**A Thousand Mile Road Trip: Preparing My Mercedes for the Journey**

I recently embarked on a 12-hour road trip from one location to another, towing a trailer with my trusty Mercedes. As I began my preparations, I realized that I didn't have too much of a problem working without issues, but I wanted an extra layer of security to ensure everything was in order. This is where the importance of checking fluids comes into play.

As I checked my washer fluid, I noticed it was completely empty. To be honest, I wasn't too concerned about it since I didn't have a washer on the trailer and it wouldn't be needed anyway. However, I made sure to check my coolant levels to ensure everything was topped up. I also took care of motor oil, making sure it was good for the 12-hour trip ahead. As a precautionary measure, I use Mobil 1 synthetic oil, which is recommended by Mercedes for five thousand mile changes due to its high-quality formula.

**Towing Safety Precautions**

When towing, there are several safety precautions that need to be taken into consideration. One of these is making sure all lights work properly, as this can be a critical aspect of visibility while driving. I took the time to tape up some loose ends on my trailer's arm to prevent any damage or fouling during the trip. Additionally, I double-checked the tow hitch itself to ensure it was securely torqued down with two bolts at each corner.

Another crucial aspect of towing is registration and licensing. I made sure that all necessary documents were in order, including my driver's license, vehicle registration, and insurance information. This ensured that I was compliant with all relevant laws and regulations while driving. Furthermore, I checked the condition of my spare tire, jack, and tools to ensure they were in good working order.

**A Test Run and First Impressions**

Before embarking on the long journey, I decided to take my Mercedes for a test run to see how it performed with the trailer attached. While it may have taken slightly longer than usual, I was pleased to find that everything seemed to be functioning as expected. The car didn't show any signs of strain or fatigue, and I felt confident in its ability to handle the weight of the trailer.

**A Quick Checklist**

Before departing on my journey, I conducted a final check of the vehicle to ensure everything was in order. This included making sure I had snacks and water for the duration of the trip, as well as a comfortable blanket for my furry companion who would be joining me. As I reflected on the preparations I had made, I felt reassured that my Mercedes was ready for the 12-hour road trip ahead.

**The Road Ahead**

As I set off on my adventure, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. With my trusty Mercedes and trailer by my side, I was confident in its ability to handle the demands of the long journey. Of course, as with any vehicle, there is always some level of risk involved, but I had taken every precaution to minimize those risks.

**A Word from the Author**

As I continue on this road trip, I'll be sharing updates and experiences along the way. If you'd like to stay informed about my progress, be sure to follow me on Twitter or check back for future articles. And if you have any feedback or suggestions, please don't hesitate to let me know. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll work on a car together, and I can put my money where my mouth is!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and thank you for joining me again very very lovely day but it is a little bit bittersweet because today is the official last day of me being in New Jersey the Sun is directly in my eyes let me get into the shade but yeah so it's my last day in New Jersey and tomorrow morning at 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. depending on what time I wake up I'm gonna be headed to Florida and I'm going to be doing it in my Mercedes tow rig and there's gonna be a short video I know I told you guys that I would probably do a video about the cars that's my graffiti Lexus if some of you been following my articles in Jalopnik and my Porsche 944 is in the garage I'm going to have those shipped I didn't make a video for that because it was just boring it was just the cars moving from my backyard to my driveway but I think this video is just going to be me explaining a few of the things that I did to make my car sort of a little bit safer to go on this thousand mile journey I said 800 mile in my last video but that was wrong it's about a thousand and fifty miles so I'm gonna go over some of the stuff and hopefully it makes it I mean this is this is fingers crossed guys I've never done this before but I think that it should make it I've doubted my eyes and cross my T's so we're just going to go over that now this car was in pretty good shape to begin with it didn't have any check engine lights nothing like that it didn't have any running issues I think you guys saw my everything wrong with my $3,000 Mercedes s-class but there's not really anything mechanically wrong with it it's pretty stout and in my last video I went over how I did the whole tow hitch setup but a few things before you go on any long road trip you definitely want to check the torque on the lug nuts and you want to check the tire pressure so if you don't know what the tire pressure is on on a specific car and if you have stock ish wheels you definitely want to go to see the driver passenger but it's driver on on this car just open up the driver door got to get my keys so open it the driver door and inside there should be a little plaque see right here it says that my recommended tire size 250 560 are 16 that's that's exactly what they are and my psi is going to be 29 psi front and 32 psi rear so I went ahead and did that I made sure to check all the torque specs on the lug nuts and that includes the ones on the trailer and the trailer actually has this nice little tire loader information loading information yeah so this should be 35 psi I loaded them a little bit more just because this this supposed to be a 13 and the previous owner put 15s the original 13s or right here and he said he took them off because this got a little bit bouncy on the highway and we definitely don't want that you know especially on on this car so another thing that some of you actually inspired me or reminded me to do is transmission cooler so whenever you're towing something whenever you're towing basically anything let me see if I can open this up with one hand this is okay awesome so whenever you're towing anything especially with the car that's not meant to tow the transmission automatic transmission fluid is going to heat up it's like a it's a hydraulic fluid it can get varnished it can get really hot there are clutch packs in there and planetary gears and a lot of other magic stuff that's going on that I don't understand at all but what I did is I got a haydn transmission cooler and this is rated for this kind of stuff that says towing to 2500 pounds so this is a little bit more heavy-duty than you know some some of the lighter duty ones I think this is a universal one it's a slip-on fit and I think it's part number four zero three but what I did is and what their recommended installation is I'm not sure if you can see down there well that's one of the lines so there's lines going to the radiator on the bottom there's a transmission cooler the stock cooler the problem is that stock cooler doesn't really do much so there's a feed line and there's a return line what I did is I left all that in place and just after the return line I cut that return line I fed it into into here so this is going to be basically a lot more efficient cooling because it's right in front of the car it's all the airflow is just going right in there and I mean you can see the fins are are pretty pretty big like there's a lot of airflow going through there and I don't think it's going to have any effect on my radiator or a/c condenser so line goes in there and then line just comes out I coupled it to the just a regular line going to the transmission so make sure that whenever you do this you know when you cut it a little bit of fluid is going to come out but also make sure that you put more fluid you should check how much fluid you have my dipstick is right here check how much fluid you have because this all the lines that that takes up physical space so you're going to actually put be putting more fluid in then then what's in there stock so I don't have to worry about the transmission like the transmissions on this car transmission on this car the 5-speed is pretty damn stout it's it's the same basic model that they put in the the s55 and the e55 like it can handle a lot of power it can be overpaid and underpaid and over overworked without too much of a problem but I just wanted a little bit more extra security so that's that you also want to check your fluids this is my washer fluid that is completely empty but I didn't really care about this because the motor is broken or the fuse is blown or something I don't know I don't have any washer but and you know it doesn't call for any rain it doesn't actually be fine I'll just wipe the window off make sure you have coolant make sure a coolant is topped up motor oil make sure your motor oil is good this is a thousand mile trip so if you're within a thousand miles like I am basically as soon as I get there I'm gonna have to do an oil change Mercedes recommends it at some crazy interval like I don't know ten thousand miles or nine thousand miles and that's that's just not happening so I use Mobil 1 synthetic this is pretty much gonna have five thousand mile changes because I do use it daily and I don't want to have any issues with this engine even though you know if I had to replace the engine it's not really that big of a deal whenever you're towing you also want to make sure that all your lights work and also right here I want to make sure that I tape this up it's pretty ghetto but taped it up just so it doesn't foul on anything and when I turn the trailer the arm that way there's there's enough slack that it can it can get picked up and it wouldn't actually rip off I mean there is a there's this quick disconnect but who knows if that's going to be the that's going to be the failure point also the tow hitch itself needs to be torque down so there's two bolts here two bolts there and then two bolts on the inside the insides are like 50 foot pounds the ones on the bottom which are the really important ones like you bolts and the think they're 5/16 inch bolts yeah those need to be 75 foot pounds so I did all that made sure you know registration all that stuff is is good to go and made sure lights work made sure it's let's see make sure it's nice and sturdy its I actually took it on a test run and it was it was fine it was a little bit slower but it wasn't any I mean if you didn't feel like you were towing any sort of weird load behind you even though there is most likely like 21 22 hundred pounds towing behind me but it is a 5 liter v8 and I'm sure it can take it I think that's about it other than snacks and water I'm gonna have my dog in the car and we we laid out a nice little blanket back there but other than snacks and water and just making sure you get some rest stops in the way there's not much else that you need to do especially on modern cars it's not like you need to check carb I didn't check the carb jets or anything it's I'm pretty sure this car is going to make it oh another thing make sure you have a spare tire a spare tire jack and the jack on this car would not like I needed a spare Jack but all my tools are in there so I don't think I'll have a problem with getting you know the lug bolts off or or getting a jack on there but just in case you definitely don't want to trust the spare the stock jack that comes with this car for anything having to do with that so I think that's about it I think this cars gonna make it I have my fingers crossed again but there's nothing really that should go wrong but you can check out my Twitter tomorrow or during the weekend to see if I've gotten into some some so to say hopefully the trailer doesn't fly off and hopefully I don't get a flat tire or get pulled over but I think we should be good so as always if you did like the video I know this is a short one and I will be doing more actual working on car videos I know you guys been wanting that and I want to do that like it's I mean it's not even about you anymore it's just I want to work on cars yeah if you like the video like comment subscribe if you didn't like the video dislike button I know hit the dislike button I don't just say dislike button when I hit that dislike button and give me some feedback you know let me know what you like what you don't like and maybe maybe I'll change it you know maybe I won't you know I'm a stubborn bastard so who knows but I'm excited to drive this thing a thousand miles is going to be 12 hours and yeah I'll see you if I don't make a video tomorrow then it's going to be sometime next week but yeah I'll see you next time byehello everyone and thank you for joining me again very very lovely day but it is a little bit bittersweet because today is the official last day of me being in New Jersey the Sun is directly in my eyes let me get into the shade but yeah so it's my last day in New Jersey and tomorrow morning at 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. depending on what time I wake up I'm gonna be headed to Florida and I'm going to be doing it in my Mercedes tow rig and there's gonna be a short video I know I told you guys that I would probably do a video about the cars that's my graffiti Lexus if some of you been following my articles in Jalopnik and my Porsche 944 is in the garage I'm going to have those shipped I didn't make a video for that because it was just boring it was just the cars moving from my backyard to my driveway but I think this video is just going to be me explaining a few of the things that I did to make my car sort of a little bit safer to go on this thousand mile journey I said 800 mile in my last video but that was wrong it's about a thousand and fifty miles so I'm gonna go over some of the stuff and hopefully it makes it I mean this is this is fingers crossed guys I've never done this before but I think that it should make it I've doubted my eyes and cross my T's so we're just going to go over that now this car was in pretty good shape to begin with it didn't have any check engine lights nothing like that it didn't have any running issues I think you guys saw my everything wrong with my $3,000 Mercedes s-class but there's not really anything mechanically wrong with it it's pretty stout and in my last video I went over how I did the whole tow hitch setup but a few things before you go on any long road trip you definitely want to check the torque on the lug nuts and you want to check the tire pressure so if you don't know what the tire pressure is on on a specific car and if you have stock ish wheels you definitely want to go to see the driver passenger but it's driver on on this car just open up the driver door got to get my keys so open it the driver door and inside there should be a little plaque see right here it says that my recommended tire size 250 560 are 16 that's that's exactly what they are and my psi is going to be 29 psi front and 32 psi rear so I went ahead and did that I made sure to check all the torque specs on the lug nuts and that includes the ones on the trailer and the trailer actually has this nice little tire loader information loading information yeah so this should be 35 psi I loaded them a little bit more just because this this supposed to be a 13 and the previous owner put 15s the original 13s or right here and he said he took them off because this got a little bit bouncy on the highway and we definitely don't want that you know especially on on this car so another thing that some of you actually inspired me or reminded me to do is transmission cooler so whenever you're towing something whenever you're towing basically anything let me see if I can open this up with one hand this is okay awesome so whenever you're towing anything especially with the car that's not meant to tow the transmission automatic transmission fluid is going to heat up it's like a it's a hydraulic fluid it can get varnished it can get really hot there are clutch packs in there and planetary gears and a lot of other magic stuff that's going on that I don't understand at all but what I did is I got a haydn transmission cooler and this is rated for this kind of stuff that says towing to 2500 pounds so this is a little bit more heavy-duty than you know some some of the lighter duty ones I think this is a universal one it's a slip-on fit and I think it's part number four zero three but what I did is and what their recommended installation is I'm not sure if you can see down there well that's one of the lines so there's lines going to the radiator on the bottom there's a transmission cooler the stock cooler the problem is that stock cooler doesn't really do much so there's a feed line and there's a return line what I did is I left all that in place and just after the return line I cut that return line I fed it into into here so this is going to be basically a lot more efficient cooling because it's right in front of the car it's all the airflow is just going right in there and I mean you can see the fins are are pretty pretty big like there's a lot of airflow going through there and I don't think it's going to have any effect on my radiator or a/c condenser so line goes in there and then line just comes out I coupled it to the just a regular line going to the transmission so make sure that whenever you do this you know when you cut it a little bit of fluid is going to come out but also make sure that you put more fluid you should check how much fluid you have my dipstick is right here check how much fluid you have because this all the lines that that takes up physical space so you're going to actually put be putting more fluid in then then what's in there stock so I don't have to worry about the transmission like the transmissions on this car transmission on this car the 5-speed is pretty damn stout it's it's the same basic model that they put in the the s55 and the e55 like it can handle a lot of power it can be overpaid and underpaid and over overworked without too much of a problem but I just wanted a little bit more extra security so that's that you also want to check your fluids this is my washer fluid that is completely empty but I didn't really care about this because the motor is broken or the fuse is blown or something I don't know I don't have any washer but and you know it doesn't call for any rain it doesn't actually be fine I'll just wipe the window off make sure you have coolant make sure a coolant is topped up motor oil make sure your motor oil is good this is a thousand mile trip so if you're within a thousand miles like I am basically as soon as I get there I'm gonna have to do an oil change Mercedes recommends it at some crazy interval like I don't know ten thousand miles or nine thousand miles and that's that's just not happening so I use Mobil 1 synthetic this is pretty much gonna have five thousand mile changes because I do use it daily and I don't want to have any issues with this engine even though you know if I had to replace the engine it's not really that big of a deal whenever you're towing you also want to make sure that all your lights work and also right here I want to make sure that I tape this up it's pretty ghetto but taped it up just so it doesn't foul on anything and when I turn the trailer the arm that way there's there's enough slack that it can it can get picked up and it wouldn't actually rip off I mean there is a there's this quick disconnect but who knows if that's going to be the that's going to be the failure point also the tow hitch itself needs to be torque down so there's two bolts here two bolts there and then two bolts on the inside the insides are like 50 foot pounds the ones on the bottom which are the really important ones like you bolts and the think they're 5/16 inch bolts yeah those need to be 75 foot pounds so I did all that made sure you know registration all that stuff is is good to go and made sure lights work made sure it's let's see make sure it's nice and sturdy its I actually took it on a test run and it was it was fine it was a little bit slower but it wasn't any I mean if you didn't feel like you were towing any sort of weird load behind you even though there is most likely like 21 22 hundred pounds towing behind me but it is a 5 liter v8 and I'm sure it can take it I think that's about it other than snacks and water I'm gonna have my dog in the car and we we laid out a nice little blanket back there but other than snacks and water and just making sure you get some rest stops in the way there's not much else that you need to do especially on modern cars it's not like you need to check carb I didn't check the carb jets or anything it's I'm pretty sure this car is going to make it oh another thing make sure you have a spare tire a spare tire jack and the jack on this car would not like I needed a spare Jack but all my tools are in there so I don't think I'll have a problem with getting you know the lug bolts off or or getting a jack on there but just in case you definitely don't want to trust the spare the stock jack that comes with this car for anything having to do with that so I think that's about it I think this cars gonna make it I have my fingers crossed again but there's nothing really that should go wrong but you can check out my Twitter tomorrow or during the weekend to see if I've gotten into some some so to say hopefully the trailer doesn't fly off and hopefully I don't get a flat tire or get pulled over but I think we should be good so as always if you did like the video I know this is a short one and I will be doing more actual working on car videos I know you guys been wanting that and I want to do that like it's I mean it's not even about you anymore it's just I want to work on cars yeah if you like the video like comment subscribe if you didn't like the video dislike button I know hit the dislike button I don't just say dislike button when I hit that dislike button and give me some feedback you know let me know what you like what you don't like and maybe maybe I'll change it you know maybe I won't you know I'm a stubborn bastard so who knows but I'm excited to drive this thing a thousand miles is going to be 12 hours and yeah I'll see you if I don't make a video tomorrow then it's going to be sometime next week but yeah I'll see you next time bye\n"