5 Mistakes Car Owners Make That Will Destroy Your Car

rev up your engines today I'm going to talk about some changes in modern cars that you may not know about now the first thing I to talk about is your car's battery and the charging system the alternator they've gotten very complicated lately but if you understand their complexity you won't fall into a trap that I've seen many other people fall into for a lack of knowledge it used to be the charging system was simple the battery would start the car sending power to the starter running the ignition and fuel system and the alternator would charge the battery decades ago companies like Honda decided to get better gas mileage they would have the alternator charging controlled by the main computer of the vehicle when they started out with those systems I saw a lot of guys mechanics included that would replace an alternator in a car that wasn't charging only to find out it didn't charge either cuz it was a problem in the computer system which is something you don't want to occur so you want to prevent it now in many modern cars there's a sensor called the electronic battery sensor it's on the negative terminal going to the frame engine too it grounds the whole vehicle the engine transmission and the body of the car well this electronic sensor sends feedback information to the computer about the battery voltage temperature sends the information so the computer can control the charging correctly now the way these things are set up today in a modern computerized car you have to jump start them correctly or you're going to have a problem with that system a lot of times if you do jump start a car incorrectly it won't run right after you do that so all you got to do is follow this follow the directions of jump start in the car this way get your jump starter put the positive on the positive terminal and then get the negative for your jump stick it on a good metal part right here there's a bracket right on the engine block now originally people said you're supposed to jump start a car that way anyway because when you connect the last cable the second one sometimes there's a spark and if the spark is right up by the battery sometimes you can have an explosion from the hydrogen gas that comes out now it's a very rare thing it generally only happens if a battery is somewhat Frozen or if you're in an enclosed area I'm outside here so I really don't care I never had any problems with it but now you really need to do this because of that electronic battery sensor because if you jump started it and put the negative from your jumper on the battery the car would start but the sensor on that negative terminal is further down and it messes with how it reads and once you start the car often bad things will happen it might not idle right the charging system might not charge correctly now if you did jump start it wrong it doesn't do any permanent damage but youd have to visit a mechanic like me that has a fancy scan tool then we go through our scan tool tool stuff and we'd get to the section where we'd reset the electronic battery sensor system so it would work correctly but if you jump started by putting the negative terminal on the engine somewhere you don't have to worry about that so jump start them that way and you don't have to worry about messing up that stupid sensor system that many of the computerized cars have these days now the next thing I'm going to talk about modern cars is they're batteries used to be when you replace the battery you replace it with the same style battery had the same cranking amps cold cranking amps but today there's various types of batteries out there and you want to make sure you're putting the right one in your car is a replacement you got a whole car like this it's just a lead acid battery no big deal let's say your car came with an absorb glass matte battery they're more expensive they have more power they tend to last longer crank a lot better but if your car has one of those in it you have to replace that battery with another absorb glass mat battery because on those Vehicles the whole charging system with the computer is is designed for that system the absorb glass mat batteries they have to be recharged differently when I recharge them with my fancy recharger I have to put it on the special setting for them you can't just use the normal full blast lead acid battery charger or it won't be charged correctly so make sure you replace your battery with the correct battery and in the case of quite a few modern-day cars you will also have to have the car reprogrammed for the new battery and that's because of further refinements in computer charging technology the first company that really went mass and that was BMW and when you change the battery into BMW you have to get a fancy scan tool hooked up to reset it to tell the computer that the car now has a brand new battery in it now that's important because of the way the software is designed you buy a brand new BMW got a brand new battery let's say it's 4 years old the computer in your car knows it's four years old and it tends to charge it more because an old battery needs more charging to keep it going but when it finally bad if you replace the battery and just put it in and don't reprogram the car it'll start but your computer still thinks that you got a 4-year-old battery in the car it will charge it too much overcharge the battery and often within a year that new battery will be destroyed now as you can see in my fancy scan tool it's got a section for that BMS you just push that then you pick the car that you're working on that has that system and it allows you to reset it look at a BMW here so what this computer does when it's connected to a BMW it isn't now but when it is it just allows you to reset so you change the battery push buttons and then it resets the whole system now you can't do this yourself so if you find out that your car was one of the cars on this list and it has a battery management system that has to be reset when you place a battery you got to pay a mechanic to do this cuz if you don't you're gonna have problems down the line and you might well ask Scotty why are they making cars this insanely crazy well because of course they can and they love making stuff computer controlled so that's just the way it is realize you got one of those cars when you have the battery replaced you're going to have to pay mechanic to reset the system you're not going to go buy one of these $3,500 scan tools you just pay somebody to reset it but realize there is a tool you can use when you change your battery or if you disconnect your battery if you're working on the car that's one of these memory keep alive systems this one was like I don't know 12 13 bucks from Amazon it's very simple this connects to any 12volt power supply and this it just plugs into the OBD memory Port you hear it beeping so you don't lose the memory of the car some of these cars minis BMWs even Lincoln they got automatic windows that come up and then down a little when you close them and then up automatically and a lot of the systems they won't work the car won't idle right when you disconnect the battery and either replace it or work on a car and then connect it back on if you have one of these keep memory alive devices hooked up you don't have to deal with any of that crap so they're very handy things and they're so cheap if you're going to work on your car if you're ever going to change a battery on your car you definitely need to get one of these now the next change in technology you may not know about has to do with the glass in your car now your windshield has always been made out of laminated glass there's a layer of glass then there's a vinyl layer in between and then there's another layer of glass under it that's so it won't break and shatter if you get in the wreck and hit it it'll crack but it won't cause Jagged pieces to come and cut people but the Side Glass now originally they actually came with laminated glass but then years later they changed the laws in the United States and instead they have what they call safety glass and this is tempered glass it's made so that if it hits it shatters into a zillion different pieces it's not like the laminated stuff it's cheaper to make but they're little tiny pieces that won't cut and if you're in a wreck and you're stocking power windows don't work anymore a lot of people have those little hammers those little glass shatters that they pop on it then it shatters then climb out the window well some of the newer cars they don't use safety glass on the side they've gone back to using laminated glass and if you have a car like that and you get in a roll over the little Hammer devices and the little ones that have a pin that snaps and shatters the glass they won't shatter the glass cuz it's laminated glass it'll just stay there so if you've got a relatively new car it behooves you to find out does your car have Side Glass that's the oldfashioned tempered glass that'll shatter or is it the more modern laminated glass on the side now your windshield's always going to be laminated that's no problem but the side ones they could go either way now find out before you need to know the last thing you want to know is if your car rolls over you're stuck in a ditch and you can't get out gee I wonder what kind of glass I have if I can break it or not find out ahead of time give them your in number and I can say that has laminated glass or that has tempered glass on the side easy to do but you want to know now not if you're in a pinch now it's great if you change your own oil and filter but here's a mistake I've seen destroy engines when you remove the old oil filter make sure that this rubber gasket is still on the old filter because sometimes the old gasket comes off when you take the filter off and sticks onto the engine and you won't see it sticking on the engine cuz the oil filter is usually in a hidden location like this Toyota it's hidden down here you can screw it in but you can't see what you're doing so if there's a gasket stuck on there you might miss it so be sure to check your old one to make sure that the old gasket is still on when you take it off because if the old gasket is stuck on the engine and you put another one on top of it you'll double gasket it and the oil will leak I've seen engines blow up because of this and of course remember before you put the new filter on put a little oil on your finger and put oil all around the gasket so it seals and doesn't leak then when you you put the new filter on not only will it not leak but it'll be easier to take off the next time now another common mistake I've seen cost people a lot of money is leaving the battery connected when electrical work is done so whenever you're doing electrical work on a car disconnect one of the cables and take it off the battery that way you won't shorten any electrical parts out like this let's say you're working on the alternator well if it's got live power and this wire touches anything it can short the alternator and the wiring of the car out but if you've taken off one of the battery cables there's no more power flowing through the system and you can't hurt anything now you might think oh I'm careful this isn't going to happen to me but hey one little mistake you can ruin a $1,500 computer it's a lot easier just taking one of the battery cables off and putting it back on when you're done working now the next common mistake I see concerns changing out spark plugs never change out spark bugs on an engine that's hot wait until the engine has cooled down modern cars have aluminum heads which is very soft over the years I've had to rethread many of these heads and sometimes had to replace them so if you're planning on changing your spark plugs hey do it first thing in the morning or wait a couple hours until the engine is cooled down so you don't do any damage now the last common mistake I'm going to talk about is motor oil some people think that a heavier weight oil is better for their engine like a 20 we 50 instead of a 10 we 40 well guess what that's not true always look at your car and see what they suggest to use in this Toyota it says use 10 weight 30 oil so that's what you should use because a lighter oil will flow better which is really important for overhead cam engines in overhead cam engines the cam is in the top of the engine and if you use a heavier oil it can take longer for that heavy oil to get to the cam so the cam will wear out faster so in this case using a heavier 20 weight 50 oil can actually make the engine wear out faster and the last thing anything wants is an engine that wears out faster you want them to last as long as possible so just stick with the oil that's adjusted on the engine in this case it's 10w30 so now you know how to save yourself a lot of grief and avoid these common Auto Repair mistakes and remember if you have any car questions just visit scottykilmer.com and I'll answer them so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell [Music] nah [Music]

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 103,006

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: tTMOQNiU4Rc

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2024