It's Wednesday after work, and the car is acting up again on the way home. It's been making a weird noise for two days and you're worried it might be bad, but in true optimist fashion, you've been riding it out. It's screeching all the time now and it's pretty obvious that it's going to need maintenance, and you're downright embarrassed to be seen, or rather, heard.

Eventually, you decide drop it off at the mechanic's shop. This is where owners really are at the mercy of their mechanic because they not only do you not have a clue what the problem really is, but you certainly don't know how to fix it.

Any time you have a customer that is less informed then the service provider, there is an unhealthy imbalance in trust. Multiply that imbalance with high costs and horror stories of crooked mechanics, and we all have a situation that is down right unsavory.

One of HowTune's main goals is to keep you informed as a car owner. The truth is, you have to fix problems early on, or else they could quickly escalate into even more expensive issues. We built this site so that you could find articles from other do-it-yourself mechanic types that have been there before.

Even if you're not ready to pick up that socket wrench, we'd like to think you'd be in a better position to understand your mechanic's diagnosis with a little help from other auto enthusiasts.

The guys over at Gizmodo put together this little article about How to Not Get Ripped Off by Your Mechanic, which inspired this article.

The article covers:

• Asking Around for Advice
• Considering Independent Shops
• Evaluating a Shop
• Keep yourself from being pushed around
• Keeping Receipts to build a history
• Researching to understand what's being fixed