Q. Does my car need a tune-up?

A. Not on a regular basis because your engine's ignition system is almost maintenance free.

Twenty or 30 years ago vehicles needed tune-ups every 10,000 to 12,000 miles because there were lots of mechanical parts like points and spark plugs, distributors and carburetors that needed checking, adjusting or replacing.

But today virtually every car and truck has a computer-controlled system that ensures the right amount of fuel gets into each cylinder and then creates a perfectly timed spark to ignite it.

Your car no longer has most of the parts that wore out or needed to have their timing manually set.

Of course it still has spark plugs. But most vehicles now come with better performing platinum-tipped spark plugs that last anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 miles. Check your owner's manual to see how often your plugs should be changed.

The only reason to worry about your ignition system before that is if your car is hard to start, repeatedly stalls or the "Check Engine" light comes on.

That light means your engine isn't performing as well as it should, and the problem can be a bad spark plug or malfunctioning sensor used to measure the amount of fuel or oxygen entering the cylinders.

The best way to tell what's wrong is to hook your car's computer up to a repair shop's diagnostic computer and download the error codes.