Editorial policy

Every article on this site carries a review status in the panel beside it. There are exactly three values and they mean precisely what they say — no more. About MotorLogic covers who we are and why we publish the review state at all.

Articles are not written from memory or generated from a topic list. The sequence is fixed:

1. 1

   Establish the question people are actually asking

   Search-demand data and live search results, to find out what a person typing this phrase wants — which is often not what the phrase literally says.

2. 2

   Read what already ranks

   Not to imitate it, but to find what every existing page omits. That gap is usually the reason to write at all.

3. 3

   Go to primary sources

   Manufacturer service information, technical service bulletins, owner's-manual maintenance schedules, NHTSA complaint and recall data, and industry bodies. Manufacturer documentation outranks any blog on a question about that manufacturer's vehicle.

4. 4

   Cross-check anything load-bearing

   Cost ranges, safety conclusions, torque and interval specifications and manufacturer recommendations are checked against a second independent source before publication.

5. 5

   Write, then cite

   Sources are listed on the article. Where two good sources disagree, we publish the disagreement rather than picking a winner.

This is the part of an editorial policy that usually gets written in the abstract. Ours is specific, because these situations come up constantly and we would rather you know how we handle them.

• Invented experts. No fabricated technicians, no stock-photo mechanics, no certifications nobody holds, no "our team of ASE-certified experts" where no such team exists.
• Unsourced cost figures. If we cannot find a defensible published range for a repair, the page omits the cost and tells you it is omitting it. A missing number is more honest than a confident wrong one.
• Invented safe-driving distances. You will not find "you can drive about 200 miles like this" on this site unless a named source states it. For several conditions the honest answer is that it depends on the failure rate and nobody can put a number on it, and that is what we say.
• Manufacturer recommendations we have not read. We do not paraphrase a maintenance interval from a competitor's article. If we cite an interval to a manufacturer, we found it in that manufacturer's own documentation.
• Fake consensus. Where sources genuinely conflict — and on transmission fluid intervals, shudder speed ranges and rebuild costs they badly do — we show both and name both sources.

Every cost on this site is a range, never a quote. Ranges are drawn from published estimator data and industry sources and are checked against a second source where one exists.

Where our sources disagree by a wide margin we show both ranges and say which source each came from, rather than averaging them into a single figure that reflects nothing.

• We do not sell parts or tools.
• We do not take referral fees or commissions from repair shops, dealerships or service chains.
• We do not accept payment, product or access in exchange for coverage, placement or a favourable assessment.
• We are not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any vehicle manufacturer.
• If any of the above changes, it will be disclosed on this page and on every affected article before the change takes effect.

Each article shows the date it was last updated. Substantive changes — a corrected cost range, a superseded bulletin, a revised safety assessment — update that date and are made in the body of the article rather than appended as a footnote. Typographical fixes do not change the date.

To report an error, see contact. Corrections to safety statements and cost figures are prioritised over everything else in the queue.