CAR WIZARD, how long will my car last? What car makers plan for & owners expect is NOT the same!

what is the life of the vehicle we're going to discuss that today and find out what we think is the life of vehicle versus manufacturer's life of the vehicle let's get started [Music] so you guys recently seen a video where we split this car in half and you can see danielson's got the bulletproof engine already installed onto the torque tube I guess you want to call it it's already gotten things installed on it getting ready to put this back on to the powertrain so thinking of Life a vehicle we have now extended the life of this engine we've extended the life of this car we've added probably many more years of cruising on the road to this thing let me show you guys a sticker I saw while we were working on the Bronco for actually hoovie's Bronco that reminded me of a debate that's been going on for quite a while now let's head on over to the Bronco so we were actually working on this 94 Bronco this is hoovies that he I guess he did the video trying to Drive the official route of O.J Simpson and everything was crazy as that was the vehicle is here to be serviced and taken care of take care of some issues on it and while we were under the vehicle I came across this sticker it says do not service so we saw that sticker on the 94 Bronco and it's not really talking about the fluid services and things of that there's a TSB that's going on with that transmission from years ago which is expired by now but just seeing that sticker reminded me over the years I've serviced many many vehicles where you're underneath there's actual stickers that say don't touch the transmission fluid don't change it don't service it leave it alone I've actually got lots of questions from people that send emails or whatnot wanting to know hey my vehicle says it's good for the life of the vehicle should I mess with this should I not mess with this they're quoting me a thousand dollars for this or that should I do it so we're going to kind of answer some of those today work talk about several topics that are theoretically supposed to last a life the vehicle but that definition of life of the vehicle is different between the person that built the vehicle and the person who's driving the vehicle now I don't know every single vehicle out there but there are a lot especially in 2020s 2018s that would say the coolant the transmission differential fluid don't surface it it's good for the life of the vehicle one of the vehicles I've seen a lot of are the BMWs that have the GM 6l45 transmission and they actually have a sticker I'll show you a picture of it here it specifically says warning lifetime oil don't touch it you're not supposed to change the transmission fluid you leave it alone here's another one this is a Toyota there's a lot of Toyota Transmissions like 07 Corolla especially this is what this picture is of let me show you the dipstick sticker It also says no need to change the transmission fluid it specifically says don't do it Subaru also with their service schedule if you look at a 2012 2015 or newer Subaru you can actually look at the maintenance schedule clear out to 200 000 miles and it will never say anywhere to change the transmission fluid it just says inspect or check it out or make sure the fluid level is at the correct level it never says the word replace means it doesn't matter what it looks like you just do it you go ahead and do a service now that doesn't exist for the Subarus also some of the Nissan Altimas and things we'll remember in the 06 789 range I can't remember when they came out with the CVT that's made by jacco those are supposed to be sealed for life and they were dropping like flies because no one ever surfaced them and we know from experience from the videos that we have watched here in this shop you have to service them every 50 000 miles it became known finally that that is the way to keep those Transmissions alive Chevy also has the 5 HP and like I just listed the 6l45 transmission which actually is used in BMWs as a General Motors product they specifically say sealed for life as well Range Rovers actually have some of these Transmissions they'll save the same sticker on the side do not change the fluid but here's the thing when you or I think about the life of the vehicle I'll give you a few seconds what comes to mind 300 000 miles or like the LS400 that you just saw possibly 400 000 miles which is very likely that the life is going to be for that car or more but at least 250 but possibly three to four hundred thousand miles is a true life like a really good life of a car there is no transmission on Earth that will last 300 000 miles without a service I don't care what your manual says I don't care what your service advisor says they will die by 300 000 miles if you don't service them now so we have ascertained what we think the life of the vehicle is now let me inform you what the dealer or the manufacturer has decided the life of the vehicle when they make that claim lifetime fluid it is not 300 000 miles for some manufacturers the lifetime of the vehicle is the warranty period sixty Thousand Miles forty Thousand Miles whatever also based on when a car is designed they come up with a useful life span of that vehicle and it's usually between 100 and 150 000 miles at that point you're not supposed to fix your car you're not supposed to service it and make it last longer you're supposed to go to the dealer trade it in and go buy a new car or better yet they want you to lease them in three or four years you bring it back and they don't have to worry about it too much it's like a company doing a big business deal but the numbers between each party is completely way far off the manufacturer says it's good for the life of the vehicle 150 000 miles but they don't give you that number they just say life of the vehicle but here in our minds we're thinking okay so we're good for 300 000 miles wrong you will destroy your transmission if you do that Chrysler actually had in the early 2000s lifetime warranty because they knew after 150 000 miles or 200 you're probably not going to keep it anyways there are a few people who did take them to task and kept the vehicle forever and they had to honor that warranty and they did but they knew nobody's going to keep their vehicle that long and we don't expect you to you will trade It Off by the time a hundred thousand miles gets here and then we don't have to worry about the lifetime warranty anyways so anytime you see lifetime transmission lifetime this lifetime that you need to remember what we've talked about in this video their definition of Lifetime is different than your definition of a lifetime a lot of newer cars we all know they're actually removing the dipsticks altogether they don't want you looking under the hood they don't want you messing with the fluid levels they want to train technician at their dealership to do that so it is getting harder to do it may be a little bit more difficult but it's still doable if you have the right tools that are if you know the methods of refilling the transmission but every hundred thousand miles you need to be doing it now if you wait till 250 000 miles to service your transmission don't just leave it alone because it's very likely the clutches have worn pretty badly by then and the only thing that's keeping it shifting right is the actual material suspended in the fluid the friction material you go and drain all that out you put fresh fluid back in it and now it starts slipping that shop ruined mine with transmission no they didn't you shouldn't have done a service on it that late in life at a hundred thousand miles every 100 000 miles you should be servicing your transmission now CVT transmissions that's even less that's in half of that every 50 000 miles you should be servicing your CVT transmission I don't care if it's Toyota Subaru Nissan Ford I don't care every 50 000 mile service your CVT transmission and again I'll reiterate I don't care what your service manual says or what this or that says those Transmissions put out a lot of material into the fluid so you need to get that fluid out the debris and things and put fresh fluid in then you can make them last a long time so that's where we're at with transmission so now let's move on to timing belt versus timing chain so under the topic of timing chains versus timing belts we all know that timing belts no matter who makes them is not going to last the life of the car 60 90 100 120 000 miles every manufacturer has their own service interval for the timing belt and it is known ahead of time you are going to have to change those out and there's a common misconception that well I'll buy a vehicle with a timing chain and then those service intervals are gone because the chain is good for the life of the vehicle no they're not there is no timing chain that will last four hundred thousand miles now I do take that back there have probably are some rare instances where somebody's car did make it that long on original timing chains but for the most part like in this picture here on the GM 3.6 look how complex that is there's so many guides and so many things and they already have so much trouble they barely make it to a hundred thousand miles before they fail or stretch so here I have an actual timing chain it's actually the small one that goes to the XLR this is the old one what happens on the GM 3.6 is the chain actually can stretch after being pulled for so long and then the timing is off and the only way to fix it is to put new chains here we have XLR timing chain guides I'll go ahead and take this plastic piece off of this guide you can see two grooves running down the guide and what that is is the actual chain has been rubbing on it for these are only 32 000 miles and they rub on the plastic like that and they make the grooves over time they literally can rub through the plastic all the way down to the metal and then you start getting metal shavings into your oil and also that can alter the timing of the valve train on some of the early Range Rovers they had the BMW 4.4 in it these would actually fall off and go into the oil pan and then it would rub on metal and it would just go south really fast from there really bad the thing I'm getting at here there are some manufacturers that state these have the long service timing chains they don't have timing belts so you're good for the life of the car we need to re-underline what their idea of the life of the car is a hundred thousand miles Maybe 150. and guess what it's usually about that time that it's time on most cars for a new set of timing chains tensioner guides everything these can last a lot longer but it's kind of a gamble keep in mind that most modern engines are high compression and they have interference engines which means if the timing belt or chain snaps the valves are going to collide with the piston and destroy the engine so there's not a whole lot of room for error here so in Transmissions we talked about every hundred thousand miles you need to service them regardless of what you've read somewhere with timing chains every 100 to 150 000 miles you at least need to have the timing cover come off or take the valve covers off so a mechanic can look in there and see how badly grooved are the guides he can also use a scan tool to look at cam crank correlation values and see if it's stretched or something's wrong it at least needs to be looked at and possibly serviced every 100 to 150 000 miles so any make any model you need to remove the idea from your head that timing chains are for the life of the vehicle they are knocked and again for timing belts it's 60 90 100 you'll have to look in your owner's manual or Google it if you don't know what your car has or anything like that again Google it check it out you can find all the information you want about your car on Google so the next topic we're going to jump to is transfer cases and they're fluid here we have on the Bronco this transfer case here it's very simple it's not a lot of weird stuff going on it's old school but let's talk about transfer cases now so I've been standing all day my feet are hurting so I'll do what everyone does they'll sit on there powertrain of their car there we go that's pretty comfortable no this car doesn't have a transfer case but it seemed like a nice place to sit anything that's all-wheel drive or four-wheel drive will have some sort of a transfer case or a way to get the power from the transmission to the front wheels especially on newer Vehicles these have become increasingly complex they have clutches inside of them they have computer control they can variably change the amount of friction going on inside the transfer case traction things of that nature some of them actually have small torque converters inside of them for all-wheel drive most people forget about the transfer case when they do Services they're like that's good for the life of the vehicle I don't need to mess with that but they're not and there may be a few manufacturers out there I'm not aware of any but they would say you don't need to service those they're good for the life of the vehicle but especially on the Chrysler Transmissions that we know about like on the Jeep Cherokees they're so sensitive that if you put different size tires that don't match on your car it'll literally cook your transfer case I know a guy that is a master Chrysler technician in Wichita you guys might have seen him actually on hoovie's garage Tyler Potter and he's his mentioned to me they've gone through a lot of transfer cases for those reasons people say oh this thing's a piece of junk the transfer case went out no it's actually a good vehicle you ruined it by putting the improper size tires on it oh I didn't know that well now you do and the thing is I have served so many transfer cases where we drain the fluid out and it's black like midnight and it smells burned it smells like burn clutches whether it's stated in the manual or the idea in your head is transfer case I don't have to worry about that that's something that's good for the life of the car no it's not again that's going to be another one around 80 90 100 000 miles you need to at least inspect the fluid drain a little bit into a cup to see the color the smell if it smells burned or if it's really black it's time to do a service on your transfer case and make sure to put the right fluid in a lot of these transfer cases today have friction modifiers in the fluid so that the clutches act a certain way if you just dump whatever you can find in there or that's good enough it will destroy the transfer case they have specific fluids for specific transfer cases so that is definitely another item on a vehicle that is taken for granted that it's good for the life of the car by a lot of people and it is absolutely not for the life of the vehicle as far as fluids and lastly is differentials it's another one that's taken for granted I don't have to mess with that that's good for the life of the vehicle and they're not and there are a few manufacturers out there they'll say that's another item that's sealed for life you shouldn't have to service it but the life of the vehicle in their eyes again 100 150 000 miles not the life of the vehicle in our eyes 300 000 miles so of all the things I just listed a lot has to happen at a hundred thousand miles it seems like that is the going number that a lot of things have to be done but you don't have to wait to 100 and then just stack them all up all at once you can get to 90 000 miles to do the transmission and maybe at 100 110 do their transfer case and then 120 or 30 maybe look into the differentials and when you get to 150 have the timing chains inspected you can space it out over some time you don't have to do them all at once at a hundred thousand miles and I have gotten a lot of vehicles in before that they have waited to the 100 000 mile mark and they have a complete huge list of all fluids timing chain I want everything done it could be three or four thousand dollars you don't want that bill all at once and bringing it in periodically is also going to allow your mechanic to actually find some other things hey man one found out one of your shocks are blown out or it's time for tires or the brakes are getting thin they give some time for other things to be found as well don't just wait until some long number has transpired and okay now I'll take it in you can space it out so again in closing this video wasn't a bunch of wrenching or cool stuff going on with the Cadillac or anything but it definitely came to mind because I've gotten so many questions that this is supposed to be good for the life of vehicle but now we have determined that we as consumers and the manufacturers are not on the same page as as far as our idea of life of the vehicle so wherever you're at with your vehicle how many miles are on it you might want to check into so many things I just listed is it time to get this done is it time to get that done and if you're in the local area or in a few States we'll be happy to do it for you but just remember because they're a sticker on the bottom of your transmission it says do not touch do not service that's a lie you need to service it you have to to keep it alive so if you're curious what kind of tools we use to do those types of services or that we've used to work on this Cadillac check my Amazon Affiliates Link in the description below we get a small cut and we really appreciate it and make sure to hit the Subscribe button because we do have some bus videos updates coming we've just been waiting on parts and things thanks for watching [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Car Wizard

Views: 316,755

Keywords: car wizard, david long, hoovies garage, tyler hoover, car issues with tyler hoover, omega auto clinic, car repair, car maintenance, Hoovie, mechanic, Car issues, BendPak, Car trek, Car, Repair, vehicle life, car life, truck life, cvt, transmission, tranny, transfer case, sealed for life, life of car, maintenance, service, timing chain, timing belt

Id: rM0YeYD66hQ

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 11 2022