If You're Not Doing This Before Starting Your Car, You're Stupid

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now people are always worried about the high price of car repairs so today i'm going to show you five ways you can fix your car for free now manufacturers put a lot of warning light on cars and the reason they put a lot of these warning lights is because it scares people then they take it in and then they try to sell them a bunch of stuff let's say your brake light came on now brake lights can come on for various reasons you can have a pressure failure where the pedal starts sinking the brake pads are worn out what i see is the most common reason that light comes on is real simple you go to the brake master cylinder and it's just low on fluid the master cylinders have a little float in it and when the fluid gets below a certain parameter the switch turns on the brake light and only thing it means is that you're low on brake fluid now of course if you have a leak in the system the fluid is going to go on the warning is going to come on but the most common thing that i see in cars is the brake light comes on because the fluid is low just from normal wear and tear as you drive down the road disc brakes adjust themselves as the calipers push the pads and the pads where thinner that fluid has to take up the space that the calipers have pushed in so just normally driving it you're gonna lose some fluid in the master cylinder even though it's not actually leaking and over time a little bit evaporates your brake lights on but everything works fine the pedal doesn't sink you don't see it leaking all over the place fill it up to the fill line and then drive it if the light doesn't come back on you look at the fluid it's not losing any fluid for weeks or months that's just normal do not just rush to a garage and say my brake lights on help me because odds are they can start selling you stuff they'll sell you brake pads they sell you master cylinders they'll sell you boosters they'll sell you all kinds of things that you may not need that happened to my neighbor years ago she went to a chain they hit her up for 850 dollars for work that as far as i'm concerned didn't need doing because i had checked it out for her and said well if you want the brake pads are getting a little thin they don't have to be done right away but that's what i do and then they solder all kinds of stuff and if all it needs is fluid and it's not leaking anywhere and then you find months later it's still full that's normal now technically that's not a free fix because you do have to put some brake fluid in but a can of brake fluid doesn't cost that much now the next free fix has to do with those stupid warning lights that say service cars soon most modern cars are set up that every 15 000 miles or so that light just automatically comes on it's programmed to do that and of course if you take it somewhere with the light on they're going to get out a list of things that they want to sell you it's just an automatic thing that comes on if you've been changing your oil regularly look at your air filter once in a while make sure the brake pads aren't worn out you don't need to have any kind of service done it's stuff you could easily do yourself change the oil or whatever never go in with an open-ended thing like oh this light is on what do i need cause they're gonna start selling you stuff learn how to reset that light they're all relatively simple in most toyotas you just push the odometer resetting button with the key turned on then it'll go through a process and then it turns the light off because by law in the united states any car that's sold here has to be able to be reset by the owner of the car if they maintain their own car it can't be a prerogative thing where you got to take it to them and they plug their computer in and use that to reset it there always has to be a way to turn that light out once the car's been serviced and of course realize with another 15 000 miles it'll probably come right back out again and then you can reset the stupid thing salesmen at a store trying to sell your stuff on the car they get a percentage of what they sell you so the more they sell you the more they make never give them an open-ended thing of oh this light's on what do i need you're just asking for trouble there let's say your car doesn't start turn the key it won't start many times that's battery related not a complex thing but again if your car doesn't start you tow it somewhere they got a cart launch car doesn't even start they'll try to sell you a bunch of stuff first go to the battery see if you can wiggle the terminals if you can they're loose if the battery terminals are loose they don't get enough electricity buy one of these dollar 99 battery cleaners this on cleans the terminal then when you take it off gets all the corrosion off a little corrosion can keep your car from starting yeah you got to spend 1.99 for one of these but hey and if you do get your car going check to make sure nothing was left on a lot of times somebody leave headlights on parking lots something's on once you get the car started walk around the car without touching anything and see oh man i left the headlights on so you know that all it was was some mistake and there's actually nothing wrong with the car you wouldn't believe how many times i've had cars towed to me and the only thing wrong was headlights were left on some device was left plugged in that drained the battery get one of these lithium ion battery jump starters and the advantage of the switch here is when you push it there is no electrical spark it's internal so you can connect this and not have to worry about explosions in a normal jump you're supposed to put the positive on positive then put the negative terminal like on the frame of the vehicle so that you don't get a spark at the battery you don't have to worry about that with these things because the switch is internal and since you're connecting it directly to the battery you have better connections and you can jump start the car easier and this particular one is great because once you start the car watch this it's showing the charging voltage in this case it's 14.8 volts so not only does this top vision one jump start your car once it starts it shows the charging voltage if it would have been 12 volts or something you would have known it's not charging but it's showing 14.7 which is great charging so you know the alternator is working and the only thing you need is a new battery so let's say if you were stuck in the middle of nowhere since the alternator is working you could drive the car as long as you wanted until you finally got to a place where you could buy a battery you don't have to worry that oh is the alternator working is it going to die while i'm going down the road this tells you it's still charging so it's a two for one in this case now the next free fix has to do with your car heater our heater systems are theoretically simple the engine puts out hot water the water cools the engine some of that goes through the car's radiator and when you turn the heater on some of it goes the other way behind the engine inside the car to the heater core that's just a small radiator action the fan blows through it makes you hot well if it's not working right a lot of times it's just low on coolant since the heater core is generally one of the highest points in the car if you get air in the system it'll fill up with air won't put out heat with hot air just hot water so sometimes fixing your heater is as simple as taking the radiator cap off that is dry like this one and you need to fill it up to the top and to get it to go best what you can do is either jack the front of the car up or back up in a driveway so the rear tires are lower than the front tires so it's at a more angle so then the air will migrate out of the radiator cap and as you fill it up the heater will start working again it's not a completely free fix but antifreeze isn't that expensive and of course what you want to do is like this use a 50 50 diluted so then you don't have to measure anything now the fifth free fix has to do with air pressure in your tires i know how many times people have brought me cars and said scotty my car is pulling to one side or hey it's really not riding all that well well this has happened to me so many times that now the first thing i do with any type of complaints like that as i get out my trusty tire gauge i check the pressure in the tires because you have to have the right pressure on all of the tires for a car to handle straight and to actually ride correctly which a lot of people don't really understand you might think okay yeah i need air in my tires because it rides on them but it's the shock absorbers that absorb all the shock to make it ride better but that's not really true tires are made of rubber and they're very flexible a lot of your ride has to do with the tires themselves that's one big reason you really don't see many of those run flat tires being put on cars anymore they were a much stiffer tire so that they could run flat when there wasn't any air in them but with that stiffness they rode like crap originally they put them on a bunch of the high-end cars but then they'd come to me and they'd say hey my car isn't riding dude what's wrong and i said well you got the stupid run flat tires they are so hard you're going to have a horrible ride they're too stiff i had one customer they were so peed i said go get some normal tires for that the rims were normal rims so you could put any tires on them put on four good michelins and it came back and they thanked me and said oh scotty oh my car runs great now and it rides fantastic thanks for telling us that it was just the stupid run flat tires because they're too stiff and of course normal tires are made to ride at normal pressure so they work best they're engineered that way so if you have too much pressure or too little pressure they will ride much worse of course the more pressure you put in the tighter it is so you'll generally have a rougher ride and the less pressure they're going to start pulling they won't handle right and of course it's when they're softer and the nails and pieces of glass can puncture the rubber and you'll get more flats that way now again it's technically not a free fix because you got to buy one of these tire pressure gauges in that respect you're better off having your own pump and your own accurate gauge so you have consistency i have personally checked out some of these pumps at gas stations but those things are so inaccurate i tested some of them they were way off my gauge said they had 20 pounds they'd say they had 30 pounds or the other way they were extremely inaccurate and what you want is accuracy when you're checking your car tires and that's always tell people do it first thing in the morning when the car is cold and hasn't gone anywhere because pure physics you drive down the highway tires get hot the pressure's gonna go up from the heat so you'll get a false reading i've had people say oh scotty i checked my tires they were way too over full i say when you check them well i drove around and checked them at a gas station i said no you got to do them cold because if they're hot you'll get an artificially high reading so check them in the morning first thing and like i say it's always good to have your own gauge so the accuracy always stays the same none of these things are 100 compatible with even the same brand so once you get yours and it works good and it says 30 32 psi you'll know it's always going to be consistent with that gauge which is the most important thing here's a free bonus six one you can often get your car fixed under recalls recalls are forever if your car has ever recalled for a fix they have to fix it it doesn't matter if you're the tenth owner of the car or is your vin number you can look it up on the internet anywhere you want use your phone whatever if it says there's a recall all you have to do is call a dealer with your vin number and they can look it up and say well yes we have to fix it for free or they can say well your car has already been fixed in the past they have it on computer records so if it was fixed for that recall then you don't have to worry because it's already been done just don't let them bs you because recalls like i say are forever they can't say oh it's too old no a recall is a recall they keep computer records on it so i mean i had a customer the other day they had an old toyota v6 engine that they recalled for bad head gaskets it had never been fixed they got it fixed for free so now you know it doesn't always cost a fortune to fix your car so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you
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Channel: Scotty Kilmer
Views: 1,193,988
Rating: 4.8849535 out of 5
Keywords: car, car diy, car life hacks, car maintenance, car maintenance hacks, car maintenance tips, car maintenance tips and tricks, car repair, car tips, car tricks, cars, diy, diy life hacks, doing this, forever, how to keep car running forever, how to make car last, how to make your car run better, how to make your car run forever, keep car running, keep car running forever, life hacks, make your car last, reliable car, scotty kilmer, doing this will make your car last forever
Id: loymXOs9jXI
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)
Published: Sat Sep 19 2020
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