People Say I'm Full of Crap About Fuel Additives, Well Watch This

okay here's an old car happens to be in Mercedes it's got a very common problem it's hard to start when it's cold once it warms up it runs quite a bit better they're not running perfect but what do you do the guy's taking it to a bunch of people nobody can figure it out so here I am whenever your car is hard to start cold you start with the obvious things spark plug spark plug wires check the battery the air filter the fuel filter but this car's already had all that done it's still starts out hard when it's cold and then it runs relatively rough when it warms up it's a little better but it's still not right it's ice cold now so let's see what happens I had to crank the heck out of a did it gone it's shaking a little but it shouldn't take that long to crank and it shouldn't run this rough after all it is a Mercedes now I cut my teeth years ago on these old Mercedes fuel injection system seems to me that's a fuel injection problem now realize doesn't have OB bd2 I can't get all kinds of live data I got to use my head on this now I know for a fact that these mechanical systems when they get old they often have problems with either vacuum leaks or rotten rubber or the part that's called the fuel injection distributor that sends the fuel to the injectors will often either get corroded or the seals inside will just flant wear out they're very complex we'll take the top off take a look at it take the air filter off first German very anal people not only they have snaps but they have bolts on top of it why they put snaps and bolts on nobody knows they're worried this is going to fly off or something they're a bit on the crazy side so I'll take the top off here just off and away one of the stupidest designs there ever was but that's the way it goes all these hoses are in the way there we'll get that out of the way now the filter itself is good enough now here's how this oldfashioned mainly mechanical system works this part here inside is called the fuel injection distributor the air coming in opens it up inside then it meters how much fuel goes to the fuel fuel injectors and you'll see these fuel injectors are mechanical got a metal line there's no electronics they're kind of like inverted Tire stems like shraer valve so they suck the fuel in here it's all done mechanically not electronically there is an adjustment you get a 3 mm allen wrench you can adjust it rich or lean you turn it to the right it gets Rich you turn it to the left counterclockwise it gets lean fits in this hole Goose right on it you can turn it now you don't want to do that until the engine's warmed up but as this vehicle is 32 years old we know that fuel injection distributor assembly is going to be worn the rubber seals and the tus are going out back in the day I Used to Know guys who rebuild them well you can forget that today they're all long gone they were even older than me and if you look it up online as you can see in my all data that fuel distributor cost 2,890 bucks see from the video it's very complex comes with all these parts it is a very very expensive system to work on so first we're going to let this B maybe warm up because you can't use this to adjust until the engine's warmed up we wait till the temperature gaug is in the middle then we can try some adjustments not it's warmed up this is a 3 mm PEX long got to reach inside we push it in now remember exactly what you do in case you have to go back to the old setting your spring loaded you push in you feel the spring when you push it down it engages you turn it to the right to give it more fuel to make it richer you turn it to the left to make it run leaner so like I said always count it's a very small hole hardly any working room go get a flashlight so you can see what you're doing and don't be surprised if it stalls out cuz when you push it you're pushing it down so a lot of times you got to do with the engine turned off and you just guess so that's what we're going to do we got it in here and we'll turn it a quarter of a turn to the right now we'll see what happens you can see a little bit richer it really helped it out started up a lot easier when we rev it up really runs a lot better it's one advantage of these old things injections adjustable modern cars are all electronic you can'tjust a darn thing you just have to find out what's wrong replace Parts maybe take them apart and clean them but knowing how old this thing is I'm sure there's all kinds of carbon in the fuel injection system so we're going to put a can of burnie's fuel injection the ATS 505 CRF in the gas and then drive it around a bit so here we go look at this you just use a finger crazy old Germans huh get this off sck this in and pour Bernie's cleaner in and it goes where the whole thing in they're driving at least 100 150 miles so I put the air filter cover on we'll take for spin now yeah it's an old car there's no arguing on that but for such an old car it's only got 124,000 Mi on it now the engines are actually incredibly strong transmission is a little bit weak so we'll watch that while we road test it we'll take you out spin on Highway here now the guy who owns US is no fool this is an everyday driver he likes to take it to go his boat and stuff here in Rhode Island I mean it's not an everyday driver dver he said he might drive it 2 3,000 m a year he's not putting heavy mileage on it got a stand still there nobody's coming there let's give it a try now hope this thing still goes it does listen to that nice pickup now it was obviously running a little bit on the lean side now for its age this transmission isn't bad when we step down on it goes into passing gear not the greatest passing gear but there we go now did pretty good still handle pretty good these are kind of amazing vehicles in there day my breast friend Steve his brother had one of these things and one time just screwing around there was nobody on the highway he's going down a road and he just slammed on the brakes turned the wheel 90° the thing turned right around didn't flip or anything they're heavy platforms there's no arguing that and this whole thing it still feels stable doesn't feel like you're going to lose it when you're cornering even over it's 30 something years old as old as it is it still has abs and it still works it's accelerating much better uphill now and we step on a gas on the road here we go runs pretty good for an old car now that's for me adjust in the fuel injection to make it a little Rich the reason I made it a little richer was it was hard to start cold if a car does not start good cold as long as the spark books air filter all that stuff is good it generally means it's not getting enough fuel when it's cold that's why I made it a little bit richer I check out the smooth idle not shaking at all now and all that was done with a turn of a screw while an allen head screw 3 mm to be exact it's a shame that modern cars don't have such adjustments everything's done by computer there's nothing you could do like this on a modern car I like the old ones you can play around with have a little bit of fun and they can run a really really long time just them here and there and they continue to roll down the road the real problem with the fuel injection system systems were since they were mechanical they cost a fortune to build all the stuff had to be machined perfectly to meter the right amount of fuel to the mechanical injectors that aren't electronic it's so much cheaper building electronic parts than it is to build expensive mechanical parts that serve the same purpose they'll never go back to making these for a regular production car forget it that's never going to happen now many old Volkswagens BMWs a lot of German cars outage use the system if you got an old old one go buy yourself a 3 mm hex it's got to be a long handle it's got to fit in the hole little screw turn here or there you can p with it all you want to get it to run as smooth as it possibly can for its age and as you saw I used some a Bernie's fuel injection cleaner because as old as this thing is they're notorious for carbon up sludge building up in those mechanical Parts this stuff will clean them up no if ands or butts you can see the engine's in phenomenal shape still gets up and goes and for an old it still shifts pretty smooth the main problem in this case was the fuel injection system wasn't supplying the right amount of gas to the engine especially it was cold but even when it was warmed up it idled like crap and it didn't have that much acceleration it's much faster now and I'll be curious as he drives it around you might get a little bit better gas mileage too A lot of people have used this stuff we got an old vehicle like this and everything's all clogged up it doesn't spray the right spray instead of making a perfectly conical upside down cone spray spatter here and there the stuff's amazing after he drives it 100 120 miles it'll probably run even better than it's running now okay today we got a Subaru Outback that stalls out you drive it Stu on the gas it has a tendency of conking out the guy bought it a couple months ago he's happy with it otherwise so let's try to figure out what's wrong here now it's a 2012 subu Outback and as we can see by the VIN number four is made in the United States it has 11 17,7 54 Mi it's all-wheel drive and it's a partial zero emissions vehicle now there's many things that can make a car conch out when you come to a stop and run okay otherwise we're going to look under the hood for the simple things first vacuum leaks can cause it so let's listen for vacuum leaks I don't particularly feel any I don't hear anything so let's pull out the air filter and indeed the air filter is all black and clogged up so we're going to change the air filter first dur the air filter will give you problems but rather than guessing anymore we're going to get out my autel here we'll get a good analysis of what's making it conk up it already detected it okay we'll do a standalone diagnosis not starting to analyze stuff and we'll do a full scan while we're doing a scan we'll look inside it's a nicely set up car you know got a nice classic setup there's the clock up there older so it's got a CD player check it out and the seats are in decent shape the headrest is missing somebody took them away everything's green we'll see what happens start with obvious things if there's a called for a problem there's a problem you fix that first if it has to do with the running of the car now if this said something about a problem with a right front window that doesn't have anything to do with a car stalling out when it comes to a stop so we would ignore that but you got to start with the basics and since the guy just bought the car a couple months ago I'll give them a good idea what shape it's in done only got one Fall Tire number four air pressure that's not going to make the car stall out that's not the problem we'll check all the pressures just to make sure it's safe for driving but that's not going to make a car conch out and after checking the tire pressure they're all normal anyway so H one of the sensors probably squirly on number four who cares tire pressure gauges are cheap just take the pressure once in a while but it's dying out for some reason we got to figure it out now we're going to go to the engine system and we're going to look at live data a lot of live data start looking and seeing what's happened the air fuel correction is only minus 0.8 it's running just a tad rich but not much that's almost perfect so you can see that's going pretty steady 2.35 G per second there's nothing wrong with that so we'll just look through and like I say look one is perfect it's only off a tiny bit 1. is perfect so you can see the air fuel correction zero it's not correcting anything it's working fine realize this is a partial zero emission vehicle runs extremely lean and even a little bit off can make the engine con out every once in a while I'm putting a can of Bernie's ATS fuel cleaner in the tank when I take it for a ride could be a simple there's a little carbon buildup and that'll clean it up from what I see here other than a dirty air filter it's not particularly correcting anything at all it's not overheating the cooling fans are coming on but this is something I have against Subaru if you notice there's no temperature gauge it's got a mile per gallon estimator but it only has an idiot light there is no temperature gauge and I don't like that we we'll turn the key off we'll turn the key on it does not have a temperature gauge it's only got a warning system if it overheats down there see if it overheats then it's too late come on subw put a temperature gauge back on your cars give us a little information about our cars that's very important you got a car runs in the middle all the time you know something's right it starts going three quarters and higher you know something's going on this stupid thing won't tell you that it'll only tell you when it's overheated and it's too late then Subaru you do not need to make them that cheap now sometimes if a transmission has a problem say the torque converter is locking uper stick and that can cause a stall so let's check out transmission data this a CVT transmission which I'm not a particular fan of but let's look at the live data voltage is fine it's got plenty of power all the data looks good it's black it's not off now we'll try a trick in that we'll put it in gear now it's got a load we'll give it a little Lo load with the foot on the brake so it doesn't move and we'll see if any of this data gets squirly no it's all staying within parameter so let's take it for a spin have a manual override so I'm going to rub the engine higher than normal since I have Bernie's cleaner in the tank to help clean it out while we drive it and go and get an air filter so by keeping it in low see we can make it go up and down but what we're going to do is we're going to put it down so it revs higher and the cleaner will do its job better the faster the cleaner runs through know the better it's going to clean I like those fake chefs see it's not second gear but it doesn't have any gears so it's kind of crazy but that's how the engineers made it now we're backing first anybody coming nobody's coming here we go wel come to a stop but in first gear and here we go look a HW you pick something up we'll leave in third at 4,000 RPM more RPMs the more it's going to clean this might stop it from stalling it out entirely see the speed limit here is 40 so I'm going 40 in the fake second gear so it's going about 4,000 RPMs which is going to really help clean the engine out now we got the air filter in we're coming home keep the RPMs up and there's nobody behind us so we'll slam the brakes on see if it stalls out and nothing idle's like a dream so it certainly seems fixed if you want to clean your engine and fuel injection system you can keep it in a lower gear even though this really doesn't have gears it's a pretend second gear but when we're going 40 m an hour we're going about 4,000 RPMs drive it that way for half an hour 45 minutes It'll generally do a pretty good job cleaning stuff so there you have it a smooth idling engine it's not shaking a little bottle of Bernie's cleaner and the fuel tank and an air filter and the car's running like a top now sometimes it's just the simple things that can fix a car dirty air filter some carbon built up in the engine because realize this particular car being a partial zero emissions vehicle runs relatively lean and if you get any little bit off when you come to a stop they can conk out when you're going at highway speeds you can really lean them out you're going fast the engine spinning so a little bit off isn't going to hurt it but with one of these if you're just a little bit off at idle it can conch out and then just the new air filter and a little cleaner can fix it so this Outback really wasn't a bad deal 100 something th000 miles still runs good now it's not stalling out but it was running almost perfectly hardly any fuel trims at all some of it was Zero no adding or subtracting fuel so rather than taking it to the dealer where they probably would have charged them a million bucks to do all kinds of madeup stuff all I had to do is change the air filter and I'll let a cleaner the tank and that's why I make these videos to show people how they can save money most mechanics charge 150 to 200 bucks an hour right there's a lot of stuff you can do yourself with just a little bit of knowledge car doesn't stall out anymore Easy Fix Plus now he's going to be happy knowing that I looked at the engine and the transmission data and saw it's actually in pretty good shape I'm not a CV fan and that weird Fake Gear 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight I mean they're faked there's no gears in the transmission kind of a weird design but I do have to say it did let me clean it faster by leaving it in the fake second gear so it spun faster when I was driving at 40 and it cleaned it off so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell [Music] nah

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 137,667

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, fuel cleaner, what type of fuel cleaner, cleaner fuel, fuel system cleaner, fuel treatment, fuel additives that work, fuel additives for cars, how to use fuel cleaner, do fuel cleaners work, do injector cleaners work, fuel additive testing, fuel system additive, do fuel additives work, does gumout work, fuel, additive, fuel additive test, how to clean fuel injectors

Id: yUe4cViUvtU

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 11 2024