rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk
about things that people used to do to their cars, but they should never do
today if they don't want to damage their expensive car, don't disconnect your
negative battery terminal while the car is running to check to see if the
alternator is charging correctly, now back in the 1960s that was totally
acceptable, if you took the negative battery terminal off and a car continued
to run it would mean the alternator's charging and giving you enough
electricity to run it, but to do that on any modern car, because by doing so you
can destroy computer modules, you can get over voltage, surges, don't do it you want
your alternator checked, have a mechanic check it with this little machine, or an
auto parts store, or today hey you can even buy $49 ones yourself that work
quite well, just don't disconnect either battery terminal with the car running on
any modern car with computers, you can destroy this stuff, and the next thing is
how to correctly jump start a car you need cables, but you need to connect them
correctly and jump it correctly, and take your time don't be in a hurry, you can
connect the positive and negative of the jumper cables to the car that still runs
that's going to jump the other car, easy enough one on here and one on here, then on
the car that needs to be jump-started, you put the positive on the
positive terminal of the battery of the other car that won't start, and you put
the negative cable on any metal ground of the car, the reason you don't connect
it directly to the battery cable on top of the battery, is because if there is a
spark when you connect the final connection
if there's any hydrogen gas that's lifting around, it can theoretically start an
explosion, now as you can tell I work outside, I've never seen it happen myself
because most of that gas is gonna dissipate into the atmosphere, but of
course if you're in an enclosed garage or something, sure you know there's more
chance that the hydrogen gas can pool up and start on fire, wait
about 10 minutes that gives it a good charge, turn off the car
that's the good car that's jumping the other
you want to turned off, then you try to start the dead car to see if it'll start
you don't want two cars running against each other connected by cables, you got
an alternator and one that's running, and if the other car does start up, you have
two of them running against each other, it can
destroy electronics in modern cars, I can think of numerous times the customers
brought cars over here, and I said ah your electrical system is all messed up,
and he said well last night a guy in the tow truck he revved his engine up real
big, then he jump-started our car and it started up and ran there for five
minutes, that five minutes was destroying the electronics of your car, don't do that,
only have one car running when they're both connected together, now the next
thing not to do is, when you're filling your car with gas, when the gas pump shuts
itself off, don't top it off just stop right there,
I know for a fact there's a lot of obsessive-compulsive people out there
that, oh I got it rounded off to $20 but that can damage your evap system on the
car, here's how that works, the evap system keeps gasoline vapors from
getting into the atmosphere and polluting things, one of the main parts
of it is the charcoal canister, that filters the vapors so if there are
gasoline vapors they go through the filter and the only thing that comes out
the other end is clean air, if you keep topping it up after it shuts off, you end
up spilling raw gas into the evap system and a charcoal canister will be ruined
because it's only made to take gasoline vapor, not raw liquid gasoline, and you
might think oh it's just a canister well on some cars it can cost you over a
thousand bucks, you got to pull the gas tank off, you got to do all kinds of
things, basically you want to stay away from getting any raw gasoline, once the
pump shuts off just take it out and pay whatever it is, I mean heck most of us are
using credit cards anyway, so it doesn't matter whether we round it off or not,
we're not getting change, now another thing that people often used to do that
they should never do anymore is drive the car till it runs out of gas,
my advice is once you get under a quarter of a tank, start thinking about
filling it up with gas, now in the olden days again it didn't mean much, because
they had mechanical fuel pumps that were bolted to the engine,
and if you ran out of gas it couldn't suck any more gas the car would die, but it
would do no damage, but modern cars they have electric fuel pumps that are inside
the gas tank, what actually lubricates the bearings is gasoline, they're soaked in
gasoline and the gasoline lubricates the pump as it's running, if you actually do
run out of gas, that pump then sucks air instead of gasoline and you can burn the
fuel pump out, in many cars these days it's over a thousand bucks to drop the
gas tank and to replace a very expensive electronic fuel pump module, don't drive
them till they run out of gas anymore and another thing that people used to do
that you should never do anymore is don't put any type of lubricating oil in
your gas tank to mix with the gas, unless you have a two-stroke motor, and really
in the United States they don't have any cars with
two-stroke Motors anymore, people used to use Lube that was called top-end lube to
lubricate the valves and stuff, they would pour a
bottle of it in the gas tank and then drive it around, well these days if you do
that, that can ruin your catalytic converter, ruin oxygen sensors, let's say
you got an old clunker that's all carbon up, you can pour some fuel injector
cleaner in there that's made to go into gasoline, but don't think you need to put
any kind of oil lubricant in your gas tank that will then lubricate the engine
as you drive, you don't do that in any modern cars, now the next thing that
people used to do that you shouldn't do anymore is, don't over inflate your tires
in the olden days guys used to put a little more pressure in their tires,
better gas mileage there was less rolling resistance, but in those days
tires were perfectly around, now we got radial tires, we got tires that you look at
them they sit kind of squashed, look at my
wife's lexus tires, you see the bottom looks kind of squashed down, in the olden
days in the 60s people would say, oh it needs air it's getting low, but not anymore
that's how most tires sit it's just important that you put the correct
pressure in them, you get your pressure reader in this case I usually put about
32 psi in all the tires, then I check it with a gauge, because you can't really
tell by looking at them, and the next thing is used the right coolant for your
car, when I was young mechanic there was one kind of coolant, it was green and it went
in all cars, well now there's all sorts of different coolants,
make sure you're using the right one for your vehicle, and you just don't go by
color, it's all dyes anyways, I mean the green antifreeze is green because they
dyed it, they come in all different colors now, even similar coolants have
different colors, so you just research what your car takes and use that same
kind, you can find aftermarket ones as long as they're rated the same you can
use them, buy the highest quality one that you
can that lasts longest, if you find that your car can take a seven year 150,000
mile coolant use that because then you don't have to think about it for seven
years or 150,000 miles and it's not much, and the last thing I'm going to talk
about people used to do that they should never do anymore is, use the correct oil
for your car don't use the wrong type, as an example
decades ago when everybody was driving around in pushrod v8 engines, as the
engine wore, you could use a little bit heavier viscosity oil to compensate
for the wear, let's say 20 w 30, you could go to like a 20 40 or 20 50 and it
could slow down oil burning, but you don't want to do that in the modern car
because they have variable valve timing, they have tiny little holes, a 0w 20
which is very light, you want to stick to that oil, I have seen people they put a
heavier oil in them, sometimes the cam would go out, sometimes a variable valve
timing systems would break, you don't want to change the oil in those
because they were designed for a very specific lightweight oil, and if you put
a heavier weight one in you're gonna have problems, and normally it's right on
the oil cap it'll say, use 0 w20 energy conserving oil or whatever, stick
to that oil, and as a side tip that I've always believed in, if your using one type
of oil, continue to use that same oil if you have no problems, because they have
various additives that are put in by law here in the United States, but each
company also has other ones that they never really tell you exactly what each
one has what percentage and what kind, so if your car is working good on one oil
my advice is stick to that oil and use it for the life of the car, so now you know
things that people used to do to their car that you shouldn't do anymore with a
modern car, if you want it to last as long as possible and have the smallest
amount of problems while you're driving down the road trying to enjoy your life,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell
