Never Do This to Your Car

**Car Repair Tips and Tricks**

In this article, we'll share some valuable car repair tips and tricks from our expert mechanic, Scotty.

One of the most common issues that can cause a car to stall is a dead battery. To diagnose the problem, it's essential to check the basics first. Turn off all accessories and electronics, including the radio, phone chargers, and any aftermarket additions like alarm systems or navigation. Then, jump-start the car using jumper cables and another vehicle with a working battery. If the car starts easily but runs poorly, there may be an issue with the electrical system.

As our mechanic observed, "If it's running poorly, you need to check the belts. Sometimes, the belt can become loose and cause the engine to miss its timing. That's why it was running poorly before." To fix the problem, tighten the belt and make sure it's properly aligned. If the belt is worn out or damaged, replace it with a new one.

Another common issue that can affect a car's performance is a faulty fuel pump. Our mechanic noticed that the low fuel light was on, which indicated that the fuel level was too low. "Don't give your mechanic a car with a fuel light on," our expert advises. "It's annoying and often means you need to put gas in, which can be expensive."

To diagnose the problem, check the fuel pump relay and make sure it's functioning correctly. If the relay is faulty, replace it with a new one. Our mechanic also recommends checking the fuel filter for any blockages or damage.

**Reliability of Subaru Engines**

In this section, we'll discuss the reliability of Subaru engines, specifically the boxer engine. Tito Esteva, a car enthusiast, shared his experience with a Toyota A6 manual that had a Subaru boxer engine. "The manual transmission is reliable," he said. "However, the boxer engine can be problematic as it ages." Our expert agrees, stating that six-cylinder Subaru engines are prone to issues due to their higher horsepower and weight.

On the other hand, four-cylinder Subaru engines are generally more reliable. They're better built than they used to be, according to our mechanic. "I've seen customers buy from 10 years ago to last year, and I'm not impressed with them," he said. "The six-cylinder ones have too many problems as they age."

**Troubleshooting a Noisy Steering Wheel**

Gonzales recently experienced a problem with his steering wheel making noise when he turned it. He asked our expert for advice on what could be causing the issue. Our mechanic responded, "If you have mechanical power steering, check your power steering fluid level. If it's low, add more. If you have electronic power steering, the motor might be faulty."

In the case of a clunking sound when turning the wheel, our expert recommends jacking up the car and pulling on the wheel to see if there are any loose or damaged ball joints or tires.

**Improving Suspension for a Smoother Ride**

Our mechanic, Scotty, received a question from Crush about how to improve suspension on a sedan to make it ride more comfortably. To achieve this, our expert recommends installing high-quality shocks or struts that can provide the best riding experience. "You want a strut that's got different kinds of springs with less stiffness to it," he said. "That way, it'll be smoother and won't corner as well."

To find the right shocks or struts, talk to quality companies and ask for recommendations based on your specific needs. Our expert advises checking the rebound rate and spring characteristics to ensure they're suitable for your car.

**Maintaining Positive Energy**

In this final section, we'll discuss the importance of maintaining positive energy, especially in a profession like car repair where you may encounter challenging situations. Scotty shared his approach to staying positive: "I live in a fantasy world, so I can be positive and happy because I don't live in the real world." Our expert emphasizes that it's essential to focus on the solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

To achieve this mindset, our mechanic recommends wearing rose-colored glasses – or rather, not being too critical of oneself. As James Dean once said, "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved." Our expert agrees that it's essential to maintain a positive attitude and approach problems with a solution-oriented mindset.

As our mechanic concluded, "Remember to ring that bell next time you watch one of my new car repair videos. I'll keep sharing valuable tips and tricks to help you maintain your vehicle safely and efficiently."

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell here's a v8 lexus sc430 that's fun and sporty and since it was used it was relatively cheap originally this 2003 lexus sc 430 was 63 000 but my customer bought it a year ago for about a tenth of it 6500 sharp looking car and he did this he painted it and i think he did a pretty good job painting those wheels they're kind of cool see how metal convertible that pops down clean car and as we look inside leather's still in decent shape you could clean and re-dye it like i do and you know it's a bit messy hey the wood still looks good and yeah it's the typical sporty car look the back seat is for tiny people there's not a lot of room in the back seat i don't know why they just didn't make it a two-seater but you know they put these goofy seats in the back now we'll start it up typical axle starts right up does have a code for the tire pressure monitoring service typical on any 18 year old car let's face it it's 18 years old each tire has a tire pressure monitoring sensor on it run by the battery inside the sensor they just go bad after all those years a lot of guys aren't going to spend the money to replace them although just ignore that and check the tire pressure with an air gauge you're getting a 65 000 car for 6500 you know nothing's going to be perfect but even has all those as you can see got vehicle speed control traction control we'll take four spins see how many of the original 301 horsepower this thing has still quiet and smooth even though it's got 156 040 miles on it all right let's step on it see what it can do it can still get up and go it's not a complete race car there's no arguing that it's got a little hesitation now because it's old but that's because it needs an alternator you can see the alternator lights on for the battery it needs an alternator that's what i'm fixing on this plus he's almost out of gasoline not a good idea to get an old car and run it low on gasoline you run them low on gasoline you can suck crud from the bottom of the tank don't do that you get an old car pretend quarter of a tank left is empty and then always refill it you don't want to temp fate with one of these expensive cars now as we look under the hood lexus 4.3 variable valve timing v8 engine and you might notice my little jump starter edition that's because the alternator is going out and i'm running it off of this until i put an alternator on it now it is a relatively heavy vehicle for a small vehicle it's just one person who weighs 160 pounds short of being two ton it's relatively heavy but that makes it ride stable and this one is conventional rear-wheel drive very stable drive to get out of the thing it's got a five-speed electronic automatic transmission that's seamless and as we check the trunk baby's got a lot of room in the trunk now some of it is for the top that pops down in there but it's still got a reasonable amount of room in the trunk because look this one has a spare standard transmission in it i guess the guy's thinking about trying to swap it over to a standard transmission now that's something i don't advise doing too much work now since the battery light's on it's not charging anymore we're going to change the alternator so we can give it a better road test see what kind of shape it's in so i'll take all this plastic crap out of the way so we can have working and we'll disconnect the battery cable so we don't short anything out now the alternator is way down there so we'll put our 14 millimeter socket and giant cheater bar and we'll pull it and we can get the fan belt out of the way as you can see now we can get the fan belt off the front of the alternator that's clear and we can jack it up in the air to get the alternator off kind of a dumb design but that's how it is stop it goes now you got to go under the car we move the plastic crappy cover out of the way and there's the alternator there's just two bolts you take off that one and that one then slide it off and take the electronics off so off comes this one and off comes the bottom one and there it goes now it's been stuck in there for quite some time so i'm getting this big hammer i'm gonna give it a few whacks to try to loosen it but wouldn't you know what the power steering pulley's in the way here so we gotta unbolt the power steering pump pulley and then pull that out of the way that stupid thing was blocking it not the greatest design then with a bunch of wiggling out comes the old alternator before we do all that work to put it back together we'll check them the new ones got three and one three and one looks exactly the same so we'll slide it back in now don't forget to plug the electrical plug in here and bolt on the big 12 volt power wire i can't film it there's no working room under here that's the one thing i do have to say about the v8 lexus they are much harder to work on the parts do cost more money realize that if you're buying one for example the brakemaster cylinder is a fancy system that's got all kinds of electronics some of these master cylinder assemblies for these v8 lexuses can be seventeen hundred bucks just for the parts my wife's lexus about the same year but it's a 300 a v6 i can get a brakemaster cylinder for 159 just realize they are more expensive to fix you can do it yourself like this you can say it's a do-it-yourself job if you want to get dirty and take all the stuff apart but realize things will cost more then of course don't forget to put the power steering pulley back on that we had to take off in order to get to the stuff then you get a picture and put the fan belt back on i got this online all data if you don't have a picture take a picture of it with your camera on your phone before you take it apart so you know where the belt goes back on use our giant cheater bar and a socket and when we pull it we can snap the belt on not easy to film as you can see in the picture you route it around and then you put the top pulley belt on once you have that all loosened up the top one will snap right on then before you put all that plastic crap back together put the battery on fire it up see if it's working put it back on and in this case jump started because the battery's still dead it has to recharge and as we look inside we can see the belts running straight everything's working fader light's not any on but the low fuel light is so long you have to put some gas in and here's a tip you don't want to annoy your mechanic don't give them a car with a fuel lights on it's out of fuel we find it very annoying now we'll take it for a spin see how it does and put some more gas on it it needs a ton no as you can see it's idling very smoothly we're going to take it on the highway and it's hot so i turn the air conditioning on let's step on it and see what happens now it gets up and goes unlike before all that loss of power is gone it was all because the electrical system wasn't sending enough power that's why it was running poorly we'll start at the bottom of the hill here and take off away it goes you can hear that v8 cranking up car still handles quite well nice and zippy hey a fun car for 6 500 bucks a nice quiet running smooth looking sports car 6 500 bucks as long as you realize if something major goes wrong you're gonna have to shell out some serious bucks but generally they don't start falling apart till they get over 200 000 miles on it and after all this one's only got 156 000 and here's some bonus questions and answers tito esteva says our toyota a6 manual is reliable despite having a subaru boxer engine the manual transmissions are and the engines aren't bad they're not heavy horsepower racing engines so they don't get that much strain and truthfully with subarus the real problem with subaru's heavier their boxer engines are are with the six cylinder ones and they have higher horsepower and they have all kinds of problems as they age the four-cylinder ones now don't really have that many problems they're better built than they used to be i still tell people do not buy a six cylinder subaru i have customers over the last decade buying from 10 years ago to last year and i'm not impressed and over time most of my customers weren't impressed with them the manual gonzales says when i turn my steering wheel car makes a noise what can it be 2011 nissan altima what kind of noise is it if it goes and you have mechanical power steering with power steering fluid you could just be law on fluid if you have electronic power steering it would be the electronic motor going out in the power steering if it's not squealing but a clunk clunk then you got something wrong in your front and then you gotta jack the car up in the air pull on the wheel see if you got bad ball joints tires check a whole bunch of stuff crush on ty says scotty any idea how to improve suspension on sedan to make it ride more comfortable what you want to do is get the best riding shocks or struts that you can buy quality companies have various levels and you tell them what you want you say i don't want a stiff ride i want a smoother ride and they can sell you a strut that's got different kinds of springs less stiffness to it so it's smoother it won't corner as well but there's a lot of different ones out there go after market and then talk to the different companies out there and say okay what do you make for this what do you make for that uh what kind of rebound do the springs have i don't want them to be too tight i want them a little looser and they can tell you exactly what's out there and you can decide what you want to put on steve here says scotty how do you maintain your positive energy all right well i live in a fantasy world so i can be positive and be happy because i don't live in the real world the real world's a nasty place there's evil people out there doing bad things to each other lying cheap and stealing my wife already told me i lived in a fantasy world and i said yes but i like my fantasy world and at james dean's grave if you've seen that picture me and james dean's grave hey i still in my mind think i look like that that's why we're the sunglasses i'm looking at the world to rose-colored glasses and i'm going to remain that way too i'm not going to change so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell youwell here's a v8 lexus sc430 that's fun and sporty and since it was used it was relatively cheap originally this 2003 lexus sc 430 was 63 000 but my customer bought it a year ago for about a tenth of it 6500 sharp looking car and he did this he painted it and i think he did a pretty good job painting those wheels they're kind of cool see how metal convertible that pops down clean car and as we look inside leather's still in decent shape you could clean and re-dye it like i do and you know it's a bit messy hey the wood still looks good and yeah it's the typical sporty car look the back seat is for tiny people there's not a lot of room in the back seat i don't know why they just didn't make it a two-seater but you know they put these goofy seats in the back now we'll start it up typical axle starts right up does have a code for the tire pressure monitoring service typical on any 18 year old car let's face it it's 18 years old each tire has a tire pressure monitoring sensor on it run by the battery inside the sensor they just go bad after all those years a lot of guys aren't going to spend the money to replace them although just ignore that and check the tire pressure with an air gauge you're getting a 65 000 car for 6500 you know nothing's going to be perfect but even has all those as you can see got vehicle speed control traction control we'll take four spins see how many of the original 301 horsepower this thing has still quiet and smooth even though it's got 156 040 miles on it all right let's step on it see what it can do it can still get up and go it's not a complete race car there's no arguing that it's got a little hesitation now because it's old but that's because it needs an alternator you can see the alternator lights on for the battery it needs an alternator that's what i'm fixing on this plus he's almost out of gasoline not a good idea to get an old car and run it low on gasoline you run them low on gasoline you can suck crud from the bottom of the tank don't do that you get an old car pretend quarter of a tank left is empty and then always refill it you don't want to temp fate with one of these expensive cars now as we look under the hood lexus 4.3 variable valve timing v8 engine and you might notice my little jump starter edition that's because the alternator is going out and i'm running it off of this until i put an alternator on it now it is a relatively heavy vehicle for a small vehicle it's just one person who weighs 160 pounds short of being two ton it's relatively heavy but that makes it ride stable and this one is conventional rear-wheel drive very stable drive to get out of the thing it's got a five-speed electronic automatic transmission that's seamless and as we check the trunk baby's got a lot of room in the trunk now some of it is for the top that pops down in there but it's still got a reasonable amount of room in the trunk because look this one has a spare standard transmission in it i guess the guy's thinking about trying to swap it over to a standard transmission now that's something i don't advise doing too much work now since the battery light's on it's not charging anymore we're going to change the alternator so we can give it a better road test see what kind of shape it's in so i'll take all this plastic crap out of the way so we can have working and we'll disconnect the battery cable so we don't short anything out now the alternator is way down there so we'll put our 14 millimeter socket and giant cheater bar and we'll pull it and we can get the fan belt out of the way as you can see now we can get the fan belt off the front of the alternator that's clear and we can jack it up in the air to get the alternator off kind of a dumb design but that's how it is stop it goes now you got to go under the car we move the plastic crappy cover out of the way and there's the alternator there's just two bolts you take off that one and that one then slide it off and take the electronics off so off comes this one and off comes the bottom one and there it goes now it's been stuck in there for quite some time so i'm getting this big hammer i'm gonna give it a few whacks to try to loosen it but wouldn't you know what the power steering pulley's in the way here so we gotta unbolt the power steering pump pulley and then pull that out of the way that stupid thing was blocking it not the greatest design then with a bunch of wiggling out comes the old alternator before we do all that work to put it back together we'll check them the new ones got three and one three and one looks exactly the same so we'll slide it back in now don't forget to plug the electrical plug in here and bolt on the big 12 volt power wire i can't film it there's no working room under here that's the one thing i do have to say about the v8 lexus they are much harder to work on the parts do cost more money realize that if you're buying one for example the brakemaster cylinder is a fancy system that's got all kinds of electronics some of these master cylinder assemblies for these v8 lexuses can be seventeen hundred bucks just for the parts my wife's lexus about the same year but it's a 300 a v6 i can get a brakemaster cylinder for 159 just realize they are more expensive to fix you can do it yourself like this you can say it's a do-it-yourself job if you want to get dirty and take all the stuff apart but realize things will cost more then of course don't forget to put the power steering pulley back on that we had to take off in order to get to the stuff then you get a picture and put the fan belt back on i got this online all data if you don't have a picture take a picture of it with your camera on your phone before you take it apart so you know where the belt goes back on use our giant cheater bar and a socket and when we pull it we can snap the belt on not easy to film as you can see in the picture you route it around and then you put the top pulley belt on once you have that all loosened up the top one will snap right on then before you put all that plastic crap back together put the battery on fire it up see if it's working put it back on and in this case jump started because the battery's still dead it has to recharge and as we look inside we can see the belts running straight everything's working fader light's not any on but the low fuel light is so long you have to put some gas in and here's a tip you don't want to annoy your mechanic don't give them a car with a fuel lights on it's out of fuel we find it very annoying now we'll take it for a spin see how it does and put some more gas on it it needs a ton no as you can see it's idling very smoothly we're going to take it on the highway and it's hot so i turn the air conditioning on let's step on it and see what happens now it gets up and goes unlike before all that loss of power is gone it was all because the electrical system wasn't sending enough power that's why it was running poorly we'll start at the bottom of the hill here and take off away it goes you can hear that v8 cranking up car still handles quite well nice and zippy hey a fun car for 6 500 bucks a nice quiet running smooth looking sports car 6 500 bucks as long as you realize if something major goes wrong you're gonna have to shell out some serious bucks but generally they don't start falling apart till they get over 200 000 miles on it and after all this one's only got 156 000 and here's some bonus questions and answers tito esteva says our toyota a6 manual is reliable despite having a subaru boxer engine the manual transmissions are and the engines aren't bad they're not heavy horsepower racing engines so they don't get that much strain and truthfully with subarus the real problem with subaru's heavier their boxer engines are are with the six cylinder ones and they have higher horsepower and they have all kinds of problems as they age the four-cylinder ones now don't really have that many problems they're better built than they used to be i still tell people do not buy a six cylinder subaru i have customers over the last decade buying from 10 years ago to last year and i'm not impressed and over time most of my customers weren't impressed with them the manual gonzales says when i turn my steering wheel car makes a noise what can it be 2011 nissan altima what kind of noise is it if it goes and you have mechanical power steering with power steering fluid you could just be law on fluid if you have electronic power steering it would be the electronic motor going out in the power steering if it's not squealing but a clunk clunk then you got something wrong in your front and then you gotta jack the car up in the air pull on the wheel see if you got bad ball joints tires check a whole bunch of stuff crush on ty says scotty any idea how to improve suspension on sedan to make it ride more comfortable what you want to do is get the best riding shocks or struts that you can buy quality companies have various levels and you tell them what you want you say i don't want a stiff ride i want a smoother ride and they can sell you a strut that's got different kinds of springs less stiffness to it so it's smoother it won't corner as well but there's a lot of different ones out there go after market and then talk to the different companies out there and say okay what do you make for this what do you make for that uh what kind of rebound do the springs have i don't want them to be too tight i want them a little looser and they can tell you exactly what's out there and you can decide what you want to put on steve here says scotty how do you maintain your positive energy all right well i live in a fantasy world so i can be positive and be happy because i don't live in the real world the real world's a nasty place there's evil people out there doing bad things to each other lying cheap and stealing my wife already told me i lived in a fantasy world and i said yes but i like my fantasy world and at james dean's grave if you've seen that picture me and james dean's grave hey i still in my mind think i look like that that's why we're the sunglasses i'm looking at the world to rose-colored glasses and i'm going to remain that way too i'm not going to change so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell you\n"