Tag: cars

The Worst Trends in Modern Cars and Trucks

Rev up your engines, today I’m gonna talk about some of the worst trends in modern car design, and as far as I’m concerned the worst one are those massive giant grills that all the manufacturers seem to be copying each other and putting on, like the Lexus grills, now yes beauty is in the eye of the beholder but those massive grilles are just absurd, because in many of them a large portion of that grille does nothing, it’s actually just covering up part of the frame of the vehicle it’s not that air is going through the whole thing and cooling the car down, now as a counterpoint to that, hey I had a 2013 Shelby gt500, it didn’t even have a grill it just had a giant gaping hole because it needed a hole that big to suck enough air in, so that it could go 200 miles an hour and cool the car down without it overeating, not that anybody really needs a car that can go 200 miles an hour, but at least that’s form following function not just some absurd ridiculous looking massive grill, now they’re all coming out with it, when I was a young mechanic the Americans had the Fin Wars, they kept making the fins bigger and bigger and bigger, and they served no purpose either it wasn’t like those things were going 240 miles an hour it didn’t make them that much more aerodynamic, they just liked the look at these giant fins coming out of the back of them, the next bad trend is turning everything into an SUV, Hey there are now Porsche SUVs, Lamborghini SUVs, even Bentley SUVs, because mark my words, not just a stylish thing, but they’re big vehicles they’re high up in the air, almost all of them get pretty poor gas mileage, in the future when the price of gas goes up, these things are not going to be as popular, and many of them come in all-wheel-drive, fine if you live in a snowy area or something but in normal driving in places like here in Texas, you get worse gas mileage as all-wheel drive, it cost more money to fix, it costs more money to build, you have to buy all four new tires when you need a tire, because if some tires are off size from the others, that will ruin the all-wheel drive system and cost you thousands to fix, which a lot of people don’t really understand until it happens to them, now another trend that I think is bad is the trend towards removal of not only full-size spares in a car, this Lexus still has a full-size spare, to the use of those mini spares, this matrix only has one of those little donut spares inside here, to some modern cars that have no spare tires at all and even have an air pump or the run flat tires and you can drive on when they run out of air, really run flat tires they cost a fortune if you get a flat on that cost a fortune to fix, and because of their inherent design of being strong, they actually get worse gas mileage, because they have more friction in them driving down the road, and at least that’s a trend that seems to already be going away, they seem to be giving up with these run-flat tires, I mean you have a problem where your tires shredded, even the run flat tires can get shredded, you’re gonna be stranded in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing better than a real spare tire that you can put on and go your merry way, now the next trend I’d like to see go away is the use of those ultra low-profile tires, now this lexus has normal tires and they serve a very good purpose big sidewalls they absorb bumps so they ride smoother, they can go through potholes without getting serious damage and they protect the rim, these aren’t cheap rims, if you go to these real low-profile tires, some of those cars ride like wagons, you feel every bump, if you live in a city like me with pothole roads, or in a country road with pothole roads for that matter, they will eat the rims up I’ve seen guys just destroy the tire and the rims on just a medium sized pot hole, yeah you can zoom around in them and corner real fast and stuff but for a normal driving car they’re kind of stupid I’ve had many BMW customers that cursed the day they got one with these low-profile tires, they kept having to buy tire after tire after tire, their super expensive tires and a lot of times they end up the rims too, that’s money wasted that you never need to spend if you just have normal tires that work perfectly fine, now the next thing that I find stupid and a ridiculous trend is the installation of fake vents on a car, for example the Buick envision has fake air scoops on hood, they don’t do anything they’re fake they’re just stuck on there, they don’t suck air or anything it’s just kind of ridiculous, and along the same vein the fake exhaust tips coming out of a car, even Mercedes getting into it, they put these space-age looking things come out of the back but there’s just regular round pipes going into them, they don’t serve any purpose at all, they’re just fake to look like they’re doing something they aren’t, now the next bad trend as far as I’m concerned is those bejeweled headlights so that at night your car looks like a spider with all those eyes on it, they look weird enough but personally I find them very annoying when people are coming at you on the other side of the highway if it’s just a little divided highway with not much room between, they kind of blind you with all those lights coming out at you they make you want to wear your sunglasses at night, hey I already do that, and the last trend, one that I really can’t stand is the use of plastics for these headlight assemblies, that’s one thing I had to replace on this Lexus cuz the old ones just got all foggy and cracked, but this is a trend that I know they’re not gonna go away from, because it’s cheaper to make plastic, and you can make it any shape you want to fit any design, but really plastic, clear plastic the headlight you know what’s gonna fog up over time rocks are gonna hit it, it’s not such a hot idea, now if you watch some of my videos I show you ways that you can protect these plastic headlights so they lasts as long as possible, but hey when I was young they were glass headlights you never had to think about anything and if they did crack those glass headlights in those days cost like 5 bucks versus many of hundreds of dollars for the OEM ones and when you go aftermarket a lot of times the aftermarket ones, they’re so poorly made they crack too really fast, so now you know some of the worst trends in modern cars, now let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope they don’t come up with a whole bunch of new ones in the future, so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!

As found on Youtube

5 Cars That Will Last 300,000 Miles or More

Rev up your locomotives, today I’m gonna talk about five vehicles that can go 300,000 miles or more, actually just about any vehicle can go 300,000 miles or more if you don’t mind spending all kinds of money putting another locomotive or a transmitting and spending a lot in mends, I’m talking about ones that you don’t have to spend a small fortune to construct them get to 300,000 miles , now I’ve actually encountered three vehicles in my period that went over thousands and thousands of miles, one was an age-old Volvo p1 800 sports car, one was a Ford f-1 50 pickup, and the other one was a Toyota Camry that went over a million miles, and to understand how this happened sure they had to be well-built vehicles, but in all three of those cases those were vehicles “thats been” driven mainly on the superhighway at route speeds because realized if you’re going 65 miles an hour all that breeze is cooling down the engine, the petroleum is lubricating accurately you’re not get any kind of buildup in the engine because it’s burning fast and getting rid of some of the pollutions, so highway mileage is actually equivalent to about 10% of metropolitans stop-and-go driving, the absolute worst thing you can do for a car is to continuously shut it off and then later starting it back up, because most of the wear on your locomotive passes during startup when the top of the engine doesn’t have the petroleum in it, the bottom doesn’t it’s got a pump the pressure to the crest, so you’re going on the freeway for 10 hours at 65 miles an hour, your barely get any wear at all, taxi cabs in New York City that travelled more than a million miles and you’d envisage, how can that be stop and run stop and go, but from what I’ve read of those they did not have the original engines and disseminations they had a lot of fixings done, so it’s not like it was somebody merely bought a car drove it a million miles in brand-new york city’s stopping and proceeding, that’s a commercial-grade thing and that’s completely different , now one reason people want a vehicle that will last three hundred thousand miles or more is because people drive more than they used to in the United States, it’s a fact today 2019, hey you might be watching this video in the future and that’ll be the past but, Americans average about 15,000 a year, and in the 60 s and 70 s that used to be 12 thousand miles a year, but of course that’s just an average, many people drive twenty to thirty thousand miles a year, living in suburbia the commutes are longer, everything is set up so you got a drive to get somewhere, so people are driving more and more, in ten years so an average person will drive like a hundred and fifty thousand miles well that’s almost double what people were driving in the sixties and seventies, autoes are eventually gonna start to wear out, and you got to decide hey when is it so worn out that’s gonna cost me more money to restore it, then it’s worth doing, well that’s why I’m showing you five autoes it was able last-place 300,000 miles or more, and I’m talking about lasting out without “ve had to” engine replacing or transmission replacing, when it gets to that tier you got a car say it’s got 150,000 and you find out “youre gonna have to” shed seven grand in an locomotive, most people will say I’ll travel get something else and I won’t secure it , now the first automobile that I’m gonna pick that can go 300,000 miles or more, is the venerable Toyota Corolla, there are millions and millions of them out there, my 94 Celica is basically a Toyota Corolla, and behind that the 2007 matrix that’s basically a Toyota Corolla too, I’ve had many of my own personal customers over the last 50 times get more than three hundred thousand miles on Toyota Corollas with the original engine and the original dissemination, and it wasn’t like the rest of the car falls apart either, they’re well made and since there’s millions of them out there, they’re also much cheaper to restore there’s an insane aftermarket of decent proportions that you are able to put one over ones that are even twenty thirty years old these days, I even had a customer a few years ago, he bought a used Corolla from a pal of his, for five hundred bucks and it had two hundred thousand miles on it, it was still going over three hundred thousand miles and he’s still driving the thing, what a deal paid five hundred bucks for a automobile, drove it another hundred thousand miles and didn’t have to do the engine or the transmitting over, recognize it that when you go small like a Toyota Corolla, there’s less load to draw itself, less load to wear out the tires and the struts and all else, a lot of times moving a bit smaller is a good if you want long life in private vehicles , now the next vehicle that can go 300 thousand miles or more is the Honda Civic the Civic is basically Honda’s competition to the Corolla and like the Corolla there’s millions of them out there, and since they’re generally a little bit zippier than a Corolla, a lot of kids like the civics they soup them up, they’re strong locomotives Honda is notorious for strong locomotives, I’ve had customers with civics with well over 300 thousand miles on them a schoolteacher and that’s what she drives and I’ve got teenage kids that have souped up ones, of course they are likely not last-place 300,000 miles they’re either gonna get wrap around a telephone pole, or their gonna blow the engines up by over revving them, but if you take care of a civic it can last-place a really really long time , now the next vehicle that can last 300,000 miles or more, is the Grandpa’s car, the old Crown Victoria, yeah they don’t establish them anymore, but they’re simple-minded old-school technology, pushrod v8 body on an actual frame, those things can last-place a very long time, and of course in this respect the Lincoln Town Car and the Mercury Grand Marquis, they can last-place a really long time if you take minimum care of them, that’s why when they still built them, you’d see the crown vics be useful for police car, they were solid basic vehicles with frames, they are likely to last-place a really long time and if you didn’t mind a relatively poor stop-and-go gas mileage, the issue is okay on the highway for gas mileage , now the next vehicle that can last 300,000 miles or more might surprise you, the Mazda Miata, a little bitty Mazda sports car, I remember years before the miatas were even built, a lot of people would say Scotty why doesn’t somebody figure out how to get a British sports car and put a Japanese locomotive in it, well Mazda pretty much took that suggestion and stimulated the Mazda Miata, a totally Japanese stimulated vehicle with a Japanese locomotive that moved cliques around the English sports cars, in terms of the fun factor, that they always started up, they get good gas mileage, they were fun to drive and they didn’t break down all the time like the British sports cars did, and of course there’s still inducing them, the 2010 into 2016 miatas hey they got one of very high faction ratings by the owners who bought them and drove them around, they’re fun little automobiles, that’s said if you want to get one certainly get the standard transmissions, because the manual transmission ones, specially the older ones, could scarcely get out of their own way, and those automatic transmissions would break down as they got older, where the standard transmissions, there is an opportunity only keep going and moving and travelling their so much simpler, if you’re into buying a applied sports car that’d be the one I tell you to buy, because I’ve had clients buy one that had 150,000 miles paid, one thousand twelve hundred dollars for them, and drove them for years we’re pretty happy with it, and rarely would I tell somebody to buy a used sports car but the Miata, likely the best pick up a ill-used sports car if you’re thinking about long life , now the last vehicle that you can buy what you can get 300 thousand miles or more as far as I’m concerned, is the Ford f-1 50 pickup path post-world War two Ford truly has moved the pickup, the F150 series the top of the line for serious pickup truck drivers, of course they got a whole assortment of options in them, but truly if you want to go 300,000 miles or more in one of those, get yourself the good solid v8 locomotive now the only thing that I’ve got against them, is the manual transmission is the weakest relate, I’ve got patrons get four hundred thousand miles or more on an f-1 50, but generally by then they’re on their second automatic transmission ford has a pretty good structure where the government had mill remanufactured communications that are pretty good that you are able to have put in, so if you’ve got one it’s got 250,000 miles and the communication travels out, my advice is, put in one of the Ford remanufactured automatic transmissions and go on your merry lane for years and years , now commonly when I have a custom-made with real high-pitched mileage and the communication moves out, I say I just get rid of it’s not worth it, but on those f-1 50 s hey the engine and torso still in good shape, you are able to as well as set a transmitting in it if you want a truck like they have to drive around, I would never ever tell somebody with a Chrysler pickup truck to set a transmitting in it if the vehicle had two hundred thousand miles on it, odds are has become a chrysler by then the whole vehicle would be falling apart and there’d be no sense to expend all that money putting the dissemination in it, so if you want to keep your vehicles 300,000 miles more , now you know five of them that have stood the test of hour, and can do simply that, so if “youve never” want to miss another one of my brand-new vehicle fixing videos, remember to reverberating that Bell!

As found on Youtube