8 Things Smart Car Owners Do (That You Don’t)

Your car is probably wearing out faster than it needs to. There are some things that smart car owners do, just habits that they do every day, that makes their car last longer. I'm amazed how many drivers don't even know they're supposed to be doing these things. Now I'm not talking about oil changes or getting your tires rotated. These are habits that savvy car owners do every day, and if you miss them you're going to end up paying a lot of money down the road. Now in today's video I'm going to talk about the top eight that I think are the most overlooked habits. The first habit that a lot of drivers miss out on is when it comes to turning. When the car is stopped, a lot of people just turn the wheel when they're ready to go in a different direction. That's actually really hard on your tires. What you want to do is have the car rolling while you turn. It doesn't have to be a lot, but say I'm backing up out of a parking spot. I'm going to start rolling just a tiny bit, then I'm going to turn the wheel, and that's going to dramatically reduce the wear on the tires. Now the reason for this is, think about it, if the tire is being pressed into the pavement by the weight of the car and you just turn it in place, it's grinding against the pavement. Versus if the tire is rolling a little bit, the resistance on the tire is a lot less. Now you may be saying, wow this is such an insignificant detail. It's not going to make that much difference. Well there's actually a name for the damage that occurs to your tires on pavement called tire scrubbing. And that damage is reduced 40 to 60 percent if you're rolling as you're turning. How often do you pull out of your driveway or pull out of a parking spot and dry turn that steering wheel on the pavement? So you're going to be wearing a flat spot on your tire and replacing at least front tires more often than someone that's properly rolling while they turn. And if you think about it, that increased friction from not rolling while you turn, it's going to put more stress on your steering system. So your power steering pump, power steering lines, tie rods, stuff like that. Which means those components potentially wear out sooner as well. Speaking of tires, the next thing I want to talk about is checking your tire pressure often. Now you may think you already know all about tire inflation, but what a lot of people don't know and you might not realize is that air actually leaks out of tires a lot faster than most people think, even under normal circumstances. So three weeks a month, tires can lose 5-10 psi pretty easily. Now the problem with this is if you run around with tires that are under pressurized, you're going to get uneven wear, which means you're replacing them sooner than you would have to, as well as reduced fuel economy. So your fuel economy is going to go down, you're losing money there. So what you want to do is just check your tire pressure more often. Whether that means buying a super cheap little tire gauge, have it in your glove box and remembering to check your tires every few weeks. Or maybe you go to a gas station that has a cheap air filler and every three times you fill up gas, fill up your tires as well. Or if you really want to get crazy, you can buy your own little pump. Pumps like this have a gauge on them and you can just fill up the tires yourself. The main thing is you just want to keep on top of it and check your pressure. And again, if you don't know how this works, you can actually check on the bead of your tire and it will say what your max pressure should be. Doesn't mean you have to fill the tire up to that pressure, but usually it should be in the 35 to 40 PSI range. You may notice that you have a light on your dash that will go off when the tire is underinflated. And a lot of people just go off of this light, which is crazy because that light actually means your tire threshold has gotten so low that it's actually at a dangerous level. So you don't want to wait for that light to go on. You want to check your tires often yourself. Now the next habit is changing your brake fluid often. Now I'm not talking about topping off your reservoir to the maximum spot. If you watch any of my videos, you know that's actually something to do with your brake pads wearing out. What I'm talking about is how much your brake fluid absorbs water. It's actually how it works chemically. So water gets into your brake system whether you're driving or not. Now when water gets into your brake fluid, a couple bad things start happening. One, your brake pedal can start to feel spongy and you can't stop as fast, which is obviously a safety hazard and not good. And another thing is that water starts to do what water does. It rusts and corrodes the the metal parts of your brake system. So calipers, brake lines, even ABS modules can start to internally rust. Like an ABS module alone, $900, $1,300 to replace one of those. That's expensive, right? And you could avoid those types of unnecessary expenses if you just change your brake fluid more often. So how often should you change your brake fluid? You want to do it every three years minimum. If you do a lot of hard driving, maybe every two years. Another thing you can do is actually check the color of the fluid in the reservoir. Like this fluid, if it's clear, it means it's more fresh. When it starts to get dark, it means it's got contaminants and probably water and it's time to change it. If you're like me, what you can do is just bleed your brakes every time you change your brake pads. So if you watch one of our videos, I'll show you a really easy way that by yourself you can bleed each brake line individually as you change the brakes. And that way you just don't have to think about doing a brake flush. You just do it with your brake pads. That's going to be more than enough to keep your brake fluid nice and clean. Next habit I want to talk about is changing the cabin air filter. Now I talk about cabin filters all the time on this channel, but still a lot of people don't know that cabin filters even exist. Cabin filters are usually behind the glove box. And as you can see, this one's pretty dirty, should be white. Now when these get really dirty, a couple of things happen. One, the airflow is restricted. So the blower motor underneath here has to work extra hard and it's going to wear out prematurely. Number two, when you get lots of debris in the filter, especially if it gets moisture on it, you can get nasty smells, mold being circulated through your air conditioning, coming out your vents right into your nose. And three, maybe even most importantly, your AC system just doesn't work as well. You're not going to be as cold or blowing as hard. So a smart car owner is going to replace their cabin air filter regularly. Now what does regularly mean? Usually car manuals say 12 to 15,000 miles on your car. I live in Hawaii where I'm running my AC constantly. So I replaced mine probably a little bit sooner and once or twice a year. The great thing is these things usually cost about 10 bucks online, which is a whole lot cheaper than replacing that blower motor. Now, the next thing smart car people do is addressing chips and scratches in their paint before they get out of control. And this can be the difference between a $10 repair and an $800 repair. For example, this little chip right here, you can see it's kind of rusty. It's gone through the paint and primer layer. No big deal, it's super small. Wrong. This little rust spot right here isn't just going to stay the same size. It's going to spread. So it works its way under the surrounding paint and just keeps widening and getting deeper into the metal underneath. This is especially true if you live near the ocean or in a place where they salt the roads in the winter. So if you've ever seen a car that has like bubbles underneath the paint, that's actually rust underneath the paint. And often that starts with a tiny little chip in the paint like this. And that damage you see with rust under the paint can be a very expensive fix because now you're not just talking about fixing a little bit of paint. You're talking about extensive body work and painting, which gets really pricey. So what you want to do is go online or go to your auto parts store. And for 10 to 20 bucks, you can get a touch up paint pen, which matches the color of your car. And you treat that rust spot that way it's protected and doesn't keep spreading. Now, if you go to the auto parts store, chances are they're only going to have basic colors, black, white, red. Now, if you want to get a more specific custom color that really matches your specific paint, you might have to pay a little bit more, maybe 35 bucks. But you can find companies online that will provide those. We'll include a link to a popular online brand. And whatever paint product that you're using for a rust spot repair, you need to address the rust first. So whether that's totally removing it or adding some kind of chemical to neutralize it. Now, when you do a repair like this, there is going to be some evidence of the repair. It's not going to be totally invisible, but it's going to look a hundred times better than a rust spot. And more importantly, it's going to keep that rust from spreading and making your damage worse. The next good car habit to have to avoid unnecessary repair costs in the future is keeping your battery terminals clean and tight. Now, the reason this is important is because loose terminals will cause voltage issues because the terminal gets loose. There's not as much contact on the battery post, which can cause low voltage. In addition, having a loose terminal allows corrosion to get in there in between the terminal and the post. And again, affects your voltage. So you'll have random stalling of the engine, no startup conditions. You will put extra stress on an alternator, which will burn it out early. And ultimately you can cause battery failure prematurely, which again, you're replacing batteries more often than you need to. Plus, if you have low voltage in the system, you're going to cause all kinds of other haywire, electronical issues. Now, this is something I see all the time. And I think it's honestly the reason that terminals come loose and it's, if I were to put this terminal on here, I put it over the post, say I'm installing a new battery and tighten it down until the nut comes tight. Right. Should be nice and tight. I walk away. Not the case. If you take a look here, there's a big gap under the terminal clamp and that's not supposed to be there. Also, I can now grab this clamp, which is supposed to be tight and it wiggles. And eventually it's going to get so loose that your battery is going to disconnect. So the reason why this happens is because people don't realize that these battery posts are actually tapered. They're thicker at the bottom. So if you don't loosen off this tightening nut and you put it on, it doesn't actually slide all the way to the thickest part of the post. So what you have to do is loosen this nut, generously, loosen it up. And this needs to slide all the way to the bottom of the post. Sometimes I'll even hammer it down with the wrench I'm using. It doesn't have to be crazy, but just hammer it down to the bottom. And now this is sitting nice and low. It actually tightens the clamp before the nut bottom. And that shouldn't slide off at all. And I can test that by trying to wiggle this clamp after I'm done and it doesn't move. Again, don't be afraid of touching your terminals. It's not going to shock you. Now, if you do find a battery terminal that was loose, it is worth popping it off, cleaning the inside of the clamp and the post itself, because if they are loose, like I said, corrosion can build up in there and block a good connection. Now I've fixed so many people's expensive car issues just by tightening loose battery terminals. And so my recommendation is just make it a habit. Every time you're under the hood, checking the oil, checking your air filter, whatever, just reach over. It takes a couple seconds. See if these clamps are tight. Make sure they're sitting at the bottom of their posts. Now this next one, you've probably heard me harp on before. And if you haven't probably means you're not subscribed, which should do that. That is a bad habit of not using your parking brake. When you park your car, especially when you park on an incline, one of the main reasons for a parking brake in a car is to take the stress off your transmission. When cars in park, you got an automatic transmission. When you shift it into park, the way it holds your car in place is it puts this little gear into the transmission to keep it from turning so that the car doesn't move. Now, if you're parked on any kind of an incline, the entire weight of the car is being pulled by gravity downhill. And these little parking pawl gears are what's holding it in place, which is a lot of stress on your transmission. You might notice that if you're on an incline and you're just shifting it into park, when you go to shift back out of park, there's usually like a lot of tension and it sometimes will slam out of gear because of all that pressure is built up on that pawl gear. If you use your parking brake properly, it actually locks your brakes and holds the vehicle in place so that not all of that weight is on your transmission. I don't know if you know anything about transmissions, but they're really expensive to fix. So you want to do what you can to take care of them. Now, the proper way to do this is when you pull up to your parking spot, you're obviously going to have your foot on the brake. Then you shift into park. And instead of letting go of the brake pedal, you're going to set your parking brake, then let go of the brake pedal. And for the last habit that smart car owners do to save themselves tons of money in the long run is by downshifting when they're going down steep hills instead of just riding the brakes. Now I'm always surprised by how many people don't do this or don't even know about it. But if you just go down straight long hills and purely use the brakes, they're going to get really hot and hot brakes, wear out brake pads, rotors, calipers, brake fluid all prematurely. And as you can imagine, replacing pads and rotors all the time would get super expensive. Here in Hawaii, we have tons of hills. And sometimes I replace people's rotors multiple times a year, which is completely unnecessary. So the process of downshifting is pretty simple. It's using your gear shift, even in an automatic to select a lower gear manually, which then causes the wheels to push against the engine and make it makes the engine run faster. But because that requires a lot of force, it causes the car to slow down. And because it's slowing the car down without the brakes, the brakes don't have to do as much work. Now, of course, don't get crazy and shift into second gear while you're going 70 miles an hour down the mountainside. It's not going to be good for your transmission. Also, a lot of people ask me, isn't this terrible for your transmission to do this? The answer is no. This is how they were designed. It's to keep your brakes from overheating and potentially causing an accident. If you work on your own car or plan to, check out this video we made on the top mistakes that DIY mechanics make before you get under your own hood.