Doing any vehicle maintenance by yourself is enjoyable and challenging, but also rewarding at the same time. Millions of car owners have started to learn how to maintain their vehicles. The question is, can you keep up?
Well, there’s still time to know your car and be your own mechanic at your own garage. After all, your car is a machine, and machines need maintenance. No other people can be trusted on its maintenance but you, the owner.
Previously, I wrote an article about 7 car upgrades that you can do on your own. In this post, I’ll share with you 8 vehicle maintenance that you can easily DIY. Lets get started!
Vehicle Cleaning Chores
One of the most obvious and quite essential responsibilities of a car owner is basic and advanced vehicle cleaning.
Basic cleaning include exterior car wash and polishing jobs (including tires and wheels), glass cleaning, engine wash, and interior cleaning that involves vacuuming, steaming, applying protectants and much more.
Of course, most of us know how to do the aforementioned tasks right? Those cleaning jobs are easy and requires no expensive tools.
But as I’ve mentioned in this post, there are various areas in your car that requires cleaning attention. And I call this the “advanced cleaning maintenance tasks”.
These tasks requires patience and a little bit of skills and knowledge. Okay don’t react as I’m not yet done. The following tasks that I am going to mention are all DIY-possible jobs. Here are some of the vehicle cleaning maintenance tasks that you need to learn to DIY.
- AC system
- Brake system
- Windshield drainage cover
- Air intake system
- Carpet cleaning (floor and ceiling carpets)
These tasks might feel daunting especially if you are not a seasoned DIY geek. But if you start working on honing your mechanic skills, these cleaning jobs will all just be a walk in the park.
Engine Oil Change
I can’t stress this enough guys. Yes, auto shops are beginning to offer customers with cheaper and more reliable change oil services. But this doesn’t mean that you should not learn changing your own motor oil.
Yes, changing your own oil won’t give you that master’s degree or special recognition from your girlfriend or wife, but it will surely be an added skill advantage for you if you know how to change your own oil.
I’ve written a few posts about oil change and I would like you to take a visit on these posts to give you a better perspective about this topic, or better yet, to help encourage you to do DIY jobs.
Once you made your first oil change, I bet you will never going to visit your favorite auto shop ever again.
Flush the Cooling System
Flushing or changing your engine coolant isn’t rocket science, trust me you can do it too!
The cooling system of your car consists of coolant, radiator, hoses, water pump, thermostat, and coolant sensors. As a car owner, you better know how to change coolant yourself.
Why? Well, you will never know when your cooling system is going to fail you. Issues might come from degraded coolant, rusting, clogged or leaking radiator, bad hoses, malfunctioning thermostat or water pump, or even a simple bad radiator cap.
So to prevent your car from overheating, at least you must know how to flush the cooling system yourself.
This post will give you an in-depth guide on how to do a coolant flush.
Battery and Alternator Diagnosis
Another important vehicle maintenance that most car owners neglect to learn and understand. Your battery is the power storage of your car while your alternator is the one that produces electricity to power all your vehicles accessories including your engine.
If you don’t know how to diagnose your battery and alternator, then you will be shock if one day your car won’t start because of either a weak battery or a failing alternator.
Back in the old days, diagnosing car batteries and alternator is quite stressful because you need to do certain tasks just to identify if the issue is with the battery or alternator.
But today, you can easily diagnose these two by just using a multimeter or a simple battery tester gadget that is specially designed to do this task.
Here are some of the best battery and alternator tester gadgets in Amazon that you might like to include in your garage tool box.
Below is my own video showing how to use a multimeter in diagnosing a failing battery and alternator. The video is in Tagalog language but has English subtitle, so enjoy watching!
Replace All Filters
Your cars have various type of filters that helps prevent dusts and debris from damaging your engine, fuel system, transmission and many others.
As a car owner, you should be able to at least learn 1 or 2 filter change so that you won’t always be at the mercy of auto shop mechanics.
What are the filters in your car that can easily be replaced or clean? Here are the list:
- Air filter/cleaner
- Fuel filter
- AC cabin filter
- Fuel strainer
- Transmission filter
- Oil filter
- Diesel particulate filter (DPF)
Oil filters are replaced during oil change to prevent any metal residues damaging your engine. Air filter or cleaners are the easiest filter that anyone can easily do. Check your air filter and if it is already dirty and black, then you need to replace it with a new air filter. The same goes with your AC cabin filter as well.
Fuel strainer is found mainly inside your fuel tank. If you have a sedan, this is accessible at the back seat. Just take out the cushion and you’ll see the opening. For diesel engines, you may need to access the strainer by removing the entire tank or simply through an opening like those in small car sedans.
Fuel filters are tricky filters that are situated differently for all vehicles. For sedans, some are found within the fuel lines underneath your vehicle, so you have to lift your car in order to get to them. Others like in SUVs and trucks, they are easily accessible inside the engine compartment. Wherever your fuel filter is placed, finding them is always a part of an enjoyable DIY journey!
Transmission filter is found inside the transmission pan. This is usually replaced in conjunction with ATF change. So see your owners manual and check the right mileage for this task.
DPF can be cleaned by using various cleaners that you can simply add to your fuel tank. However, it is still best if you remove the DPF itself from the exhaust to achieve thorough cleaning.
Inspect and Replace All Other Fluids
Your car doesn’t just contain oil or coolant, it does have a few more fluids on its system that you need to inspect from time to time.
This include the following fluids:
- Power steering fluid (if your car is not electronically driven)
- Automatic transmission fluid (if you have automatic transmission)
- Manual transmission fluid (for manual transmission)
- Clutch Fluid
- Brake Fluid
- Windshield washer fluid
Out of this bunch, windshield washer fluid is the easiest to learn to DIY. Just pour some fresh fluid into your reservoir and you’re done.
Clutch, ATF and manual transmission fluids are similar tasks which requires you to go underneath your car and unbolt the drain plug and fill in fresh new fluid. Take note that you need to know the right fluid for these job.
Power steering fluid also needs flushing though you can simply change the fluid and retain some of the old fluid for an easier DIY task.
These maintenance jobs seems daunting, but once you try changing fluids yourself, you’ll learn that it’s easy as 1, 2 and 3!
Change Spark Plugs
If your car is a petrol engine, then your engine contain spark plugs, which are integral part of your car’s ignition system.
Spark plugs supply the needed “spark” that ignites the air and fuel mixture which creates an explosion. This enables your engine to produce power.
A bad spark plug (the quantity depends on the number of your cylinders) can result to ignition failure, abnormal RPM or even stalling. So it is quite an advantage if you know how to replace your car’s spark plug.
I will do a specific video on this topic soon so stay tune in my channel!
Changing Tires
Every owner must know how to change their own tires, especially if you do long distance drive. This is also important for female drivers that sees this job only suitable for men.
But that’s not the case. You need to know how to change tires or re-inflate tires because you’ll never know when an emergency will struck.
To avoid any inconvenience with your tires, checking your tires in a regular basis is a must. Check its thread wear, pressure and alignment. All these contribute to tire-related accidents like blowout, which can be deadly to you and also to other motorists.
So the next time you see your tire is deflated, you might need to change your tire yourself. How? Watch the video below.
