How to Tune Up a Car Engine

Video Transcript

"Hi, today, we're here to talk about how to tune up your car. Well, long story short, tune up a car is a generic term. What exactly does that mean? Does it mean we rotate the tires? Does it mean we change the spark plugs? Does it mean we change the coolant? Does it mean we look at the brakes? Absolutely, all of the above. In years past, every 10,000 miles, 15,000 miles, the manufacturer wanted you to adjust the carburetor, they wanted you change the spark plugs, possibly set the dwell on the points in your distributor. Several parts that were moving got out of adjustment and needed to be readjusted at predetermined times. That was considered a tune-up. Late model cars do not have any of this stuff, with the exceptions of spark plugs, they still have. But the spark plugs nowadays are manufactured to last a very long time. What I recommend is to follow the manufacturer's recommended guidelines for any scheduled maintenance to include what would be considered a tune up -- spark plugs, and that sort of thing. As you can see, this car right here, where the spark plugs? Well, we have to take apart the engine to even get to the spark plugs. And once we get to them, they're covered by ignition coils. This is a coil over plug setup, which means the coil -- there's six of them -- over each one of the spark plugs. Now, that's very expensive. We don't want to start arbitrarily replacing parts that don't necessarily need to be replaced. That's when we fall back to the manufacturer's recommendations, as I'm about to show you. This is an example of a factory recommended tune-up. It has our mileage interval, which is 60,000 miles, and it has a very specific checklist. Inspect automatic transmission fluid, inspect the brakes, inspect the brake pads, inspect the drive belts, the evaporative emission system, the fuel tank, the fuel filter, the fuel lines, intake and exhaust valve clearance. That's critically important to the way the car runs. Now, we move on down to the parts that they say replace. They want you to replace the air cleaner. They do not tell you to inspect it. They say replace it. They say replace the coolant, replace the engine oil, and replace the spark plugs and rotate the tires. This is what the manufacturer recommends as per a tune up. Now, each mileage interval will be different. And if you can notice, a lot of the stuff is the same inspections that the manufacturer wants you to do over and over again. And the reason for that is we want to make sure they're running at their optimum level at all times."