1998 CHEVROLET VENTURE Owners Manual

Care of Your Cassette Tape Player
A tape player that is not cleaned regularly can cause
reduced sound quality, ruined cassettes or a damaged
mechanism. Cassette tapes should be stored in their
cases away from contaminants, direct sunlight and
extreme heat.
If they aren’t, they may not operate
properly or may cause failure of the tape player.
Your tape player should be cleaned regularly after every
50 hours of use. Your radio may display CLN to indicate
that you have used your tape player for
50 hours without
resetting the tape clean timer.
If this message appears on
the display, your cassette tape player needs to be cleaned. It will still play tapes, but you should clean it as\

soon as possible to prevent damage to your tapes and
player.
If you notice a reduction in sound quality, try a
known good cassette to see if it is the tape or the tape
player at fault.
If this other cassette has no improvement
in sound quality, clean the tape player.
The recommended cleaning method for your cassette
tape player
is the use of a scrubbing action,
non-abrasive cleaning cassette with pads which scrub
the tape head as the hubs of the cleaner cassette
turn.
The recommended cleaning cassette is available through
your dealership
(GM Part No. 12344789).
When using a scrubbing action, non-abrasive cleaning
cassette, it is normal for the cassette to eject because
your unit is equipped
with a cut tape detection feature
and a cleaning cassette may appear as a broken tape. To
prevent the cleaning cassette from being ejected,
use the
following steps.
If your vehicle is equipped with the
AM-FM Stereo with
Cassette Tape Player:
1. Turn the ignition to RUN or ACCESSORY.
2. Turn the radio on.
3. Insert the scrubbing action cleaning cassette.
4. Within five seconds, press and hold the REV and
FWD buttons at the same time for three seconds. The
tape symbol on the display will flash, showing that
the cut tape detection feature is no longer active.
5. Eject the cleaning cassette after the manufacturer’s
recommended cleaning time.
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If your vehicle is equipped with the AM-FM Stereo with
Cassette Tape Player and Automatic Tone Control:
1. Turn the ignition to RUN or ACCESSORY.
2. Turn the radio off.
3. Press and hold the TAPE AUX button for five
seconds. The tape symbol on the display will flash
for two seconds.
4. Insert the scrubbing action cleaning cassette.
5. Eject the cleaning cassette after the manufacturer’s
recommended cleaning time.
When the cleaning cassette has been ejected, the cut tape detection feature is active again.
You may also choose a non-scrubbing action, wet-type
cleaner which uses a cassette with a fabric belt to clean
the tape head. This type of cleaning cassette will not
eject on its own.
A non-scrubbing action cleaner may
not clean as thoroughly as the scrubbing type cleaner.
The use of
a non-scrubbing action, dry-type cleaning
cassette is not recommended. After you clean the player, press and hold EJECT
for
five seconds to reset the CLN indicator. The radio will
display
--- to show the indicator was reset.
Cassettes are subject to wear and the sound quality may degrade over time. Always make sure
the cassette
tape is
in good condition before you have your tape
player serviced.
Care of Your Compact Discs
Handle discs carefully. Store them in their original cases
or other protective cases and away from direct sunlight
and dust. If the surface of a disc is soiled, dampen a
clean, soft cloth
in a mild, neutral detergent solution and
clean
it, wiping from the center to the edge.
Be sure never to touch the signal surface when handling
discs. Pick up discs by grasping the outer edges or the
edge of the hole and the outer edge.
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Care of Your Compact Disc Player
The use of CD lens cleaner discs is not advised, due to
the risk of contaminating the lens of the CD optics with
lubricants internal to the
CD mechanism.
Integrated Windshield Antenna
The antenna in your vehicle is a very thin, metal layer in
the windshield. If you look near the edges of the
windshield, you can see the outline of the antenna. The
connector is at the top of the windshield, where the
headliner ends.
If you experience difficulty with remote transmitters,
such as a garage door opener,
try pointing the device
through the very top of the windshield.
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0 Section 4 Your Driving and the Road
Here you’ll find information about driving on different kinds of roads and in varying weather conditions. We’ve also
included many other useful tips on driving.
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4-3 4-6
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4-1
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4-13
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4- 15
4- 16 Defensive Driving
Drunken Driving
Control
of a Vehicle
Braking
Steering
Off-Road Recovery
Passing
Loss of Control
Driving at Night 4-18
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4-22
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4-33 Driving
in Rain and on Wet Roads
City Driving
Freeway Driving
Before Leaving on a Long Trip
Highway Hypnosis
Hill and Mountain Roads
Winter Driving
Loading Your Vehicle
Towing a Trailer
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Defensive Driving
The best advice anyone can Five about driving is:
Drive defensively.
Please start with a
very important safety device in your
Chevrolet: Buckle up. (See “Safety Belts” in the Index.)\
Defensive driving really means “be ready
for anything.”
On city streets, rural roads or freeways, it means
“always expect the unexpected.”
Assume that pedestrians
or other drivers are going to be
careless and make mistakes. Anticipate what they might
do. Be ready for their mistakes.
Rear-end collisions are about the most preventable
of
accidents. Yet they are common. Allow enough
following distance. It’s the best defensive driving
maneuver, in both city and rural driving.
You never
know when the vehicle in front
of you is going to brake
or turn suddenly.
Defensive driving requires that a driver concentrate on the driving task. Anything that distracts from the driving
task
-- such as concentrating on a cellular telephone
call, reading, or reaching for something on the
floor
-- makes proper defensive driving more difficult
and can even cause a collision, with resulting injury.
Ask a passenger to help do things like this, or pull
off
the road in a safe place to do them yourself. These
simple defensive driving techniques could save
your life.
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Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is
a national tragedy. It’s the number one contributor to
the highway death toll, claiming thousands of victims
every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs to drive
a vehicle:
Judgment
Muscular Coordination
Vision
Attentiveness.
Police records show that almost half of all motor
vehicle-related deaths involve alcohol. In most cases,
these deaths are the result of someone who was drinking
and driving. In recent years, over
17,000 annual motor
vehicle-related deaths have been associated with the use of alcohol, with more than
300,000 people injured.
Many adults
-- by some estimates, nearly half the
adult population
-- choose never to drink alcohol, so
they never drive after drinking. For persons under 21,
it’s against the law in every U.S. state to drink alcohol.
There are good medical, psychological and
developmental reasons for these laws. The
obvious way to solve this highway safety problem
is for people never to drink alcohol and then drive. But
what if people do? How
much is “too much” if the
driver plans to drive? It’s
a lot less than many might
think. Although it depends on each person and situation,
here is some general information on the problem.
The Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC)
of someone
who is drinking depends upon four things:
0 The amount of alcohol consumed
0 The drinker’s body weight
0 The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
The length of time it has taken the drinker to
consume the alcohol.
According to the American Medical Association, a
180-lb.
(82 kg) person who drinks three 12-ounce
(355 ml) bottles of beer in an hour will end up with a
BAC
of about 0.06 percent. The person would reach the
same BAC by drinking three 4-ounce
(120 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks if each had 1-1/2 ounces
(45
ml) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka.
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