As a car owner, you may not like the idea of actually calling a towing service to have your car towed to a shop or back home so you can make repairs. You may also assume that if your car is running, you can manage to drive it yourself. However, some car problems are very dangerous and could cause your car to fail when on the road. Note a few times it's good to have your car towed by a service like Dickies rather than trying to drive it.

Soft brakes

If you feel you need to apply more pressure to get your brakes working than what is normal, you don't want to keep driving your car. This usually doesn't just mean that the brake pads only need changing; chances are that your car is low on brake fluid. If there is a leak in the brake lines, this fluid can drip out completely. The fluid is used to build up pressure and to keep the wheels of the car turning smoothly as the brake pads squeeze shut to stop them. If your car's brake fluid were to drain, your brakes might fail or lock up against the wheels and this is very dangerous.

Smell of gas

When your car has a fluid leak of any sort, you can often smell it burning as it drips onto the hot exhaust. If you smell gas, however, this is much more dangerous. A gas leak can mean the risk of an engine fire or fire someplace else under the hood, as gas is more flammable than any other fluid in the car. If your fuel tank is leaking, you don't want to even run the car. Instead shut it off and have it towed and then fixed immediately.

Loud banging

Your car may drive, but if you hear a loud banging as it does, you don't want to ignore this. Usually this sounds means that you've broken a strut, which is the piece that keeps the wheel connected to the car. Tie rods run horizontally and connect the wheels to the steering column, but a strut is a vertical piece that holds the wheel in place; these struts are attached to the body of the car. When one breaks, that wheel is now being held by the tie rods alone, and this is very dangerous as they are not meant to support that weight and pull. Driving with a broken strut can mean having the spring and tie rod break or losing the wheel from the car altogether.

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