today i'm going to talk about an overheating toyota corolla
and the poor quality of mechanic work these days
now this toyota overheated this guy took it to the toyota dealer
toyota dealer charged them 531 and all they did was change the radiator
hoses and put new coolant in talk about a rip-off but the worst thing
is it didn't fix the car it's still overheating i see that so
much these days everybody's in a hurry to make money
just change the hoses and put cooling in it for 531
they obviously did not road test the car he got it back it's still overheating so
i look at the bill and i look at the car it's got 200 000
something miles on it what's on the bill they didn't even
mention that they replaced the thermostat
so they didn't change the thermostat thermostats are closed when it's cold
they open up to flow when the engine's warmed up
200 something thousand miles they'll often wear out right
common sense they charge them 531 bucks to change some hoses and coolant they
certainly should have changed the thermostat now that just shows poor
training poor quality of work and this was at the
dealership let's hope that changing this thermostat is going
to fix it and if it does i'm going to advise my
customer to go back to the dealer demand all of his money back because
it's just total fraud they didn't do the simple thing
these young mechanics that a lot of places have they don't even analyze the
stuff and they certainly don't road test it when they're done they don't know
it's fixed any fool knows if the thing overheats
and you don't see any obvious problems change the thermostat it could stick
shut right so we're gonna try that see if it fixes it
first we'll put a pan underneath to catch the coolant so we don't waste it
now in this case the thermostat is hiding it's down here there it is
right here it's got a bolt in the top and a bolt on the bottom
you can see the bottom bolt there we're going to take it out and change it
now maybe out of sight but it shouldn't be out of mind in a good mechanic that's
the first thing they should have changed i don't know what they're using at these
dealerships what kind of mechanics they're hiring
if they don't even do something that simple 10 millimeter socket put a little
extension on and unbolt it yeah there isn't much
working room but and it's on tight but it's not that
big of a deal there's one 10 millimeter bolt put it
here so we don't lose it then we'll do the other one and the
bottom one's harder to get so we're going to use a deep well 10 millimeter
where there's a will there's a way if it sticks in deep just use a deep well
socket to get over the thread not that easy to see but it's not that
hard of a job now i can get it with my bare finger
and here comes number two then we just pull on it
now it comes there's the thermostat not judging by the corrodedness of the
gasket this is the original one why oh why they didn't replace the
thermostat is beyond me i guess it must have been a young mechanic who doesn't
know that much about cars didn't think oh thermostat it's a car
with 200 something thousand miles try the cheapest part that could
possibly fix it no 500 worth of hoses that he probably didn't
need and it didn't fix the problem because they didn't even road test a new
thermostat and gasket we'll put it in it just pushes back in the hole
right there there's the new one pushed in its hole then you just
put the thermostat cover on it and bolt it up just slide it back
on and bolt it on first put them on finger tight so
the gasket doesn't slip you don't want the gasket slipping
then you can get the deep wall socket 10 millimeter flip
it and tighten it up then you put coolant back in we get our pan
and it looks to me like they even lied about new coolant this coolant is pretty
old and dirty looking so i'm draining it all out and i'm gonna
put new coolant in now you notice this is xerix but it's
asian vehicle one you don't have to go buy the expensive stuff at toyota
realize toyota does not make coolant they just buy it from somebody this is
what's called the haute cooling hybrid organic acid technology
and that's when you're using this car so after draining it up
i'm putting new stuff in it's always better to use the
50 50 dilution that way it always stays 50 50. if you use pure
you don't know what's inside 50 50 is what you want so
buy it that way it costs a little more but what the heck
it works right now we have to get the air out of the system so we're going to
start the car and turn the ac on full blast
now that makes the ac fan come on so it'll keep it cool while it's warming up
as you can see the fan's blowing and another trick is
this also turn the heater on full blast because then the heater will recirculate
and get air out of the heater core which is hiding inside here
air can get stuck in there and as it warms up add coolant
and we're also going to replace the radiator cap this is the original one
with 200 something thousand miles the springs will wear out over time but
before you put it on we let the car warm out to get the air
out but then we let it sit for about 40 minutes
because then if there's any air a lot of times it'll migrate
and you can pour more coolant in all the way to the top you can see a bunch of
air migrated then we're going to start it up again and check it
top it up the rest of the way
keep going until all the bubbles are gone then put the top on nice and tight
oh the old cap it came off real easy loose
this is nice and tight you can see them now we're gonna take it for a good road
test so we'll start it up starts right up
and away we go so where do we go on a magical mystery tour we can see it's
staying a little under halfway so far and away we go
we're driving a good half hour on the highway we're okay on the highway now
we're gonna try it in town so far it's staying good you want to
test it both on the highway and in town 15 20 minutes of each now as
you can see it stayed pretty much in the middle but there's one thing i'm
worried about now and that's a possibility with all this overheating
since it happened twice after it was fixed it happened again it
could have damaged the head gasket it's going to let it cool down
and do a head gasket test put a big fan in front
and let it cool down and in about half an hour we'll do a
head gasket leak test to see if the head gasket's been damaged
well now we'll turn the fan off and we'll test the head gasket so we get our
block leak test we'll take the top off and we'll pour in
some of the blue liquid you can see it's blue put the top back
on let me stick it in the radiator make a
vacuum with the pump now we start the vehicle see if it
changes colors if it goes blue to yellow head gasket's blown so here we go
as you can see it's starting to turn it's not yellow yet but it's getting
yellow it's not the solid blue that it was before
and what that means is it's got a small leak
i'm gonna try some sealer maybe it'll work maybe it won't it's got 244
thousand miles it's probably time to say goodbye to this car
now even though it ran okay for me it was starting to lose a little cool and i
had to add some more cooling to it so that shows it's burning the coolant
now i put in some head gas concealer you just pour it in we'll see what happens
maybe it'll work maybe it won't but it's probably time to
say goodbye to this car because i can't say if it blew
after the dealer had worked on it or whether it was blown when they had it
and they just didn't do a good job and didn't test the system like i did
with a block leak test to see if the head gasket had been damaged
obviously it has some damage hey maybe the sealer will last a while
who knows but it was not repaired and diagnosed correctly at the dealer for
sure because all they had to do was that
simple test i just did to see that well the head gasket's blowing and then
you wouldn't have put hoses and all kinds of stuff on
you would have just said okay it overheated
why did it overheat well the head gasket's blowing do you want to repair
it or you want to forget it because that was 500 something dollars just wasted
really but i am trying to seal her i put in
some bars head gas concealer you let it idle for half an
hour with the heat and the ac on then you let it cool for half an hour
and you repeat that six times or so let it sit overnight
then pray a whole bunch then it'll hold up
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