rev your engines now sure modern cars are complicated and over the last 52 years
I've seen some really simple fixes that you can quickly do it yourself and not
have to mess with the mechanic now the first one is rather straightforward
let's say you're driving on the road and your brake light comes on not could be a
serious problem it could be nothing you can have a leak in the system
you could have a pressure loss where it goes down maybe the boosters going bad
or the ABS system you could have forgotten I left your emergency brake on
but you could just be low on brake fluid and check the brake fluid level
it should be up to the top line in this case it's low realize inside that
master cylinder reservoir there's a flow when the float gets low turns on the
brake line usually just major low on floor sometimes the float itself breaks
and if you tap it and the light goes out your float is starting to break it's kind
of you're trying to put a new one in but if adding brake fluid turns the
light off then just watch your brake fluid week or two or three and it's not
losing any that's fine because your level can go down for more reasons than
just the leak of course if it's leaked and it keeps going down you got to fix
that leak but as you drive the brake pads wear and as they wear they push in
so the brake calipers that squeeze them go in further and that takes up fluid so
just over time the fluid love will go down as the brake pads wear and there's
also a tiny amount of evaporation because it's a vented system but
normally it's as your brake pads wear so if your brake light comes on once every
few years hey just add the fluid but of course
check your brake pads then to if it's been years because they might get real
then and add you can look at physically but a lot of times just they had in the
fluid fixes it as long as it doesn't leak out fast it's perfectly fine to
drive it that way if your brakes are hard and the only problem was the light
was on it's cuz things have worn in the fluid level goes down in your and a
little up now of course that's not the case for radiator your radiator hey it
should always be full it does not lose overtime if it does you got a problem
but the brake system over years it'll go down so if every so many years your light
comes on you add fluid it's totally normal
now the next easy fix has to do with your EVAP system me anti-pollution
system in your car if you check engine light comes on you get a code like p0457
evap emission system leak detected now evap systems can get leaks
in many places sometimes you got to drop the gas tank to find it but in this
particular code it's often either a loose or missing gas cap but you can
easily replace stuff as you can see right on the inside here there's a
rubber seal guess what happens the rubber seal goes bad over time and check
the lip if it's dirty it corroded you want to clean it off a little carburetor
spray so if there's any crud it'll get it off and it was sealed correctly just
realize gas caps wear out over time and you got to change them every once in a
while and my advice says don't go online and buy the cheapest gas cap you can get
your hands on you're better with the OEM ones they're made correctly they have
the correct pressure I've seen it where people buy aftermarket gas cap and some
discount auto parts store they still have the code they bring it to me I go
to the dealer and buy an OEM one guess what the cold goes away maybe don't even
need a cap if it's not tight turn until it's tight and it click when they
collect they're tight yeah won't wait I can't remember how many times people
have brought me a car but didn't have a gas cap or it was not tight enough and
it tripped that code you can easily check that out yourself and just either
replace it or tighten up now let's say your car isn't putting out much heat
well heater systems are pretty basic a heater core inside the dash that takes the hot
water from the engine air blows through it makes your hot then it goes back into
the engine gets heated up goes through the radiator comes back it's an endless
cycle but today those things are all computer control but there's still a
very simple thing that often makes them not work right and that is the car is
low on coolant now either car it's just your radiator what generally they're one
of the highest points of the cooling system soft your low on coolant what
happens the air rises to the top of the system so if your heater core has air in
it instead of hot water it won't work right
now it might sound a little crazy because hey the heater core would still be full
of hot air but the specific heat of air so much
lower than water you won't get hardly any heat when there's air in it instead
of water the heater core is a heat exchanger made for liquids not for gases
like air up your heaters not working right or if it's just going weak check
your coolant up to the top could be as simple as your just low on coolant now
if you're low on coolant anyone want to check I know once a week at least to see
if is there a leak or something you got to keep adding because I mean some
people they don't check the coolant ever two cars three four years old and you
add a little heater works great now if it keeps going down you got to find out
what's wrong but on the plus side cars all have temperature gauges if you have
a serious cooling system leaf or problem you see the temperature gauge starts
running warmer then you want to work on that if you add coolant you get heat and
everything works fine for weeks or months I don't worry about it you fixed
it by just adding coolant now the next simple fixes perhaps the simplest of
them all I've had scars of customers bring me cars that fail the yearly
emissions test that didn't run right and what was wrong the only thing that was
wrong was the air filter was clogged the car burns thousands of cubic feet of air
every day the filters dirty hey you can't have problems now I keep mine
pretty clean you see this is the dirty side that's the clean side you can look
at the Sun with it if you can see through really clearly you don't have any
worries it's clean I got customers bring me cars that this is
all black full with crud it was amazing the car ran at all hey we live in a
dirty place and getting dirtier by the minute filters can clog up much faster
than they used to find where your filter is jacket every once in a while when it
comes to replacing your filter my advice you best stick into the original
equipment ones that came the cheap after-market wants often if you count
the number of pleats less of them they don't
filter as well the material can be cheaper made they're not all that
expensive even the original equipment one you're much better doing that then
you are buying the cheapest one you can that isn't gonna work as good when you
consider the hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of air you're gonna be
burning and the thousands of gallon of gasoline you're gonna be burning you'd
actually save money buying the more expensive filter if it works better than
a cheap one it doesn't filter as well and you get less power worse gas mileage in the long
run by a quality filter don't save pennies and lose dollars I has a simple
fix that really isn't effects it prevents you from having to do a very
expensive fix and that's your gas gauge fill your car up don't want to get all
the way to the e good advice when you get down to about a quarter of a tank
refill it and here's the reason why all modern cars have electric fuel pumps
they hide inside the gas tank what actually lubricates the fuel pump is
gasoline may sound crazy but yeah liquid gasoline is somewhat of a
lubricant so the bearings of the pump are lubricated by gasoline flowing
through them so if you do actually run your car out of gasoline the fuel pump
will then suck air air does not lubricate the bearings so you run out of
gas and you actually have none in a tank you keep cranking the engine the fuel
pump is pumping air it will burn out the bearings ruin your very expensive fuel
pump some cars you got dropped a gas tank it cost you over a thousand bucks
to change out a fuel pump just making a point of when you get a quarter or less
fill it back up don't just see how far you can go and then end up running out
of gas and now let's say you've been bad you let it round a gasps look at that
gauge if it's way down II don't keep cranking the engine to try to start it
that will burn the pump up let's say you're driving the car and you actually
run out of gas it stops Ronnie if you look and see it's on E just go get some
gasoline and pour it in and do not keep trying to start it cuz starting it will
burn that pump off you don't want to do that so if you're really don't want to
get involved in any of this nonsense in the first place just keep it above a
quarter of the tank all the time go like I do
pretend that part of the tank is empty and when it
gets near a quarter fill it back up again no my last quick fix is a simple
easy to do one let's say you try to start your car all you get is click
click click if you jump-started and it starts right
up odds are you just need a battery because let's face it if your car
doesn't start you'll have a total mechanic you got to pay for very
expensive tow and there's a lot of dishonest mechanics out there
trying to sell you all kinds of crap the numero uno reason a car goes click is
because the battery doesn't have enough power to go to the starter to start the
car and if it jump starts right up odds are you just need another battery and
related to this quick fix is another one let's say you jumpstart it still just
goes click then get a hammer or a giant piece of wood and beat the starter as
someone turns the key if all of a sudden it starts or at least it starts going
and tries to start that means your starter is bad now some cars like my
Celica starters just sitting there out and hoping you can change it in ten
minutes some cars they're real pain but at
least you'll know what's wrong with the car if you're not gonna fix it yourself
and if you are gonna fix it yourself hey you're gonna save yourself a ton of
money and now you know some easy quick fixes for very common car problems that
you can do yourself in a flash and not have to waste any money in time paying
somebody $100 an hour to do it for you and here's some bonus questions and
answers, like a sun says Scotty I have a
2014 Impreza automatic do you recommend sticking to the factory transmission
fluid or can you use a different one modern cars are so particular
what kind of fluid is in it your best to stick to the factory fluid on all the
modern cars now ages ago when I was a young mechanic in the 1960s there was
like automatic transmissions lewd to fit most cars and sometimes ford had
especially one just for Fords and that was it but now there's a zillion
different kinds there's all kinds of different transmission designs CVT
regular automatics and they all come with a particular
fluid that engineers designed I wouldn't go against the engineers
on that one so what if one you can get for $3 a quart and the other one
is seven hey you only using three or four quarts generally you don't want to
mix different things who knows what additives are in each one you got the
factor one that has the additives it was designed for you by an aftermarket one
hey it might be the same I might have slightly different had a test don't
mess with success that's what I say when it comes to fluids in any modern vehicle
because they become so ultra high level of technology you don't want a mess so
that by using some generic fluid that may or may not have the correct
additives, journey 19 says scotty I got a 2000 chrysler 104,000 thousand miles
runs great my my heat is only lukewarm I've changed the fluids I had a guy
flush out the heater car but it still look warm help I workout enough with all
those things to tell you 99.999% of the time that means you need a new heater
core chrysler max some of the worst heater cars in the world and i mean hey
it is a 2000 so the thing lasted for 20 years i mean you really can't gripe
about that but when you find out how much money it's gonna cost change that
heater core because you can take the dash apart you gotta take all kinds of
crap off to get to that heater core the problem with the heater core yes heater
course have hot water i'm just like your car's radiator but unlike the radiator
they don't have full flow they only have a little bit of flow going through them
and as they age and corrode they don't dissipate heat as well and even though
you said i got flushed it out those things are so cheaply made that the
flushing often doesn't help because the metal inside is just flat-out corroded
it doesn't dissipate the heat anymore now that said and if you find us it's
gonna cost you seven eight hundred bucks to change the inner core you might try
this and I've seen it work I believe one was called lime away I've used that
and you could put hoses going into the heater core take off the regular houses
put hoses in and fill it up lime away clr and let it soak there for like an hour
too and then flush it all out to get it out of the system
sometimes that can take enough of the chemicals off that the heater will be
usable then you might give it a try, so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell