20 Car Myths Stupid People Fall For

rev up your engines how to make your car last as long as it possibly can before you have to buy another one tricks that i've known that work and some that not only do they not work but they can destroy your car so you don't want to try them now let's say your power steering fluids leaking all over the place you find out you need an expensive rack it's going to cost you over a thousand dollars well you can use power steering leaks sometimes it can help but you can't always use that leak let's say you got a ford a chrysler perfectly fine putting that power steering leak in the power steering system let's say you got a honda never ever use that stuff in a honda power steering system hondas have very delicate power steering systems only use the honda fluid that's why when you go to auto parts stores you'll often see special bottles that say honda power steering fluid only use that don't add any kind of sealer it'll mess it up and the same thing goes for transmission fix says it stops shuttering and slipping now it can the stuff is really thick check it out it's like molasses look how slow it flows it's very thick stuff look at it now if you have an old ford old chevy old chrysler if you take a quarter of the fluid out of an old transmission replace it with a quarter that thick stuff it can actually help it i've seen it in gm products they would barely shift some guys would take two quarts of fluid out put two bottles of the lucas and within a few days they'd be shifting pretty good but don't ever ever use it in a honda the honda automatic transmissions are just like their power steering systems you want to stick only to the honda original fluid you don't want to use anything else now i am talking about trying to keep an old clunker going a little bit longer so that's why i'm saying you could drain out a quart and a ford or a chevy chrysler put a quarter of that stuff in and pray it helps really all cars high mileage it's not a good idea to take all the fluid out because if you do and put in new fluid they often start to slip it is a good idea you could drop the pan change the filter that's important but then put in the old fluid minus one quart and add a quart of the lucas you don't want to change the whole fluid in an old car with really high mileage because if you do often they won't even move they'll slip so bad now the main thing in an old honda like this is just change the transmission fluid i do it every 30 40 000 miles because all it has is a little drain plug you drain it out then there's a fill plug you pour it in and that's it it's a very simple thing to do use the honda fluid last as long as it possibly can but if you've been bad so you got 200 something thousand miles and you've never touched the fluid in a honda believe me leave it alone just live with whatever it's doing because if you do change the fluid after all those years 250 000 miles odds are it'll start slipping if you put fluid in it so if it's going okay and it hasn't been changed leave it alone if you're up on your maintenance and change it every 30 40 000 miles just keep doing that but if you haven't my advice is leave that alone don't mess with something that's working with that kind of mods because it might go out and if you own an old car with a cvt they've been out a long time now someone's been off for much longer than a decade only use cvt fluid do not try any other type of fluid they're very different transmissions and the older ones often don't feel right anyways they didn't really design it perfectly so they're kind of sloppy they're kind of like you're sloshing on when they're driving down a road like an old motorboat engine you don't want to mess with other kinds of fluid they're made for one type of fluid only use cvt fluid and if you do own one you've been maintaining it definitely change the fluid every thirty thousand miles fluids cheap those cvt transformations cost thousands to fix when they break you want to maintain them as well as possible and if you have an old one make sure you only use cvt fluid but same as all the others you got 200 something thousand miles on it leave it alone if you haven't changed it before do it regularly but if you're having all those mileage leave it alone could you change it then you may have a car that won't even move under its own power now here i'm going to dispel an old myth a lot of guys as their cars wear and get really old they start burning oil and they put a heavier oil let's say your car was made for zero w20 oil they'll say i'll put a thicker one in like a 5w30 oil don't do that in a modern car back in the day when i was a young mechanic in the 1960s that was okay in those days vehicles had cast iron engines you could put all kinds of heavier oil they were made for heavier oil but take a monaco that was made for zero w20 and some of them zero w16 oils you want to stick with the light oil because they were designed for this take this honda it's 13 years old but as you can see here even it was made for 5 w20 oil if you want to remember one thing i'm talking about today that is your engine has the most wear upon dry startup when you start the car the oil pump has to pump oil to the top of the engine to the cam shaft and the valves cam shaft's dry it's got to pump up you want it to pump up as fast as it can because you do not want metal to metal contact for long with the zero w20 oil it flows faster especially when it's cold outside but even when it's hot outside it flows better it flows better you get lubrication and less wear 90 something percent of your wears on dry startups so you want to make sure you use the right oil not one that's heavier because it's burning some oil you stick in a heavier weight oil yeah it might burn a little bit less but it's going to wear the cams and bearings out faster oil is relatively cheap you can keep adding oil when the cam goes out you got to rebuild the engine if you got an old clunker you're not going to spend that kind of money thousands rebuilding it so it's good by car so it's better to keep the original oil if it does burn add it keep a jug in your trunk they got those five quart jugs now screw tops use some of it put it back then you got plenty of oil for when it burns the oil do not put a heavy oil in it and the same goes for the lucas engine oil it's thick too the additive do not put it in a modern car now they do make a lighter version it's not thick that's a lighter version lucas oil the thin lucas additive and that's okay to put in a modern car if it's got a ton of miles and it's using more oil now the best thing of course is to change your oil and filter regularly to not have a problem in the first place and if you have a modern car with gasoline direct injection the gdi or turbochargers use that new gf-6 oil that oil was designed just for those engines it costs a little bit more but the prices are coming down because it's new and now there's some competition the gf6 oil is made so it burns less oil so it lubricates the bearings better and especially lubricates the timing chain modern cars have all gone back to timing chains because they have variable valve timing some of them have two or three different timing chains they're very complex engines you don't want the chain to go out you use that new oil and they even have one of them that's backwards compatible for other cars that are heavier than zero 16. use that it's an excellent oil you pay a little bit more but it's a higher quality oil do not think heavier is better it is not it has to flow correctly it will not run correctly you'll get worse gas mileage stick to what the says on the car or use the backwards compatible gf6 oil that has the same viscosity you always want to keep the same viscosity that says on the top of the engine as you can see it's not rocket science there it is you can't miss it and if you do want your old clunker to last longer don't think it's an old car i'm not going to waste my time changing the oil it's actually more important to change the oil in an older car it gets dirtier faster things wear out faster you'll get more micro metal fragments inside from the engine wearing so you might even push your oil changes up you might change it every three thousand miles instead of every five do not have an old worn out car and think you can change the oil every ten to twelve thousand miles it will wear out even faster oil is cheap engines aren't always keep that in mind now the next thing you can do to make your old car last forever is keep a really good fire extinguisher handy in the vehicle and this particular one has helitron in it the stuff is amazing for putting out fires that cars are going to have electrical fires gasoline fires oil fires this stuff's amazing that smothers the fires realize you're driving an old car okay you got a brand new car you're not really thinking about fire but you got an oil clunker what if a fuel line or something leaks starts a little fire you don't have a fire extinguisher good by car it'll burn down to the ground you got a tiny little fire whoosh you can put it out plus it could save your life or somebody else's life you see something on the highway whip it out and holds it down now this is a very expensive fire extinguisher it's very expensive to refill too but if you put out a fire believing the fire departments they'll refill this thing free for you you save somebody's life and stop something they fill them up for nothing if you're a good samaritan like that this h r performance all metal you buy this thing once you can extinguish fires forever they just need to be refilled it's kind of like a miniature scuba diving tank and it can save both your car yourself and anybody on the street who's in trouble it's worthwhile keeping one of these in your vehicle now let's say you got an old car the tires are starting to get worn out and you think oh i'll try one of those retread tires they're a lot cheaper it's an old car i don't care ah big mistake believe me don't do it unless you're on an 18-wheeler the big trucks have tires that have many many plies they can be rebuilt over and over again and people have been doing it for over 100 years but car tires one they have less plies and it's not a procedure at least here in the united states that's done all that much the quality of them is i've had some customers try to save money that way bit them in the rear end stupid thanks cup coming apart like you see on the road the casings of some of the big trucks where they came off they get flat it's not worth it on a car kind of honda here you can see a bunch of cracks are forming because the tires fed just wearing out you see cracks you don't bite a tire but take these used tires on my matrix they've been on here like eight years look they're not cracked they'd be perfectly good tires even though they're old they're not crack or rotting or anything there's a little scuffing from hitting the side of the curb every once in a while but you could buy a good use set like this cheap if you don't mind traveling to a junkyard at least if you live in the united states don't put your life in the hands of retread car tires it's not a process that's done that well in this country it's not worth chancing your life on something like that most cars united states are made to run perfectly fine on regular gasoline even the modern high performance they'll run fine on regular gas and they'll say it has 246 horsepowers with regular gas but 315 with high tests it'll run fine on the regular won't have as much power but it'll run perfectly fine so you got a little clunker odds are was made to run on regular gasoline but here is the kicker as engines get old and where carbon often builds up inside the engine the carbon takes up space so the inside of the engine now has less space because the carbon took some of it up that ups the compression and i've seen it a zillion times guys with all clunkers and when they put high test gas in it not only they run better but they get better gas mileage now if you've got one of those old clunkers you should carve and clean out the engine but it might need engine where tool could be really worn inside pay a little bit more for more expensive gas if you like the way it runs and it gets better gas mileage what the heck you might break even on the price because yes high test gas can make an old clunker run a little bit better if it's carboned up inside the myth that you can buy special oil or special oil additives and that's going to make your engine last longer get better gas mileage have more power well it's total nonsense if such additives and oils did exist they would be sold in the cars in the first place because the car manufacturers get bonus points for meeting epa standards if the car got better gas mileage it's better for them so don't think that any of these magic oils are going to do anything except possibly damage your car look at the oil cap this one says to use 10 w30 oil so that's what you use and this one says use 5w30 so that's what you use so stick to that there's a million brands out there you can use don't think oh if i put this magic ceramic coating oil and it's going to work better or i'm going to use a lighter oil or a heavier oil no the only thing that you got to worry about is keeping it clean you want to change it regularly now let's say you buy an old junker and the engine is all dirty you take up the valve cover there's all kinds of sludge in there well then you can use something like this k w motor flush basically kerosene you follow the directions this is a five minute one you put it in the oil you let it idle for five minutes then you drain it out and change the oil filter and the kerosene inside will get rid of a lot of the sludge inside if you bought a car and it's all sludged up yeah you want to clean it out to get the crud out and don't get the on bright idea that oh i'll use the flush all the time to keep my engine clean no you don't want to flush all this stuff out they can even cause problems in a car that's in otherwise really good shape so just change your oil and filter and use the correct oil don't listen to any of these scams out there they're telling you're going to get better gas mileage more horsepower all that stuff is a line of baloney now the second myth i'm gonna bust is tire pressure some guys will tell you oh you can adjust your tire pressure to make the tires work better ah don't mess with the normal pressure for normal driving down the road you want the tires to ride the best and last the longest it's always a compromise because you want them to ride well but you want them to last long when i was young and old trick guys would do would be they'd have a big car and they'd lower the air pressure 5 or 10 psi the tire was softer and it actually had a softer ride the tires wore out faster the middle was in more and outer edges would wear more and it didn't handle as well it wasn't made for these sloppy tires you get more flat tires because less pressure the tires a lot softer and nails can go through easier now in specialty situations you could let air out of your tire really slippery road if you let a bunch of tire pressure out the tire is going to get flatter and have more area contacting the ground which means it has more friction and it might not slip so if you were stuck you could let some of the air out and then if you drove out of the hull hopefully you got an air pump in your trunk i got an electric one you could fill it back up and drive merrily down the road hey the military humvees are set for that they could let a bunch of air pressure out so they could get out and then they'd push a button and they'd reinflate so i mean in a specialty situation go ahead and let some air out but don't drive like that and the same goes for too much air pressure so once you have pressure the middle of the tire will wear plus it's dangerous if you over inflate them they can eventually explode realize that you do your tires when it's cold outside car hasn't run all day check the pressure as you drive down the road the pressure goes up just check your pressures to 32 take it for a half hour drive and quick jump out and check it you're going to see the pressure is quite a bit higher because as it heats up it's physics the pressure increases then when it cools down it goes back to the 32. so if you want the combination of the best handling the best gas mileage the longest life of your tire and the least amount of possibility of getting nails and stuff going through the tires put in the regular pressure for your car you want to get a gauge that your own so it's always the same these gauges hey they vary from place to place so don't listen to any fool tells you oh you can put in less pressure you can put in more pressure no you want just the right pressure the tires will be happy and you'll be happy with the ride and handling any of these gimmicks that tell ya if you use this on your car you're gonna get better gas mileage have more power they're all nonsense from guys that are selling giant magnets that you put over the fuel line to make the fuel work better to line it up well i hate to tell you gasoline is not magnetic so it doesn't have any effect on it at all that myth actually came from a somewhat true practice ages ago farmers and attractors they had rusty gas tanks and if they put a magnet near the line it could hold the rust pieces against the magnets so it wouldn't clog up the carburetor but unless you're driving an old tractor that's falling apart don't fall for these magnetic fuel enhancing things and don't fall for these oh if you add this to your gasoline it'll burn more efficiently i mean you can destroy a car that way there are guys that would put mothballs in they said oh well you know whatever's in the moth balls is going to make your vehicle run better it can destroy your vehicle don't try any of that foolish stuff same thing goes with those hho generators that take water and they create hydrogen that you're going to burn in your car and then you're going to get better gas mileage and more power that's what your nonsense do you have to create the hydrogen from water through electrolysis well you're using electricity that your car has to generate the energy it takes to generate the electricity and do the electrolysis more than you ever get by burning hydrogen so in the end it's a net loss procedure you're not going to get better gas mileage you got to get the energy to make the hydrogen in the first place ever since i was a kid people were trying to find these perpetual motion machines that would run by themselves but you know it's not going to happen on planet earth we have friction there are laws of physics that you have to follow you can't get something for nothing and these hho generators they kind of promise that but they fall flat now i'm not saying hydrogen doesn't work in the car cars can run on hydrogen quite well it's a very good fuel supply but you got to get the hydrogen from somewhere and you have to have a system that can meter it correctly to the engine and hydrogen is a pretty flammable gas it's not that easy to store so it's got its own problem so don't take one of these hho generators stick under your hood it's gonna make your car get better gas mileage and have more power now myths are propagated throughout society for various reasons often they have a tiny bit of basis in truth don't talk on your cell phone or fill in your car with gas at the gas station because it might cause an explosion well and that's fake now in the old days with old cell phones that had external antennas theoretically they could have a spark in the antenna that could ignite gasoline vapors well modern phones are different they have internal antennas there's no antenna sticking out of this bone even with these i've never even heard of one causing an explosion but hey nobody smokes like this anymore these phones have internal antennas they don't make any spark so when you're filling the car with gas yak away if you want on your modern cell phone just remember to turn the engine off because the engine running creates all kinds of sparks and you don't want the fumes to go so always shut your car off before you put the gas pump inside and fill up and of course don't smoke or vape those vape machines put out really high temperatures while you're filling it up fill it up you want to talk on your phone go ahead and don't start vaping up a storm while you're doing it now the second myth is another common one people say hey fill your car up with gasoline first thing in the morning when it's cold and the gasoline is more dense then in the afternoon if it warms up it'll expand and you'll have more gasoline well there's a lot of reasons this isn't true most gas pumps the tanks are underground it's relatively insulated the temperature doesn't change that much from the morning to the afternoon but the main reason is even if the gasoline expands and contracts a little bit whatever you pump in your car has a certain amount of energy called british thermal units and it doesn't matter what size it is inside your tank if you pump it and fill it up you're going to have the same amount of british thermal units whether that gasoline expands or contracts inside your tank the energy is in there just like a battery and it doesn't matter what size it is it still has the same amount of british thermal units inside that's the law of physics and that's not going to change so don't get up early in the morning to fill your car gas thinking you're going to save anything now the third myth that you got to change your engine oil filter every three thousand miles is actually one that was originally based in reality taken i was a young mechanic my father had a 1954 ford fairlane v8 you changed the oil every 3000 miles and the reason it did that was one it didn't even have an oil filter that was an option so there was no oil filter to filter the crud and back in those days the oil wasn't as well made as it is today and neither were the metals in the engine things just wore out faster so you wanted to change your oil every 3000 miles to keep sludge from building up to keep wear from happening but modern oils and engines are better made than they used to be now i still change the oil on my cars every 3000 miles and often less than that but that's for a different reason i don't drive all that much oil will break down over time so regardless of how many miles you drive a year you want to change your oil once a year at least if you have a normal car and you're using normal oil not synthetic oil i'm more of a believer i've changed it every 5 000 miles 6 000 miles or so and if you use full synthetic oil you can push it to 7 or 10 000 miles especially if you do a lot of highway driving because highway driving doesn't wear the oil i had a customer the other day i changed the oil from they drove out to california and back and then they said scotty we checked the oil and it was whistle clean i said well yeah if you drive like 4 000 miles on a highway 60 70 80 miles an hour that's equivalent to 10 city so 4 000 miles is more like 400 then you can push it even further to change but even the synthetic oils are only good for one year in your vehicle so regardless of the mileage that you drive you want to change your oil once a year but the 3 000 mile that is a myth from the past it was once true but it isn't anymore back in my grandfather's day was a mechanic they originally used alcohol mixed with water to keep the water from freezing in the winter in your radiator of course then when it got hotter outside the alcohol would just evaporate that'd be the end of it so they came out with what they called permanent antifreeze so everybody figured it's permanent they left it in well all the anti-rust capabilities of it were down after so many years and then it ended up destroying a whole bunch of engines because it wasn't permanent but they said it was at the time now the fifth myth is that using your car's air conditioning system is going to radically lower your gas mileage so you shouldn't use it if you want to get better gas mileage again it's a myth based in reality from the past a young mechanic take the gm's they had these gigantic compressors they had like three four pounds of refrigerant inside them they took a reasonable drag and you could lose a few miles per gallons when you ran them but modern ones hey and i'm modern i mean anything in the last 30 years modern one's hard to use that much energy at all matter of fact i had a custom he drove from houston to the indianapolis 500 and back and on the way he ran an air conditioner saw what his gas mileage was on the way back he turned the air conditioner off and rolled the windows down and found that he got the same gas mileage whether he had the air conditioning on or whether in the air conditioning off if the windows rolled down now of course at highway speeds rolling your window down is going to make the air more turbulent and the vehicle won't be as efficient driving through the atmosphere so it's going to have a little bit more drag well that tiny bit of dragger rolling the windows down was exactly the same as the tiny amount of drag that the air conditioner in his mustang took so it really isn't true anymore don't think you're going to get great gas mileage if you turn your air conditioner off it doesn't make hardly any difference at all but if you have a car anything made in the last 25 years you turn on the air conditioner you do get a lot worse gas mileage you got a problem with the air conditioning system or the electronic system if an air conditioner is starting to wear out it can really put a strain on the engine i've had customers where the car ran fine if you turn the air conditioner on every time it came to a stop that would stall out it was because the compressor was dragging too much power then you know you'd have a problem and have it looked at but normally it is going to make hardly any difference at all in your gas mileage running the air conditioner now the sixth myth one way to check your batter is if you get in your car and you crank your engine over and your engine goes run run run run run run run but it won't start that means the battery's okay and something else is wrong in the past that was pretty much true we have a car in the old days if the battery wouldn't crank it over we jump started start right up we know well the battery's gone or it's drained something's wrong with the battery but today's cars are much more complex you can have a battery hiding in here that has plenty enough power to crank the engine over but won't actually start the car cause modern cars have so many computer systems to them i see this quite a bit especially in the winter they don't have power to crank the engine over but there's not enough extra power to run the ignition system the fuel injection system the anti-theft system and if anything goes wrong in either of those three systems car's not going to start even though it's cranking over i've had numerous late model cars towed over here and a customer says well i know it's not the battery because it cranks over it just won't start so i get out my trusty little battery checking machine pause it at the positive negative to negative then turn it on push the button now it's checking it doesn't take that long it says recharge battery which isn't surprising because i don't drive this car all that much anymore but it knew that the battery was good and just needed recharging if it would have said replace battery because they had a bad cell or something these machines can check that really fast and i have had quite a few batteries in the last 10 years customer towed the car in thinking well it's cranking headlights come on battery's okay battery did not have enough electricity to run out of the computer system all i did was put in a new battery and whoop up they started and away they drove so if you don't want to be fooled by a battery that cranks your car but won't start once every year or so just to have your battery checked with one of these machines buy one if you want they're not all that expensive anymore and then you can test any car you own they work on all cars then you'll know hey the battery's starting to go if it's 100 it's fine but if it starts getting to 30 40 percent then it's a good idea to buy another battery before it strands you somewhere they last for years so bite the bullet when it's weak and don't get stuck somewhere so now you know some tips on how to keep your old clunker running as long as possible and not do any damage by doing some stupid thing that somebody told you to do who didn't know what they were talking about so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 513,879

Rating: 4.9234257 out of 5

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, never do this, don't do this to your car, things not to do in a car, how to maintain your car, car maintenance, things, things not to do in a new car, car maintenance fails, car maintenance for beginners, cars explained, car repair fails, car repair fail, fails, car fail, car fails, car myths, myths, mythbusters, myth busted, stupid people, dumb people, dumb, 20 car myths

Id: mPXg-N28rZs

Length: 27min 25sec (1645 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021