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