Doing This Will Make Your Car Get Better Gas Mileage
Scotty Kilmer:
rev up your engines, today I'm gonna help
answer a very common question
Scotty all of a sudden my car's getting
worse gas mileage what can be doing that
the first thing to check of course is
the air filter, I don't know how many customers
I have over, their car was running
sluggish getting bad gas mileage, first
thing I did was take the air filter box
out and find out it's all clogged with
dirt, check it every once in a while, I
know people don't look at stuff much
these days but check the air filter,
they get clogged up you're gonna get
horrible gas mileage, and don't fall for
any of those foolish claims that some
companies had that say, Oh our air filter
will get you better gas much it's a
bunch of nonsense, the filter that comes
with the car was designed for the car
and a lot of times if you don't get that
OEM filter but you get a cheaper
aftermarket one, it's worse for the car
because they don't have as much
filtration area in them, and then they
clog up faster so you'll get worst gas
mileage now the next thing about worst
gas mileage is, you want to keep clean
oil and you want the right weight,
whatever your car calls for on the oil
cap use that because of course the
lighter the viscosity, the less friction
the better the gas mileage, I've seen
people put in a heavier weight oil than
the car was designed for, sometimes these
things you'll get 8-10% worst gas
mileage, especially in a modern vehicle
that might use like a 0w 20 oil, that's a
really lightweight oil, it calls for that
use that oil, use the correct oil you
find you had your oil changed and your gas
mileage went down, probably got the
wrong oil in there, now another common
thing that give you bad gas mileage is a
dirty or bad mass airflow sensor, this is
the mass airflow sensor from a GM, if you
look inside you can see there's tiny
little wires those things can get dirty
then they give a false reading, I have a
whole video on how to use mass airflow
sensors to clean cars, it's called make
your car run better with a little spray
cleaner and you might do that every once
in a while to keep the crud from
building up on them, because if these
mass airflow sensors get bad data to the
computer, you can get really bad gas
mileage, anybody who
knows how to use a scan tool you can
plug the scan tool in and and you can read
the mass airflow data, if you're really
into cars hey you can even get a thirty
forty dollar scan tool that'll read mass
flow and you might just want to put it
on your car when it's running normally,
write down the data of what it's like
when it's warmed up and it's idling in
drive and see what the data is, you start
getting worse gas mileage just plug in
your scan tool see what the mass airflow
data is and if it's way off, you can try
cleaning if that doesn't fix it you can
just replace them, they just bolt on and
off they're very easy to change on most
cars, another reason you can get bad gas
mileage especially in a late-model car
you could just have a weak battery,
absolutely everything is run by computer
in modern cars, if the battery doesn't
have enough voltage in it the systems
can go haywire, now it may sound crazy
but I've even had customers, one had a
Mercedes that the engine would crank
fine, but the engine
wouldn't start, and I do have to admit I
spent a reasonable amount of time
checking all kinds of stuff to see why
the vehicle wouldn't start, but I found
out that when I put my battery tester on
the battery showed that it was no good
and it needed replacing, even though it
was cranking the engine pretty fast, now
that would have never happened when I was
a
young mechanic, if the battery went
that was good enough to get a
old carbureted car going but these
modern fuel injected computer run things,
hey it had enough voltage to spin the
engine over but there wasn't enough to
get the fuel injection system, and the
electronic ignition system to fire up,
soon as I put a new battery in start it
up ran like a champ, so as crazy as it
might sound, get your car battery checked
if
you're getting worse gas mileage, and while
you're at it these machines also check
the alternators and the alternator and
the batteries work in conjunction so you
just want a test of both, the whole thing
takes like four minutes with one of
these machines, now the next common
reason I see that cars get worse gas
mileage has nothing to do with the engine
itself, has to do with the transmission
the transmission does exactly what it
says, it transmits the power of the
engine to the wheels to make them spin,
if it's not shifting into all gear
smoothly you're gonna get worst gas
mileage, and if it's slipped you're gonna
get worst gas mileage, the transmission
has a lot to do with your gas mileage
and with modern computerized automatic transmission
a lot of times it's a good idea to pay a
mechanic like me to run a transmission
scan with our fancy scan tools, I've seen
cars like this Mercedes behind me pop up
four or five different transmission
codes when you hook that up, and then I
explain to the customer, that's why your getting
bad gas mileage your
transmission isn't working right, now the
next big reason you can get bad gas
mileage is because the problem in your
braking system, the brakes are supposed
to just do nothing while you're driving
down the road, then when you step on them
they're supposed to squeeze the rotors
or the drums to make all the energy of
the car turn into heat and stop the car,
which is great when they work, but they
get old a lot of times the brakes will stick
on them, all you got to do is jack the car
up
in the air
spin all four wheels, if you see some of
them they drag or you can hardly spin them
at all, your brakes are drag and it would
be like driving with one foot on a
brake and one foot on the gas, now years
ago I had a customer who's getting bad
gas mileage in a BMW, I checked all kinds
of
stuff out and I really couldn't find
anything wrong with the car
so I said, okay let's go for a road trip
you drive, so he's driving his bmw and
I watched him, and he had one foot on the
gas and one foot on the brake, and I said
why do you have you foot on the brake,
he said well they taught us that way, one
foot
on the gas one foot on the brake, so I
made up some flimsy excuse to him and I said
well yeah let me go behind you and I'll
follow you and see if your car looks
weird, well the only thing I was looking
for to see if his brake lights are on
and the whole time he was driving down
the road he had the brake lights on
which means he was driving down the road
with one foot on the brake and one foot
on the gas, and of course he was getting
bad gas mileage there was absolutely
nothing wrong with the car, I couldn't find
anything wrong with that at all
it was cause he had one foot on the
brake and one on the gas, and sticking
brakes will do the same thing of course,
now the last common thing for getting
bad gas mileage is using the wrong fuel
in your car, most modern cars are made to
run on plain ol regular gas and they run
fine, but let's say you've got a car that
needs the super octane gasoline, if you
put in regular gasoline at least in the
modern ones, it'll run okay but it will
get worse gas mileage, it won't be as
efficient, and vice versa as crazy as it might
sound,
if you put high-octane gas on a car
that's made for normal gas, you can
actually get worse gas mileage, the thing
about
high-octane gasoline is, it burns slower
it can take more pressure too before it
explodes, a high compression engine has
to have a fuel that won't ignite too
early, where a low compression engine
doesn't have to worry about that, you put
high-octane gas on a low octane engine,
it's not gonna destroy anything it's not
gonna make it ruin any better either,
but you could actually get worse gas
mileage doing that, hey the engineers
design these things to run as well as
they can on whatever fuel they're
supposed to run on, don't mess with the
way they designed it, they know what
they're talking about when it comes to
that, they have to work their butts off
to try to get these cars get the best
gas mileage they can, and if you go
against the way they designed it that's
a foolhardy move, now I bet somebody's
gonna say, oh Scotty doesn't know what
he's talking about, I got a really old
car it was made for regular gas and I
put high test gasoline on it, and it
actually gets better gas much, yes that
can happen but here's why it can happen,
it can happen because your old engine
hasn't been taken care of and it's
building up with carbon inside, and as
the carbon builds up, carbon takes up
space, so if it takes up space inside the
engine that increases the compression
ratio and makes your engine to be a
higher compression engine now, the more
carbon that's inside there
the less space so when it gets
compressed by the piston, the pressure is
higher, so you're actually driving a
higher compression engine in which case
the higher test gasoline will make it
run better, but if you took such an old
engine apart if you wanted to do a
physics test, clean all the carbon off
made it whistle clean and put it back
together, you'd find that it would get
the same gas mileage that it always did
using regular gas, and if you put high
test in, it wouldn't make it run any
better that's just kind of bizarre
consequence of a carbon up engine, things
are not as cut and dry as people often think
they might be, you gotta understand the
whole picture if you're gonna talk about
an aged engine all the things that can
happen inside them, but for a normal car
modern one you've taken care of, it
says use regular gas, use a regular gas
you'll get the best gas mileage using
that, so now you know reasons that your
car can get worse gas mileage, and what you
can do about it, so if you never want to
miss another one of my new car repair
videos, remember to ring that Bell!
Getting Bad Gas Mileage? You May Need A New Air Fuel Ratio Sensor
Scotty Kilmer:
one, two, three, four!
Rev up your engines!
It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel
today I'm going to show you how to fix a car
that has a bad air fuel ratio sensor on
it, now most people are used to oxygen
sensors on cars that monitor the oxygen
level to make the car run right, but most
modern cars, like this 2003 Honda Accord
v6, use what's called an air fuel ratio
sensor, and if you look closely at it
you'll see it has one two three four
five different wires going to it, now
older cars like this 94 Celica, have an
oxygen sensor that only has one wire, as
you can see down here, this oxygen sensor
just has one wire going to it and then
those oxygen sensors evolved in later
years, to have four wires and a heater so
they warmed up quickly, but the latest
incarnations are called air fuel ratio
sensors, they have five wires in them and
they're much more efficient at making
the car run better, though as you'll find
out soon, they're also much more
expensive to replace when they go bad, in
this case cars running poorly and has
P0134 trouble code, which stands for
oxygen circuit has no activity bank 1
sensor 1, so now you got to figure out
which is bank 1 sensor 1, well bank 1
is the side of the engine that has the number
one spark plug in it, which in this case
is over here by the firewall, and sensor
converter, so it's this one right here,
and at least they didn't change the size
of the socket that fits on the sensor, so
my old oxygen sensor socket works fine
for taking them off, so I just put the
socket on the sensor and turn it to
loosen it, then we unplug the socket that
plugs it in, and then pull it out there
it is, then make sure your new sensor
matches the old one, especially the clip
so they snap in, because a lot of times
they have different sized nubs and they
won't fit in unless there right and
realize that these air fuel ratio
sensors are going to be expensive, that's
the price of modern technology, then you
just stick it back in the hole and
thread it in and tighten it up with the
socket and a cheater bar, and then plug
the connector in until it snaps, then
start her up and take her for a spin,
no more check engine light, and no more
hesitation when you floor it,
so the next time your car breaks an air
fuel ratio sensor, why not replace it
yourself, and remember if you've got any
car questions just visit the Scotty Kilmer
channel.
Why Your Car Gets Worse Gas Mileage Over Time and How to Fix It
Scotty Kilmer:
rev up your engines, today I'm gonna
explain, why cars get worst gas mileage as
they age and what you can do to minimize
that gas mileage loss as your car ages
as an example, here's my 25 year old
Toyota Celica, it was originally rated at
29 miles per gallon highway and now it
still gets 28 miles a gallon, which isn't
bad considering it's got two hundred and
thirty-nine thousand miles on it, now I
can't directly tell you the efficiency
of this car, because it's so old it's obd one
it doesn't have all that fancy new data
I can get on later my car, so I'll show
you a couple other cars where you can
actually see how efficient the car is as
its aging, take this 2004 Honda Civic,
it's ten years newer, so I can use this
to get some serious data, and I'm using
this new tool that I got, it's a launch
X431 pro mini, it's hooked up Wireless
to the OBD connector and we're gonna see
how efficient this engine is running,
all cars are different, this does them all and
as you can see down here, the AF LAMBDA
which is the air fuel ratio, is going
between a perfect one point zero zero
and point nine nine, that means that this
Honda is almost running perfectly, one
point zero zero is perfect and point
nine nine is really close, so even though
this car is twelve years old, it's still
running almost perfectly, now that's a new
customer's car that I've never worked on
before, so I don't know the gas mileage, but on
my wife's old 07 matrix here
that's 12 years old, I know what the gas
mileage is, it was originally rated at 36
miles per gallon on the highway and guess
what, it still gets 36 miles a gallon on
the highway, so if you got a vehicle
that's running at 99 to a hundred
percent efficiency,
hey it's going to get pretty much the
same gas mileage, and here are the key to
getting good gas mileage is twofold, one
you want to buy a well-made car, hey this
thing with 239,000 miles still gets 28
miles a gallon instead of the original
29, so number one you got to buy a
well-made car, but then of course you
have to maintain the car, so that the gas
mileage
doesn't drop dramatically as the car
ages, now the reason
cars get worse gas mileage as they age is
basically wear and tear, as you're
driving the engine, the piston rings have
to seal the Pistons, but if you don't
change the oil enough, gets too much dirt
it wears the piston rings, they don't
seal right, and voila
there goes your efficient engine, and lets
say you never change your fuel filter, if
it gets clogged up the fuel pressure is
gonna go down, it's gonna run poorly
because the computer will keep trying to
compensate for it, and it'll get worse
gas mileage, and realize that these
filters aren't 100% efficient, things can get
by them and if they do get by them, they
can damage your fuel injectors, they can
clog them up yes, but if you get little
pieces, they can actually wear them out
like sandpaper,
then they spray wrong, look at all these
tiny little holes,
that's the spraying end of the injector
if they get clogged or if they get
damaged, then it sprays like a bad
showerhead all over the place and your
gas mileage will have to go right down the
toilet, now in the olden days when cars
had carburetors like this big
four-barrel carburetor, these are
mechanical they just flat wear out and
when it wear out you get really bad gas
mileage, and then you either rebuild it or
you throw away and put in a brand new
carburetor, but these fuel injectors are
much more efficient and if well made can
last a really long time, that Celica of mine
still has the original fuel injectors
on it, two hundred and forty thousand
miles and they're still spraying strong,
so as long as you keep them clean, use
good fuel, keep your fuel filter clean,
they can keep you getting good gas
mileage for a long time, now of course you
want to keep your air filter clean
because if your air filters dirty, you're
not gonna be able to suck enough air in
and the car is gonna get worse gas
mileage, and in many modern cars they use
what are called MAF sensors, mass airflow
sensors, if these get dirty and all of a
sudden you get bad gas mileage, sometimes
it's as simple it's just cleaning these
things, see these tiny little wires just
resistors on them, if you clean them with
some mass airflow sensor, a lot of times
the car will go back to getting good gas
mileage, just to make sure you use mass
airflow sensor cleaner
it's very particular, I've got a whole
video on that called make your car run
better with a little spray cleaner, you
can watch that and it shows how you can
clean it yourself, and if push comes to
shove, you can always buy a new MAF
sensor, you get one of these scan tools
hook it up, you can look at the data and
if it's really bad it'll trip a code for
a bad mass air flow sensor
they just bolt on and off
they're very easy to change, now another
reason as the car ages it can get
worst gas mileage is the brakes, you want
to check them every once a while to make
sure they're not dragging, because if the
brakes are dragging, while you're driving
down the road the brakes are gonna hold
the car back and you're gonna get worse
gas mileage, I even had one customer
years ago the BMW complaining he was
getting horrible gas mileage, so I said
let's go for a ride,
and we went for a ride and it turned out
that he drove with one foot on a gas and
one foot touching the brake, because he said
oh they taught him how to drive that way
in driving instruction school, I got out
of the car later I watched him drive
down the road and sure enough he's
driving on the road and his brake lights
on the whole time, you know whether
you're stepping on it yourself or
they're dragging, you're gonna get bad
gas mileage if your brakes are dragging,
and the last thing I'll talk about in
aging and bad gas mileage is your
automatic transmission, if your automatic
transmission isn't shifting right, hey
you're gonna get worst gas mileage, if it
stays in the lower gears longer or maybe
doesn't even shift into overdrive
there goes your gas mileage and the same
goes for dirty transmission fluid
automatic transmissions drive through
the fluid dynamics and if you got old
dirty fluid with a lot of friction in it,
guess what you're gonna get worse gas
mileage because it has more friction
in the engine and friction takes
energy up, but as I said, if you maintain
your car correctly, you might get one that's
got 240,000 miles on it and it's
still getting almost the same gas
mileage it did when it was new, and as I
said the main ways to achieve that is to
one, buy the correct car and two, maintain it
so it doesn't wear out unnecessarily, so
if you never want to miss another one of
my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell!
Chevy Bolt EV Summer Range Test
Technology Connections:
So I apologize for the shakiness, this is
kind of an unplanned video.
It's not often that you see me outside, but
I'm actually gonna be borrowing the Bolt again
today to do a little video for you.
It is...
hot today.
It is about--it is currently 86 degrees and
it'll go up to a high of 96 which is...
this Celsius.
And I'm going to take the Bolt EV back to
my place, to work, and back which will be
a total of 184 miles.
All highway driving.
And we'll see how it does.
But before we go, I want to show you one thing
here.
Because it's so warm outside I'm gonna have
the Bolt precondition itself.
And I wanted to show--this is the charging
station that it's on.
And as you can hopefully see the charging
station is not supply power to the car 'cause
it's fully charged.
So I'm going to use the remote to remote start
the car and then the charging station will
click on.
[Clunk of contactor inside EVSE]
Hear that big thunk?
So now that orange light indicates that the
charging station is sending power to the car.
And very soon you'll hear the air conditioning
running.
[sound of A/C compressor spinning up]
The Bolt has a variable speed A/C compressor--same
as the Volt with a 'V', it's just more efficient
that way and it can run any amount of refrigerant
it needs to.
So I'm gonna let the car run like this for
about five minutes to get nice and cool.
That way, right now it's pulling power
from the grid; it's not using its battery at all.
So by preconditioning the cabin like this
we're gonna get a little bit better battery
range.
And then once it's cooled off, I'm gonna
get in the car.
We'll use my dashcam and I'll show you a bit
of the drive that I'm taking.
OK one more thing before I get going--I'm
sitting inside and it's nice and cool in here
but the car is not actually on and it is still
plugged in.
So I'm gonna turn it on 'cause I want to show
you one thing.
Some people are worried about this.
[warning chimes as vehicle starts up]
So I wanted to show you--notice how it says
the charge cord is connected 'cause I'm still
plugged in?
It will not let me shift into gear.
If I try...
[warning chime]
"Conditions not correct for shift"
[warning chime]
"Charge cord connected"
So a lot of people freak out about what happens
if you move your car while it's still plugged
in.
The answer is nothing!
Nothing happens.
Because it knows its plugged in and it won't
let you move.
So I want to apologize for the dashcam footage
because the dashcam that is in this car--
I got dashcams for my mom and dad for Christmas
one year, and it's the same one as in my car--and
it's a wedge style dashcam.
And there's a blue windshield tint on the
Bolt and so it's looking through that a little
bit.
So everything looks pretty blue, and I'm gonna
do my best to correct that.
So this Bolt unlike probably many Bolts EVs
spends a lot of time in rural areas on country
roads like this one.
This is IL-29.
I'm heading North to get to I-180 to take me
to I-80.
Peoria.
And, well, we're just entering Bureau county
right now so this EV spends a lot of time
in a rural setting not anywhere near a city.
We are about 120 miles away from Chicago right
now.
And part of why I want to make sure people
understand that is because even for people
in a rural setting, if they have access to
a home charging station which can recharge
the car in about 10 hours from empty... you
know this car works for a LOT of people.
I see so many comments about EVs "They're
city-dwelling car's only, you can't take them
outside of the city".
This car doesn't even live in the city most
of the time!
It either spends some time with me in the
suburbs or a lot of the time out here!
This is not the city!
So I have cruise control set to 70 MPH which
is how its gonna stay for a good portion of
this trip.
70 MPH is actually not idea for an EV's range
because generally you want to stay to 65 or
less, but I'm intentionally keeping it at
70 because I don't want to paint the picture
that I am trying to hypermile here.
I'm really not.
I'm gonna keep up with traffic as best I can.
And according to the car it is 89° outside,
so we've got some nice toasty warm weather.
This part here getting to I-80 is one of the
most challenging parts for this car as far
as range goes because--if you can hopefully
tell in the dashcam--we're actually going
at a pretty significant incline.
Where my parents live is one of few areas
in Illinois that aren't completely flat.
It's still pretty flat but there are some
river valleys around here.
And, uh, so there's some pretty wild changes
in elevation.
Right now to go up this hill maintaining 70
it's taking 37-38 kW which is a lot of power.
But now we are back to flat land as far as
the eye can see.
By the way, just as common courtesy you should
do that.
Like, if someone's on the side of the road
for whatever reason move over for them.
The person behind me didn't, and there's no
one around me.
Don't be a jerk.
And by the way in Illinois if that's a cop
or an emergency vehicle you HAVE to get over
and if you don't you will get pulled over.
Just ask my dad about that.
Here we are on I-80, everybody's favorite.
Big East-West Interstate, going from New York
to California, all the way across.
I think it's New York, maybe it's New Jersey.
Uh, anyway, I'm not going to try and hypermile,
remember?
I'm keeping speed set to 70.
If I pass a truck I pass a truck, if a truck
passes me, a truck passes me.
I'm not gonna follow one.
I'm trying not to present this as a "you have
to be careful to drive an EV" thing, I want
to show you what it's like if you're just
driving it like you would a car.
So I've got cruise control set to 70 MPH,
which is the speed limit.
Yeah, you might be going a little higher than
that on average but I will at least do that
much.
Well, that's not hypermiling by any stretch
of the imagination but I will at least do
that--get that little bit of range out of
it.
But now, we're on this road for the next 60
miles or so.
We have just under 100 miles left in this
journey and we'll see where we are when we get there.
The temperature reading on the car is now
94°!
It's going up!
Did you know that in Illinois there's a warp
tunnel to Peru?
It's right there.
Just take that exit, you're in Peru.
They even have a Menards in Peru.
Oh you know, I should probably say I have
the cabin temperature set to 71° F, so I'm...
In my winter range test, I kept the cabin
temperature pretty cold because I have a heated
seat, a heated steering wheel and I was bundled
up.
Some people complained about that.
Well now I have the temperature really comfortable.
Perfect for driving, it's 94° outside but
71° inside--nice and comfy here.
As we are moving into the 44th mile of this
journey we have use 12.2 kWh which is, uh,
a little worse than average.
If we go with the EPA rating, 12 kWh should
get us 48 miles.
But we've used 12.3 and we've only gone 44.7
miles so we're a little bit behind but not
a whole lot.
Here in Illinois we also have a warp tunnel
to Ottawa.
Just go that way and find yourself in Canada
all of a sudden.
I'm about to be passed by a Tesla!
I'll give him a nod.
Hello!
Eh, he seems unimpressed.
He's also not running a front license plate,
tsk tsk.
OK, so I just noticed that--and I've heard
some wind noise but you can see in the trees,
or I could see in the trees of the right I'll
have to back the footage up a bit, but I'm
facing a pretty significant headwind.
Which is weird because I'm going East.
And usually if I'm going East there's a tail
wind.
But you know, sometimes...
It seems every single time I want to do a
range test in this car the wind condition
is the wrong way.
So we're still gonna be fine but just to give
some context, right now wind is not helping
me.
It's hurting me.
So keep that in your head while you're thinking
about the range here.
Every time I take this ramp there's a truck
at the front going 25 MPH.
Ugh.
Come on in, Mr. 4Runner.
Welcome to this lane.
I bet you knew you needed this lane a long
time ago but just now is when you decided
to get in because ya know,
that's how we do
things!
Oh, and thank you so much for letting me know
you were exiting, I really appreciate that signal.
We really have a model driver in front of
us, ladies and gentlemen.
Alright, so.
We are now back and I'm parked in my garage
just because I want to keep the car out of
the sun.
Just get that little bit, tiny bit of an advantage.
But we weren't super efficient this time,
we took 31.9 kWh to go 113.4 (miles).
And that's probably...well I'll do the math
12.5% lower than what the EPA estimate would be.
And, uh...
I really did not account for the winds today
I didn't think it was gonna be that windy.
So I just want to point out climate settings
was only 4% so, and I've said this a lot to
people--air conditioning is not that big of
a load for an electric car.
So even though it was 94° outside for much
of the commute--it got a little cooler once
I get towards home but it was still about
88--I've been keeping the climate control
set at either 71 or 72 and that was only 4%
of the energy usage for this entire trip.
So air conditioning is really not a huge deal.
If we go to the main center cluster you'll
see that it's predicting 98 miles of range
remaining.
And I have 70 miles that I need to go further.
Now if I were a rational human being who wasn't
doing this test I would plug the car in because
I have 2 hours of charging that would give
the car another 40 miles of range at least.
But I'm not going to do that!
Because I want to test this range and I really
think it's gonna improve for my drive to work
because I typically go a little bit slower
and also we'll be going North-South rather
than East-West, so we'll see what happens.
Okeydokie.
[Music from car intro screen thingamabob]
Alright so I did not plug in the car--you'll
notice it says "Plug in to Charge".
And our range estimate actually went up by
one mile because it realized that we went
into a cooler place.
So we are still at 31.9 kWh with a distance
traveled of 113.4.
Now we're going to drive 34.2 miles or something
like that and then we'll see where that puts us.
[sound of electric acceleration on the on-ramp]
Alright so the trend line this early into
this leg of the journey is right in the middle.
There is no direction going up or down, but
as we cut back in here we've gone about 6
miles.
Our max range is 110 and our minimum is 76.
Currently we're predicted to go 93.
So I can see that the guess...
I can see that the trend line is starting
to creep up which I expected it to do so,
especially because I looked outside and the
wind around here seems to by dying down.
I'm no meteorological expert but I did notice
it was getting cooler as I headed toward my
place which is closer to Lake Michigan and
I'm wondering if there was a high pressure
area over the lake as it always keeps the
air above it colder because it's a big body
of water, and maybe that was forcing air out
towards the West and that's why I had the
head wind.
I don't know.
But in any case the wind is much calmer right
now, it's 93° out according to the car, and
we will be up at my work within the next half-hour
or so.
Also, I should point out that I'm not taking
a huge risk here.
If there are people who are like "Oh my God,
range anxiety!!!"
I know two things, one my boss is fine if
I plug in at work so if for some reason I
get to work and there's way less range than
I think I'll plug in, but two--the O'Hare
Oasis which you keep seeing signs for has
both a Level 2 AND a DC Fast Charging charger
available for the car.
So if I needed to on my way back I could
just stop at the oasis.
I've never actually used the DC fast charging
on this car--I won't do it unless I need to.
One day I'm gonna test that, but not right
now.
But it looks like that trend line is creeping
up some more and driving conditions seem much
more favorable.
Also I'm trying to keep up with traffic in
this lane.
I'm not hypermiling but also people tend to
go way faster than I want to on the Tri-State
so I'm not gonna join the left lanes but I
will stay here and keep up with the guy in
front of me.
I know I said I wasn't gonna hypermile and
it may look like I'm hypermiling because I'm
here in the right lane and everybody's passing
me but if you're unfamiliar with the Tri-State...anything
goes here.
I am, to put it.... well I'm speeding.
I'm going a bit over the speed limit.
Everybody else is...
Woah!
Now in Illinois we have laws where you need
to follow traffic flow so really I'm going
under the "speed limit" but, ugh.
I'm just in the right lane because I don't
want to go a fast as the other people are
going.
Alright, I am now at work.
And that is our final, we are actually just
at 40 kWh used which is 2/3 of the battery.
We went 148 miles so that means we could go
50% more assuming we have the exact same average
efficiency we had so what would that be?
74 on top of that, so about 221 or so.
Which is actually right about what it predicted
when we first turned on the car.
So then going over to the speedometer cluster
area we are at a minimum of 61 miles, predicted
75, and if you recall it said that--we started
at 100.
So the range meter only went down 25 miles
even though we drove 34 and that's because
it was just more efficient driving this time
and we weren't facing that wind.
And still, our climate settings have now accounted
for 5% of our usage but still that's very
very little and I'm still keeping myself comfortable
even though the temperatures are in the 90's.
Alright so I just got out of work.
Yes I work in the evenings.
It sucks.
I drew the short straw working this particular
time on Memorial Day, but let's see where
we're at.
It is showing 78 miles.
It's not exposed right--there we go.
78 miles.
So let's turn it on.
That's better.
Alright.
So we have 34 or so miles ahead of us.
I'm sure we'll make it.
OK now that we are back on the Tri-State headed
southbound, I normally keep my speed to 68
on this segment and then I slow down a little
bit as I get towards home.
I don't have traffic to keep up with because
it's late at night so I'm just setting the
speed that I always do.
And again, I'm not trying to hypermile here
I'm not gonna follow a truck.
Yeah I'm going a little bit slower than the
average person, but really not that much slower.
And we will see what sort of range we have
when we get home.
So, uh, we'll do a bit of a time warp.
So I took us out of warp speed because I wanted
to explain for those who have never been to
Illinois--the oasis that I was mentioning
that has the charging station that we're about
to go under, it's more obvious what it is
at night.
I don't know...they've been around for many
decades, in fact there's a Williams pinball
machine from I believe the 1960's called "Highways"
which has one of these oases on its backglass.
There's some trivia for you.
But anyway, these highway oases are on the
tollway here and it's got restaurants and
stuff.
And it's built above the tollway as an overpass--it's
kinda cool.
So you can see Auntie Ann's and Starbucks
maybe in there.
And, so... do other states have those?
I don't know.
Not all of them in Illinois are built over
the road like that, some of them are just
off to the side.
But the ones that are built over the road,
you know you uh... depending on which direction
you're going you enter through one door or
the other.
And you can't turn around which kinda stinks
but you wouldn't really need to in most circumstances.
But anyway, that's what the highway oasis
was and over there by the Mobil gas station
there is a DC fast charger.
I have not used it myself but I have seen
it and people on Plugshare have rated it so
that would've been there as an option.
But as it stands I'm still showing 56 miles
of range remaining and I'm more than halfway
home so no need to stop.
Aright, we are now back home and we have gone
183 miles today which took 48.8 kilowatt-hours.
And the car thinks we will be able to do another
47.
The trend line was pretty high up towards
that max 55 but that's because I was going
less than 60 MPH for the last bit of this
journey.
But, uh, if we do our little math here...
Uh, the EPA estimated range of this car is
238 and we are...
oh man I'm so bad at math in my head.
...223...
OK we would have gone 230 so we're actually
only 8 miles shy of the EPA estimated range
assuming that our efficiency stayed what it
is because we were going 40...
If we had 47 left, with the 183 that we did
we would be a 240...
no (guffaw) 230 miles
so that's only 8 miles off.
I am bad at this.
So this is gonna cost me about $5.50 in electricity,
so not bad.
We did 183 miles of driving on $5.50.
I also wanted to show you the experience of
plugging it in.
Because, you know, people feel like this is
so hard.
There's the charge port.
I actually have like the hardest way to plug
in of anybody because my charger's all the
way over here.
And I gotta unfurl the cord.
And we're just gonna walk back to the car...
And, plug it in.
And just for your enjoyment you're gonna hear
a bunch of sounds.
You're gonna hear some relays clicking, you're
gonna hear the actual charging station back
there make a big THUNK, and the car's gonna
make a couple other weird noises.
And then, it beeps.
Just push that in.
[click]
[THUNK]
[other odd sounds]
[beep]
So incredibly complicated.
And then the car will tell you when you open
the door when it will be done charging.
Its estimate is going to move up a little
bit.
Oh, I have found a bug.
Let me close the door.
[startup music]
It does that a lot.
OK.
So it says that the charge will be done by
8:30 AM and, uh.
Often times that estimate will go up a little
bit as I plug in because this is a 32 amp
charger but it's only on 208 volts.
So it's actually a little bit slower than
my parent's charger even though the charger
itself--the Clipper Creek HCS-40--is a larger
charger.
It's on 208 rather than 240V so it charges
a little more slowly.
So maybe they actually--the car's software
was updated over the air recently and I don't
know if it affects the instrument cluster
but maybe it did.
In the past it used to be you would open it
after I plug in and it say "charge complete
by 7:00...7:15...7:30...7:45" as it realized
it was on a lower voltage but today it didn't
do that.
So I hope you enjoyed this video on the Chevy
Bolt EV’s summer driving range.
Although it missed the EPA estimate by just
a hair, I think it’s still pretty impressive
since for much of my drive the car was facing
a headwind, and all of the miles were strictly
highway.
Unlike a conventional car, an EV does better
in stop-and-go city driving because it can
use regenerative braking.
On the highway, there’s no braking going
on so its range will drop.
This partially explains why the EPA range
estimate for Electric Vehicles is so much
more conservative than the european or asian
estimates for the same vehicle--being so spread
out in the US, highway range is more important
here.
Anyway, thank you very much for watching,
please check out my Twitter feed if you’re
into that, and a peek at my Patreon page would
be much appreciated if you’d like to support
what I do on this channel.
I’ll see you next time.
The Best Spark Plugs in the World and Why
Scotty Kilmer:
rev up your engines, today I'm going to
talk about the best spark plugs for your
car's engine and why they are the best
ones, now over the past hundred something
years spark plugs do one basic thing in
a gasoline engine, they fire the air and
fuel mixture so there's an explosion
that pushed the pistons down, now the
early spark plugs hey they didn't fire
all that great, the really early ones
you could actually take them apart into
different pieces, clean them and fix them, put
them back together and use them over, and
after that for decades and decades most
spark plugs had copper electrodes in them,
copper is a good of conductor of
electricity so they would conduct the
electricity that would make the spark that would
fire the gasoline air mixture, but if you
know anything about copper hey it may
conduct electricity quite well but it's
extremely soft, so what happens is it
would wear out in a reasonably short
period of time, back in a day when I was
a young mechanic, hey you'd be lucky if
you got twenty thousand miles out of a
set of spark plugs, sometimes we had to
change them even closer if it was an
engine that was worn and burned some oil,
so they didn't last all that long, then
they went to platinum spark plug, because
platinum hey it's much harder, it keeps
its sharper edge long and where the
spark plugs fire you want a sharp edge
for the spark to fire correctly, Platinum
spark plugs can easily last a
hundred thousand miles and another
advantage of the Platinum spark plugs is
they generally run a little bit hotter
than the copper plugs do, it's running
hotter they burn the deposits that get
on your spark plug off better so the
spark plugs can last a lot longer, even
if your sparks firing right if it gets
clogged up with unburned carbon parts it
won't fire right, but then came Iridium
spark plugs the top-line ones now,
iridium is six times harder than
platinum, so it lasts even longer, plus it
has a 700 degree hotter melting point
than the Platinum does, so they can last
an awful long time these Iridium spark
plugs,
I personally have seen some Chevy v8 engines
that had two hundred thousand miles on
them and the Iridium plugs had never
been changed and it still ran fine, now
of course the iridium once cost more but hey the
price keeps coming down, now you can
easily get them for seven or eight
dollars a piece and there's a big reason
that many engines now use iridium plugs
from the factory, and that's because
they're making spark plugs harder and
harder to get to, as an example this
Lexus behind me is a v6, the front three
cylinders are real easy to get to,
they're out in the open the front three
simple to get to, but the back three are
under the intake manifold and you have
to take the intake manifold plenum
completely off to get to those three
smart plugs, it is a gigantic job, and
there's many modern engine designs that
are even worse than that,
some of them you practically have to pull the
engine out of the car to change all the
spark plugs, so iridium makes sense if
you can get two hundred thousand miles
out of a set of spark plugs hey most
people are gonna be happy with that,
now the copper then the platinum then
the Iridium, those are the three main
plugs that go into cars, but there are a
bunch of these wild and crazy
manufacturers that design plugs that have
four electrodes or are made all even
different materials and they claim they
boost your horsepower and make you a
better gas mileage well, stay away from
that stuff it's just nonsense, now ages
and ages ago a spark plug design could
have made a change like in the 60s where
you had points and condensers just
mechanically opening and closing and
firing the spark plugs through the
distributor, a lot of those systems
didn't have all that much power and if
you replace the stock spark plug in those
with one that fired better they would
have actually run better, but it spent
decades and decades since theirs been points
and condensers, all the systems are
electronically controlled now, the stock
spark plug that comes with the car is
what's designed for the car and will
generally work best,
again in this 94 Celica hey it's got
electronic ignition in it, the stock
Nippon Denso was the best plug for it, it
was designed by engineers it's the right
fit and speaking of the right fit, let me
tell you a horror story, years ago I had
a customer come over here with a 300
Z nissan sports car, and it
clacking like mad and I said, well when
did this start and the guy said, well I
changed my spark plugs and right after I
changed the sparks it just started
making all that noise, so I said okay
let's stop right there, I pulled out one
of the spark plugs, I looked at the spark
plug and I could see the top of the
spark plug was hitting something it had
metal shiny parts on it where it was
wearing, well nothing's supposed to touch
the top of the spark plug in the engine,
I went to my auto parts store and got a
set of six spark plugs, and I measured
them against the spark plug that I'd
taken out, well it turned out that the
spark plugs he installed were like this much
this they stuck in the engine this much
higher, and it was actually hitting the
top of the Pistons, it turns out he used
a discount auto parts store and the
software that they had strangely enough
was typed up in South Korea who knows
these days what kind of technology goes
on, and one of those guys made a mistake
and they said that these long spark
plugs belonged in his car that had
shorter spark plugs, they sold him the
wrong ones, now he was extremely lucky
because he did it fast and brought it to
me and I put in the right ones and after
about a day of driving the noise went
away, so it didn't really seem to have
damaged it in the long run even though
that noise was pretty rattling to his
peace of mind when he started it up and
heard it, so really you can't beat the
stock spark plugs, always try to get the
same exact spark plug the car came with,
and don't trust anybody take one of your
old ones out and when you take it out you
can either match the number this has a
big number on it, or at least when they
sell it to you match it up to make sure
it's the same size and that's exactly
the same length of threads as your old
one, because you don't want one that's
too deep that's gonna hit the pistons or
one that's too shallow and it won't fire
the flame correctly, engineer spent years
refining engine designs,
refining the spark plugs that go in them
your going against all that knowledge if
you decide to swap out to a different
spark plug, it has to be the right size
and it has to be the correct heat range
for normal driving, but that said there
is one exception, you had a car that say
came with a
Platinum sparkplug or a copper sparkplug
you could upgrade to an Iridium spark
plug if an Iridium spark plug is made
that will fit in there, you're not gonna
get more horsepower, you're not gonna get
better gas mileage, but you're gonna get
longer life, like in that Lexus it didn't
come with iridium plugs but I put them
in, because it was such a pain to take
that manifold off I put in Iridium spark
plugs, now I have to admit the platinum
spark plugs and I took out of it had
nothing wrong with them, I had to take
off the valve cover gasket on that side
because even though it was a Lexus things
wear out eventually and it was 16 years
old and this stupid little rubber gasket
on the valve cover was leaking oil, I
figured as long as I'm taking that
manifold off so I could change the valve
cover gasket I"m going to change the spark
plugs too, if they make an Iridium spark
plug that will fit in your engine when
you go to an auto parts store and they
look up and you match it with the old
one that's the same size, go right ahead
and put an Iridium version of the
original spark plug, but don't think that
there's some magic spark plug out there
that's gonna make your car run better by
some crazy design that somebody thinks
is going to work inside an engine better
than what the engineers designed it for
and since this is mechanic Monday I'm
giving away a set of original equipment
spark plugs, to have a chance to
win just place a clean non offensive
comment on the youtube comments below
and the winner will be chosen randomly
by a computer to get brand spankin new
original equipment spark plugs for their
car's engine, so if you never want to
miss another one of my new car repair
videos, remember to ring that Bell!
How to Increase Gas Mileage in Your Car
Scotty Kilmer:
rev up your engines, today I'm going to show
you how to get better gas mileage in
your car, now I've been a mechanic for
the last 50 years and believe me, I've
seen every scam known to man that
promises better gas mileage, you don't
want to fall for any of those, for
instance there's one that was called the
tornadoes, this asian company was selling
it
they claimed, you stick this in the air filter
and it would make the air go like a
tornado vortex and get better gas
mileage, total nonsense, the things don't
work, now lately some guys have been
making videos on this HHO scam, where you
get electrolysis and you make the water
turn into hydrogen and your car burns
the hydrogen, but that's a scam too,
because you use more energy and
electricity to break the bonds between
hydrogen and oxygen than you ever get
burning the hydrogen, it's just a silly
thing that people are making multi-level
marketing companies and ripping you off
selling these kits, I've even had guys in
the past, claimed that if you put these
magnets on your fuel line it makes the
molecules line up and they burn better,
of course that's total nonsense
too, years ago a guy gave me one of those
kits, he said Scott you're such a great
mechanic, you got to see this invention
you get better gas mileage,
well I tested it out and I said, it's
nonsense it doesn't work, then he said I
was an idiot and I didn't know what I was talking
about,
he sure changed his opinion on me when I
told him the truth, but there are real
things you can do to get the best gas
mileage, first make sure you got a clean air
filter, realize for every gallon of
gasoline that your car burns, it also
burns about 1100 cubic feet of air, if
you don't have free-flowing air, you're
going to use more fuel with less air, so
just make sure you got a good clean air
filter, then make sure you're using the
right oil for your car, it generally
says right on the top of the engine, in
this case it says use 5w30 energy
conserving oil, and in many newer cars,
it'll say use zero w 10 oil that's a
full synthetic oil that's very light,
because the lighter, the oil the less
friction inside the engine, the better
gas mileage you're going to use, and remember
to change your oil frequently, because
dirty oil, guess what it has more friction,
you're going to get worse gas mileage
because there's more friction with dirty
oil, and if you use a full synthetic oil,
like this dirty old bottle and I found
lying under some leaves in my yard I
forgot about, realize they do flow better
and I've had customers switch from
regular synthetic oil and they will get
slightly better gas mileage, now the next
thing is air pressure in your tires, you
want to have the correct air pressure or
you'll get too much rolling resistance
and get worst gas mileage, and realize if
you're really a fanatic about gas
mileage, there are tire companies out
there that make special tires that have
less rolling resistance, you will
actually get a little bit better gas
mileage, you can check it out it's not
made up, they have tread designs so they
have a little bit less friction and they
get better gas mileage, and since the
more weight you have, the worse your gas
mileage, make sure you got a relatively
empty trunk that doesn't have a bunch of
heavy stuff in it, the more weight you
carry, the worse your gas mileage, so
basically remove all the excess weight
in your car that you don't need, unless
you're going on a trip and you're
carrying a bunch of stuff sure, but for
everyday driving keep your car pretty
empty, and perhaps the best tip is drive
conservatively, my grandfather had a
customer years ago before they were
computers in cars and he said, you tuned
up my car but it's getting horrible gas
mileage, what you do wrong, so my
grandfather the mechanic said, okay let's
go for a ride, so he went for a ride with
the guy, he'd slam on the brakes at the
stop light, step on the gas and tear off
when he was taking off, and my
grandfather said, you're lucky you're
getting the gas mileage you do, the way you
drive like a maniac, conservative driving
patterns are the biggest thing for gas
mileage, that's why when you're on a highway
going 60 miles an hour, you get the best
gas mileage, because the car is conservative
it's going at a lower rpm, it's not shift
and up and down, you're not stepping on
the gas, stepping on the brake, and here's
an odd fact that I found out years ago
if you're driving on the highway you
actually aren't going to get worst gas
mileage turning off your air conditioner to
cool yourself down, because rolling down
your windows actually creates more wind
resistance and you're going to get a little
bit worse gas mileage with the windows rolled down
to cool yourself down, then you are with
the windows rolled up with the
air-conditioning turned on, so now you
know what you can really do to get
better gas mileage in your car, so it will
last as long as it possibly can, and you
spent the least amount possible on fuel
so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell!
How to Remove AC Smells in Your Car (Odor Life Hack)
Scotty Kilmer:
one, two, three, four!
Rev up your engines!
It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel
does your car smell when you turn your
air-conditioning on, sometimes it gets as
bad as a dirty cat box, but don't blame
it on your cat, because it's actually
bacteria growing inside your vents
that's making that smell, deep inside
your air-conditioning system it's dark
and damp, and it's exactly what bacteria
likes to live and breed in,
here's an old a/c evaporator that I
just changed in a car, and as you can
see, there's all kinds of mold and
bacteria growing inside, so when you turn
your air conditioner on full-blast,
that air is blowing mold and bacteria
right into your face, but don't give up
and drive down the road wearing a gas
mask, kill that mold and bacteria with a
little disinfectant spray, now as a
professional mechanic I have all kinds
of machines and tools to flush out an
a/c system, but I found that often a can of
Lysol every couple of months
will do just as good of a job, just turn
on the air conditioning, and turn off the
recirculation, you want fresh air coming in,
then turn the fan speed to full blast,
then rolled on all the windows, front and
back,
disinfectants are pretty strong, so you
want to roll the windows down, so the
older blows out,
then go to the front of the vehicle by
the windshield, and if you feel with your
hands, you can feel air being sucked in,
that's the intake, spray about half a can
of Lysol into the intake,
and make sure you do both the drivers
and the passengers air intake side, so
spray the passenger side too,
you want the cleaner to saturate all of
the inside of the air-conditioning duct
work, it'll kill all the mold and
bacteria, so the smell will go away, now
as you can see, this stuff is pretty
strong, it says hazardous to humans and
domestic animals, and that's why you want
to leave all the windows open, so it'll
air out, and if you're really sensitive to
odors, you might leave the windows open
overnight in your garage, so the whole
vehicle airs out completely, now if
you're living really hot and humid
place like I do, Houston Texas, you might
have to spray the stuff in, four or five
times during the summer, to keep the
bacteria from coming back, they multiply
rapidly, so the next time your
air-conditioning starts to get stinky,
throw away your gas mask, and clean out
that bacteria with a little Lysol, and
your nose will thank you, and remember if
you've got any car questions, just visit
Scotty Kilmer.com and I'll answer them
as soon as I get back from this ride!
Chevrolet Spark 1.0 LS BIFUEL/LPG AIRCO!
Ruesink Enschede:
How to Fix a Car Engine that Burns Oil for 10 Bucks
Scotty Kilmer:
How to Clean Fuel Injectors in Your Car (Without Removal)
Posting Komentar
Posting Komentar