one, two, three, four!
Rev up your engines!
It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel
today I'm going to show you what to do if your car dies
on the road, now if you're driving down the road, and all of a sudden your car
stops running, here's some things you can do to get back rolling again, now
the first thing to check is your gas tank, as nutty as it sounds, if you're out
of gas, the car is going to die and here's the reason you want to check that
first, and almost all modern cars, the fuel pump is inside the gas tank,
gasoline actually lubricates the fuel pump passing through it. so the bearings don't
burn out in the fuel pump. so if you ran out of gas and you keep cranking the
engine to try to start it. and you're out of gas, the fuel pump will suck air, it'll
burn the bearings out and some of these fuel pump assembly can cost you over a
thousand bucks to replace them, so if you are out of gas, don't keep trying to
start the car, get some more gas and fill it up and go on your way,
but if you do have plenty of gas, here's the next thing to check, you could have
blown the fuel pump fuse, so check that next, and it's always a good idea to have
a few spare fuses in your glovebox, you don't need a giant box like I have, but
you can get them that four or five fuses in them, then go to the fuse box and
check the fuel pump fuse, and any other fuse like EFI for the fuel injection,
tells you on the back what fuse goes where, and here's how you can tell if it
fuse is good, if it's continuous like this, the fuse hasn't blown yet, but a blown
fuse looks like this, as you can see now the loop is burnt off, and it doesn't
connect anymore, so the fuse is blown, so of course you have to have spare fuses
to begin with, so make sure you got some in the glove box or the trunk, but
here's another trick, say you got a 10 amp fuse that's blown, well you could try
a 15 or a 20 amp fuse, just to see if I could make you home again, it really
isn't going to hurt anything and you might be able to make it home if there's a
minor short, that'll blow a 10 amp fuse but not a 15 or 20, now let's say you
don't find any blown fuses, as well you got the hood, open check the fan
belts to see if any of them came off, for example, if your alternator belt had come
off, the alternator will stop charging the battery, you'll run out of electricity and
the car will stop running, and in that case, be preparing again be like me,
have a spare fan belt for the alternator in
your trunk, so if it ever goes bad you got one to put on, and if you really want
to be prepared, you can have one of these little jump starter packs in your trunk,
it can jump it, after you put the fan belt on, or if you don't have a fan belt,
or you can't mess with that kind of stuff, these little packs have a
reasonable amount of power in them, they'll sometimes start a car and you
can drive a few miles, if you turn the headlights and everything off, and you
might be able to make it to a gas station or someplace running on this
little battery along, now let's say your car stopped running because the
temperature gauge got in the H, now of course you'd have to wait till the
engine cooled down before you could do anything, but once it cools down, if
you're prepared like me and have a spare jug of coolant in the trunk, once it's
cooled down add the coolant to the radiator, then you can start it up, turn the
heater on full blast, and then drive while you watch the temperature gauge to
make sure it doesn't go back up to the H, and here's how that works, the heater
core is a smaller radiator, so if you run the heater that helps dissipate any
extra heat, and as long as your temperature gauge doesn't get into the H,
you can drive it back to a safe place, then find out what's wrong and fix it,
and the last thing to check if your car dies on the road is, check your oil, you
wouldn't believe how many cars I've had towed over to me over the last 50 years
that had run out of oil, because no one ever checked the oil, so if you've been
bad and don't check your oil enough, have two or three quarts in the trunk, so if
you do get stuck somewhere and you're out, you can pour some in, a lot of times
the engine will be damaged if you really ran it completely out of oil, but
there's always a little bit left in the sump, and sometimes just putting in two
or three quarts, it'll start up and sound fine and still run, so now you know what
to do if your car dies on the road, with a little preparation upfront you can
often save yourself, and remember if you have any questions visit Scotty
Kilmer channel.