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Hello everyone and welcome. In this video, I have teamed up with Progressive, and we're going to be talking about simple checks that you can make on your car at home. I would recommend doing this at least every six months, if not more often than that. Certainly, some of these items you will want to check more often than once every six months, but these are simple checks that you can do at home to make sure your car is in good running condition.
We're going to start with the exterior of the vehicle, looking at the tires, the brakes, and the suspension, and then we will dive under the hood and start looking at filters as well as fluid checks.
Starting with the tires, there are three things we want to be looking at: the tread depth, the tire pressure, and how the tire is wearing. Starting with the tread depth, on all tires you'll have these wear bar indicators. You'll notice them within the grooves. What these indicators tell you: if you roll your finger across from one tread block over to the next, over top of one of these tread wear indicators, and it runs perfectly smooth across rather than falling down into the groove and then back up, then that means you need to replace your tires.
Next, it's important to make sure your tires are properly inflated. You'll find the tire pressure information on the inside of your door jamb or within your owner's manual. You want to make sure that the tire pressure doesn't get too low, because this can result in uneven wear, worse fuel economy, and an increased chance of hydroplaning.
Finally, we get to tread wear. If you look at your tire and you notice that the center of the tire is wearing down more than the outside of the tire, then that probably indicates your tire pressure is too high. If the outsides are worn down but the center isn't as much, then your tire pressure is likely too low. If you notice that one side of a tire is wearing far more than the other side, then it likely means you need your alignment readjusted.
Next, we're going to inspect the brakes. I've removed the wheel using the spare tire kit from the back of the vehicle, but oftentimes you won't actually have to remove the wheel. You can simply look through the holes in the wheel and look at your brake pads. A new brake pad will typically have around 12 millimeters of pad material remaining, and you want to start thinking about replacing it once that pad material gets down to about three millimeters. If you've only got one or two millimeters left of pad material, you want to replace those brake pads. Often times, when these brake pads get down to about three millimeters, they'll have a metal indicator in there, and you'll start hearing a screeching sound from your brakes, letting you know that it's time to replace them.
Moving on to the shock absorber, you want to make sure you don't see any fluids leaking out of the damper. You also want to look for any visual damage on the shock or on the springs and make sure everything looks like it's in good working condition. Again, you don't have to remove the wheels to do this. You can simply rotate your steering wheel all the way to one side, look in from that angle, rotate the steering wheel all the way to the other side, and then look in from the other angle.
Okay, now let's take a look underneath the hood. The first thing we're going to look at is the engine oil. You're going to want to find the dipstick and pull it out. As you pull it out, we're going to wipe down the entire thing using a towel, so we're going to clean it off. That way we can get a good reading once we insert it back in. Once we know that it's clean, stick it right back in, then pull it out and read it.
Looking at the dipstick once it's pulled out, after you've cleaned it off, stuck it back in, and pulled it out once more, you will see that there are two little indicators. There's a hole right there, and there's another hole right here. You want your oil level to be somewhere between these two, and you can see that here it's right at the end, right at the high fill line. Now, if it's right towards the bottom or if you don't see any oil, you might want to add about half a quart to the engine, then recheck the engine oil level using the dipstick and add as needed. You want to make sure, though, that it lies between these two indicators.
As far as how frequently you should be changing the oil, refer to your owner's manual. One thing you also may want to look for is milkiness in the oil's color, which can indicate that coolant is getting into your engine oil, and that is a big problem you don't want to have happening. So just make sure that it's either clear or starting to get darkish. That darkish color comes from the oil holding contaminants before you change it out.
Depending on your vehicle, you're going to have different fluids that you need to check. For example, this vehicle has electronic power steering, so there's no power steering fluid to check. You do want to check the brake fluid. You'll see a max and a minimum indicator line on the brake fluid reservoir, and you want to make sure that the brake fluid is between those two lines. You'll see the same thing on your coolant reservoir. Somewhere near your radiator, or coming from your radiator, you'll have an expansion tank for the radiator, and you'll see a min and a max line. You want to make sure that the coolant falls between the min and the max line. Of course, top off your windshield washer fluid as needed.
Next, we move on to filters, and there are two filters we're going to want to inspect. The first is the engine air filter. Oftentimes these don't require tools to gain access. You can simply pull these out and inspect them with just some clips, which are used on this. You can see there is a little bit of debris in there, but overall it looks pretty good and still very clean. You can shake out some of that debris and then put it back in, or replace it with a new filter.
The second filter we want to check is the cabin air filter. You'll generally find this behind the glove box, and it usually won't require any tools to remove. Simply pop it out and inspect. This one is looking okay, but it's definitely got some debris in there, so I'll tap some of this out and perhaps consider replacing it fairly soon. There is a good amount of dirt and debris stuck in there. Go ahead and slide it back in, and then we'll place the glove box back in.
It's also a good idea to check your wiper blades. You want to make sure that it's a nice smooth, continuous surface that doesn't have any cracks in it, and that the rubber isn't starting to deteriorate. It should still be flexible so that it maintains good contact with your windshield.
Finally, you want to make sure that all of your lights are working properly: your headlights, your indicators, and your brake lights. For the brake lights, you can either have a friend check them for you while you press on the brake pedal, or you can set up a mirror or use your phone to record them, and make sure that all of your brake lights are working.
Hopefully this has provided you with some useful information. These are easy things to check over on your car, but they can save you a headache in the long run and could save you some money as well if you catch a problem early. Thank you all for watching, and thank you to Progressive for partnering on this video.