21 Auto Repair

Are you being overcharged by your mechanic? We have all wondered t A lot of jobs mechanics love to overcharge for and there's a reason for t But a few of these jobs are really easy to do yourself and they can be done with basic tools. So I'm even going to demonstrate them to you using these two ve The first job mechanics will overcharge you for is actually super common and that is your spark plugs and your ignition coils. The reason I group these together is because they're very closely connected they're actually attached to one another and it's essentially the same job to remove them. To get a coil replaced with the mechanics probably going to cost you about 140 bucks and if that mechanic says well you need to do all six on your six cylinder motor well that's You can go out and get and you can get a spark plug for eight dollars so if you're doing a six cylinder motor it's Well how do You need a code reader and I always They're right on top of the engine and you may have an engine cover of some kind that comes off easy. All it is an electrical plug I use my screwdriver to help me pop them off they're often a 10 millimeter but it's going to be a small socket holding the coil in place. The coil slides right out that's it if I need to replace it I put a new one in the same way I took t Now if you want to do your spark plugs at the same time you just need a spark plug socket that fits and extension and you're going to go right down that hole that the coil is in. On four cylinders and a lot of six cylinders Now on some six cylinders or more you can get one bank of plugs and coils that are harder to get to they may take a little more time maybe some extra tools but for the most part t So the second job I want to talk about is getting your oxygen sensor replaced. Now oxygen sensors are a common cause for check engine lights and a mechanic is going to charge you anywhere between two to five hundred dollars to replace one. Now replacing an oxygen sensor has varying levels of difficulty depending on the car but most of them are incredibly easy and you can get an oxygen sensor good quality one online for Now t Well it's not random t Professional auto mechanics have access to these labor times via commercial paid software so they'll take those times and slap on their hundred t Now the reason t So on t Now he's marking up the price of the actual part and also he's maybe getting a book rate of 45 minutes or an hour to do that sensor but it will probably only really take Auto shops have a big overhead so if they can lean into t So this is why if you really do need to take your car into mechanic using a website So let's get back to oxygen sensors. Now they're gonna be on your exhaust system. You'll have some that are more easily accessible underneath the car But before we take t Now oftentimes you can just get a normal wrench onto an oxygen sensor and take it out but if you've got a really sticky one or it's in a difficult to reach position they do make sockets designed specifically for t It can be a little bit sticky so you might want to use a half inch drive wrench to really get some leverage but pretty easy overall. Hey if you're liking t Now if you're interested in finding out more how to find and diagnose oxygen sensors we have a great video that we made that you can check out right here. One of the biggest money savers I've seen is doing your own transmission fluid changes. If you go to a shop probably going to charge you a few hundred dollars at least to change the fluid in your transmission whereas you could do it yourself for The tools required for t A lot of the fittings for drain and fill plugs are going to be just bolts some of them are going to be a 3-8 ratchet fitting some of them will be actually Changing your transmission fluid every car is going to be set up a little bit different but they're all going to have three basic steps involved draining the old fluid putting in new fluid and checking the level of that new fluid. Now one t So when you do this method you're only getting a third to a half of the fluid and If you're interested in my method you can check out our video that we made on transmission maintenance up here. You always want to start with measuring how much you took out and that will tell you roughly how much to put back in. On every car it's a little different where you fill it on t Some cars have a plug on the top some you fill through the dipstick you just want to check your individual model. Obviously on this car I'm having to get it into the side of the transmission so I So now that the fresh fluid is in there I'm going to start up the car now I'm going to cycle through all the gears I'm going to let it sit in each gear or five seconds or so neutral drive and now we're going to check the fluid level. On t Again make sure that you're following the instructions for your specific model. On a lot of cars though it's as simple as getting the car started and checking a dipstick. The fourth job is brake service pads and rotors and in my opinion t I just talked to a lady who paid over $1200 to get brakes done on all four corners of her car and that's crazy considering that it was probably $300 worth of parts. Now part of that So instead of paying $1200 at the mechanic for a brake service job you could pay just $300 in parts and do it yourself and it could be even less since sometimes you don't even need to replace your rotors even though the mechanic says to always do it. Now if all you have is the jack and tire iron that came with your car to do the first t So a little trick I At t So we're going to fully disconnect the caliper it's a good idea to somehow hang it from So you can see at t I'll put a wrench on it and I Now sometimes these rotors can get really stuck on with rust or corrosion. We've got a great video on how to remove stubborn rotors you can check out right here. The fifth job I want to talk about is struts or shocks. So if you were to take this car in to get the front struts replaced at a mechanic they'd probably charge you between five to seven hundred dollars but if you were to just buy the parts for this job it's It could be even less if you transfer the old springs over to your new struts. We ran out of time so I'm going to show you footage from t So you want to jack the car up get the front wheel off and then basically you're going to start a bunch of busy work so that's going to be taking off ABS lines removing any other brake lines then you're going to get those two big main bolts off the bottom of the strut that attaches it to the hub. Also you're going to want to disconnect the sway bar link and then you can go up top under the hood and there's usually three small nuts that you take off the bolts. Some cars will have a single larger nut that you'd remove that will allow the strut to drop down into the wheel well and then the old one is out and you reverse the process for the new one. So as you can see it's not hard lots of little busy work might take you a little longer but absolutely somet See you on the next one.