Do You Have The Confidence To DIY Your Car

Welcome to the Under the Hood Show podcast. Thanks very much for listening and don't forget you can subscribe to our YouTube page or follow us on Facebook and watch our Facebook Live videos when we do the show every week, Thursday morning from 9 to 11 Central, and we do have some podcast sponsors.

Thanks for listening to the Under the Hood Show podcast. Here's the show. This is Under the Hood. Welcome to the Under the Hood Show. We are glad to have you with us. Russ Evans is here to answer your automotive questions. Thanks for joining us under the hood. Shannon Nordstrom is here to do the same. Welcome hoody. Thanks for tuning in so we can help you tune up. I'm Chris Carter here to answer your calls at 866-594-4150.

I'm excited. I pointed at the clock and was like, five o'clock. That time can't be right. This week, if I can't talk, you got it back up. Yeah, no kidding. Could you not talk last week? We thought it might not last today. It did okay. It's been getting worse every week for since Labor Day. Oh, you sound great today. I'm glad you say that because I know. No, you sound good. If I were not knowing there was an issue, you sound good. Last week, watching the YouTube, we could

tell because we know, but I'm upset. I sounded fine. So okay, we're good. But I can always talk if you need to talk her. That's not a problem. Right. That's for you. If you need talking done, you just look at me and say, talk. Because I'll get that when we go to like conventions and stuff. They're like, we need to wait up there. And they say, well, send Shannon up there. Just put a quarter in a weekend talk. We got our we got our new video system installed. And we didn't want to talk about it the first week because we talk about it. You know, it happens one swing of the bat. And it's all over. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All

more back all firing lined up voices lined up with the audio and that's you know, I don't think of people that get into Facebook videoing on YouTube podcasting podcasting probably a little lower bar. But that video bars pretty high. If you want to put out high quality. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of fine tuning. So you've got video bit rates, audio bit rates, all these things. And if you don't get them the way that that

reception and let's say YouTube wants it, they cut your video views down or they just say, you're not, it's not going to work. So it's, it's tricky stuff. We've learned on our own. We don't pay somebody else to come. No, Russ has became the video engineer, the audio engineer, the we learned on our own menu and Russ. I just keep asking Chris and he feeds me the info. The two of us and Russ have learned on our own. Yeah, I've learned that it Russ is quite amazing to figure this stuff out is what I've learned.

866-594-4150. Let's go to Arizona and talk to Randy here on the end of the hood show. Randy, what can we do for you?

Hey guys, I love you show. Thanks for giving me the courage to work on my vehicles. Now I'm at a, I've been wrenching on my old car for a second.

Stop for a second. That statement was paused us because I don't think somebody said that before. Yeah, I think you're right.

I mean, that caught my attention. Maybe because I've been gone, but that caught my attention, Randy, because that would be a, not was never a goal of ours to say, I'm going to make somebody work on their car that doesn't work on their car.

But as we've built the show, that has happened quite a bit where people have said, well, that sounds like I could do that.

And Russ has told people, hey, if you can change a sink, you can do this. And so I'm glad we gave you the courage to work on your own vehicle. I hope you don't screw it up.

Well, yeah, well, now you'll understand that the reason I'm calling is now I'm moving to my newer vehicle. It's a 2016 Ford F250 Super Duty 6.2 liter gas. And it's only got 35,000 miles up.

And what I'm trying to do is plus the radiator and that we got a shop man, you know, the children manual, none of them really.

And I went online, you know, looking for, you know, taking your guys' advice. And there's so many different opinions. So here's what I'm, here's where I'm at. My truck gas only has one cap at the top. It's on the reservoir. There's no radiator cap or secondary cap.

And on the bottom, I have a drain valve on the radiator. I think there's also, if you use an Allen wrench, I'm the block away. I could drain it, but it doesn't seem like I would need to do that. So I bought seven gallons of the pre-mix, you know, a Ford, you know, correct radiator coolant. And I've got 10 gallons of diluted water.

But my question is, if I just wanted with that with those seven gallons and those 10 and how would you, and I also have some detergent, you know, that for the that I bought to go in there, pressed on to go in. But I'm, I'm definitely going to do it here. I'm not going to take it in. You know what I have. Can you give me advice how you would do it.

So you want to flush your cooling system.

Yes, that's I'm sorry. Yeah, that's what I want to do. And I don't want to make it my quit. I just don't see how you get all the diluted water out of there.

By starting your engine up a bunch of times without going through a bunch of radiator fluid to to get the proper mix.

You don't, you won't get it all out of there unless you take those two plugs out of the block that the Allen wrench is for.

It's new enough truck that they might come loose. You could try that before you get your water in there, but they're, you know, it's 10 years old already. It may they may not come out. Those things are so hard to get out. We've had those engines, not that engine, but we've had engines on the ground with an impact Allen wrench in there in a three quarter impact driver and could not get them out of the block without extreme heat on them. They're, they get that tight. They just weld themselves in.

So most people just do a flush, you know, they'll, they'll hook up a machine where you've got or or improvise it. What you've got your, your fluid going in, pulls it in, thermostat comes out, they make sure fresh fluids going in one end and then the other ends dumping out until it's clean. So you could take, we've got a machine that's pretty prehistoric. It's a basic machine. It has a five gallon bucket.

And the upper hose where the thermostat is dumps into the bucket. It's that simple. And then the other hose fills it up. So you could fill the, fill the radiator while it's running. It doesn't go real fast because the thermostat opens a little bit comes out and it closes when it cools off.

So you, you keep felt that thing full and then that upper hose where the water, the coolant is normally coming out, you just direct that into a bucket and watch it when it's clean. It's completely flushed. So you don't need the distilled water in the engine. You just need to put coolant in because it's going in one way. It can't back up there. It's not circulating. And then it's dumping out out the radiator hose where the thermostat is.

So that's that's one way you could do it. Look online on YouTube. You see some people that have done that. We used to do with transmissions that way until we got a machine decades ago, but that's what I would do. If I was doing it at home, I would take, you know, I do that. I'm like LS engine. I just take a five gallon bucket and I take the upper radiator hose off and stick it where the auxiliary battery would go. I just stick my hose right in there and keep pouring fluid in it while it's running until it comes out clean.

And then I shut the engine off and reconnect my hose. And it's good to go.

So in other words, I don't even need to mess with the drain on the bottom. Just do that. And then so I might go through an extra gallon or two of new fluid to do it that way.

Probably not. You're maybe a half gallon at the most because you're going to spill a little bit. But yeah, you would know.

And during that final transition as it's closed and you're trying to find out where your stop point is at.

Yeah, you're going to go through a little extra because your water pump is going to be sucking the coolant out of the radiator and the reservoir.

And it's going to be dumping. You've just got one outlet coming out of that radiator hose with the thermostat on it.

That's the hose you want in the bucket. And as soon as it warms up, you know, when you first start it, nothing's going to come out of it.

And as soon as it gets warm, it's going to start dumping out of that hose.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to run too much through to make sure.

Oh, a lot of people do. Yeah, but it's probably better than running 10 gallons of water through it.

You will have a problem with dilution. If you put water in there, you're probably going to have two gallons in the block.

And the freeze protection is not going to be there. And that's not what you want.

Yeah.

No, at least he's an Arizona. So yeah, what about the, yeah, it's real mild here.

I'm at 40, I'm at 4200 feet elevation. So it's real mild weather.

So what about the cleaner? You recommend even using it then because I don't think you're supposed to use it with fluid, are you?

No, you, that, that Ford cleaner they have, that D scalar is meant to go in there.

You, you remove, I've done it on my truck several times using the Ford product and you drain it.

You put it in there, you run it, they're recommended time, and then you completely flush it out.

BG products also has a cleaner that's meant to be used in the radiator.

You can put it in with the fluid without it being emptied out and clean water.

And it'll, it'll help clean that on its own. And then you flush it out.

So you don't have to worry about that. Like you do with it, that Ford product is, is pretty extreme.

And it's usually requires a neutralizer too. Like in mine, I ran that product in there with the, with the diluted, you know,

with the distilled water. How long it was, I can't remember anymore, but I ran that in there and it really turned the fluid a dark, dark color.

And then I had to drain it, fill it up with fresh water again, put the neutralizer in it, run it for the recommended amount of time because it's acidic.

And you want to neutralize that. And then I drained it, flushed it good, filled it up with the correct amount of, of anaphyries in there to, to fix it.

So I think I'm going to go with the way you described initially, then they not use that and maybe do it another time down the road because I don't think it's that bad in any way.

Yeah, or check with your local part story. You know, they've got that BG cleaner is available at many auto part stores. You could pick that up there.

Randy, thanks very much for the call. Good luck. 866-594-4150. That's the number to reach is here at the end of the hood show.

Let's go to Oregon and talk to Bill. You're on the end of the hood show bill. What can we do for you?

I'm going to afford the 2011 Ford F-150 and it's got an icon for the airbags.

It was coming kind of coming off and on for a while. And now it's pretty much on all the time. And it's also got another light for the passenger airbag.

And that's also illuminated all the time as long as I'm driving. What's causing that? And is there something a person to do themselves to work on that?

If you've got an airbag light on and a passenger light on, there is nothing you can do at home. It has to be done in a shop that repairs airbags specifically.

And there's no way to tell what's wrong with that system until a professional type scan tool is plugged into that system that can read airbag codes.

Now you will get the passenger light when the main light is on, but you can get the passenger light without the main light if there are no faults.

But rather it's just reading that that system is disabled. It's turned off.

Yeah, because I think in some cars, not in a lot of them, that passenger light will come on when there's not enough weight in the seat.

If it senses something there, but not enough weight. Right. And then it'll put that on. So if there's something laying in your seat.

Something like a laptop or a book or a phone even sometimes.

Yeah, so that's something to consider on that passenger side one that could be unrelated.

And your driver's side one, it like Russ is saying, you got to find out where that's coming from.

It could be as simple as a clock spring of in the steering column that makes the connection.

But it also could be wiring that's compromised somewhere. It could be if this we've had people have seats come out of vehicles to clean them.

And they didn't get wires hooked back up again to seat belts or to the seat that have to do with the airbag system.

That home remedy is to look at the yellow connectors, which means airbag on both the front seats right where the buckles are.

Make sure they're plugged in. You can unplug them and plug them back in and then start the car up again and see if the light goes out.

Sometimes that will work. A lot of those connectors get dirt in them. There's so much dirt on the floor.

And it wiggles its way down the connectors and just impedes their impedance. They don't make a good connection.

So if you unplug them and plug them back together, it wipes them off and they work again.

So if somebody were to read your code and it said seat belt driver passenger side, that is usually the fix just unplugging it, plugging it back in.

Usually last for a couple of years every time you plug those back in, if it's a dirt problem.

But you could try that at home. That's by the seat belt.

It's attached to the seat belt right where the seat belt bolts to the floor. The buckles.

And some vehicles, as you get newer, will have yellow wires going right into the seats also. That one will.

Yeah, because they'll have airbag, like some cars have airbags placed in the seats. They have sensors that have to do the airbag system in the seats.

And you're going to recognize most all that that's crucial with yellow wires.

Will the side airbags go off if no one's in that passenger seat? No.

If they're operating properly, they will not. Right. Yeah, because we'll see vehicles where the curtain bags go off, but the side air doesn't.

There's all kinds of different scenarios based on the vector of the impact.

Most of the time, the belts will all tension and lock even if no one's in the seat, even if the airbag doesn't go off in the seat.

The belts are like on their own circuit. It just has turned a belt on. That goes for back seat belts too.

But when that yellow light is on, your airbag system is compromised and it's imperative that you get that figured out.

Yep. That helped you out there, Bill. Okay. I'm going to take a look at those wires. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thanks very much for the call.

866-594-4150. What were you been? Venturing.

Venturing a little bit. Yeah. I don't want to just come under and tell stories, but I got stories to tell.

But I'll just tell you a quick thing. I did something. Well, let's first of all say where you were with the air.

Yeah. We had a group of us, a delegation that went to the cars convention.

And it was part of a bigger recycling and waste convention that was held in Birmingham, England. Big event.

I would say like a mini SEMA, but crazy stuff there. I got some pictures that I've, but I'll share on our page here at some point.

What's I get organized? I just got home late last night before we produce today. But that event was pretty cool. You're in Europe.

And so the European timetable on recycling is way ahead of ours. Right. And so the type of products that you see that are pretty cool.

And the mindset of the people that are there is different. And so you have different conversations.

But a lot of our recycling friends from the professional automotive recycling group, they had a section of that conference.

And there's a big group of folks that come over my friend Andy Snyder's. And I could go on names long after Alan from Silver Lake.

And all these guys, they come over to our conferences all the time. And so we're always good about reciprocating to go to theirs.

And this was a different event for them. So yeah, we flew into Manchester, England.

And my plan was to not drive a vehicle in England that my friends were going to be there.

They were ahead of me. They were there two days sooner. And they were going to pick me up.

And then we realized that we made a huge tact clear. And we were two hours apart from each other.

Okay. And so the text I got from my executive director, the Trade Association, we're trying to make a plan as I was, you know, going to the airport for a second leg of our flight at JFK.

He goes, how are you driving on the left side of the road? And I knew what that meant. I needed to rent a car.

And I wasn't planning on doing that there. And we were wiped because we had been Vikings game.

And then we got up and went got into our flights. And you know, you go, you go that way, you lose six, seven hours.

And so we were pretty wiped. And I got in a car that I had never driven before on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road.

And my daughter had helped me with the planning for the trip. And she had us getting a car from a place called Drivezilla, which was not at the normal airport.

And we ended up renting a Chinese amoda. And it was a car I'd never heard of in my life.

And as I researched it, it was made by cherry motors, one of the big manufacturers in China. And China has a ton of vehicles in England.

Oh yeah. A ton of vehicles. I can see why when we talk about some of our trade philosophies about trying to control domestic made product,

they have gotten overrun by everything over there as far as other products.

So the car was a probably reminded me a little bit of like a Nissan Marano had a, not because of this, it had a terrible CVT transmission.

With the automatic start stop in the CVT, you thought you were like at a go-kart track.

They probably stole the technology from Nissan.

Like, you're at a go-kart track and they got to push you to get going and then the car gets going.

That's how it felt every time it came out of auto start stop. And it had a very hyperactive lane avoidance that I couldn't forget how to adjust or turn off.

And so not only was I probably a little tired that I would hit the lines, that drive the two hours up to meet them where we went and toured some amazing facilities.

And then two hours back to get to Birmingham where we stayed at a hotel nearby Birmingham was not fun because it was my wife was very anxious.

Remember that I told you a story about being in the full self-driving Tesla? You should have rented one of those.

We should have rented one of those in that case. That's fun.

For sure because we were both like ready to get out of that car.

But, you know what, I did it. I got it done but that area where we were in was very busy, very high traffic, very high speed.

I have driven enough roundabouts for the rest of my life.

I mean, leave the roundabout under third exit. The car is in navigation mode of native country.

Oh, a roundabout on the wrong side of the road. Can you imagine Chris?

No joke. They're full speed roundabouts. You got to know what you're doing. I definitely got honked at and had near misses on at least five roundabouts until I figured out the best approach.

We'll tell you more later but we had it was it was great. We are in one piece. We survived my we had a great trip and we ended up in Ireland after that.

I can tell you some more there but it was it was really cool.

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Welcome back everybody. It's time to get back under the hood with the motor medics.

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You have permission, but what you don't need to call me out on one of my many blunders that I made.

Because I make them all the time. I didn't even notice that. I just noticed the YouTube.

One car thing before we jump to the call when we got to Ireland, we flew into Shannon Ireland.

I always thought it'd be cool to fight fly into the Shannon Ireland airport and I did.

And we got a Kia as our rental there, but it wasn't what you'd think it was because it was fancier.

Oh, was it a K6? It was a sportage.

Oh, the sports eye.

Because the young man that was checking us in was the assistant branch manager.

I said, what do we got for a car? I said I'm supposed to get a Nissan Nissan Quashiga or something where it was.

I looked up the name. I can't say it. I can't say whatever it was that thing.

And he said, no, it's that or similar. He goes, you get the Kia sport.

He was a sportage or no, he said Kia sportage. I go sportage.

He goes, yeah, he goes the guys here at the place I was calling it a sportage and they said, no, we call that the sportage.

Like it's Italian.

And so it sounds Italian.

I think they charged $10 more day when it's a sportage.

Much better vehicle, by the way, the one that I had, much better vehicle than the Chinese made a moda that I had in England.

I'm serious. The sportage was a great steed for us as we traveled across Ireland. I loved it.

866-594-4150.

Let's talk to Brian. You're on the end of the hood show. Brian, what can we do for you?

Yeah, I got all one Chevy Silver Islander doing several things.

Not sure if it's in the fuel pump or if it's in the instrument cluster, both have to do it with the instrument cluster.

The fuel gauge ever since I got to pick up 10 years ago.

When it was three quarters to pull all of a sudden randomly, it would just go down to empty.

Say you're empty tank and you're driving.

And then it go back up and you just never, but usually from three quarters down, it was pretty accurate.

But now it could be any time you're driving. If you don't use your trip meter, you don't know how many.

How much gas you got because it could go to empty.

We don't know if the fuel pump had been replaced before we got it.

It was an in straight fuel pump itself. We're fine. Pick up runs fine.

Nothing with the fuel pump, but the gauge just is all wacky.

And now here recently, we do have 18 inch rims on it, but there's still, I think it's 265 and 16s or 18s in there.

And the speed speedometer usually at 30 miles an hour is right on it.

We have an app on the phone and the computer hooked up to say 30.

But if you're going 55 on the speedometer, you're only going 45.

And if you're going 65, you're only going 55.

And according to the computer, though, you're going that 55, the lower number.

But then you get back up to 75.

And the app says 75 is stronger than 75.

So it's in there about 30 miles an hour that it's 10 miles an hour off.

I wonder if you guys have ever seen that before.

I haven't been able to talk to any mechanic that has right on the bottom end and the top end, the wrong in the middle.

That's got to be a speedometer instrument cluster failure if it's doing that.

Because if you've got a gear ratio and tire size error, it's off a percentage entire range period.

There's no way around it. If it's fine at one off at a different fine in another time ago.

It's a graduating scale.

And those instrument clusters, they have two kinds.

The ones that are already failed and the ones that will fail.

So I probably start with that cluster, get that place and then check the fuel gauge after that.

Did you say you had a computer plugged into it?

Yeah.

What's the speed signal saying coming out of the computer?

It's right.

I mean, it's it's right with the app on your phone.

Yeah.

What about your fuel gauge on that computer?

I don't remember if he looked at that when we had it hooked up.

I don't remember that.

It has a fuel percentage.

So if you can read fuel percentage and it shows where it's supposed to be or it's something different than that gauge.

You just got to get that instrument cluster replaced.

Yeah, these things all together, the gauge going, the speedometer, and it being a 01 Silverado.

And our partners at dormant products have a solution for this, a dormant solution that you can get at the most fixes it.

Yeah, most any of the part stores have that option available, or else you can go direct, go to their website.

The new cluster.

Yeah, and it's a it's a pro.

It's a cluster that you give them your VIN number, you give them your miles, and they have a exchange program.

So it comes plug and play.

Put it right in your vehicle and get ready to roll.

The only problem I found that the 01 Silverado cluster is almost every other cluster when I talk to NAPA anybody there that I'm friends with.

Most clusters of 3 to 350 bucks, this one 700.

No, for no one silver.

It should not be.

I mean, I put an 01 in two weeks ago, and it was $232.

Okay.

Something is not right there.

Pull years out, takes about five minutes, get the number off the back of it and look at it by that number.

I think they're just going to the generic look up 01 Silverado dash, and they're all priced very high like that.

But when you put in the part number, they have a lot of part numbers that come back into one general part number for now.

And it says boom, there it is, because I guarantee you I put the one and I know I put the one in this one.

And it was over the years when we used to have a lot of brand new vehicles that got damage and transit and such that we dismantled for parts only.

We would pull the clusters out of them and sell them and people on eBay quickly learned that there was multiple ones that you could interchange between different vehicles and pick up a different option.

Yeah, I put the trans temp gauge in our Tahoe years ago.

Yeah, and it worked by accident and it worked.

Oh, I got a trans temp gauge. Look at that.

But it would have been a completely different part of the cluster.

And it's different color even too.

Yeah, so those things can make it a different part number, but this is a good opportunity for dormant products to solve your problem.

This is this has become such a solvable problem that it has been almost 20 years since Russ said you can pull out your cluster and just re solder all 47 solder points if you want.

That's one way to do it.

I did that on one of those about a month ago too.

Yeah, it was just certain things were working. I said, you know what, I'm just going to fix this instead of waiting time was short.

So I took it out, soldered it, fixed it up, put it together.

It's going to work.

If you're adventurous, there are people that show you on YouTube what you can do.

I was thinking of that earlier this hour. YouTube really has changed the game on a lot of things.

When I give tours of our facility to groups that come out last group was a big group from the governor's office of South Dakota.

We had Governor Larry Rodin here with his team touring our facility when he did a visit in our town of Garrison.

And that was pretty neat experience.

But one of the things I'll tell people often is that our main business of selling parts at Nordstrom is selling to professionals that have sales tax licenses.

That's our main business.

But we've got a good strong 25% of our business that are people that are fixing their own stuff.

And that really spins into this under the hood show radio program.

How it started way back in the day was to let people know you have parts available.

You have options available so you can fix your own stuff.

But the game changer has been YouTube because there was a period when Russ and I did this show where people were scared to death of their car.

The technology was like, oh my gosh, they put a computer in this thing. What do I do?

And the younger generations coming into the market, they have no fear of jumping online and looking up and becoming an expert in something.

It's a little dangerous or a trouble maker.

Chris is exactly right. You can learn the wrong way.

I watched a video the other day and the guy was 100% certain you do it this way.

I just didn't feel right. So I googled it and did some looking and 9 out of 10 were like that is absolutely wrong.

And the one guy said, no, it's right.

So you got to make sure you're doing it.

Take a palette sample.

But I guess my point though is that the do it yourself for his alive and well because of YouTube.

And I think that there's also new technologies that people have got that they're not scared of that has allowed them to figure out how to get into systems

that the manufacturer doesn't want you in.

There's a lot of things that have happened because of the online presence for every industry, but it's definitely been a big thing for the auto industry.

So like our caller earlier in the show had said, I'm just going to repeat this.

He goes, but you guys gave me the courage to work on my own vehicle.

So shows like this are part of that solution to make the do it yourself or be alive and well.

But you got to be careful do it yourself or don't jump right into it.

Do your research. Look at a few things.

Ask at the part stores.

You know, but realize that not every part store has an expert at the counter.

Yeah, for sure.

I we know how hard it is to fill those positions.

And we've got some shops that will go through a period of time that they have got just amazing people have worked at their sales counters for 15 years.

And they can not only become good catalog looker uppers.

They're good advice givers because they've seen it.

But then you can go into one that they can't for whatever reason keep a steady rotation of people that have got knowledge.

And those folks can run you down the wrong path sometimes.

You really got to, you got to, if you're going to do it yourself, you got to use the tools that are available.

Brian, thanks very much for the call. Good luck.

866-594-4150.

Let's talk to Jeff and Wisconsin.

You're on the end of the hood show. Jeff, what can we do for you?

All right. Hey, thanks for taking my call.

I just tell you I've been listening, caught on to your show about four years ago.

I have not missed one episode.

I'm sure of it.

That's an awesome event for me to, yeah, to watch your show and listen to your show.

Listen to it. Download it for flights.

I do a lot of traveling and I really enjoy it.

You got to be very helpful. I'm typically a do it yourself or do it yourself, self person.

But I decided a couple of years ago, now a couple of years ago, to buy a brand new truck.

It's a 2023 Nissan Frontier, the Pro4X.

I really love the truck. I've got 32,400 miles on it right now.

The only issue that I've had, and I've had in the past year, about a year ago, started having issues where I would go out to my truck,

and it would just be completely dead.

No dashlights, no nothing.

I do try to jumpstart it. The battery's so dead I can't even jumpstart it for, it takes me quite a while.

Happened maybe a year ago.

It's happened in March this year. It's happened again in May.

It's happened in June.

And now August, or sorry September 18th was the last time it did it.

And I'm just real getting frustrated with it, taking it to the dealership each time.

Except for the first time, I just got it jumpstarted, took care of it myself.

But they did replace the battery the time before last.

And this last time I brought it in, they had it in the shop for about three or four hours.

It all sorts of tests on it.

Everything checked out fine. They checked the, I mean you name it. They went top to bottom on it.

And it's obviously a parasitic draw.

I know I've listened to your show in the past, and there's been worry that maybe the key fob is too close to the vehicle in the house or something.

But it's happened to me when I was traveling even, and been at the airport, and I come back from a flight and it's dead in the parking lot.

How many days is that? Like that particular flight where it was dead in the parking lot?

I would say three days.

Yeah, that's.

You should have to put a battery tender on your vehicle the airport.

What is the fastest that the vehicle has gone dead where it's been driven?

So you know it's fully charged. Let's say you've been driving it four or five days and it's run every day.

What's the fastest you've turned it off and come back?

Did you turn it off and the end of the day you come back and it's dead?

Was it a one day?

Three days? What was it? What's the fastest it's ever gone dead?

The fastest it's ever been is overnight.

Okay, that's fast.

You know, I drove at the day prior, and I get out there in the morning to drive somewhere and it's dead.

And I 100% dead. Just no click. Nothing is just out.

Oh, nothing. There's no dash lights. There's nothing until I put some sort of a charger on it to get a little bit of juice going in it.

I've got about 1500 miles left on my warranty and that's the part that worries me because the dealership is saying we don't have a solution for you.

You need to put a call in after this last visit.

I would get on the phone with Nissan because if they have a long documented string of this vehicle having this problem throughout your warranty period,

and it gets to the end of the warranty, that is not a get out of jail free card for Nissan Motor Company to say,

oh, sorry, you're out of warranty. We can't take care of it.

They're not honoring in good faith.

No, and you have records to go back on that for that specific problem.

Because of you, especially, I mean, we don't want to go too crazy on this side of it.

But if you've got documented, if you've been into the dealer and they've worked on it and they say,

well, we just can't find it. We can't fix it and it continues to do it.

We have seen cases from multiple companies where they're going to have to figure this out.

And I would keep my own journal, too, probably just in this point, just of your own personal experience when you've had a jump in.

Records, records, records. I would go get them all now before that warranties up.

Now let's go back to what we could look at for some ideas.

I'm wondering if it's not so much a dead battery. I'd want to test that battery by hooking up directly to the center of the terminals with a voltmeter

when it's not powering up to see if the battery has voltage, but the vehicle's not getting voltage.

Like you've got an open connection somewhere, so it's not allowing the power through.

So when it's dead next time?

Yep. You got your cables hooked on the outside and then on the center you got the post.

I would check that right on the post with a multimeter and see if I've got voltage.

If it's dead, it's dead. But if you've got battery voltage there and nothing coming out,

it's an electrical issue in the car or not making a connection.

And that's a different route to go through to try to find out what's going on.

But an overnight drain is a pretty substantial...

Something's hot.

If it drains overnight, something is getting warm and the very few components on that vehicle

other than a cut wire shorted to ground that can pull that much juice without lighting a light bulb.

And that is pretty much the only thing that could do that would be the electric engine fan coming on

and running, which you would hear, or an alternator that was shorted internally and staying on.

And that's a very likely candidate on that one.

And it would be warm. If they hit it with a temp gun, they'd say,

whoa, that thing's 150, 190 degrees, so it's hot. It's running with the car off.

Have you got any aftermarket accessories put on this vehicle since you bought it?

No, completely stock. And I've always... I've mostly bought used vehicles in the past, and I thought,

well, this is the first new one that I had bought in a while.

And I plan on keeping it until I retire in beyond.

I mean, it's bought it for reliability, and I'm a big niece on fan.

I love the truck. It's just that one thing. It's just very annoying.

It's new to us, this hearing, this problem on this type vehicle.

I don't think I've ever had one come in that they've had this problem occur.

But I think as far as just to kind of recap, and I think you've got it,

document your visits, have your own personal journal.

If you haven't been, think about it, and maybe recreate a little bit of it.

Not live, but you know what happened.

And just approach them about that, say, hey guys, I'm 1500 miles away.

I'm really nervous that you're going to try to leave me with this.

And we've got a problem here. What's our approach? What can we do here?

And it's not like they haven't been trying. If they brought it in and spent four hours on it,

I give them some credit because that's the thing.

But Russ has said over the years with these parasitic drains and these overnight drains.

If you bring it in and they energize the system,

and it's not in the trouble mode, they're not going to find it.

No, they've got to look, but you really need, like Shannon said,

that documentation is extremely important.

I have had customers in our shop a year out of there.

We give them a year warranty, parts and labor.

But I've had a couple that there were problems occurring and I just couldn't catch it.

But I knew there was a problem internally in that part, but I couldn't catch it.

So I said, I can't do anything for you unless I catch it.

They were out of warranty.

And it was a year later, and I finally caught it and saw what it was,

and I said, I'm going to take care of you because I know it was there.

I know what happened. You got a video of it occurring.

I hear the noise. I know it was there.

We're going to take care of you. We don't want to leave my hanging.

It's just not right. Yes, legally, you could say, well, your warranty's up.

I never saw it.

Jeff, how many times has this happened?

So this has happened to me. This is a six, let's see, one,

first time I didn't document it, it was just, I have a note for myself.

Sure.

The first time it brings the dealership was March.

There's one, two, three, four additional instances where it's gone to the dealership.

There you, that's a plenty.

I just wondered how often it happens.

If this happens 50 times or if this has happened seven times in the three years that you've owned it.

And you're in Wisconsin every month or two, it'll happen.

And I document everything into a car box app.

Just, I put receipts in there and everything.

So it's got pretty good documentation on it.

And you bought this car new?

And to the point where I thought, well, do I just threaten a lemon law?

Well, yeah, if you did you buy it new?

Are you the original owner?

Yes.

Okay, if you bought a car brand, there's certain thing,

lemon laws are different in every single state.

Sometimes in different cities.

But I do know that all the ones I've ever seen are only if,

only if I apply to the original owner, which is you,

the vehicle has to have the exact same problem, which you do.

And it has to occur a certain number of times before they'll even start looking into it.

But it sounds like you just want it fixed.

If they could say, oh, look, it's just this alternator that's bad and they put it on and it fixes it.

Everybody's happy.

It's fixed.

But you don't want to be in that spot where you're out.

Yeah, and that might have different recourse after the warranty.

You're going to have to do some asking.

I do want to just have a ask for a time to sit down and talk with the service manager.

And get it back by all means.

If it goes dead again, take it into that dealer every time it goes dead.

Jeff, thanks very much for the call. Good luck.

866-594-4150.

Now let's go to Texas and talk to Daniel.

You're on the end of the hood show. Daniel, what can we do for you?

Hey, I've got a 2007 Saturn view with the 2.2 liter L4 engine.

And it's got about 173,000 miles on it.

And somebody just gave it to me.

I've been going over it and looking at all the different fluids,

making sure everything's fine, change the water pump,

a few different things they need to do.

It says in the manual that you're supposed to check the automatic transactyl fluid

and says the way you do that is take it to a dealership.

Yeah.

I wanted to know if there's a way I could do that myself.

You can.

So how?

You can.

Look at YouTube for the procedure so you can see what I'm trying to tell you,

but there's a plug on the side of the transmission on the axle end.

You take that out and if fluid drips out of it, it's full.

If it doesn't, it needs to have some added.

And you can change it yourself even if you're doing just to take the pan off,

drain the fluid, put the pan back on with new gasket and filter,

fill it back up until that runs out.

They'll show you a procedure to do it.

Engine running.

It's very specific things and how to do it.

But yeah, you can do that yourself.

They did it like that to get you back into the dealer and keep them in the casino.

They want you in front of them.

But you can do it yourself.

It is.

It's a simple procedure you can do.

Free play.

Yep.

Through wheel well on one end of the car.

It's right on the end of this now where the axle CV shaft is.

Just one little 10 millimeter head nut or bolt comes out and it'll drip out of there when it's full.

How, how, how dirty am I going to get if I do that?

I mean, how am I going to?

I know you don't like to get dirty.

Yeah.

And I like, I don't like this.

This isn't running down your arm.

I mean, I'll have gloves on.

Don't give me a kick you down and roll you around on the red dirt of Texas when we get down here.

Hey, that's why as you're going to say, he said at the beginning,

it's called we're going to Texas.

We are going to Texas, right?

Yeah, next.

We're going to Texas.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can do it yourself.

You can pull that plug out and change it.

Just look up YouTube.

Transmission fluid check on GM transmission.

Oh, they're all, they're, they're, they pretty much are all that way now.

Daniel, thanks very much for the call.

That'll do it for another hour of the under the hood show until next time you can find us at underthehoodshow.com.

Thank you very much for listening to the under the hood show.

With Ross Evans, this is Shannon Orts from Thank You for tuning into the Nordstroms under the hood show.

Have a great day and remember PTLA.

The opinions heard on this program based on the many years of experience of Russ and Shannon

are offered for entertainment value only and as a guide to your repair needs.

No claim to repair or cause is given or implied.

Always consult with your own certified technician and follow all safety procedures before attempting any repair.

To be a part of the show, call 866-594-4150.

Find out more by visiting underthehoodshow.com.

Under the hood is produced by Prairie House Productions.

All content is the property of Nordstroms Automotive Incorporated and may not be used without our permission.

Copyright Nordstroms Automotive Inc.

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