one, two, three, four!
Rev up your engines!
It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel, in the 42 years and I've been
working on cars I've had to fix a lot of mistakes that other people have made, so
today I'm going to show you how to avoid common auto repair mistakes, now it's
great if you change your own oil and filter, but here's a mistake I've seen
destroy engines, when you remove the old oil filter make sure that this rubber
gasket is still on the old filter, because sometimes the old gasket comes
off when you take the filter off, and sticks onto the engine, and you won't see
it sticking on the engine because the oil filters usually in a hidden location,
like this Toyota, it's hidden down here, you can screw it in but you can't see
what you're doing, so if there's a gas gets stuck on there you might miss it, so
be sure to check your old one to make sure that the old gasket is still on
when you take it off, because if the old gasket is stuck on the engine and you
put another one on top of it, you'll double gasket it and the oil will leak,
I've seen engines blow up because of this, and of course remember before you
put the new filter on, put a little oil on your finger and put oil all around
the gasket, so it seals and doesn't leak, then when you put the new filter on, not
only will it not leak, but it'll be easier to take off the next time, now
another common mistake I've seen cost people a lot of money is, leaving the
battery connected when electrical work is done, so whenever you're doing electrical
work on a car, disconnect one of the cables and take it off the battery, that
way you won't short any electrical parts out, like this, let's say you're working
on the alternator, well if it's got live power and this wire touches anything, it
can short the alternator and the wiring of the car out, but if you're taking off
one of the battery cables, there's no more power flowing through the system,
and you can't hurt anything, now you might think, oh I'm careful this isn't
going to happen to me, but hey, one little mistake you can ruin a fifteen hundred
dollar computer, it's a lot easier just taking one of the battery cables off, and
putting it back on when you're done working, now the next common mistake I
see concerns changing out spark plugs, never change out spark plugs on
engine that's hot, wait until the engine has cooled down, modern cars have
aluminum heads which is very soft, over the years I've had to rethread many of
these heads and sometimes had to replace them, so if you're planning on changing
your spark plugs, do it first thing in the morning or wait a couple hours
until the engine is cooled down, so you don't do any damage, and if you want to
do the job right, put some anti-seize lubrication on the threads of the spark
plug before you put it back in the engine, now the last common mistake I'm
going to talk about is motor oil, some people think that a heavier weight oil
is better for their engine, like a 20 weight 50 instead of a 10 weight 40, well
guess what, that's not true, always look at your car and see what they suggest to
use, in this Toyota it says use 10 weight thirty oil, so that's what you should use
because the lighter oil will flow better which is really important for overhead
cam engines, in overhead cam engines the cam is in the top of the engine, and if
you use a heavier oil, it can take longer for that heavy oil to get to the cam, so
the cam will wear out faster, so in this case using a heavier 20 weight 50 oil
can actually make the engine wear out faster, and the last thing anybody wants
is an engine that wears out faster, you want them to last as long as possible, so
just stick with the oil that suggested on the engine, in this case it's 10w30, so
now you know how to save yourself a lot of grief and avoid these common auto
repair mistakes, and remember if you have any car questions just visit Scottykilmer.com
and I'll answer them