one, two, three, four!
Rev up your engines!
It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel
today I'm going to show you how to get your car ready for that cold winter weather, now
the first thing to check, is your car's battery, because the colder gets outside
the harder the battery has to work and unfortunately, the colder batteries get
the less power they have, so it's a good idea to have one of these battery
checkers hooked up to your battery and check it, any mechanic can do it for you
and many auto parts stores do it free, just takes a minute, you plug the rating
into it and just turn it on and I checks your battery and tells you if
it's any good and in this case, it's a bad battery, it says replace battery so we
know, it's got hardly any charge left in it, so it's a good thing we tested it because
the car seems to start and run okay, but when it gets really cold it won't crank
and you'll be stranded, best to change it before you get stranded, now the next
thing to check is the coolant in your radiator system, now of course you do
this when the engine is cold, so take the radiator cap off and I'm going to use
this spectrometer, because it's the most accurate one you can get, you can get one
of those little squeegee that has balls and float to tell you how much
antifreeze in the system too, but these are much more accurate, you just take a
little sample of the coolant, then you get the sample put it on a little test
and plate here, and close the top, then you look inside it and it tells you how low
the freezing point is and in this case it says -20 and that's perfectly fine
here in Texas, because it rarely gets even below freezing, because if you don't have
enough antifreeze in the system and it gets really cold outside and it freezes
the engine will crack, so you want to make sure that it's good enough for your
area, now the next thing to check is your tire pressure, because the colder it gets
outside, the lower the pressure your tires are going to get, it's just plain
physics, so the colder it gets, the lower the pressure is going to be in your tires
make sure you fill it up as it gets colder, so you don't end up getting a
flat tire and before it gets cold, make sure you have good enough squirt
fluid in your squirters, so that they won't freeze too, because in the summer a
lot of times people use cleaner or pure water and then it'll freeze in the
winter and if your windows get all clogged up with dirt when you're driving
the squirters won't work to clean them off,
it never gets that cold in Texas so that zero degree fahrenheit one is fine for
me here, but up north you're going to have to get stronger stuff, so it won't freeze
and the next thing to do is, get a flashlight look at all the hoses and fan
belts to see if they're cracked, because rubber products don't like the cold
either and if you see that they're all getting cracked like this with big
cracks in them, then change them out now, before you get stranded in a snowstorm
and the belt flies off and of course plan ahead before the ice and snow comes
have an ice scraper already hiding on your glove box, so you're ready when it
does come, because at least around here when it does get icy and snowy the auto parts
stores always run out of them, because nobody's prepared in the first place, and
speaking of ice and snow at the very least inspect your wipers to make sure
that they're not ripped or torn and if you live in an area where you really get
a lot of ice and snow, you might go out and buy a pair of those wiper blades
that are coated in rubber, so they don't get stuck on things with ice building up
on the metal, now years ago people used to change the oil for a lighter oil in
the winter, so the engines would start better and colder weather because the
oil was thinner and the engine could spin faster, but as you can see they're already
using pretty lightweight oil in most modern cars, you don't need to do that
anymore, but if you live in a really cold place like Alaska, hey you can run fully
synthetic oil instead, it flows better at really cold temperatures and this
great where it gets extremely cold, now my last tip is about your car's heater
for guys like me who drive really old cars like this 20 year old Toyota, if you
haven't used to eat all summer, hey turn it on full blast
make sure that it's working, because it's a lot easier to fix your heater now,
before it gets all snow and icy then getting out in the snow and ice and
trying to get your heater fixed, so now you know what to check on your car
before the cold winter weather keeps you from doing it yourself, and remember if
you've got any car questions visit Scotty Kilmer.com