest way to remember it. • Quick look underneath: brake pads, belts, hoses, and any fresh leak are all visible while the vehicle is up. Whatever gets done, log it in Maintano with the odometer, the oil grade and quantity, and the filter part number. Next time, you'll know exactly what went in and when, whichever shop or driveway it happens in.

Welcome to Maintano: your first three minutes

Maintano is your vehicle's logbook. Here's how to get rolling: • Add your vehicle in seconds: tap + in the Garage and scan the VIN with the camera, so you never type it wrong. • Log your first service: pick the vehicle, add a log, and capture what was done, the cost, the odometer, a photo of the receipt, and where it happened. • Never miss an oil change: set reminders by date, by mileage, or both, whichever comes first. Maintano learns your daily distance from the readings you log and tells you before the deadline, not after. • Watch the trends: after a few logs, Reports shows your cost of ownership and fuel economy at a glance. The megaphone in the top bar is where we post release notes and maintenance tips, so check back after an update. Start with the next thing done to the vehicle, however small. Log it, and the history builds itself from there.

Seasonal maintenance checklist

Every season change is a good excuse to give your vehicle twenty minutes of attention. Heading into the cold months, whenever they arrive where you live: • Battery: cold mornings are when weak batteries die. If yours is more than three years old, have it load-tested. • Tires: check tread depth and pressure. Pressure drops about 1 PSI for every 10 °C (1 PSI per 18 °F) the temperature falls. Swap to winter tires where the law or the weather demands it. • Wipers and washer fluid: fit fresh blades and fill up with winter-rated fluid before the first frost, not after. • Coolant: make sure the antifreeze concentration matches your climate. A cheap tester tells you in seconds. • Lights: shorter days mean more driving in the dark. Walk around the vehicle and check every bulb, licence plate and fog lights included. • Emergency kit: a scraper, jumper cables or a booster pack, a blanket, and a flashlight earn their place in the trunk all winter. Log each item as you do it, so next year you'll know exactly when it was last done.