Rev up your engines, now it's come to my attention recently by
fixing customers cars, that these little adapters that you put in your car to run anything like
your phone or a computer that are 5 volts that plug into the cigarette lighter or your
aux power, they can cause problems in your car that you would have never thought, and
they do it through the process of electromagnetic interference, you can't see it and let's face
it even the physicists don't really understand electromagnetic stuff it's even beyond them
when it comes to how this stuff actually works, just like gravity you can't see it but you
can certainly feel it if you jump up, it pulls you back to the planet, well electromagnetic
interference on a modern day car can do all kinds of damage, so I'm going to tell you
how you can keep that from happening with these little adapters in your car, now modern
cars have everything run by computer, electricity, magnets, and a lot of the system are even
using rfi using radio frequencies, like your keyless ignition if you have that, the keyless
ignition sends a radio frequency to your car and says it's ok to start it up, well guess
what these little babies put out some radio frequency too, now these little adapters may
look simple but their actually not, to begin with you plug them in, they take the 12v dc
of your car and uses solid state system that switches the dc voltage of your car into high
frequency ac voltage, then that ac voltage goes through a coil, a diode, and a capacitor
to become 5 volt dc, it's a lot more complex than you might of thought this thing is, now
if done correctly it works perfectly fine, but as everyone is aware, you can get dirt
cheap models of these, you can get them at a gas station, a hardware store, I've even
seen them in a drug store, but it's not a good idea to buy one of those cheap ones,
as I just explained their pretty complex inside, if they have cheap parts, maybe they make
a little too much ac that's broadcast all through your car and can mess things up, and
you certainly don't want to overload your system using too much on one plug, this has
two I advice only one, I've seen some that had 4, and you don't want to buy a cheap one,
I personally use a qualcomm one, hey it's like $20 it's not that big of a deal, but
I don't advise going and buying $8 or cheaper ones, and don't overload the amperage ratings,
where your plugging it in or for the device itself, I've had customers plug these in and
put some laptops and stuff on them, they've actually started to melt these things from
too much amp draw, take this cheap one here, it's only rated at 2 amps, so you put more
amperage on that you can cause problems, now the worst problem I ever saw was on a customers
subaru it was an outback it has a bunch of plugs the kids were always running stuff,
one day they got in the car and it wouldn't start, so they towed it in and I hooked up
my scan tool and couldn't find any problems, but since I realize these things can cause
your car to get weird, I look in the car there's 4 of these things plugged in all over the
place, so I thought let's do a little sherlock holmes, I went through the car and I unplugged
them all out of the adapters, then since it was a keyless ignition I didn't have to turn
the key I already had that in my pocket, I just went to push the start button and guess
what it started right up, the radio interference created by this little thing that turns the
dc to ac and then back to lower dc, was interfering with the signal between the key and the computer
and it wouldn't let the car start, I've seen it trip airbag codes, when I scanned it, it
didn't show any codes, so I saw the same thing there were a bunch of these adapters plugged
in, reset the computer and I drove it around and the code never came back and months later
they said it never came on again, we don't plug all those things on anymore and we took
your advice and bought more expensive ones when we are using them, I've seen cars where
automatic tire pressure monitoring system was tripping codes, now that makes total sense
cuz this is broadcasting rfi, and tire pressure monitoring systems, each valve stem is broadcasting
radio frequencies into the car to tell what the pressure of the tires is, these were interfering
with it, because when you think about it these are kind of a stop gap measure, you plug them
into an adapter or something, if your really serious about electronics what you really
need is get yourself one of these power inverters and hook it directly to the battery, because
when you do that your going directly off the battery, your not tapping off the wiring system
of the car that can create problems, then you have whatever power you want, this one
has a couple of usbs and 100v ones you can plug stuff into, these are for serious electronic
use, wire it to the battery like I say and you can put this under the seat and put it
wherever you want, then you have a good supply of power that isn't going to mess with anything,
because modern cars with all their wiring and computers, I've seen a lot of kids they'll
put in a fancy stereo system in their car, and they'll just go under the dash and they'll
find a power wire that has power when they turn the key on and they'll start wiring stuff
off of that, you can destroy computer systems doing that, if your real serious about power
in your car hey put an inverter in it then you can have all the power you want running
directly off the battery with it's own fuse going to the battery so your not taxing the
electronics of the car in a way it wasn't designed for, when I had a customer who was
having a problem and I unplugged it and it went away I thought I wonder if you can stop
the rfi interference from coming out, so I just got a little aluminum foil and I rapped
it around the thing, well that was enough to keep the waves from escaping and it didn't
have the problem anymore, so if you want to rap any kind of insulation around these things
it's going to stop most of the radio interference from being broadcast out of the thing, but
I've also found that I had no problem in any of my cars cuz I buy a quality one that has
one tap coming out not two or three or four, I use this qualcomm one and like I said it's
around $20 they seem to be a lot better made and they don't put out as much rfi as the
really cheap ones do, and of course realize that if your powering devices with these that
they themselves put out radio waves in this case microwaves, that can eventually cause
a problem if you've got too many people using too many phones, too many other wireless devices
in the car it can make strange things happen, cuz you can't see electromagetism unless you
have a strange brain and senses inside it, it's out there doing it's thing 24 hours a
day whether you know about it or not, so if your car does seem to be acting weird, hey
unplug ever single one in your car for a couple of days and drive it around, cuz computers
hey their always checking for problems in your car as you drive, if that's the problem
and you take it out, within a day or two of driving, let's say your check engine light
is on or something, if it goes away it can do that automatically and you will know that
it was these things putting radio interference and messing with your car's electronics, and
if your car is older and doesn't have built in usb ports get one of these inverters, this
thing is good enough to run a refrigerator, it will certainly run anything they've got
going in the back seat, and since this is mechanic monday I'm going to give away one
of these qualcomm adapters that doesn't create problems, to have a chance to win just place
a clean non offensive comment on the youtube comments below and a winner will be chosen
randomly by computer to get a high quality qualcomm usb adapter so you can use your devices
to your hearts content and not worry that it's messing with your car's electronics,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell