- 2 days ago
Mechanic and host of 'The Questionable Garage' Jared Pink joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning car repair and maintenance questions.
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00:00I'm Mechanic Jared Pink, host of The Questionable Garage.
00:02Let's answer your questions from the internet.
00:05This is Mechanic Support.
00:11The Geek00 asks, is there any reason to use a dealership?
00:15Sometimes, yes.
00:16The newer cars, software is not always yet available to an independent shop,
00:21so sometimes you're stuck going to the dealership.
00:24If your car is under warranty, your work is getting done for free at the dealership.
00:28There are trustworthy dealerships out there, so there is benefit going in there.
00:32They're generally always going to be using manufacturer parts,
00:35and they have the full access to all the manufacturer information.
00:39It does come at a premium, so you have to decide,
00:42is it worth your dollars for certain vehicles?
00:46Absolutely, because it's going to hold a higher resale,
00:49but that's if you're buying an Aston Martin,
00:51Lamborghini, like the super top-tier brands.
00:53If you're in a Toyota, Kia, most of your Chevrolets,
00:56you're going to get good service at a dealership,
00:58but you're also going to be able to get good service at an independent shop.
01:02Here's a question from Quora.
01:03How do I know if I'm buying a lemon car?
01:06So let's say you are in the market for a used car.
01:08You go to that used car lot, and you're looking at something you find
01:11and you really do like.
01:12How do you know if it's a lemon?
01:14One thing you really need to try to do your best is find its history report.
01:18Look into its background.
01:20There's tools like Carfax and AutoCheck that are going to pull the title history.
01:23If you pull up the car, it's five years old, but it's had eight owners,
01:27might not be a good car because it's changing hands a lot.
01:30The other thing you might want to look for in that report is if you see a ton of repairs
01:34that aren't normal maintenance and service.
01:37Also something that title check is going to reveal is if it is a branded lemon buyback.
01:41So manufacturers, when they sell a new car, if it's deemed unrepairable at some point,
01:45it gets branded a lemon, goes back to the manufacturer, they eventually fix it and resell it.
01:50Something else that you need to be careful of is if it's an older car,
01:53but it looks way too clean, like there's been a lot of extra detail work,
01:58make sure they didn't polish it up a little bit too much to hide a problem underneath.
02:02From the AskReddit subreddit,
02:04As a mechanic, what car do you drive and what cars would you never own?
02:08Well, my daily driver is a mid-2000s Chevrolet.
02:13They pretty much, the GMT 800s, you have the Silverados, the Tahos, they're bulletproof.
02:18They go forever and even when they're broken, they're still going to drive.
02:21Now, something I would probably really steer clear of as a mechanic,
02:25meaning I'm going to have to fix it, is that same generation's Mercedes.
02:28Anything mid-2000s Mercedes, when they're working, they're great.
02:31When they break, it gets very expensive very quick.
02:35At Pin to Primer asks,
02:37If an electric vehicle breaks down, do you call a mechanic or an electrician?
02:42Long before electric cars, cars had electrical systems we had to find faults with and fix.
02:46So you're going to want to bring it to your mechanic.
02:47Now, one thing with electric cars, a lot of people think they never need maintenance,
02:51but believe it or not, you still have gears inside that car.
02:55The electric motor needs to turn something to end up turning your wheels,
02:58and that goes through a traditional gear.
03:00That gear needs to be lubricated.
03:02So you still have oil inside your electric car that does need to get maintenance.
03:06Granted, it's like every 100,000 miles, but more importantly,
03:08your brakes on your electric car, because they don't get used as much,
03:11need regular service, especially if you live up in the Rust Belt.
03:15So if you break down, you're going to go see your mechanic,
03:18and you should probably see him before you break down to keep your electric car running.
03:22At Carl Line asks,
03:25I know my car is a man because he's terrible at communicating.
03:28What does a little light up wrench on my dashboard mean?
03:31Just tell me what you're feeling.
03:33A lot of cars do have a lot of crazy lights that will pop up and they can be very
03:37confusing.
03:38In your glove box, you're going to have an owner's manual.
03:39That's going to help you out.
03:40But what you're asking, a yellow wrench in a hand.
03:43That's just letting you know your car needs some maintenance.
03:45An oil change at tire rotations is just saying,
03:47Hey, I do need some help.
03:49And it's trying to communicate.
03:50You want to see it sooner than later.
03:52At Hayden Olson asks,
03:54Is premium gas really better for your car?
03:57It all depends.
03:58Does your car call for premium gas?
04:01Now let's explain really quickly, what is premium?
04:04You have all of your different octane ratings.
04:06The higher quality or higher octane rating gas just means it's better at resisting explosions.
04:12Sounds backwards.
04:13You'd think a higher quality gas would explode easier.
04:15Its job is to only explode in the engine when it's supposed to.
04:20Now I use explosion because that is how your car actually runs.
04:24A very specifically timed explosion where all of that fuel that's got pumped into the cylinder
04:30explodes and pushes the piston back down.
04:33That happens a whole lot of times every second and it needs to happen exactly when it needs to.
04:38Otherwise, you're going to damage your engine.
04:40If you're driving most German cars, if you're driving a car with a turbocharger or a supercharger,
04:45it's going to tell you minimum octane 91 or above.
04:49That is when you're going to need to put the premium in.
04:52At Happy Iris 9 asks,
04:54I hate adulting.
04:55Like how do I find a good mechanic?
04:58There are lots of good mechanics out there and there are some people that unfortunately
05:01are going to take advantage of you for not knowing.
05:04One of the best things you can do, ask your friends.
05:06If they're getting work done, do they trust their mechanic?
05:09When they go in, do they feel like they're being treated fairly by their mechanic?
05:11The other thing you can do, drive by and if you see a busy mechanic shop
05:15and you know you need some work, you're new to the area, stop by.
05:17Go in, introduce yourself, look at their cars, their work process,
05:21and will they even take the time to talk with you?
05:23If you pull up to the shop, you're in a busy town and they don't have a single car,
05:26and you have four mechanics ready to run and take care of you,
05:29they're not busy for a reason, so take that as a red flag.
05:31You want a mechanic that you know you can trust,
05:33who's going to help keep your car running, take care of the service for you,
05:37and fix it when it unfortunately breaks.
05:40From the mechanic advice subreddit,
05:42How can I make my car last forever?
05:45Well, that's only a diamond that's going to last forever,
05:47but you can make your car run for a very long time.
05:51Realistically, let's say three, four hundred thousand miles.
05:53If you do all of your preventative maintenance,
05:56you're going to spend a lot less in repairs in the long run.
05:58So it's a great return on investment.
06:00That's the best thing you can do.
06:01You got manufacturers telling you 10,000, 15,000 on oil changes.
06:06I'm a big fan of 5,000.
06:07It's one of the cheapest things you can do to keep that engine happy and healthy,
06:12because oil is cheaper than an engine rebuild.
06:14It's the lifeblood.
06:15The next big thing, transmission fluid.
06:18Almost all manufacturers now are telling you it is a lifetime fluid.
06:22Well, to them, a lifetime is at most 100,000 miles.
06:25So I'm a big fan of about a 60,000-mile service interval on it.
06:29Your coolant, 80,000 to 90,000 miles.
06:31You do want to change your coolant out.
06:32And you want to make sure you put the right type in.
06:35There's Oat, Pet.
06:36There's so many different types.
06:38Make sure you put the right oil in for your manufacturer.
06:41And when it comes to synthetic or conventional oil,
06:43if you're doing a really long service interval,
06:45make sure you're running synthetic.
06:46If you're doing a three, 5,000-mile range, you can do conventional.
06:50Ultimately, the best thing you can do is go ahead and pull up the factory minimum service intervals.
06:56That's the least you should do to it and do a little bit better.
06:59You might just turn that car into a diamond.
07:02At Nikki Coley asks,
07:04What happens to your car if you put diesel in it instead of gas?
07:08Asking for myself because I'm an idiot.
07:10Well, you're not an idiot.
07:11You made a mistake.
07:12Well, first off, your car won't run.
07:15You're going to have to get it towed,
07:16and you're going to have to have all of that diesel pumped out.
07:18Now, you may have a mechanic that claims you're going to need new injectors,
07:21a whole fuel system.
07:22Really, what has to happen?
07:24Your tank needs to get drained.
07:25You're going to probably need some fuel filters,
07:27and it's going to take a little bit of gasoline to flush all that last of the diesel out.
07:32Now, when it comes to mistakes,
07:33diesel in a gasoline car is a lot better than gasoline in a diesel.
07:37If you ever do the opposite, gasoline in the diesel,
07:39don't even attempt to start it.
07:41Get it towed.
07:42Flush it very, very quickly because you do risk serious, very expensive harm.
07:48At ghostwritingcow asks,
07:50Chevron marketing is genius.
07:52I have no idea what the heck Tecron is,
07:54but it makes me think Chevron with Tecron is better than other gas.
07:58It is an additive package.
07:59Now, most gas comes from two or three different refiners,
08:03but all of your different gasoline vendors, BP, Shells, Sinclair, Chevron,
08:09they add their own additives.
08:11Additive packages help condition the gasoline.
08:13There's a little bit of cleaners.
08:14They're stabilizers.
08:16They're things that just make the gasoline a little bit better.
08:19So while you can buy your additives in a bottle, you don't have to.
08:23As long as you're stopping and buying your gasoline at a major named brand store,
08:28you've already got your Tecron in it.
08:30At Nick Rich asks,
08:32Why do mechanics offer to rotate your tires?
08:34They literally rotate all day long.
08:37And he is serious about this question.
08:39Well, when we're rotating your tires,
08:40we're not just spinning them on the hub.
08:42We're actually going to take the tires that are in the front,
08:45move them to the rear of the vehicle and the rear tires to the front.
08:48If you have a full size spare, sometimes that will get rotated into the mix.
08:51And it actually will help give you a much longer tire life.
08:55Now, the reason this is happening is the tires in your front
08:58are doing things very different than tires in the back.
09:00The front you're having to steer, about 70% of the braking happens up front,
09:04whereas the rear tires generally just kind of hanging out.
09:07Also, most places that you buy your tires will offer you free lifetime tire rotation,
09:12so it doesn't hurt to go in every 5,000 to 6,000 miles and get them rotated.
09:16Raw Turbo asks,
09:18Are older cars built better and more reliable than new cars of today?
09:23No.
09:23There's a lot of rose-colored glasses.
09:25Everyone thinks about how wonderful the 70s and the 80s were,
09:30the 90s, that they are the ultimate of all cars ever built.
09:34Most of your older cars had a life expectancy of 100,000 miles,
09:38where again, two, three, 400,000 miles out of modern cars is much more common.
09:43The other thing that you find in a modern car is they are substantially more fuel efficient.
09:47You get a lot more horsepower out of smaller engine sizes,
09:50so modern cars are built a lot better.
09:53A lot of the reliability concerns come from the simplicity.
09:57Your car from the 70s is much simpler.
10:00You don't have computers, you've got two or three basic components,
10:02and that's what's going to make it run.
10:04But your modern car, you're going to have 30 sensors sometimes,
10:08all working in symphony to make your car work perfectly.
10:11As far as what car should you buy, what do you like?
10:14If you want to just jump in and go most of the time, buy something modern.
10:18If you want to look cool and have some loud, rowdy muscle car, buy you an old muscle car.
10:22From the No Stupid Questions subreddit,
10:26Is Nitrous and Fast and Furious a real thing that people can have in their cars?
10:30Can you magically shoot a chemical into your engine and make it go faster?
10:34Yes.
10:36Yes, you can.
10:37Nitrous oxide is a real thing.
10:39Now, in the movie, they sensationalize it.
10:42You see purple flames and that's not quite how it is.
10:45It shoots a concentrated oxygen into your engine to make more power.
10:50The beauty of nitrous oxide is it's a relatively simple thing to add to just about any engine out there.
10:56You can bolt this on with some extra fuel jets, turn it on, and boom, you can have up to
11:0125%
11:02more horsepower for most engines.
11:04Now, one other thing you see in the movies is a car gets shot up and nitrous explodes.
11:09This is just your oxygen.
11:10Without that fuel, it's not going to explode.
11:13Again, most modern nitrous systems are pretty safe.
11:15And as long as you install and set it up correctly, your engine's going to be safe with it as
11:20well.
11:20Another way you can add that extra air and oxygen into your car,
11:23you've seen these in Fast and Furious as well, is a turbocharger.
11:28They're very expensive to initially install, but once they're installed,
11:32this is ready to inject all of that air at all times.
11:36Now, some cars actually come factory turbocharged.
11:39They're incredibly efficient ways to get that extra air into your engine to make more horsepower.
11:46Adamola asks, Bro, how do mechanics listen to your engine for three seconds
11:50and immediately know what's wrong with it?
11:53Experience. When we have worked around cars for a very long time,
11:57we know what certain engines sound like and what they shouldn't sound like,
12:02and it helps dial in and identify those problems very quickly.
12:05So if I were to hear a sound like this,
12:09I would immediately know to start looking at a serpentine bell idler pulley.
12:14You can kind of hear that chirping sound, and it's spinning about as fast as the engine RPM.
12:19Now, if I hear a sound like this, I'm going to let the customer know he's going to have a
12:25very bad day,
12:25because that sounds like a major engine bearing knock, and it's about to get very expensive.
12:31Now, if you end up hearing a sound that sounds like this,
12:35believe it or not, that's normal.
12:37Most fuel injectors on modern cars are actually pretty loud,
12:41and that's why you see the engine beauty covers with foam on it to try to make it so you
12:45don't hear it
12:45as bad. Anaya asks,
12:47What's funny is that I don't even know what tire pressure is.
12:51Tire pressure is one of the most crucial things to have good fuel economy,
12:55good driving performance, and make the car perform the best it can.
12:59The only thing that's connecting your car to the road is your tires.
13:02First, you need a tire pressure gauge.
13:04Now, in the US, we use PSI.
13:06They use bar overseas.
13:08It's telling you how much pressure and force is pushing against the rubber.
13:12If you have severely underinflated or overinflated tires, you can actually damage them.
13:17If you have a vehicle since 2006, I believe it is, they all have active tire pressure monitoring,
13:24which means you can push a button and your car is going to tell you how much air is in
13:28each tire.
13:29That is a pressure reading, not a percent.
13:32So how do you know what to do and how to check your tire pressure?
13:35Well, first, you're going to want to open up the door of your car, the driver's door.
13:39Usually the sticker is either on the door itself or on the B pillar.
13:41That's going to give you the tire size and the pressure that you should have in each tire.
13:46Next, you can either buy your own small air compressor or go to a gas station.
13:50There's lots of air service pumps around, and then you'll want to fill it to that pressure.
13:54Now, I will caution you, bring your own gauge.
13:57If you have to, those real cheap 99-cent ones, they're good enough.
14:00But the gauge that's on that machine that you're using, it's been abused a lot.
14:04Now, the other option is some of the new cars are really tricky.
14:07You can tell them that you're inflating the tires and it'll honk the horn at you when the air pressure
14:10is right.
14:10But I still like to go with the mechanical gauge.
14:13Double check it.
14:15I am Daniel Chai asks, how do mechanics figure out why a car died?
14:19They perform an auto-opsy.
14:21Well, I think that was meant as a joke, but that's actually a really good question.
14:24How do we figure out why a car died?
14:26Well, first, exactly how is it dead?
14:29When you turn the key on, does anything power up on the car?
14:32If nothing powers up, we're going to check the battery, make sure there's voltage.
14:35If it starts to power up, but then runs really rough or doesn't run at all,
14:39we're going to pull out one of our diagnostic scan tools.
14:42We can connect to the vehicle's data port and see everything the computer's seeing,
14:46and that's going to help us narrow down and figure out what electrically has gone wrong with the vehicle.
14:51Now, if it's a mechanical failure, we try to turn the key and try to crank it and nothing happens,
14:57or it's knocking incredibly, that's when the fun really starts to happen.
15:01We have to take apart an entire engine.
15:04Here, we have some parts of a major failure.
15:08This is your oil pan.
15:09This sits at the bottom of the engine.
15:11It holds all of your engine oil, and if you look close inside,
15:15there's a lot of metal inside this one.
15:18That means something has blown up really badly.
15:21All of that metal comes from the bearing halves.
15:24That lives under your connecting rod, and this particular engine was knocking and ate its bearings.
15:30Oil needs to lubricate all of the bearings, and when the engine's running correctly,
15:34it's actually riding on oil, not the bearing.
15:37The bearing is there for when the oil goes away.
15:40So, at this point, in this auto-opsy, we know we have a lot of bearing material,
15:45and we have a spun connecting rod bearing.
15:48There's not a delicate way for that.
15:50So, when we start looking at this crankshaft,
15:53we know in this particular engine, oil flows from the front of the engine to the back,
15:57and we could look and see the front of the engine looked perfect.
16:01No bearing damage.
16:02Everything is perfectly fine.
16:03Then, suddenly, we get to this main bearing, and we discovered it actually did what's called
16:08spinning the bearing.
16:10This bearing is now moving in a way it's not supposed to,
16:13and once it's done that, it blocks off the oil to the connecting rod and ruin those bearings.
16:18So, we take all of that information, and we try to figure out why did we spin a main bearing.
16:23And what's really sad is this incredibly expensive engine was ruined because it was a half-quart oil low.
16:29So, we go back to that phrase from earlier.
16:31Oil's the lifeblood of your engine.
16:32You gotta take care of it.
16:34Make sure you got the right amount in it.
16:36$5 worth of oil did about $8,000 in damage.
16:42XCSPI from the Ask Car Guys subreddit.
16:44How do you pick out a project car to buy?
16:47I love this question because that means you're wanting to wrench.
16:49First, what cars do you like?
16:51There's no point in buying something you're not going to enjoy working on.
16:54Two, one of the most important things I would suggest,
16:56see how much information is out there.
16:59If you're buying some weird, obscure car,
17:01trying to figure out how to work on it is going to be really hard.
17:03So, with cars like a Miata, any generation of the E30, E36 BMWs, early 80s Toyota Corollas,
17:10there's lots of information out there.
17:13Any generation of Honda.
17:14All phenomenal project cars.
17:16They're things that if you end up not being able to fix,
17:18you're still going to be able to sell for your parts
17:20and not lose out a lot of money.
17:21Now, I definitely was there long ago.
17:24I found small, fun, simple project cars,
17:27but I've kind of graduated a little bit in project cars like, you know,
17:31shoving a whole Corvette suspension and engine in an old farm truck
17:34because I couldn't buy a ball joint.
17:35I put a Chevy Big Block in a Nissan 300ZX to do nothing but giant burnouts
17:40and win Hot Wheels contests.
17:41Or, you know, turning four-door Dodge Chargers into pickup trucks with cop car lights.
17:46So, from the Mechanic Advice subreddit, CrashDummy45 asks,
17:51what are some tools that every mechanic should own?
17:53Funny you should mention that.
17:54I've actually put together one of my favorite beginner tool sets here.
17:58Now, some of the absolute crucial things you're going to need
18:02is a good socket set.
18:03Now, my particular set, I've got quarter-inch,
18:06three-eighths, and half-inch sockets in both SAE and metric.
18:10You're going to need a really good set of screwdrivers,
18:12because you don't know what you're going to need to fasten for clamps or interiors.
18:16Another thing you're going to want, you're going to need some good pliers.
18:20A good pair of side cutters, absolutely crucial.
18:22You want to spend a decent amount of money on your pliers
18:25because nothing's more frustrating than cheap pliers.
18:28The other thing you're really going to want to do, get a good wrench set.
18:31I've got all of your common sizes, both metric SAE.
18:34That's going to get you set up to be able to do just about anything.
18:38Now, if you're working on something like a European car
18:40that has a lot of triple squares, a lot of the general motors with torque sets,
18:44you're going to obviously need to add that in.
18:46But at its core, you need a good solid socket set.
18:50You're going to need some basic wrenches, and that's going to get you covered.
18:55EscoJax1 asks, what does engine coolant do?
18:58It helps keep your engine cool.
19:01Anytime you're converting one type of energy to another,
19:04electric cars, gasoline cars, it's not free.
19:07It's going to generate some heat and the coolant's job along with the radiator
19:12is to transfer that heat away.
19:13What a lot of people don't realize is coolant's designed to raise the boiling temperature of water
19:17and also lower the freezing point so you're able to drive it on the road.
19:21Anytime you need to top off your coolant one, you probably have a leak and you do need to identify
19:25it, but make sure whenever you do add coolant, you're putting the correct kind in for your vehicle.
19:30And also at most parts stores, you can buy a 50-50 ready to use coolant.
19:35That saves you from having to mix distilled water with your coolant.
19:39At Haley Alana asks, do I really need an oil change or is it just like a scam?
19:45You do absolutely need an oil change.
19:47I keep preaching it.
19:48It's the lifeblood of your engine and the easiest way to keep it running the longest.
19:52So let's do an oil change together.
19:55All right.
19:56So the first step of your oil change, safety gear.
19:59Second step, you need your vehicle in the air.
20:01Now there's fancy modern ways where you can use extraction tubes from the dipstick.
20:05I'm old fashioned.
20:06I like pulling the drain plug because you're not going to suck any small debris out.
20:10You can check and make sure your engine's healthy.
20:12I always like to pull the oil filter off first.
20:14So we're going to get our oil drain kind of in a good position here.
20:17So you'll see people fight removing an oil filter.
20:20If you put it on correctly, you snug it and go another quarter turn.
20:23So I'm going to be able to reach up here, get a little bit of a twist,
20:27and we're going to get this oil filter coming out.
20:30This is your oil filter and its job is as your oil is gathering and collecting all the particulates,
20:37this is going to collect it and scavenge it and keep it from rolling around all of your lubrication system.
20:43We're going to let that keep draining.
20:44Then we're going to come to our drain plug and loosen that.
20:48This is the fun part.
20:49You get to check and see if any chunks come out when you remove your drain plug.
20:53So right now we've got the dirty oil draining out.
20:56The good thing is it's just a little bit black, which is expected of old oil.
21:00Again, it's catching and holding and suspending all of the combustion debris,
21:04the carbon deposits.
21:06There's nothing alarming.
21:07We didn't hear any chunks of metal or nothing coming out.
21:10So we're just going to let it run.
21:11And then when it's all done, we're going to put the drain plug back in.
21:13So now that we still got a little bit of oil trickling out,
21:16we can go ahead and put our new oil filter in.
21:18Make sure you're using a quality filter.
21:20There's a lot of arguments of pre-fill or don't pre-fill your oil.
21:24I don't like to pre-fill an oil filter, but you do need to lubricate
21:27the O-ring of your oil filter.
21:29So one of the number one things you need to do before you put your oil filter on
21:32is make sure that O-ring didn't stick to the engine.
21:35Sometimes it does, you'll double gasket and that's going to blow out.
21:38What I like to do is I'll just simply dip my glove finger in,
21:42get a little bit of fresh oil, rub it on that O-ring surface,
21:44and you put it on the oil filter pedestal.
21:46There it's tight and quarter turn.
21:49Then the last thing before we set it back down on the ground and fill it back with oil,
21:53is you got to put your drain plug in.
21:54Now this has a really good O-ring gasket.
21:57I can reuse it several times.
21:59A lot of times you're going to have to replace that rubber seal every time.
22:03So double check your car, make sure you're doing the right thing for it.
22:06It's just a matter of thread it in.
22:07Now you can wait until it completely stops dribbling.
22:10One drip every second, that's low enough.
22:13And then give it a little snug,
22:17wipe off all your oil mess, lower the car and fill it up with oil.
22:22And that's how you do an oil change.
22:25Well, those are all the questions for today.
22:28I hope you learned something.
22:29And thanks for watching Mechanic Support.