20 Things Only Stupid People Do to Their Car

rev up your engines now the first thing is never jump start your car backwards learn which terminal is positive and which negative this toyota is pretty easy it's got a big plus on the positive and if you pick this up you can see there's also a plus on the battery right here it says plus you know that's positive and the opposite side is negative and it's got a negative on the battery they're not all this simple that's why you need to learn which is positive which is negative and here's why jump starting it backwards can really cause problems using this volt meter you can see how many volts the car battery has now in this case it's almost 12 volts this battery is a little bit low it's 11.68 and like all modern cars the positive wiring goes to all the wires and switches and the negative goes to the body of the car into the engine all the metal in the car is negative electricity and that's 12 volts negative electricity unfortunately since cars are all computerized many of those sensors work on a 5 volt reference signal so a lot of the electronics and especially the computer itself runs on 5 volts now that's 5 volts on the power side if you jump start a battery backwards and put positive and negative and negative on positive you're making the ground now go to power so instead of the ground being negative electricity you're now having positive 12 volts going through there that will feed right through any of those computer parts on the ground circuit and go right to the computer with 12 volts instead of five and it'll fry the computer so never jump start a car backwards and as a corollary to that if you're working on the electronic system make sure you know the voltage of what you're working on is it regular 12 volts or is a computer circuit that has 5 volts and you should never put more than 5 volts into that circuit now the next thing i don't advise to do is to add fuel additives to your fuel now this isn't going to hurt anything except your wallet you're wasting money in most cases modern fuel at least the united states has many additives required by law cars run perfectly fine with the stuff you get out of the pump if you buy good fuel take care of your cars you don't need additives now i know some people are going to say well scotty those gdi gasoline direct engine cars they get carboned up don't they need cleaners in a fuel tank and the answer to that is no cause if you put them in the fuel tank of a gdi the gdi injectors spray them right into the engine they don't go over the intake valves so the intake valves still get crud on them and they don't get clean because the inside of them we have air and oil from the pcv valve system going in the only way you can clean those is by either spraying it into the intake where the air goes in or paying a mechanic like me who has pressurized cleaning machines to clean up now the next thing not to do is to put a heavier weight oil in an older engine that might start to be burning a little oil and you think i'll put heavy oil in it'll make it better you really don't want to do it in any modern engine and here's why you can see this is a 12 year old matrix and it says use 5w30 oil and some modern ones say even to use zero w20 oil it's very light oil and you don't want to make that light oil heavier most have these variable valve systems and they have to have thin oil so the oil flows really fast gets into the vvt system if you put a heavier oil in when you start the engine up it won't flow right you'll get wear in that vvt system and if it's really heavy it won't flow right through the vvt system and the variable system won't work right it won't accelerate right it won't put the check engine light i see that a lot of people put too heavy oil in the modern car so don't do that stick to what it was made for and the next thing not to do is don't waste your money filling your tires with nitrogen a few years back they were pushing that and they're trying to sell guys nitrogen concentration machines because realize the air we're breathing in now that's like 80 nitrogen already so all these companies are trying to sell guys like me nitrogen enhancing machines that could turn that 80 nitrogen into almost 100 nitrogen to fill the tires with and yes nitrogen is an inert gas and it keeps its pressure a little bit better i believe they use them in big jets because they're up in the air where it's really cold then they got to land really fast and they want the pressure to stabilize exactly but for normal cars just driving down the street you're wasting your money paying somebody to fill your tires with nitrogen because of course over time most tires lose a little bit of air so you'd have to keep going back and paying them to add a little air you couldn't be adding it yourself and all you're doing is knocking out 20 of the non-nitrogen that's in there so waste the money don't throw your money away fill in your tires with nitrogen and the fifth and last thing not to do is don't forget to change your coolant every once in a while if you keep your cars a long time now this is an old car and it has that old-fashioned green coolant in it you need to change you once every three years but more modern cars they use extended life antifreeze as you can see here 150 000 miles or five years now if you don't keep your cars five years or 150 000 miles you don't have to care and there are even more modern ones that are seven years so it's not something you need to do all that often but if you're cheap like me and drive your cars 30 years 20 years 15 years you want to change the coolant when it's required if you don't it can ruin the water pump it can ruin the hat of the engine and with these modern computerized cars it actually creates a battery voltage when it's low inside the coolant and that can destroy the electronic system the computer sensors make the car go haywire i've had customers cars like that i stick my meter in there coolant and another end on the battery terminal and find out that there's voltage flowing through the coolant that destroys stuff it's not that hard to change the cooling out you can change it out yourself but you have to do it if you keep the car a long time to prevent all kinds of electrolysis can occur inside and damage your car when you start a turbocharged engine coal do not race the engines up allow the engine to warm up for five to ten seconds so that the oil in the engine starts flowing through the turbocharger realize that your engine oil on most turbocharged designs is also the oil that lubricates the turbocharger so you want to start the engine up the runner five to ten seconds before you ever rub the engine up because you don't want to rev up the turbocharger when it's not fully lubricated with oil very simple and a coral area of this is do not rev the engine up and give it full power full rpms until the engine oil is warmed up so you want to drive it around a few minutes before you rev it to full power you know you start it up you're going someplace don't get it and float and go as fast as you can after say four or five minutes the engine's warmed up enough that the oil has got its consistency just right and then you can go full power and the third thing is also oil related use high quality oil and change it a lot here's where full synthetic oil is best full synthetic oil works under hotter temperatures guess what your turbo charge does the turbocharger uses hot exhaust gas to spin itself it gets super hot this is where synthetic oil is best you got a turbocharged car definitely use full synthetic oil and change it a lot me i changed it every five to seven thousand miles and realize that if you're driving at high speeds really fast with the turbo some turbos will actually almost start to glow from the heat they get so hot so if you're driving it hard make sure when you come to a stop and you're going to shut the engine off wait about 30 seconds so that the oil can flow through it and some of them are also water cooled so the cooling can flow through it to stop any built up heat from damaging the turbocharger now years ago before you shut them off let them miter for 30 seconds to a minute the metal energy is better than it was when i was a younger mechanic but still you're driving it hard before you shut it off wait 30 seconds or so with it idling so they can get rid of excessive heat that might have gone when you drove it hard and speaking of cooling it down you got a good turbocharged system that has an intercooler like this volvo make sure the intercooler is working correctly in fact it's volvo the intercooler's inside here what's going to happen if you drive out in the country at night all the time bugs are going to get in there or if you're in the city plastic bags could get in there you want to make sure that it's clean hose it down with water if there's bugs on it and that there's no plastic bags or anything that are restricting flow to the intercooler and always check the intercooler line this is plastic they can crack then when you go down the bottom it's rubber down there and on the other side that's plastic too and there's rubber in the front check all the rubber and the clamps now generally if the plastic cracks or the rubber comes loose or just falls off or rots and has holes in it it's not going to run right because that's where the turbocharged air is going and that's going to mess with the air fuel mixture if it's got air leaks on it's a good idea to check them every once in a while anyway it's a simple thing you can do yourself and since many modern turbochargers are also water cooled make sure you have clean coolant these turbochargers spin at thousands and thousands of rpms if they're water cooled they got water seals and the oil lubricated the oil cooled ones have oil seals if you have dirty coolant for dirty engine oil dirt is friction it will heat up the seals replacing it can cost thousands of dollars and can also be a royal pain in the rear end because they're bolted onto the exhaust system all that heat a lot of times that metal is practically welded on and rusted and when you start taking it apart pieces often break then you gotta end up changing exhaust parts if they're rotten and crack when you take them apart you want to make that system last as long as you can without having to take it apart and replace it by keeping the coolant and the oil clean and of course if you do want to get better gas mileage with the turbocharged vehicle you don't want to accelerate harshly all the time turbocharged engines get better gas mileage than a non-turbocharged engine but this advantage is totally negated if you're always flooring it and the turbo is kicking in full force and the engine's accelerating as fast as it can then you're going to get much worse gas much i have had little old ladies get phenomenal gas mods with turbocharged cars and i've seen young teenage guys get horrendous gas mileage as low as 5 miles a gallon in a turbocharged car because they were driving it like a lunatic realize with turbocharged cars the power is there if you really need it when you floor it but if you drive more conservatively get better gas mileage and of course the turbocharge yourself will last longer than two if it's not strained as much now you never want to drive an automatic car through deep water and here's why you see that little black piece right there well this black piece right here that i'm tapping that's a vent you have to have vents on automatic transmissions as the fluid gets hot and expands and contracts to release pressure and if you go through water that will suck water into the transmission and let's just say water and automatic transmissions do not go together if you get water in your automatic transmission sometimes you get lucky and flushed out it'll work but often it will destroy the entire transmission you'll need a new one and the second thing never to do is never accidentally have your car go from drive into reverse while the car's moving now this honda's a better design the shifters on the dash that's kind of hard to do but a lot of cars have them down on the bottom down here so if yours is like this make sure you don't accidentally hit it and rip it into reverse while you're driving down the road because it will destroy the transmission i've had more than one of my customers teenage kids when they learn how to drive and screwing around with their friends do that hit in reverse and they just destroyed the transmission and if they're older cars they just ended up junking them now the next thing not to do with an automatic transmission car is leaving and drive if you're idling for a really long period of time because leaving the drive if you're on there for a long time that can lead to overheating of the inside of the transmission if you're going to be sitting there for really long time just shut the car off or at least put it into park because in park it's not directly connected the torque inverter isn't sending a lot of power so it won't get quite as hot in park as it will in drive now the next bad thing not to do with your automatic transmission is don't go around doing burnouts all the time doing burnouts is one of the worst things you can do for an automatic transmission and of course burnouts aren't good for any car i know you're going to say oh scotty are you having pictures of burnout well those are standard transmission cars it's not that great for them but hey you're just going to end up burning out the clutch which is a lot cheaper than replacing the whole transmission if you have a later model car don't listen to this nonsense this says no need to replace atf under normal driving conditions that's a bunch of nonsense no i've dealt with that in a recent video it just basically says oh the fluids good for the lifetime of the transmission but then the lifetime of the transmission is less and less and less because you don't want dirty fluid and you want to change it regularly and yes modern cars use synthetic fluid that can handle heat better and break down less but eventually it does break down i still say change your transmission fluid every 60 to 80 000 miles regardless of what these ridiculous directions say realize if you take care of your transmission they can take care of you this honda has been taken care of it's got 195 000 miles and even though hondas have relatively weak automatic transmission this one is still shifting fine don't downshift all the time from fourth to third to second to first like a race car driver now race car drivers drive away for a reason they have a limited power band let's say the power band is 8 000 rpms they always want to keep the engine about 8 000 rpm so if they're slowing down they'll put it in the next lower gear or the next lower gear until they get to the maximum power bend and then they keep shifting to keep it in the power band but if you're just driving normally you don't need to do that you're going to wear out the engine and the transmission faster and let's face it brakes are a lot cheaper than clutches of course in an emergency situation sure downshift to a lower gear slam the brakes on that'll stop the car the fastest but for normal driving downshifting isn't a smart thing to do if you want things to last now the next thing not to do is don't drive down the road riding the clutch with your foot on the clutch the whole time you're driving have your foot on the clutch pick it up and then when you're done put it to the side do not drive with your foot on the clutch or you will wear it out i had a customer years ago with a standard transmission bmw i kept wearing the clutches out and i thought i wonder why it's wearing the clutches out so i said let's go for a ride so he went for a ride so i said to him why do you have one foot on the clutch and one foot on the gas all the time he said well the driver's instructors told me to do that one foot on the clutch and one foot on the gas i said that person's an idiot don't listen to him do not ride the clutch now the next thing not to do is if you're parking on a hill don't just shut the car off and then put in gear and walk away i see more cars roll down hills because they either came out of gear or the engine wasn't strong enough to hold and it just started slowly rolling backwards what you want to do is have one foot on the clutch push down one on the brake then put it in gear and pull the emergency brake on then when you shut the car off guess what it's not going to roll anywhere now modern clutches need very little maintenance but you don't want to forget the tiny bit of maintenance that a modern clutch system needs now when i was a kid most clutches were manually adjustable like my motorcycle here you want to have a half quarter inch of play before it starts to grab that was just adjusted by turning the star adjuster as they wear they actually got tighter and you'd have to loosen them up a little it's a very simple thing and if you have a car like that do adjust it every once in a while when it gets too tight now most modern vehicles use hydraulic clutches that have brake fluid in them you don't need to adjust and they adjust themselves but the fluid does get dirty over time so you want to change the fluid and flush it out every ah two three four years it's no big deal to do but if you don't the dirty fluid inside can ruin the seals and some of these clutch systems cost a lot of money to change the master or slave cylinders for example some ford pickup trucks with standard transmissions the slave cylinder is built inside the housing so you have to pull the transmission off to change the slave cylinder it can cost you well over a thousand bucks so you want to keep the fluid clean and it's no big deal flushing that out every two or three or four years it's not that hard to you can use a turkey baster suck it out and then bleed the bottom part now the last thing i'm going to talk about is clutch replacement realize eventually clutches wear out and you have to replace them but when they do wear out and the clutch discus thing just don't replace the clutch disc get a whole kit with all the parts when the clutch disc gets thin it'll start to slip then you need to change it but don't just buy the disc you got to pull the transmission off it's a gigantic job get a clutch set that's got all the clutch parts in it the disc the plate throw out bearings and this one hey it's even got a nice alignment tool so you can align it and fit it in right it's full hearty to pull a transmission off a car and guess that the other parts will last for a lot longer change everything then you don't have to think about it for a long time 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: 615,715

Rating: 4.919744 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, tips for driving a car, things not to do in a car, how to maintain your car, car maintenance, what you should never do to your car, things, things not to do in a new car, car maintenance fails, car maintenance for beginners, how to drive a car, 5 things you should never do, 20 things you should never do to your car, driving tips

Id: 28MexgFvq7E

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021