Car Mechanics Shared The Things They Would Avoid Doing To Their Own Cars At All Costs

It’s the job of car technicians and mechanics to diagnose what’s wrong with your vehicle, so don’t make their job harder by fibbing.

“We get it all the time … ‘I don’t know what happened. It just suddenly started making this weird noise,’” Lateiner said. “And then we look at it like, ‘Clearly you’ve been off-roading with your very low-profile car.’”

“The more accurate information you can give us, the quicker we can get to the actual problem, because you’re not sending us on a wild-goose chase,” she continued.

To give more helpful details, Lateiner recommends keeping track of when you hear the “weird noise.” If you’re having trouble describing the sound, Lateiner recommends taking an audio or video recording that you can show your technician, or taking someone on a test drive with you so they can hear it too.

Ultimately, maintaining a car properly can involve upfront costs and extra research, but it should save you headaches in the long run.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.