When it comes to proper maintenance of your car, there’s the typical stuff you hear all the time. Most of it involves fluids: changing your oil, changing your coolant, changing your transmission fluid. On the hardware side, replacing fuel filters, windshield wipers and checking your tire pressure are all important maintenance habits.

But there are also are some less-obvious things you can do to make sure your car stays running and healthy.

Use your parking brake on hills. If you depend on your transmission to keep your car in place on a hill — by putting it in park — you are putting a lot of pressure on a tiny pin called a parking pawl. Add years to the life of your transmission, and use the parking brake on hills.

Change the differential fluid. About every 60K miles, you will want to have a mechanic change the differential fluid. Like the transmission, the differential is extremely important to the forward motion of your car and very expensive to replace.

Lose some weight. Many of us live in our cars too many hours of the day, and we tend to acquire freight in the back seat and trunk. Is that crockpot still back there? Is that really four bags of laundry? Oh, that’s where you left that generator. Hauling that extra weight around takes its toll on your car by making it work harder (and reducing your miles per gallon). It’s time to unload.

Make a complete stop before shifting. It’s easy to get lazy when you’re backing out of a spot and want to get going, but shifting into drive before your car is ready is a sure way to cook your transmission—not right away, but over time. Bring your car to a full stop and then shift. A transmission is a terrible thing to waste.

One final tip — schedule your next service with Windsor Nissanto keep your car running great.