And we do welcome you to the CNC Auto Show.
You jump in, buckle up, and hold on. I'm your host, Aaron Clements, and I'm here to answer your automotive questions, share some tips, talk about cars, and have some fun. And along with answering those automotive questions, I'm here to share those tips. And today, some of the tips I have to do with vehicle warning lights. That's the way that your vehicle can communicate with you to let you know either something's good, either something's bad, or if it might want a little bit of attention there. And we want to talk about what they mean, what they do, and what you should do if you see certain lights come on. And I would love for you to call in also and share some tips of your own.
You might have had a light come on at one time that you did something about and made things better, or it may have caused you some heartburn. So give us a call. The number is 706-863-5800. And you can also listen to the show by going to ccautoshow.com. Just pick your platform, and of course iHeart, and all of them there. So just tune right in. Okay, we will read the Tech Tip Quiz real quick, and then we will go to the callers. And of course, if someone wins that Tech Tip Quiz, they will be inducted to the Tech Tip Quiz Hall of Fame.
And they will also win a t-shirt. So all you have to do is give us a call to answer that question. And here it is. Susan is 16 years old and knows very little about cars. She was riding down the interstate, and a light came on.
Even though she knew almost nothing about cars, she pulled over and repaired the problem in less than 20 minutes. What did she do? If you know the answer, give us a call. And again, 706-863-5800 is the number. And we will go straight over to Robert. Robert, welcome to the CNC Autoshow. What can we help you with?
Yeah, I got a 2012 Chrysler 300. And it started, temperature hands started going up and stuff. So I put a water pump, a dump there, and then I had a crack in that reservoir bottle.
I bought a reservoir bottle and put it on there. But it's still trying to get hot. And then the other day I noticed, like I filled it up, and I didn't even crank it up.
But when I went back out there the next day, the water gone. Okay, now the running hot part, does that do that when you're riding down the road, or does it run hot when you're sitting still? It'll do it when you're driving down the road.
Okay, driving down the road. Okay, and there's no question that when it does this that the engine is hot, because you can tell that the engine is like smoke coming out anywhere, or is it overflowing, boiling out the coolant jug or anything like that? Okay, all right, now one thing you want to find out is if the system has any leaks in it. Now to do that, you normally would take a pressure tester, or put it on a pressure tester. But sometimes you can just crank the engine up, let it run until it gets under pressure on its own, and you can look around and see if you have any leaks. That way the preferred method is to let the engine cool off, put a pressure tester on it, and see if anything comes out that way. But you probably don't have a pressure tester with you, because very few people do unless you work on cars all the time. So with that, you might fill it full of water, and then make sure that you don't see after it runs for a little bit gets up to operating temperature, you don't see any leaks coming out anywhere. If you don't, then I would let the engine cool back down. Now this is something you could do yourself if you decided to, but unfortunately, some of the things you're saying, well, you know, I got something else I'm gonna mention first. That vehicle, when it gets low in coolant, did you go through a bleed procedure on that car to bleed the cooling system?
No, I didn't. Yeah, there's a bleed procedure. That one may even have a bleed valve at the top of the engine. But anyway, on those vehicles, if you add coolant to them, and you don't bleed the cooling system afterwards, there's a chance you might have an air pocket stuck there somewhere, and that could cause the engine to run hot. Like you said, sometimes it'll go like not necessarily all the way hot, but you know, it gets hot and then all the sudden it'll come back to high weight, you know, keep on riding, don't have nothing. Then sometimes it'll go over there and then, you know, it'll start steaming. So you cool off, pull over, and let it wait a few minutes, and it cool off, crank back up, and be high weight, and keep on going. Yeah, and I will tell you that many, many cars now have bleed procedures that you have to use when you add coolant, or if you change any component, or if the engine runs fairly low, and run fairly low in coolant, if you don't run that bleed procedure, you will have running hot issues. So I would find out for sure if that one does have a bleed procedure, because I was trying to remember, there's so many different engines out there. I know they say it had on that when you on that thumb that it got a little screw thing right there, they say that's where you you bleed it at or something.
Okay, good, good. Yeah, that one I was thinking that it did have a little screw at the top, but you can more than likely get the bleed procedure from Google. You can just Google the engine and say coolant bleed procedure, and you should see something on there that should make it to where you can bleed the system out. Now, if it's not that, unfortunately, there is the possibility that you've got a head gasket issue that's letting combustion gases get into the engine, it getting into the cooling system, and that would cause some issues that way. And if you... That's what I was telling the man, okay, ain't no water getting in the oil, and then it ain't steaming that day, you know, like I said on that, it should be steaming out the tailpipe. It ain't steaming out the tailpipe either.
Yeah, you're exactly right. So I'm leaning toward it possibly being air in the system that you need to bleed out, but if not, you can, there's a device that you can get from O'Reilly Auto Parts, and it's a chemical tester. I don't think they're major expensive, and if you like to work on your own vehicles, you can get this. Hopefully you wouldn't have to use it very often though, but it's a little deal to where you pour a blue chemical in a little container, and then it sits on top of the radiator or overflow jug, and you pull air from there, you pump a little bulb on there, and it pulls air up across that chemical, and if the chemical turns yellow, you do have head gasket issues. If it stays blue, you're okay. So I would go through the bleed procedure first, and after the bleed procedure, if you still have an issue, then I would run that chemical test on it.
They call it the block tester. Oh, okay. Okay, and I'm hoping it's going to be a bleed procedure. All right, then I appreciate it. All right. Okay. Well, thank you. Well, I tell you, while I got you, Robert, while I got you on the phone, do you want to do you want to answer our Tech Tip quiz for us?
No. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna read it to you real quick again. Susan is 16 years old, knows very little about cars. She was riding down the interstate at the time, she was riding down the interstate, and a light come on. Even though she knew almost nothing about cars, she pulled over and repaired the problem in less than 20 minutes.
What is the answer? The gas needs the gas cap needed. Tighten it up. Replay the gas cap.
Ah, that's not a bad try there. I tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna wait until we hang up before we do the ah button. How's that?
Is that fair? Okay. Robert, good luck with that.
I hope it just needs some bleeding on that system. Have a great weekend. Okay, the number to call is 706-863-5800.
And that's the 8 to 10 Eastern Time. And we will be right back after these messages. O'Reilly Auto Parts is here to keep your car on the road with the right parts, advice from their professional parts people, and their free loaner tool program. There's no need to purchase a tool if you're only going to use it once. Your local O'Reilly Auto Parts store has more than 80 specialty tools available to rent for your next repair.
Refundable deposit required at time of rental. Stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts and ask about their free loaner tool program or visit OReillyAuto.com. And we do welcome you back to the CNC Auto Show. We would love to hear from you.
That number is 706-863-5800. If you have a question about your car truck or your SUV, all you got to do is give us a call. And you can also watch the show or listen on other platforms.
Just go to ccautoshow.com and pick the one that you like the most. And I'm gonna look at these times on here to make sure that I am 100% fair. And I will go over to Tim. Tim, welcome to the CNC Auto Show.
What can we help you with? Good morning. Yes sir. I'd like to try to solve the tech tip quiz. Oh wait a minute. Let me read that bad boy. All right.
Here it is. Susan is 16 years old and knows very little about cars. She was riding down the interstate and a light come on. Even though she knew almost nothing about cars, she pulled over and repaired the problem in less than 20 minutes.
What day? She didn't get that dirty either. I mean it's a little bit, but not bad. What is the answer to today's tech tip quiz, Tim? I think she had a low tire light come on and she was able to take her little compressor that she plugs into the cigarette lighter and air the tire up or use the can to fix a flat. Wow.
You know, that's a pretty good deal. You know, Tim, something kind of odd on some vehicles now. I don't know about the Camaro. I really hadn't looked at those myself, but many vehicles now don't come with spare tires.
They just come with either a can of fixing a flat or a compressor. That's kind of weird. And the reason I'm stalling Tim is because I'm trying. I don't want to do this, but oh, I just, I had to. I mean, I absolutely, it's my job, man. So, but Tim, listen, I really do appreciate it. Yeah.
Somebody's got to do it. I mean, it's kind of bad, but have to, but Tim, I really do appreciate you giving us a call. All right. Have a good day. You do the same.
Bye-bye. And the number to call is 706-863-5800. If you have a question about your car, truck or SUV, you give us a call. We're talking a lot about vehicle warning lights today, two different ones that might come on.
So we'll be given a lot of tips on those, but also we have a tech tip quiz laying on the table. And this is a, one thing about this show, this is all, this is, we, we have some hiccups every now and then, but this is, this is a real show. I mean, it's real. What we do in the show, uh, at an automotive repair facility. So it has to be done here and then sit to the studio, come back here and then go out on the air.
So it does all kinds of weird stuff before it gets out there. But, uh, with all that going on, sometimes there's a little hiccup every now and then, just like last show, we had a, um, some phone issues, but we still love it. Okay, here we go. Let's go over to Ron. Ron, welcome to the CNC auto show.
What can we help you with? Thank you, Aaron. My grandson, uh, told me he's getting a little bit of oil in his air filter box. And, um, he's got a 19 Dodge Ram. He bought it new, but it's getting old. Uh, well, it's got 105,000 miles on it and he works his truck pretty hard in his business and doing a little research. A lot of people are putting an oil catch can on them. What's your opinion about that? Yeah.
Well, the first thing you want to check all the basics to make sure that that's all done. And what normally takes that out, all, all vehicles have a certain amount of bypass gases and bypass gases means that during the combustion cycle, a certain amount of that combustion or exhaust air goes past the rings into the crank case. Uh, cars, many, many years ago, they used to just let that go down a little pipe and you'd see a little pipe with smoke coming out of it under the car.
But the government said, Hey, that's not good. We need clean air. So they come up with this fantastic idea of the PCV system, which actually takes the air that's in the crank case and pulls it out and then sends it back into the intake system and reburns it, which is fantastic. But what happens is sometimes the too much bypass gases are there. So it actually, instead of pulling the air out of the crank case, the crank case blows back into where it's supposed to pull there from and which is in the breather area because they won't clean air. So, uh, I would check the PCV system very closely to make sure that their proper amount of flow, positive crank case ventilation. And that means air is flowing through the inside of the engine, make sure it's not stopped up on either end and make sure that it is pulling air, uh, like it should. And so, uh, check that first, uh, make sure the oil is, uh, is not due to be changed.
And I'm saying that I know he probably has, but you'd be surprised how many cars I get in and they say it's doing this or that and find out, Hey, but it's just new for an oil change. And if all that's good, uh, I would say to can method would be an okay. Oh, I'd go one other step. I would have a BG induction service done on the vehicle, uh, first, because sometimes that cleans to carbon out of the system. Less carbon means that the compression ratio is what it should be, uh, because too much compression can force some more past rings after you've done all that.
If that's good, then I would do the can. If you still had the problem, it showed some, uh, intake ports on two different engines, port injection and direct injection. And I believe the direct injection is the ones that had the most problem because the injector didn't spray all around the intake valve. Yeah. And what is that? Correct?
Yes, exactly. You, you have the injector spraying down on the valves, which cleans it, the fuel going through it. But, but on cars, it goes straight into that straight into the combustion chamber. Then you don't have anything that's cleaning that carbon out of there. Now there is a special carbon clean for, uh, for direct injection.
So, uh, those are two different ones, uh, different type chemical and everything. So I would, um, I would recommend that that was, especially if it happened, if that's a direct injected engine, I would definitely recommend a, um, induction service. Does this engine have the, uh, uh, PCV valve that the old engine said? I think that one has a, uh, uh, uh, a system to where it has constant, um, vacuum on the engine. It's not really like a PCV valve.
Uh, shoot. I was trying to think of the term of it. The other technicians, somebody called me and tell me the term for that, but it's the old metered air.
It's metered air that pulls from the, from the engine, very similar to a PCV system, but it does get clogged up. Okay. Um, I think I'll take a shot at the yellow tech too. All right. I'm going to put you on hold just a second. And as soon as we get back, I'm going to be ready for you. We'll be right back after this.
Oh, you got this call seven Oh six, six, three, five, 800. That's Saturday mornings, any Saturday morning at a five to 10 Eastern time. You'd also go to CC auto show and pick a platform in case you might want to listen online or either do, um, watch some video.
You can watch the show there too. Uh, whatever you want to do. It's yours. Okay. We are going to go back over to run and run.
Welcome to the CNC auto show back to the CNC auto show. Thank you. Yes. Uh, my answer for the tech, hold on.
I think her gas light come on and she pulled off and filled up. Hold on. We got it. We'll back it up.
All right now. Um, and then I need to read the question. Uh, Susan is 16 years old and knows very little about cars. She was riding down the interstate and a light came on, even though she knew almost nothing about cars. She pulled over, repaired the problem.
Didn't get hardly dirty at all. And everything went good. And Ron, I am going to rest my finger over both the odd button and the crowd cheering.
So we are looking for you. I have to push one of those two and Ron, what is the answer? Yeah.
Like I say, I think our gas flight come on and she pulled off and build up. Uh, Ron, that sounds like that would be a little bit of a sneaky tech tip quiz to give somebody. Uh, but let me, let me turn this into the, to the judges and see what they say. Oh, oh, wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Here, here you go.
Let's see what they say now. Thank you very much. Oh, okay. Ron, it looks like you did that. You did it.
You are, you have answered today's tech tip quiz and you're right. She, uh, she did. She ran out of fuel. The gas light was coming on and she would have ran out of fuel, but she pulled over and gassed up and got back on the road. And one of the reasons I wanted to mention this when Ron is so many times people wait until the light comes on before they get fuel.
But do you know what happens when you, when you ride down the road and what happens if you're doing that? And it turns out that the next gas station is 20, 20 miles away or 10 miles away and the lights on. Not only that, if, uh, you got an electric fuel pump and it, it runs out, uh, you may have a problem re-cranking it.
Well, you're right. And plus that fuel that's around that electric fuel pump is what keeps that pump cool. And if you're riding around with the low fuel and you don't have the gas around that pump, then the fuel pumps running much warmer than it normally was. But what else happens, Ron, anytime that you like 10 or 15 minutes away from a gas station and the light comes on and you, uh, what happens almost every single time? I don't know why. What happens to something to the driver when that happens?
Well, you panic and you should slow down to burn less gas and try to make it to the safest turn off. But Ron, what happened almost every single time you end up having to go to the bathroom at the same time? Your own E?
Am I wrong? Have you ever seen that? That's exactly right. Yeah. Practically every time you, you, you not only have the light on, you not only are looking at the signs and there's not one that says gas in sight, and you know, there's a blank spot there because you've been on that road before and then you have to go to the restroom. It's killer.
I don't know why it's like that light is wired in to having to go to the restroom. I don't know. Okay. All right.
That's enough of that. Sorry about that. But because you're an official winner and I need to recognize that because that is huge. Well, thank you for calling and I'm going to get you to stay on the line and Jason up at station there, he's going to write your information down and to make sure we give you the proper credentials that you will need.
And we appreciate that. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Okay. And Ron answered our today's tech tip quiz. Congratulations to him. And he is right now having all kinds of questions.
He'll go through this long process of telling them what to do as far as being a tech tip quiz winner. Cause that's kind of huge. Okay. One of the things that we did, we didn't really talk about, uh, temperature lights yet, and they're kind of important. Well, they're very important. And I do want to make sure that we talk about those just a little bit. Um, temperature light is another one of those lights that I have seen people either drive into the shop in, or they told me that they were only a block away from their house.
So they went ahead and said, well, I'm that close. I'm going to go and drive it. But I can tell you if you have, if, if you have a temperature light that comes on and, and it is for real, then you are doing damage at that time while, while it's there, the damage is being done, cutting the car off and how fast you cut it off. That's the term determining factor on how much damage was done because it's going to do some damage. It may not affect it right then, but it will eventually have an effect on the vehicle.
Maybe when it gets, when the vehicle gets a lot more miles than I have it. So if you see the red temperature light come on, assume that is, is, is for real, uh, always a chance it could be faulty, but you don't want to take that chance. You want to find the safest place that you can pull over and you want to pull the vehicle over and cut the vehicle off. And you want to let the engine cool off by itself, especially if you see it, uh, boiling over or anything like that, do not try to take the top off of the radiator of a hot engine, because that temperature, that water temperature is somewhere between 225 and 275. And when you take that cap off at sudden to pressure, you will get a very, very hot bath and it will not be pretty and it will not be good.
So don't try to do it. Let the engine cool off by itself. And then if I, many times I'd recommend just having the vehicle towed, but if you don't, then I would, once it's cooled down, then make sure no pressure is on the system by squeezing the radiator hose. And if you can if you can squeeze the upper radiator hose together, then hot chance that it's not under a lot of pressure. And then you can remove the cap very slowly, one notch at a time.
And then you can see if it's low. And in, of course, from there, it's possible to add some coolant to it. And, but have to have the vehicle checked again.
I prefer the method of just having it towed in if it ran hot because it's not worth taking a chance. And again, I mentioned during the last hour that doing a, uh, getting an engine, uh, many years back, getting an engine was like, uh, 1500 to sometimes $3,000. Now it's not unusual to see engines that run anywhere from, uh, the four to five on up past $10,000 range. So it's very important to try to do all you can to have the engine or make the engines last as long as they possibly can. And of course, that means not letting them run hot and keeping the oil changed on a real regular basis. And if you see different warning lights come on, if it's a red warning light, that's the more critical ones that you would want to do something immediately about.
And that one includes your oil, your temperature, and your brake lights. If any one of those comes on now, there's a lot of other lights that you don't have to act immediately. I mentioned before that you have a, well, you have your brake lights, uh, your, um, uh, anti-lock brake lights. You have your airbag lights and you have other lights that you don't have to do things immediately about, and you can get done at your convenience or, uh, check it at your next stop or do different things, um, not to ruin a trip over. Uh, but if it's a red light temperature oil or brake light, you do want to act, uh, soon. And it may not necessarily be something, uh, terrible, but it is something you want to address immediately and, and do some things about.
So, uh, those are, those are some, uh, some tips having to do with warning lights and need to pull over for just a minute. I'm going to grab a bottle of water real quick, run inside. Uh, as soon as I return, uh, I hope you'll be already dialed in and that's 7 0 6 8 6 3 5 800.
Again, that's 7 0 6 8 6 3 5 800. If you have a question about your car truck SUV, give us a call. We'll be right back. The CNC auto show is brought to you in part by Dorman products and their HVAC doors actuators and blend door repair kits.
Dorman has the coverage you need with direct replacements, as well as creative, replace the piece, not the assembly kits to save tech and do it yourselfers time and money drive to Dorman products.com for more information. And we do welcome you back to the CNC auto show. If you have a question about your car, truck or SUV, all you have to do is give us a call and we are ready for you. And it don't necessarily have to be a warning light question, but we are talking a lot about vehicle warning lights today, uh, on different things that might come up. And we've talked about red brake lights. Uh, we've talked about red temperature lights. We've talked about alternator or battery lights. Uh, but there's also a lot of other lights there.
And one that I feel like is one of the more common lights we hadn't talked that much about. And that is the check engine light, check in your lights, uh, amber light. And, uh, if I remember right, they started putting the first check in your lights on GM products. I don't remember exactly on, uh, Chrysler's and, uh, Ford's, but the first one was in 1981, uh, on GM cars. And they wanted a way to communicate with the driver.
If there was an emission issue or some other issue that might affect emissions issues there. And one thing I had, um, run into, we had something very similar to that. When I was working on fighter planes and on a, on a fighter plane, I still remember it was the F4 fighter. It had a thing called master caution light. And I always thought that was really neat because you could, uh, you had a whole list of different things that, uh, like a hydraulic pump failure or hydraulic pump to failure. If one of those small items came on a larger master caution light would come on that was sort of monitoring everything. And it would let the pilot know that, Hey, I've got an issue here somewhere that I need to attend to. And the check engine light is much like that.
If the, if the computer sees something out of the parameters of what it considers good, then it cuts that light on to let that person know that, Hey, something is off. Now this could this could be something that might not have a major effect on the vehicle or the performance. And of course, one, uh, I'm sure most every everyone's heard of is the evaporative system on the vehicle. And they put the evaporative system on there because they didn't want the fuel vapor from the fuel tank going out into the atmosphere. So they said, we will seal the fuel system and reburn those vapors, uh, in the system. So what they, what they do is as you're driving down the road, these vapors that are being emitted out of the, out of the tank, because of course you have to have something vented to be able to let the fuel come out of a tank. It has to have a vent, just like if you had a gas can and you were pouring gas out of a gas can, if you don't have a vent in the top, it won't come out.
And so what they did, they let these vapors go into a charcoal canister. Uh, and, and so then when the conditions are what they should be, the computer opens up some valves and let set vapors from that charcoal canister vent down and go back into the engine and get reburned into the engine. Now, if something, let's say that something goes wrong and that system's not sealed, the, uh, say the gas cap is not on like it should, something that small can cause that check engine light to come on because the system is running a test on itself. The computer will block off two different valves, a purge valve and a vent valve. It'll block those valves off and then it will put pressure on the system or vacuum. Some vehicles use vacuum and it'll monitor to see if it's holding that.
And if it's not, then it'll say, well, something's wrong. I'm gonna cut the light on, warn the driver that, uh, he or she needs to have a, uh, a repair done. And then with that, some, many times we get cars that come in and they have a code for an EVAP system.
And then we'll walk back to the back and the cap will be loose. And that's one reason why we check for trouble codes at no charge. If someone comes in and they say, well, my light's on, but the engine seems to be running okay.
Not really having any other problems. We'll run a free code test on the car because if it shows that it has an EVAP code problem, then we'll tighten the gas cap or we'll check the gas cap. And if it's loose, we'll just tighten it and clear the code. Uh, because in doing that, that might be all it is. And of course you don't want to get into any diagnostics.
If there's a chance, that's all it is. And if it don't come back on, you're fine. If it does come back on, then some other tests that need to be run to find out what it is, but it is, um, it is important. One of the reasons why you want to do that, let's say you didn't do anything about it and the light just stayed on that. If something else that is more important does happen, you won't know it because the light's already on.
So it's very good to monitor, uh, check engine light to find out what it is. And if the light does come on now, every, sometimes a person may have a check engine light come on, and then they're planning to go have the car repaired, but then the light goes back off. Well, the computer does have a memory to where that trouble code that was that calls that light to come on it, the computer checked itself and said, well, I'm not seeing that problem anymore.
So I'm going to cut the light off. Well, the lights off, but a technician can still go into that computer and read that trouble code that was there. And it might say something minor, like it had an EVAP code, but it's not seeing it anymore.
And of course you may have tightened the cap by then. Uh, or it might say, Hey, I've got a, uh, ignition coil issue, or I've got a misfire on number four. Um, any of those codes like that would need to be addressed. Now, if you've got a code reader or something that you look at these codes yourself, I would not recommend clearing the codes because the computer also has a, uh, a freeze frame value that a technician can go into that computer and see what happened when that light was on. And let's say the technician brings the car in and you said, Hey, the check engine light was on last week.
It's not on this week. The technician can look at it and say, yeah, when the, when the car first started and so many starts ago that this code set and the, and the water temperature was this, the outside temperature was this, the technician could look at all the conditions that were present when that light came on. So he or she can go in and duplicate that problem. Uh, for instance, some codes, there are certain things that you might want to look at. If a code set with the engine cold, certain things you want to check when the, if the code set when the engine was hot. So you want to have all of these things checked out to find out what needs to be, uh, what tests needs to be run on the vehicle. And if you don't have that data from when the light come on, then you will pretty much be, uh, shooting in the dark to find out what's wrong with the vehicle. So don't clear the codes. If you plan to have the vehicle checked out by a technician, uh, because the code reader does pretty much just that.
It looks at the, uh, trouble code that's stored in a very basic parameters. Now, the other thing is if you have a car that does have a problem like that, don't just go spending a whole lot of money saying, well, I can replace this part. It might be this part might be this part. Once you get past that certain part, I've seen so many people just put part after part after part and never get diagnostics run. Next thing you know, that it's been a huge amount of money and their car is still not, uh, uh, still has the same problem. So you want to be very careful not to get into that, uh, situation.
Uh, sometimes it gets to the point of needed to have some diagnostic tests run at a shop. Okay. Time clocks on me. I need to pull over for now. We'd be back on road.
No time. I'm your host Aaron Clements, our show producers, Mason Rogers and Anthony Masano. And we would like to say thank you to all of you that all of you that tuned in, clicked in or called into the CNC auto show. The CNC auto show is brought to you in part by KCL ultimate with 33% more ceiling power KCL ultimate will help stop the unexpected cooling system leak before it stops you find KCL ultimate at fine part stores nationwide, like advanced auto parts. And remember, don't just seal it.
