rev up your engines, modern car engines are complicated they cost a small
fortune if they wear out and have to replace them and rebuild them, so you
want to make it last as long as possible, so I'm gonna give you some tips many of
which you probably never even thought about the make to last as long as it
possibly can, now of course the number one is
to change your oil and filter regularly I'm not gonna beat that, that's an old
horse that's been beaten to death, just please do it, if you don't do any
maintenance on your car at all except change the oil at least you're doing
something, use the oil that it suggests on the car don't use a different oil,
modern engines are very particular about their oil, and use a quality brand of oil
there are many quality oils out there like right here they all have the API
service rating, that said changing oil is a boring subject, here are some
things you may never have thought of to make your engine last as long as
possible the tire pressure in your car, you might
think what does tire pressure have to do with my engine lasting longer, well if you
have consistently low tire pressure tires will sit flatter, they'll get
hotter because there'll be more friction from not having the correct amount of
air in them, the more friction there is the harder the engine has to work to
spin around, just like dirty oil in your engine which is more friction which is
gonna wear the engine out faster, if your tires don't have enough air in it you're
gonna have extra friction going down the road, it's gonna strain the engine more
and it will wear it out faster, now the next way to make your engine last as
long as it can might sound crazy too, keep your air filter clean, check it every
once in a while, you can knock the dust off even vacuum it off and when it gets
dirty and you put it off to the Sun and you can't see the light anymore replace
your air filter, and here's the main reason, sure you'll get better gas
mileage with a clean air filter, but if your air filter is clogged, then your car
isn't going to have the right air fuel ratio, because there's not enough air
sucked into the engine, and if the air fuel ratio isn't right, the engine can
run too hot or can run too cool and both are actually bad for an engine,
if your engine is running too lean then the Pistons get hotter
of course they're gonna burn out faster if your engine runs too rich,
of course you're wasting gas, but a rich engine often is dumping too much gas
that gets by the piston rings and gets in the oil, and contaminated oil in your
engine with gasoline will wash the lubricants off of all the bearings and
metal parts, and your engine will wear out faster,
and speaking of wearing out faster, you want to keep your cars cool and clean,
years ago you more or less had to or the vehicle would just rust and fall to
pieces, as a young mechanic engines were made out of cast iron those things all
rusts, the coolant as anti rust inhibitors in it to keep that from
happening, now over time the inhibitors break down and things start to rust, when
I was young mechanic you had to change your coolant like once every three years
the stuff didn't last all that long, but you might say hey Scotty this is modern
times most of the engines are made out of aluminum and
aluminum doesn't rust, aluminum corrodes just as bad as cast iron or steel rust,
and the modern coolants of course have anti-corrosion additives to keep the
aluminum from corroding, but they wear out over time just like anything else
does, so you want to check on your own model car about when to change the
coolant to keep the engine from wearing out, some modern cars like Toyotas,
some of them come with a seven-year 150,000 mile Hoat coolant that stands
for hybrid organic acid technology and if you have one like that and you only
have to change the cooler once every seven years or once every 150,000 miles,
hey it's not that big of a deal but you want to do it when it reaches that level,
because aluminum has many advantages over steel and cast iron for use in
engines, but one big disadvantage is the stuff is much softer, and so once you get
impurities in the system it will corrode and it will come apart much faster than
steel or cast iron because it's a much softer metal, now the next way to make
your engine last twice as long is don't over rev the engine, don't always
be driving so that the engine is spinning as fast as it can and either
manually shifting the gears late or every time you take off
floor is so it goes as fast as I can before it
shifts into second gear, the more you rev the engine the faster it's gonna wear out
I'm not saying you can't have fun driving your car around, most modern cars
you're going the speed limit someplace out here in West Texas the speed limit is 85
miles an hour, that isn't gonna hurt any modern car but
you don't want to go zero to 85 miles an hour as fast as you possibly can, you
just want to do it gradually just like when you're driving around here, I live
in a big city of Houston, it makes no sense to be revving and going as fast
you can in a city because there's traffic jams everywhere, you don't want to wear out
the engine and the transmission by revving it up too much and that leads
me into the next way to make your engine last twice as long, you want to make sure
the transmission is full of the right fluid and clean fluid, as it wears it
gets dirty there's more friction, it works less efficiently and of course
your gas mileage will go down, but that makes the engine work harder, anything that
creates more friction between the engine and the wheel spinning on the road is
gonna make the engine wear out faster, and I know some of these modern cars say
oh the automatic transmission fluid is lifetime, yeah ask the engineers what
that means I have, what the engineer who told me was, well Scotty that means that
the fluid is good for the lifetime of the transmission, and I'd say what's the
lifetime of the transmission, and they'd say like oh well the warranty is for 75,000
miles, so it still is a good idea to change that fluid regularly, don't listen
to people that say oh it's a lifetime because when the lifetime is up they're
not going to give you a new transmission free, you're either gonna pay them thousands
and thousand dollars to fix it or replace
the transmission, or they're gonna sell you another car and say, oh well that
one's worn out it's lifetime is over, time for a new car, and modern cars are so
computer-controlled and so interrelated that even for a mechanic like myself
who's been doing it for 51 years, I can get cars come in and it's very hard for
me to figure out, does it have an engine problem or does it have a transmission
problem, because they both have sensors that feedback to a computer and it can
really confuse you as to where the root problem is, so you don't want to get in
that situation in the first place, if you take care of the fluid in the
transmission that'll also take care of the engine, the
next tip is a very important tip and it's probably one that most people don't
think of, you want to minimize the starting and stopping of your engine and
here's why, when you start up an engine that's when the most wear occurs inside
an engine, because the oil has to be pumped up to the top to lubricate the
cams, it wears the most every time you start it up, so if you're continually
half a mile to the convenience store and back, turn it on, turn it off, that will
actually wear your as you're out faster than taking a long trip all the time,
as a general rule of thumb highway driving at a steady speed like 65 miles
an hour, wear in the engine is about 10% of what it is in stop and go and start
and stop city driving, let's say you drive 2,000 miles on a highway at 65,
that's equivalent to like 200 miles of stop and go and start and stop, because
there isn't that much wear when you're going down the road and everything's
functioning smooth and the wind's blowing cool in the engine, that's the
least where you're ever gonna get on your engine, and that's one of the main
reasons that you can see guys in these big 18 wheel diesel trucks driving on
the highway and they say, oh wow you know they got a million miles on this truck,
only a few hundred thousand of those miles had been all stop and go traffic
in a city, that thing would be in a junkyard by
now, it's because it's mainly going 65 miles on the highway where everything's
running smoother, you will minimize wear by minimizing the amount of times you
start and stop the vehicle, and this is a big reason I'm not a fan of that modern
start/stop technology when you come to a stop the engine turns itself off, because
yes over time that will wear your engine out faster there's no doubting, and my
last tip when you do need parts use quality parts don't use the cheapest
thing you can get your hand on, one real big example is a mass airflow sensor
these sensors measure how much air goes in the engine so the computer decides
how much fuel to spray with the fuel injectors to make it run right, and if
you have one that's gone bad and you say, oh the dealer one costs 350 bucks but I
can get this one that's made in China for $89, believe me don't try the
$89 one, because air fuel ratio has to be perfect for a modern car and those
sensors are very complex inside, they're relatively expensive to create and if
you get a cheap knockoff one in the past I tried to save customers money by doing
that and always bit me in the rear end, sometimes they didn't work at all
sometimes they worked worse, sometimes they worked for a few months but then
when I started seriously analyzing them every time I put one on, I get my fancy
scan tool out, and believe me hardly any of them work perfectly they all had
glitches in them, so if your car does need parts, make sure you're getting
quality ones especially if you're talking about any kind of computer
sensors, you want to stick to quality electronic parts when your car needs
them, so now you know how to make your engine last at least twice as long, so if
you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that Bell!