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Well hello guys…
I’ll try to shorten this as much as possible, but, I once was driving with my aunt, and she saw me put the car in N when stopped, then trew the shift stick to L to start on a slow traffic. She though that I was wearing that transmission, but someone else told me about putting the car in N will help prevent overheat, as the transmission fluid will flow more freely trough the torque converter (I guess he owned a mercedes and heard about the overheat problems on some of their transmissions) And I even heard Eric on the “wintering your car” video about going down to L when stuck in snow is going to put lessd stress on it and all that. So, I came up with this idea of asking you about the myths you’ve heard about wear. So there’s mine.I almost forget, I recently heard about a man who just don’t use the clutch pedal to disengage gears on a manual (ovbiously, he does when engaging) and he says that he didn’t get into any abnormal wear because of that…
So, would be cool to have a ETCG1 video about myths on wear. yeah… what do you think?
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Towing a vehicle on its drive wheel. Jump-starting a car with the negative connecter going straight to the dead battery’s negative terminal rather than ground.
I’ve seen enough of this for it to be touched upon, in my opinion.
placing a car battery on a concrete surface?
switching between fully synthetic and conventional motor oil. (I’ve been told once you go fully synthetic, you never go back)
I’ve been busy asking everybody I know about myths, and I got a few quite interesting. Some of them are not service/repair related. they’re likely fancy things:
- Due to the way their aerodynamics are engineered, If a supercar goes in reverse fast enough, it will fly.
- Doing a emission test will be better during a rain, this can be considered a way to cheat.
- To do some close turns on a FWD vehicle, you could try to slightly engage the handbrake (thus, wearing it a bit more) and going slow. It’s not a drift thing BTW.
- Downshifting to brake on FWD vehicles should in some instances do some harm to the transmission.
- Also, there’s no direct benefit of downshifting to brake on these as would be on RWD vehicles, because the braking force distribution.
- A proven one: during a thunderstorm, the safest place is inside the car… (this is where it comes interesting, a new addition to it) but, it doesn’t mean that the car will be ok, there’s a high chance to catch fire if the wheels are filled up with certain mixtures of air, or the fuse box/battery may probably explode if highly loaded. (likely unbeliveable from my point of view, but gotta post it)
- Using water and detergent instead of wiper fluid is valid, and sometimes preferable.
- The water coming from the A/C condenser could probably be distiled.
- Some technicians think that the rear drum brakes MUST spin EXACLY ONE TURN with the wheel installed to be considered as correctly adjusted.
- Few dumb (I want to call them not experienced, as I once was one, I respect them) people lift the car from the suspension arms. (gotta clarify, I’m not saying that lifting it from the joints is all bad, I’m saying lifting it from the middle part of the arm itself, not a mount point which will propably be strong enough.)
- This is one of my favourite ones, I even had done this (Not really car related): If you filter coolant using coffee machines filter, you’ll end with universal coolant, which you can use to fill Computer waterpumps. This also evidences that some coolants have a gooish thing, which stays sticked to the filter.
- You can install a heavy truck horn into a very small vehicle, say, a bike, but it will overload the battery.
- It is possible to clean a bit of the rusty stuff out of the cylinders by removing the spark plugs and cranking/turning the engine. Eric has done this a lot of times, and appears that this side effect exists. To even increase the cleaning, you can use ATF as stated by Eric once, but you’ll end up with a lot of white smoke for a while, and using too much will be a bad thing instead.
When I was a kid my DaD used to drain his antifreeze out in the summer months and fill it with water. Before winter he would drain the water and reinstall the antifreeze again.
His reasoning was that the antifreeze was hard on the hoses and water pump. “Strange One”
He use to add a little can of what was called “Top Lube” to his gas tank that was supposed to lubricate the valves. I thought it was kinda like pissin in the ocean.
I just heard this one:
You can clean your battery terminals and mostly any bolt or fastener with Coca-Cola. It works better if the drink was sitting outside for a considerable time (so it should not be bubbling and must be warm)[quote=”grimreap93″ post=72867]I’ve always heard that if you get two tires of different sizes on the rear, or front that it effects your speedometer, Is this true Eric? Thanks.[/quote]
yes it does effect it. In fact some newer trucks it will cause the check engine light to come on cause the speed sensor picks up readings above or below tolerance
Keep these coming. I’ll answer as many as I can on Wednesday.
https://plus.google.com/b/100195180196698058780/events/c5loh91md6ao2skc0bq5vpet198
half-truth, and it doesn’t include the worst bit.
A different size tire on a driven wheel will affect the speedometer reading. The speedometer is calibrated for the size tires the car was sold with.
Now a different size tire on one side is bad in other ways– the wheel will spin at a slightly different rate, and that may confuse the ABS and traction control sensors, if any, and will cause the differential to be constantly spinning a bit. Not totally deadly, unless the traction sensor tries to compensate by applying the brakes a bit on the fast spinning side. And oh, I hot a light-pole once because I had a very worn tire on one side and spun out on ice.
A few I’ve heard of over the years, which could be true or false:
Starting a manual car with the clutch pedal down saves wear on the starter motor.
Bump starting an engine with a timing chain can make it jump teeth.
Idling a cold engine for extended periods whilst it warms up in winter is bad for wear.
An “Italian tune-up” with flushing oil can fix noisy / worn tappets.
Waiting until the oil temp has reached 100 degrees before driving it hard adds years to the engine life.
[quote=”grimreap93″ post=72867]I’ve always heard that if you get two tires of different sizes on the rear, or front that it effects your speedometer, Is this true Eric? Thanks.[/quote]
I honestly think it does because one time without me even knowing. I had one different size tire on the back and I began noticing my speedometer not being very accurate. I’m not sure if it was just me or the tire. Once I found out, I swapped the tire and never really noticed my speedometer acting up again.
[quote=”SoilPack” post=73506]A few I’ve heard of over the years, which could be true or false:
Starting a manual car with the clutch pedal down saves wear on the starter motor.
Bump starting an engine with a timing chain can make it jump teeth.
Idling a cold engine for extended periods whilst it warms up in winter is bad for wear.
An “Italian tune-up” with flushing oil can fix noisy / worn tappets.
Waiting until the oil temp has reached 100 degrees before driving it hard adds years to the engine life.[/quote]
The first and last I agree with. Having the clutch down will disconnect the clutch from the flywheel. So the starter doesn’t have to turn as hard. I also agree with the last one, it just makes sense. 😛
very basic but still floats around today.
oil needs to be changed every 3 months even if it doesn’t have 3k miles of wear.
oil is millions of years old. It sits in a plastic bottle for who knows how long. Sometimes in 55 gallon drums for months and months or longer. Yet once it gets in an engine its only good for 3 months?
the most well known and practiced myth to date
[quote=”scorpius ” post=73589]very basic but still floats around today.
oil needs to be changed every 3 months even if it doesn’t have 3k miles of wear.
oil is millions of years old. It sits in a plastic bottle for who knows how long. Sometimes in 55 gallon drums for months and months or longer. Yet once it gets in an engine its only good for 3 months?
the most well known and practiced myth to date[/quote]
engine oil, once in an engine, is repeatedly put through severe thermal stress, therefore, breaks down.
[quote=”shaun” post=73593][quote=”scorpius ” post=73589]very basic but still floats around today.
oil needs to be changed every 3 months even if it doesn’t have 3k miles of wear.
oil is millions of years old. It sits in a plastic bottle for who knows how long. Sometimes in 55 gallon drums for months and months or longer. Yet once it gets in an engine its only good for 3 months?
the most well known and practiced myth to date[/quote]
engine oil, once in an engine, is repeatedly put through severe thermal stress, therefore, breaks down.[/quote]
that’s correct. Unless were talking about the proverbial soccer mom that idles the engine for 3 hours a day that only applies to mileage. Most oil even conventional won’t break down in 3k miles. That’s just a standard since its impossible to gauge oil life without testing the oil.
I would add that most of my customers are nervous when I say that they can go longer than 3 thousand. I tell them that is why cars have oil life monitoring systems when the car tells you to change it well then change it.
The most common one I encounter is that you need back-pressure in the exhaust. When you want quite the opposite, just do not run to big of a pipe for the motor.
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