3 Things You Should Never Do to Your Car

[Applause] you can hear that first metallic sound once the starter engages and the engine actually started so you're gonna pull in the driveway and check it out now when you look under the hood you can see this has a one ar fe engine here it is it's a four cylinder engine and if you do a little research you'll see that the engine has been known for reliability but it has one main problem the variable valve timing system has a tendency to make a knocking sound on cold startups now you heard that first knock watch what happens now that it's already started up [Music] now the only thing you hear is a little valve rattle it's got 130 000 miles but you don't get that metallic on the first startup because the variable valve timing system already has oil pressure in it it only makes that noise when you start it up cold but i do have to say the oil is really dirty so i'm going to change the oil and filter run some quality oil in it and see what happens so i'm going to jack it up in the air so we can change the oil and stick a jack sand for safety digging an all-drained pan and since it's often hard to get the oil drain bolts on and off i use a long extension bar and a socket then it's easier to pull them out and get them tight without wrecking anything as you can see with a long bar when you're pulling a long bar it's a lot easier to get them off then we can get the rest of my finger and now comes the oil and as you can see it's really dirty and if you don't want to have future problems get a new gasket for the oil drain plug these things only last so many times they don't cost much so buy them before you change your oil then you're not hunting around to find one and if you only have one car you can't drive it so buy a package i buy these on amazon i buy packages like 10. then i got 10 of them and i know i'm never gonna have to worry about having a problem with them leaking or stripping because it's got a nice new gasket each time and they don't cost much now you got to change the filter too but unfortunately this is one of these swine designed paper ones where there's a plastic container it hides inside you have to have one of these metal tools to get it off it fits on and gets it off do not buy one of those plastic tools they're crap they'll break get a metal one like this this particular one is a vim v-i-m solid metal look at that this is not cheap it will last as you can see here snaps right on nice and tight and again we're going to use our extension bar because these things can be helicious pulling them off as you can see now it's turning it'll come off and down comes the whole assembly which will take off then you get the new filter and it just goes inside pushes right in and there's an o-ring here you replace the o-ring luckily the stp oil filter the kit comes with a new ring just get a little pick slide it under get the old one off and then slide the new one on it goes on the last groove get a little bit of the old oil and push it around so it slides on nice and doesn't stick then it just spins on and gets you a little socket keep turning until it gets snug now it's tight and it won't leak yeah now we're going to fill up with oil it takes about 4.6 quarts of oil pour it in slowly because these toyotas don't take oil fast they have baffle plates and if you pour it too fast you're going to get oil all over the exhaust and it's going to smolder now i love these giant jugs because they got a little clear part and since we're putting in 4.6 it'd be a little less than half a quart left so we'll do it till it gets down to here a little bit more then we'll start it up and check it whatever you do don't forget to put the cap back on i've had people leave the cap off oil gets every working room stuff make sure you put the cap back on and don't forget to get rid of the jack stand because if you drop it with a jack stand you might bend something now we can let it down then we'll start her up let it warm up about five minutes and if you notice compared to what it was doing before the overall engine is somewhat quieter too you don't hear the valves clacking as much it's quieter than it was this is why i have to keep beating people over the head to change your oil regularly you don't want to ruin a great engine like this by having dirty oil running low on oil i had a customer a few months ago bought me a toyota camry had the same engine sounded like it was falling apart she only had half a quart of oil left and she said well i had it changed six months ago i said did you ever check it she said no her car had 140 000 miles it was burning a little oil she never checked it so please change it regularly me in this particular vehicle i change it every 5 000 miles with normal stop and go city driving you don't want to ruin this beautifully designed 2.7 liter four-cylinder engine because the oil is either too dirty or it gets low then once you shut it off wait about a minute pull out the dipstick and check it in this case it still needs a little bit more you can't always go by the specifications that a computer gives that's why you check it so we're going to put the rest of the total five quarts in then turn it off and wait another minute for the drain and check it again and now it's perfect it's on the second dot which is full between the top dot the bottom dot is one quart now it's full and this is another reason you want to double check your work you can't always believe the data i've seen them off sometimes as much as a couple of quarts the dipstick works correctly always go by the dipstick reading on level ground after you warm it up and then shut it off and let it sit for a minute or two so the oil drains down you get the correct reading now take it for a spin and it's running quite smoothly and lo and behold a lot of that noise is gone you can hear a tiny bit of valve but hey that's normal for a car with over a 100 000 miles let's look under here we're cornering the oil light is not coming on like it was before i'm going to show you why you should not drive your car through water using this 2014 dodge challenger with a v6 engine as a prime example now we recently had a tropical storm come in through a bunch of water in houston unfortunately this woman drove through the water she said it didn't look that deep but the car started acting up you should have watched my video beforehand one don't go through the water and two if you do shut the car off immediately do not try running it because the air we breathe compresses quite a bit inside an engine compresses fuel sprayed in it ignites if water gets sucked into that mix the water compresses a very tiny amount but not much so if you suck a bunch of water when the piston goes up instead of squishing air it can't squish the water much so what happens is it bends the connecting rod on the piston that goes to the crank once it's bent the engine starts running funky so the first thing you do check this open the hood check the air filter in this case the air filter is sopping wet this baby sucked water into the engine you don't want to run an engine that way you want to take this plastic cramp off and check the spark plugs because if you're lucky the water is in the engine and it hasn't compressed yet get this out of the way you can see water's coming out not a good thing we're going to pull the spark plugs out three on each side first we take off the coil take the coil off and bolt it pull it out and remove a spark plug take all the spark plugs out because you're making them long out it comes and it smells plus it's wet remove all six spark plugs that one's wet too and before we crank it over we're gonna check the engine oil we'll stick it in see if water's intruded inside the engine and it has because it's overfilled and i do have to say in this case i don't have much hope because unfortunately she drove through the water and kept driving until it died generally then the rods are going to be bent from water getting inside and collapsing it got deep enough that not only did it suck water into the pistons but it sucked water into the engine oil too so this thing just went too deep in water that's a disadvantage of a load of the ground car they go faster less drag they look cool but if you take out the air filter and see the air is being sucked from it's being stuck from way down low way in here weight on low it's a racing thing for speed race cars do that too this one went through flood waters and sad but true it's probably a losing effort but after changing the oil let's crank the engine over see what it does if it hadn't been run at all we could push the water out of the holes by cranking it let's see what happens now unfortunately the only thing we really see coming out is air and a little bit of fuel that's being sprayed into the cylinders it hadn't been run after it went through the water the water could have gotten into the air filter and on the intake but not sucked into the engine and then tons of water would shoot out while we're cranking it didn't really come out so odds are this thing has been damaged let's put it back together and see what happens you can see there's still water in here so we're not going to put that back on we're going to leave that off spark plugs back in get it nice and snug now we'll put the ignition coils back on you want to get them on tight so they're grounded now we're going to crank it up and see what happens that horrible knocking noise here is rodnock the engines have been destroyed by water now in this case there's no sense in going further who knows the computers might be ruined from getting wet and stuff but she said the water wasn't that deep it doesn't need to be that deep to suck water in the engine and ruin it and that's because as i said previously air compresses quite a bit but water only a tiny amount so when you get a bunch of water in the cylinder when it fills up and then it goes up for the firing event the piston has to compress it it's got to go a certain distance if that's full of water it can't go the whole distance so instead of going the whole distance what it does is it bends the piston rod now if it's really bad sometimes it'll actually crack the block and do even more damage but in this case the engine's toast and would need a complete rebuild at least it's a three liter vvt the v6 engine the hemi engines are very popular all the kids won and the racers want them these v6 is not so popular so if she can find a used one in a junkyard from a wreck she could have that installed now i had a customer do that a couple years ago they spent about 1400 bucks for the engine and labor at a junkyard most mechanics are gonna charge a lot more than that but if she can find a junkyard that'll sell and install an engine that's what they're going to advise her to do she owes so much money on now if she would have full coverage hey that water came up the insurance company would pay for the damage she did not have the coverage it's coming out of her pocket so she's either going to lose a ton in what she owes for this or put a used engine in it and so what's the moral of this story you might think the water is not that deep because your air filter is up here but in this case the intake is way down there as you can see it doesn't take that much water to suck in then it's good by engine and it's all because air compresses a lot engines are actually giant air pumps they suck air in they pump it out as fast as they can but unfortunately they are not water pumps you do not want water sucked into the engine and blown out because that will bend the piston rods at a minimum destroy an engine that was otherwise running perfectly fine hope that a junkyard's got a decent engine sell it at a decent price pray it doesn't go through any water that's just even that deep anymore when it really starts raining you got a low racing car like this sucking air from the bottom you don't want to drive through it that's why you see guys with those jeeps they put big snorkels that go up to the top and that's where the air sucked in and of course even they're gambling it doesn't get too deep to suck water into the engine and into the transmission a lot of those are diesels and they work differently since they don't have an ignition source they can run in water quite well a lot of tanks can go underwater with a snorkel but cars not so much especially if you got a gasoline engine with an intake duct low see these fake air intakes you open the hood they don't go anywhere adjust for show and as i've already shown this baby's sucking the air from way down here low not a good thing when you're driving in the rain you shouldn't drive your car too far when the suspension parts are starting to wear has too much play handle squirrely things like this can happen now luckily for me at least not for the owner of this car it's an older toyota camry so it's got a pretty solid frame and good places to jack it up so i can jack it up because this thing is so low now because it's broken off be hard to jack on a modern car but not here because right under here there's the togo and when you get on here you can see the tow hook the tow hook is right here now it's meant to pull but you can also jack up on it so now we have the jack on it we can jack it up now we can analyze the mess inside here as we look inside the ball joints come out that's broken it's going to need new ball joint the axle's broken may have bent the strut we don't know we're gonna have to take the tire off and go a little bit further so i'll get a little screwdriver here and we'll pop this cover off we'll take off the lug nuts but before we do let's put a jack stand we got to jack it up a little higher safety first there here's an old trick if you work by yourself like me get a long screwdriver stock the car jam on the brake with that on the brake pedal and we'll pull it forward unlock the wheel so we can take it off now now we can take it off the last one's going to be a stinker because it's kind of wedged in can barely do it by hand i'll just keep twirling it now let's see if we can whack it off huh not much room here we got to turn the wheel some hope we can get it loose enough it's getting there a little more wiggling there we go finally now we can turn the car off and assess the damage well it's pretty much destroyed the wheel there'll be a lot of other damage in here too the ball joint popped out we don't know if this is good or not it might be wallowed out too and the axle's definitely broken it's popped out so we're gonna have to check under the hood too and then look under here and it looks like that's broken too that one's okay but that one's broke now at a minimum it's going to need a lower ball joint a drive shaft and a strut truthfully considering the shape of this car as you can see the paint's all faded door handle's broken and on the other side that paint's all fitted out this car used to be gray and some pool painted the bike considering we don't know what kind of shape the other side is in i rather doubt the owner is going to spend the money it's going to cost now if he was a do-it-yourself guy which he isn't he could go to a junkyard buy a bunch of used parts and put him on but i'm not gonna do that because i gotta guarantee my work and i can't be using junkyard suspension parts i mean if he wanted to do that himself let him go at it but the way this vehicle stands now i doubt it's going anywhere except the junkyard so i called up the owner we're actually the friend of the owner he brought it over for a friend and they said yeah i'm not gonna fix it so here's a lesson to be learned and the lesson is this as i've been beating people over the head with for decades you're gonna buy a used car this car was just bought used always always have a mechanic check it out first even a great car like a toyota camry you don't take care of them they get old and have a lot of mileage on it they can be endless money pits like this thing if i were to check this out before he bought it i would have said don't buy it when you drove it around you could feel the front end was totally shot and i told them hey i wouldn't take that car in the highway if i were you that thing is totally shot i had a going 40 and it was hit a bump and it would go and i saw the whole front end zone i told them that's going to cost well over a thousand bucks to fix and that was before it broke off now the price is going to be even higher so always always have a mechanic check out a car before you buy even if it's a toyota camry now i'm going to pop this back in so at least i can get it to roll on the ground so the tow truck won't have to drag it like they did i'll drive march on the street well at least it'll roll when i'm done starting it up straighten it up a little now it's straight no it's not going to drive because the driveshaft's broken but i at least popped it and stuck a nail in one of the holes so at least i can push it so the tow truck driver will have an easier job put the wheel back on i hate these alloy wheels where you got to line them up if you don't they'll be on crooked so you got to keep wiggling while you tighten them up so they're lined up now we got them lined up so we can do the other three easy then we'll put the hubcap on i don't know why but i will and don't forget to remove the jack stand and we'll see if we can get some air in the tire for a while to at least move it and if you use a quality air pump like this it doesn't take long all steel construction yeah it costs more than one of those cheap 20 dollar ones this thing will last a lifetime if you take care of it and now at least we can push it so the tow truck will have an easier job go buy an old used car unless a mechanic checks it out first and two don't let your suspension system go so far that the wheels start flying off like this one did so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 597,185

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, common mistakes, auto repair mistakes, car mistakes, top car mistakes, automotive mistakes, car owner fails, car owner mistakes, mechanic mistakes, car repair fails, car mistakes to avoid, diy fail, mistakes, car owner, top mistakes, top mistakes car owners make, mistakes car owners make, don't make this mistake, top 5, top 5 mistakes, 5 things you should never do

Id: cPp8mt8U_8E

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021