Rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about 5 things that
you can do to your car to make it last almost forever,
now as crazy as it sounds worn out coolant through electrolysis can create battery power,
make a little voltage and conduct electricity and really mess with the sensors in a modern
car, now in this old 94 celica I've got the positive
and negative terminals inside the coolant so their touching the coolant and you can
see it's .094 volts, as long as it's under .30 volt it's perfectly fine it's not going
to hurt anything, we'll check out this 2007 toyota matrix and
see what it puts out, as you can see it's even less, it's .011, which doesn't surprise
me at all because the celica had the old green antifreeze, this has the modern toyota HOAT
hybrid organic acid technology, it lasts longer and it had less problems with electrolysis
than the older coolants did, and it's a good thing it does because with all the electrics
on modern cars any stray voltage or electrolysis in the cooling system can make the electronics
go crazy, make sure you have clean coolant in your car, those old engines were cast iron,
cast iron is going to rust, now their cast aluminum but still aluminum can corrode just
as bad as iron can rust, you want to make sure you keep clean coolant
in your vehicle, there's a whole bunch of coolants out there, so you have to research
what your car has and how long it lasts, for example this peak long life, it's good
for 150,000 or 5 years, and some cars use a HOAT coolant, some of those are good for
7 years or 200,000 miles they can last a long time so check to see what your vehicle has
in it, now the next thing to do to keep your car
lasting forever is, check your battery every once in a while, especially one that's a few
years old, it's a simple fast test, you can easily check your battery and alternator,
and as we can see here it shows that the battery is normal and doesn't have any problems, now
you might think, battery blah blah it starts the car who cares if it goes out I'll just
buy another one, but it's not that simple with modern cars,
all the computers and electronics run off batteries, and if the battery has low voltage
or has a problem inside it can end up destroying not just your alternator but your computer,
you can get voltage surges, it's very important in a modern car to have a good health battery,
so checking it every once in a while, especially before cold winter weather is a must so you
don't create problems that you could have easily solved by just putting another battery
in, and like I said if you don't trust anybody
hey, get a machine like this and check it yourself every once in a while, with the price
of batteries as high as they are these days, sometimes their close to $200 for just a plain
one, why not get a machine to check it yourself, you can use this on all your vehicles,
now the next thing to make your car last almost forever is spark plugs, now decades ago spark
plugs were pretty simple, they would wear out the car would run bad and they might wear
out in 30,000-40,000 miles because the electrodes were made out of copper, now copper of course
conducts electricity really well so it sparks good, but it's relatively soft and it wears
out too fast, so they went to platinum that's stronger and lasts longer and a lot of the
modern cars use iridium plugs that wear out the slowest,
but even they eventually wear out over time, you get a little gauge to see what the gap
is, as they wear the gap gets bigger and bigger and as it gets bigger it strains the electronic
system to make the spark go, now since the iridium ones last so long I've
seen some GM products that had 200,000 miles with the original spark plugs, but it isn't
that smart to leave them in that long, because as I said, eventually the gap starts wearing,
it needs more electricity to jump that, it starts straining it and not only could that
ruin your expensive computer ignition system, if it's making the car run too lean it can
ruin the catalytic converter and do all kinds of damage just because the spark plugs are
worn out, so you want to change them when they need
changing but their pretty easy to check just pull one out and measure the gap, if the gap
is within say 5000 of an inch of factory it's ok, but let's say 40,000 of an inch and now
it's 70 thousands of an inch it's time to change your spark plugs, and in most cases
it's a pretty simple job to do it's not rocket science,
and always use the correct spark plug for your car, really the original equipment ones
are the best, their set up for that, don't fall for some of these sucker bates of, here's
a brand new spark plug, your going to get more horsepower and power but it's just a
bunch of nonsense, they just fire and ignite the gasoline and the ones they were designed
for generally work the best, now the next thing to make your car last forever
of course is to change the oil regularly, this 94 celica hey I change the oil every
3-4 thousand miles, the engine has 240,000 miles on it, it doesn't really burn any oil,
yeah I got a put half a quart in every 3,000 miles but that's not bad and it's all because
the oil has been changed and kept clean over the years,
so don't be fooled by some of these manufacturers claims that say they have an oil that will
last 20,000 miles or change your oil every 15,000 miles, clean oil is the best thing
to make your engine last forever, their warranties are long gone when they have over 100,000
miles on them but hey if you want to get hundreds of thousands of miles out of your car change
the oil frequently, now the last thing to keep your car running
as long as possible with the least amount of money spent on repairs is to make sure
all your other fluids stay clean and healthy, like power steering fluid,
and brake fluid, now these fluids don't need much maintenance
they can last a long time, but if your like me and want to keep your car for hundreds
of thousands of miles every once in a while you need to flush those fluids out and put
new fluid in, because really brake fluid costs almost nothing and the same thing for power
steering fluid, flush out the whole system and put in new fluid, hey maybe it's going
to cost you $15 or something if you do it yourself, but if you do want your car to run
forever you want to change them every so often, brake fluid is hygroscopic, it absorbs water
vapor and then it starts to corrode stuff, power steering fluid, hey some of those things
are 1,700 psi, that's a lot of pressure, they get dirt inside and eventually they get dirty
enough that pressure turns dirty fluid into friction into a cutting fluid and it will
eat the seals, it will eat up the rack, you can spend thousands of dollars fixing that
stuff that hey $15 worth of fluid changed every so many years can save you from that
hassle in the first place, now granted if your the type of person that
gets rid of your cars every six or seven years you probably don't even have to mess with
the power steering fluid or the brake fluid, most cars it will last that long with no problems
at all, but if you want to keep them forever you want to keep those fluids clean, not taking
care of your car and expecting it to last 200-300 thousand miles or longer, hey that's
a bad thing, so take my advice and do these 5 things to your car if you want to keep them
forever, so if you never want to miss another one of
my new car repair videos, remember to ring that bell!