today I'm gonna talk about some changes in modern cars that you may not know
about now the first thing I got to talk about is your car's battery and the
charging system the alternator you've gotten very complicated lately but if
you understand their complexity you won't fall into a trap that I've seen
many other people fall into for a lack of knowledge it used to be the charging
system was simple the battery would stock the car sending power to the
starter running the ignition and fuel system and the alternator would charge
the battery decades ago companies like Honda decided to get better gas mileage
they would have the alternator charging controlled by the main computer of the
vehicle when they started out with those systems I saw a lot of guys mechanics
included that would replace an alternator in a car that wasn't charging
only to find that it didn't charge either because it was a problem in the
computer system which is something you don't want to occur so you want to
prevent it now in many modern cars there's a sensor called the electronic
battery sensor it's on the negative terminal going to the frame engine too it
grounds the whole vehicle the engines transmission and the body of the car Wow
this electronic sensor sends feedback information to the computer about the
battery voltage temperature sun's the information so the computer can control
the charge incorrectly now the way these things are set up today in a modern
computerized car you have to jumpstart them correctly or you're gonna have a
problem with that system a lot of times if you do jump start a car incorrectly
it won't run right after you do that so all you gotta do is follow this follow
the directions that jump-starting a car this way get you jump starter with the
positive on the positive terminal and then get the negative for your jump
stick it on a good metal part right here there's a bracket right on the engine
block now originally people said you're supposed to jumpstart a car that way
anyway because when you connect the last cable a second one sometimes there's a
spark and if the spark is right up by the battery sometimes you could have an
explosion from the hydrogen gas that comes
now it's a very rare thing it generally only happens if a battery is somewhat
frozen or if you're in an enclosed area I'm outside here so I really don't care
I never had any problems with it but now you really need to do this because of
that electronic battery sensor because if you jump-started it and put the
negative from your jumper on the battery the car would start but the sensor on
that negative terminal is further down and it messes with how it reads and once
you start the car often bad things will happen why not I don't write the
charging system might not charge correctly now if you did jumpstart it
wrong it doesn't do any permanent damage but you have to visit a mechanic like me
that has a fancy scan tool then we go through our scan tool stuff and we'd get
to the suction where we had reset the electronic battery sensor system so
would work correctly but if you jump-started by putting the negative
terminal on the engine somewhere you don't have to worry about that so
jumpstart them that way and you don't have to worry about messing up that
stupid sensor system that many of the computerized cars have these days now
the next thing we're gonna talk about modern cars is the batteries yesterday
when you replace the battery you replace it with the same style battery had the
same cranking amps cold cranking amps but today there's various types of
batteries out there and you want to make sure you're putting the right one in
your car as a replacement you got an old car like this is just a lead acid battery
no big deal let's say your car came with an absorbed glass mat battery the marks
bounce up there more power they tend to last longer crank a lot better but if
your car has one of those in it you have to replace that battery with another
absorbed glass mat battery because I know the vehicles a little charging
system with the computer is designed for that system the absorbed glass mat
battery stamped to be recharged differently when I recharge them with my
fancy recharge or I have to put it on the special setting for them you can't
just use the normal full blast lead acid battery charger or it won't be
charged correctly so make sure you replace your battery with the correct
battery and in the case of quite a few modern-day cars you will also have to
have the car reprogrammed for the new battery and that's because of
further refinements in computer charging technology the first company that really
want mass on that was BMW and when you change the battery on the BMW you have to
get a fancy scan tool hooked up to restart it to tell the computer that its
power now has a brand new battery in it now that's important because of the way
the software is designed you buy a brand new BMW got a brand new battery let's
say it's four years old the computer in your car knows it's four years old and
it tends to charge it more because an old battery needs more charging to keep
it going but when it finally goes bad if you replace the battery and just put it
in and don't reprogram the car it'll start but your computer still thinks
that you've got a four year old battery in the car it will charge it too much
overcharge the battery and often within a year a new battery will be destroyed
now as you can see my fancy scan tool it's got a section for that
BMS you just push that then you pick the car that you're working on it has that
system and it allows you to reset it we'll get a BMW here so what this
computer does when it's connected to a BMW it isn't now but when it is it just
allows you to reset say you change the battery push buttons and then it resets
the whole system now you can't do this yourself so if you find out that your
car was one of the cars on its list and it has a battery management system that
has to be reset when you place the battery you got to pay a mechanic to do
this because if you don't you're gonna have problems down the line and you
might well ask Scotty what are they making cars this insanely crazy well
because of course they can and they love making stuff computer-controlled so
that's just the way it is realize you got one of those cars when you have the
battery replace you're gonna have to pay mechanic to reset the system you're not
gonna go buy one of these $3500 scan tools you just pay somebody to reset it
I'd realize there is a tool you can use when you change your battery or if you
disconnect your videos you're working on the car that's one of these memory keep
alive systems this one was like I don't know 12 13 bucks from Amazon it's very
simple this connects to any 12-volt power supply and this it just plugs into
the OBD memory port there deep and so you don't lose them
a car some of these cars minis BMWs even Lincoln's you got automatic windows that
come up and then down a little when you close them and then up automatically and
a lot of the systems they won't work the car won't I don't write when you
disconnect the battery and either replace it or work on a car and then
connect the back on if you have one of these keep memory alive devices hooked
up you don't have to deal with any of their crap so they're very handy things
and they're so cheap if you're gonna work on your car if you're ever gonna
change a battery on your car you definitely need to get one of these
other nuts changing technology you may not know about has to do with the glass
in your car know your windshield has always really made out of laminated
glass there's a layer of glass then there's a vinyl layer in between and
then there's another layer of glass under that's so it won't break and
shatter if you get the wreck and hit it it'll crack but it won't cause jagged
pieces to come and comfy but the side glass now originally they actually came
with laminated glass but ten years later they changed the laws of the United
States and instead they have what they call safety glass and this is tempered
glass it's made so that if it hits it shatters into a zillion different pieces
it's not like the laminated stuff it's cheaper to make but there's a little
tiny pieces that won't cut and if you're in a wreck and you're stuck in the power
windows don't work anymore a lot of people have those little hammers those
little glass headers that they pop on it then it shatters then climb out the
window well some of the newer cars they don't
use safety glass on the side they've gone back to using laminated glass and
if you have a car like that and you get in a rollover the little hammer devices
and the little ones that have a pin that snaps and shatters the glass they won't
share it of the glass because it's laminated glass you'll just stay there
so if you've got a relatively new car it behooves you to find out does your car
have side glass that's the old-fashioned tempered glass that will shatter or is
that the more modern laminated glass on the side now you windshields always
gonna be laminated that's no problem but the side ones they could go either way
now find out before you need to know the last thing you want to know is if your
car rolls over your stuck in a ditch and you can't get out and wonder
what kind of glass I have if I can break it or not find out ahead of time
give them your vin number and I can say that has laminated glass or that has
tempered glass on the side easy to do but you want to know now not if you're
in a pinch so now you know cars are evolving they're becoming more
complicated that you should know a little bit more about so you're not only
gonna stay safe you're gonna keep from having to pay for a really expensive
repairs that you could have avoided in the first place with a little knowledge
and here's some bonus questions and answers Willy Wonka's says 2013
Toyota Camry 4 cylinder I lose power once it gets about 4,500 revolutions
I had a mechanic look at it he can't figure it out it's got three codes po7
17p 1603 and P 1605 a rough idling engine stalled input speed sensor
there's a lot of reasons cars can't rev up too high if the catalytic converter is
clogged it'll do that Toyota's are known for that if the fuel
pumps weak well the older Toyota's like that aren't known for fuel pump problems
that's a new thing that they've made something wrong and they got to recall a
bunch of them but that's newer than yours
I fixed one a couple months ago with the same exact problem I drove it around
with my scan tool hooked up erased the codes the code started coming back I
pushed my record button and then I looked at the data it turns out sensor
one oxygen sensor air fuel ratio sensors but they look just like an oxygen sensor
that's the sensor that's before the catalytic converter when I looked at
that data it was going on it would just drop to zero so I checked the wiring it
was all ok so all I did was buy a new sensor from Toyota the original
equipment one don't get a cheap after-market one like a Bosch or
something they won't work get the original equipment oxygen sensor bolted
on and it could easily fix a problem because it did on mine thank goodness it
wasn't the computer because the computer circuit could go out and do that too it
was the actual sensor itself I replaced the bank one oxygen sensors one before
the catalytic converter fix the whole thing
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell