- Maintenance, it's
unexciting, it's messy, it can be complicated and it takes time. There are a bunch of reasons to avoid keeping up with
your car's maintenance but if you don't, it's probably
gonna bite you in the ass. So today I'm gonna walk you through the nine parts of a car that commonly require
maintenance or attention. For each I'll show you what to look for, why we're looking at it and how to fix it. I'm Zach and this is Money Pit. (lightning blasting) (bouncy upbeat music) So the most common and consistent
maintenance item is oil. The engine oil is the
lifeblood of your engine and your car requires transfusions of new blood every so often. Any time you get metal on metal contact in your engine, the components that are touching
are gonna wear very fast. So all your moving parts
need to be separated by a thin film of oil at all times to keep your engine in good shape. You know how much friction there is there? Now at 7000 RPM, that's gonna
toast itself pretty quick but let's put a little oil on it. (oil squishing) Oh, no noise at all 'cause it's riding on a thin film of oil. So that's what you want. Engine oil is comprised of
pretty much two main components, a base oil and an additive package. Base oil is a product created by refining
crude oil from the ground when you're talking about conventional oil or the base oil is a synthesized polymer when you're talking about
a full synthetic oil. A combination of both types of base oil would make for semi synthetic or a synthetic blend, which has a quality and
price somewhere in between conventional and full synthetic. In either case, the
base oil comprises most of what's ultimately in the bottle, the rest is called the
additive pack or package, which contains various additives which make it possible for oil to do its super difficult ass job. The oil needs to be thin enough to be able to be quickly
pumped throughout the engine on a cold morning startup. But, as the oil heats up to
the operating temperature of your engine, it also thins out, as most fluids do. That does sound like a pretty hard job, so how on earth does it
keep from becoming too thin at operating temperature? Enter multi-grade engine oil, also knowing as
multi-viscosity engine oil. Viscosity is just the measurement of a fluid's internal friction
or its resistance to flow. Low viscosity is like water, and high viscosity is like honey. Low viscosity, low number, low resistance to flow. High viscosity, high number
and a high resistance to flow. And whenever you hear
anyone talking about weight, when they're talking about motor oil, they're talking about viscosity. So anyway, oh, (bleep). Oh my god. Oh, no, this has to go. (laughing) So anyway, multi-viscosity oil, this is actually pretty
much every oil you know. Let's take 10W-30 for example, 10W-30, we've got a
viscosity or weight rating here of 10, with a W, then a dash, and then a viscosity rating of 30. So let's split thing in half at the dash. These numbers represent
the viscosity rating of the oil at two different temperatures. The W attached to that first number, that stands for winter, not weight, and it represents winter temperatures, or specifically, 0 degree Fahrenheit. So, when cold, this oil
flows like a 10 weight oil which is good, that's a pretty low number, which means it's probably thin enough to get pumped around on a cold start and protect the goods. But then the second
number is a measurement of the viscosity of the oil
at operating temperature, or, 212 degrees Fahrenheit. At 212 degrees, the viscosity of this oil is now a 30 weight, it's
still thinner than it was because now it's hot, it's at 212 degrees, but, it's not as thin as a
straight, 10 weight oil would be at 212. So for the multi-viscosity trick, the additive pack has what's
called viscosity improvers or modifiers, which expand
in size with temperature and effectively increase viscosity. There are also things called
dispersants and detergents which help oil do two of
its other biggest jobs. Dispersants help catch and
suspend combustion by products like soot and carbon. And detergents help clean deposits and they help neutralize acids which are created by combustion. And at some point, the oil in your engine has trapped all the soot it can hold and it's neutralized all the acid it can. So it's reasons like these that
you need to change your oil. You've probably heard every
3000 miles on the old odometer or every three months, but honestly, it varies quite a bit. Really you should be able
to go 5000 miles nowadays with no problems. Typically speaking, a
synthetic oil will give you the longest drain interval possible when compared to a semi-synthetic
or conventional oil. Generally it's best to stick with your manufacturer's recommendation. You gotta make sure that
the oil you're using meets the certifications
that your engine requires. So anyways, let's change this fricken oil. First you're gonna wanna make sure you have the car on a
nice flat level ground. Then you need to make sure
it's in park or in gear and the e-brake is pulled. Then you gotta chock the wheel, like that. Then once you got the wheel chock, you need to find the
lift points on your car. There's always gonna be two
on either side of the car. And on the Miata, you
can tell where they are by these little indents, but that's where I want
our jack stand to go, so I'm actually gonna lift
from the front sub-frame which will pick up the front
two tires at the same time. - [Eddie] What do you call that move? - That's the old scissor kick, bye master. And then I'm gonna get the jack stands under the reinforced
bit on the pinch welds on either side and slowly
lower the car onto the stands. Now we need to lift the rear, I'm gonna do basically there same thing, we're gonna use the same side lift point, just the rear one, and I'm gonna lift the
car from the differential. Now, that it's up in the
air, give it a little shake, to make sure it doesn't
fall off your jack stands and if it doesn't, you did it. Good job. So for our sweet little Miata here, we're gonna use a full synthetic. We're gonna use a Mobil 1 10W-30, and we're gonna operate on roughly a 5000 mile oil change
interval, but realistically, we're gonna be taking this
thing apart so many damn times, I don't know if we'll
ever actually get there. (upbeat music) First, pop off your oil fill cap. Get underneath the car, drain the old oil. And see how little of a mess you can make, it's always fun. All right, the oil's all drained, time to put the drain plug back in, I've got my torque wrench, the torque spec is 22 to 30 foot points, I'm gonna go with 30 foot pounds, try to make sure it doesn't leak. Now that the drain plug's back in, I'm gonna yank off the old oil filter, which is right up there and
it'll drain into the pan. It's always a good idea
to lube up the new gasket on your new filter. You can use the old engine oil for that, or you can you go with the new stuff. Just get it wet, it just helps it seal. Just spin it on until it gets snug and then go maybe another
half turn or a turn, that's really all it takes. So the oil capacity on
the Miata is four quarts, so I've got four quarts here, and we're gonna dump them all in. All right, so now we're
gonna start the car, so we can check the oil level, and the point of that is just to fill up that dry filter with oil so
we get an accurate reading on the level of the oil. Then check your oil level and make sure you don't have any leaks. So we changed our oil which
leaves us with this vat of used, dirty, gross, oil. I like to have one of these on hand, take it to your nearest
store and drop it off, it's free. All right, that's an oil change, it was pretty easy. But what about those other oils? Other oils? What? Yes, we do need to change the gear oil and our diff oil, so let's do it. (upbeat music) Now there's no combustion
going on in the trans or diffs so the fluid doesn't need get
as dirty as your engine oil. And that's part of the
reason you can these fluids so much longer than
you can run engine oil. Now I've got these two fluids, this one's for the transmission, and this one's for the diff. They're both 75W-90, but
they are not the same. The fluid for the transmission, this is a GL4 spec fluid,
and the diff fluid here, is a GL5 spec. Now what does this mean? In this case, it's mostly
about the difference in extreme pressure, or EP additive. It adheres to all your metal parts and basically acts like
a last line of defense against metal on metal wear. So the difference between these two fluids is the level of that EP additive. For our differential, where forces are
extraordinarily high and brutal, we're gonna use this
GL5, this Mobil 1 75W-90. We need to be a little bit
more delicate in our gearbox, and the amount of EP
additive in the GL5 fluid is too aggressive for
the synchronizer rings in the Miata's transmission, so this GL4 spec fluid is
what's going in the trans. Now that we've got all the
jibber jabber out of the way, let's talk about actually
changing the transmission fluid. Before you open up the drain plug, which obviously you have
to do to drain the fluid, you need to open up the fill plug, to make sure that you're
gonna be able to put new fluid back in it once you
drain out the old fluid. Then you remove the drain plug, you drain all the old juice out, put drain plug back in, tighten it up, and then you'll just fill with new fluid until it comes out the fill hole. To get the fluid into the transmission, I've got this, it's a
little fluid transfer pump. That just goes down in there, you just squirt it like
a little soap dispenser and it puts the fluid where you want it. She's full, there you go. See how it's running out of
the filter plug like that? That's how you know when its filled up. So we're ready to put
our fill plug back in. The transmission is done, now we need to do the diff. We're gonna pop off the fill
plug to make sure it comes off, then we'll drain it. And again, as we're draining our fluid, we're looking at it and
making sure it looks good, and it does, there's no dirt
or foreign debris in there. So that's a good sign. Put the drain plug back
in, fill it up with fluid. So same thing with the transmission, we're just gonna pour the
fluid into the fill hole until it spills out,
then we know its full. Where's my plug? Oh no. You gotta keep track of your plugs. Hey, Yahtzee. For the drain plug, the spec
is 29 to 40 foot pounds, so if you're new to
doing this kind of stuff, you should absolutely use a torque wrench, and do it to spec, so you get to learn. And that's how you change your diff fluid. Pretty easy, right? Let's do some brakes. (upbeat music) Brake fluid is a type of hydraulic fluid that your brake system uses
in order for your car to stop when you want it to. When you step on your brakes, the fluid causes a piston or
pistons in your brake caliper to push against your brake pads, the pads then clamp against the rotors and those are attached to your wheels. Now brake fluid, like all the other fluid
we've talked about before, needs to be changed. It absorbs water, it's what's called a hygroscopic fluid. Now if you're thinking,
well, water is fluid, that's incompressible,
so why would it matter if water gets into the system? Well, so as you use your brakes, you create a lot of heat, and your fluid gets hot, and it gets too hot, it'll
cause that unwanted water in the brake fluid to boil, because water has a
much lower boiling point than any brake fluid. And when you boil water, it becomes a gas, and gas is very compressible. So, when that happens, you lose
the function of your brakes pretty much completely, which is also known as
being completely (beep). So it's important to check
with your car's manual to see which fluid your system takes. So I wanna make sure we use
the best fluid possible now so we don't have to deal
with it in the future. So that's why we're using Motul's RBF600, it's got a dry boiling point
of 594 degrees fahrenheit, which is full, 148
degrees more braking temp than you get with the standard .4 stuff. Break bleeding the name of process, which you purge air bubbles
from the brake lines. When the brake fluid heats
up past the boiling point of that water, it creates
steam in the lines, the steam creates air
pockets in the brake lines and then that reduces the
amount of hydraulic pressure when you hit the brake pedals. So a common symptom of
air in your brake lines is a soft or spongy pedal. The only way to get that air out is to bleed the fluid and air bubbles out. So Eddie's gonna get in the car and he's gonna pump up the brake pedal to get some pressure in the system. Then, he's gonna hold the pedal down to keep all that pressure
on the fluid, in the system. Then I'll crack open the bleeder valve at each, individual, brake
and fluid, and, or, air, will come out out of the bleeder as Eddie's foot sinks to the floor. Then I'll close the bleeder and Eddie can pump the pedal up again, and then we'll repeat that cycle until we've flushed out all the old fluid. So as we do this, we have to make sure to keep filling the brake
reservoir with new fluids so you don't suck air
in from the reservoir. This is where communication
with your homies is key. Now Eddie, pump it up. (tranquil music) So we got this corner done, we gotta do it on three other corners, so let's get at it. Pump it. Okay, how does the pedal feel? - Feels good. - Well that's a brake bleed my boy. So as we know, car engines
create a lot of heat, and to keep things from melting down, your engine has coolant coursing through it's aluminum, and, or, steel veins. Engine coolant is pumped
through the engine where it absorbs heat from the block and then the fluid gets
transferred to the radiator, here at the front. Air flows through the radiator, across the veins, and
pulls heat out the coolant, and then the coolant
goes back to the block and then starts the
process all over again. So, what exactly is engine coolant? Well, it is a mixture
of water and antifreeze. You know what water is, I hope, and antifreeze is either ethylene glycol or propylene glycol, depending
on what formula you buy. Those chemicals, when mixed with water, do exactly what the name suggests, they prevent freezing. Over time, the coolant in your engine can become slightly acidic, and that slightly acidic
solution in your engine causes corrosion, which is bad. Beyond that, your coolant
can lose its ability to keep from freezing
when it gets really cold, and you can't really tell
just by looking at it. So you need one of these,
this is called a hydrometer, basically you just sucks
some coolant up into it, and it floats to this little float, and points at a number
here and tells you roughly, what temperature your
antifreeze is good to. Just under negative 34 fahrenheit, so that's pretty good. So our coolant's pretty cool, let's take a look at our power steering. So power steering fluid,
much like brake fluid, is a type of hydraulic fluid, and in this case, it's
used to transmit power to your steering system. So the power steering pump pulls fluid from our reservoir right here, pumps it, puts some pressure on it, and forces it into your steering rack, which is what gives you the power. So power steering fluid, just
like all our other fluids, over time, gets dirty,
and needs to be replaced. But you also might notice, if you're having power steering issues, like if there's a squeal when
you try to turn the wheel, or it's really hard to turn
the wheel at slow speeds, or it's jerky and not consistent, all of those can be
signs of a failing pump, or low on fluid, or even
potentially just a loose belt that isn't driving your
power steering pump. So, dip stick, it's full of fluid, and the fluid looks okay,
it looks nice and clear, there's not any chunks of junk in it. The power steer system in
the Miata seems to be fine, so I'm really not gonna
do much to do it today, I'm gonna turkey baster
out some of the old fluid, fill up with new, fresh, Mobil 1 ATF, check our level, gotta
use our little dipstick, and try to land somewhere on
that little middle part there. All right, so power steering
fluid is at the right level, got some fresh juice in there, which is good, and I'll do
that the next couple of times I work on the car, and then it'll just be kind
of a nice easy, background way to cycle some new power
steering fluid in there. Let's do some spark plugs. (upbeat music) Spark plugs are responsible
for creating the spark that ignites the air and fuel mixture that's in your engine. So this is your positive terminal, which you'll connect your coil
pack or your spark plug wire to the top there. And then electricity travels
through the center electrode, all the way to the tip
where it gets to the gap, and with enough voltage,
the electricity will jump this little gap, and that's your spark. So that's how it does the
sparky part of its job, but spark plugs have another job, they need to dissipate the
correct amount of heat. The heat range rating of a spark plug is the measurement of how much heat the plug can transfer from
the tip of the spark plug, to the cylinder head and ultimately, to the cooling system of your engine. So you need to use a plug that operates in its most efficient temperature range. As you put miles on your plugs, they are subjected to a
pretty insane environment, and as the miles rack up,
the tip of your electrode will wear away until
it's no longer effective at creating a spark. Now depending on the durability of the materials used
in the plugs you choose, will have a lot to do
with how long they last. For example, a cooper plug
is gonna wear the quickest and have the shortest life
span at 10 to 30 000 miles depending on how you drive, they're also the cheapest. Plugs with iridium or platinum tips are much more durable and they can last up to 100 000 miles, but
they are more expensive. So you can tell if you need
to change your spark plugs, if they start misfiring, which feels a lot like
walking up some stairs and trying to take that
last step that isn't there. Let's take a look at our plugs and see how things are
going inside the engine. All right, so we're
getting ready to pull out our spark plugs, I've got my handy, dandy, spark plug socket here, it's a 5/8 in size because spark plugs often still a standard size. It's got a magnet in the tip, which makes it easy for pulling them out and putting them back in. All right, so here's our first plug, no oil on the threads, so no leaks. We've got a nice, light grayish, tannish,
looking strap there. Our electrode's nice and square still, it doesn't look very eroded, there's no deposits,
these look pretty good, well at least the first one does, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Plug number two, looks equally good. Now number four, and this is the cylinder that tends to get hot, isn't it Eddie? - [Eddie] Yeah it is. - Threads are clean, tip looks good, pretty dry, electrode looks good. Our plugs look fine but we
already have a new set of plugs so we're gonna install them anyway. It's always a good idea to
check the gap of your plugs even if there pre-gapped. To do that we've got a
little gapper tool here. All you're doing is measuring the air gap between the tip of the
electrode and the ground strap on the spark plug. So we're gonna check and make sure that all four plugs are gapped the same, and then we'll install them. This one's a little bit tighter at .04, so I'll show you how to
open up the ground strap, it's really easy. So you just get it in there like that, give it a little push,
there we go perfect. So I'll put a little
bit of dielectric grease on the porcelain here and that will help the spark plug boot seal to the spark plug and help prevent misfires. We're gonna do 22 foot
pounds on the spark plugs. And that's it baby, new spark plugs. How exciting. (upbeat music) You know what it is, we're about to take off that intake son, so we get to them belts. All right, so your engine uses a belt or a couple of belts to operate
various different systems attached to the engine. Like your water pump,
your power steering pump, your alternator, they're
all driven by the crank, so if the car's running,
the crank's spinning and it's spinning your
accessory pumps and components. They're made out of
rubber just like tires, so over time, with a lot of use, they'll wear down and
they lose their ability to do their job well. They look okay, they're not cracked, they don't look too worn, but we're still gonna stick
some new ones on there. So in order to install some new belts, all you need to do is
loosen your tensioner or tensioners, which changes
the tension on the belt. So we loosened the bolts
on the power steering pump, and we loosened the tensioner, that allows the power steering pump itself to pivot down, which loosens the belt, so now we've got a really loose belt, and I'm gonna take it off. There's belt number one. Let's get the second one off. Okay, so this one a little
tougher to get to it looks like. Okay, now you can see
the alternator moving, so that's loose, we should be able to get the belt off now. So we've got these grooves here or the teeth of the belt, there's
no cracking which is good, this doesn't look exceptionally worn, you wanna look at the sides too, see if there's any melting
going on or anything like that. It looks okay, but
again, these are so cheap that I'm replacing it, 'cause I wanna know it's okay. Just up under the water pump, down onto the crankshaft, then we just gotta get
it on to the alternator, which has got a tensioner. All right, so the first belt is on, we've got it tensioned, it's pretty tight, just
the way we want it, and we're gonna tighten up our alternator, and then we'll put on our second belt. Okay, now that belt's on. We need to get a little tension on her. That's about good, that's
the tension we want. The spec is 11 and a half milometers, which is close to half an inch. And I'd say that's just
under half an inch of play up and down, so that's great, we'll tighten up our tensioner and then our belts are done. It's time for our filters after that. (upbeat music) All right folks, I know
we've been at it for a while, but we're almost there, the
last thing we have to do before this Miata is up to snuff, is install some new filters. We're gonna do an air
filter and a fuel filter. The air filter lets air through, but it traps all the dirt and
debris and all the nasty stuff that you don't want
your engine to suck up. And just like all filters, at a certain point, it can't
do its job very well anymore, because it's full of junk. All right, to get to the air filter, its gonna be really easy, especially 'case we already have our front part of the intake off, so now I'm just gonna
disconnect our mass airflow, awww. - [Eddie] Did you break it?
- The clip broke. Well, now I just have four screws left, 10 milometers or Philips, and
then the top of intake bars come off. Hey, doesn't look too bad so far. So, here's an air filter,
this is a paper filter, there are also cotton filters, and there are cool foam ones, but they all do the same job which is trapping junk, and honestly, so far, this
one looks pretty good, but again, I've got a new anyway, because we're zeroing this puppy out. Looks like the filter
that was already in there, just a little newer. Drop the filter in, put the lid back on, screws back in, and you're done. There's no satisfying click there anymore. - [Eddie] Who's fault is that?
- Dude, it's mine okay. (imitates car engine) So the last step here is
to put this intake tube back in place, just the way it came off, should be pretty easy, and then we're done up here. All right, now we're
down here under the car getting ready to replace the fuel filter. Over time, it filters out a bunch of gunk, and it can get blocked up, which can cause poor
idle, poor fuel economy, and just poor performance overall. So we're gonna spill a
little bit of fuel here, but the car hasn't been
on since yesterday, so we shouldn't really have much fuel pressure in the system, but if you do, the best thing you can do is take out your fuel pump fuse, and then start the car and it'll run until it runs out of fuel, and that'll depressurize your fuel system so you can work on it. All right, so here's our old fuel filter, now I'm gonna pinch this line right here to try to stop from losing
as much fuel as possible, and then we'll pop it off. Take out the first line,
loosen up the hose, might as well pinch off
the upper line as well, that should do. Sometimes your hold hoses will get really stuck on
stuff, so you gotta kind of, loosen them up, there you go. (relaxing music) We got the old one out, time to put the new one in. (relaxing music) Brand new fuel filter. Dang, this thing got a lot of love today. Let's bring this thing down. She's back. Now let's torque them wheels. All right, so the torque
spec for the wheels seems to be 65 to 85 foot pounds, which is a pretty wide spread, I'm gonna go with 75 foot pounds, and let's see if the wheels come off. And that's it, that's
maintenance on a Miata, let's take it for a drive and make sure everything feels good. (smooth music) The car feels great, what do you know, it honestly feels a lot like it did at the beginning of this, but
now know I feel a lot better, knowing that the car has fresh fluids, fresh filters, fresh belts,
and fresh spark plugs, so the car is at a great baseline now to start modifying it, so check back next week when we replace those worn out tires, we'll put some new sticky ones on it, we'll talk about tires,
we'll take about wheels, how to gt your fitment right, and you guys are never gonna guess, what wheels we bought. So check us next week for that. In the meantime, follow me
on Instagram, @ZachJobe, follow Donut, @Donutmedia, follow our new YouTube
channel for our podcast, Donut Podcasts, and thank you
guys so much for watching, I hope you're having
fun, we're having a blast making this show. See you next week.
