The tire pressure light is a warning that tells you if one or more of your tires doesn't have enough air. It's important to check your tires when this light comes on.
The check engine light is a warning light on your car's dashboard. It means there might be something wrong with the engine or another important part of the car.
Premature tire wear means your tires are wearing out too quickly. This can happen if they're not inflated properly or if the car isn't aligned right. Keeping the right air pressure helps your tires last longer.
TPMS sensors are devices in your car that check if your tires have enough air. If a tire is low on air, these sensors will warn you with a light on the dashboard.
The coolant overflow tank is a plastic container in your car that stores extra coolant. If it gets damaged, it can cause your engine to overheat because it won't have enough coolant to keep it cool.
The Hyundai Elantra is a small car that is usually less expensive and is known for being reliable and good on gas. Many people buy it because it’s affordable.
The registration office is where you go to officially register your car so you can drive it legally. They give you important papers that show you own the car.
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that many people recognize. It's known for being fast and stylish, and it's been around for a long time, making it very popular among car enthusiasts.
The Ford Expedition is a large SUV that can carry many passengers and has a lot of space for cargo. It's popular for families and can be used for towing trailers or boats.
Illegal tint means the dark film on the windows is darker than what the law allows. This can make it hard to see inside the car and can get you in trouble with the police.
The oil pressure light is a warning signal on your dashboard that shows if your engine's oil pressure is too low. If it lights up, you should check your oil levels or get your car checked to avoid engine problems.
The coolant light is a warning on your dashboard that tells you if your engine's coolant is low or if the engine is getting too hot. If it comes on, you should check your coolant levels or have your car looked at.
The oil light is a symbol on your car's dashboard that tells you if there's a problem with the engine oil. If it lights up, you should check the oil level or get your car checked to avoid engine damage.
The transmission warning light is a symbol on your dashboard that warns you if there's a problem with your car's transmission. If it lights up, it's important to get it checked to avoid bigger issues later.
Advanced Auto Parts is a store where you can buy car parts and get help with car problems. They can check your car's computer for issues if a warning light is on.
OEM means the parts are made by the same company that made your car. These parts fit perfectly and work just like the ones that came with the car when it was new.
An emission warranty helps pay for repairs that keep the car from polluting too much. It usually lasts for a set number of years or miles, so you don't have to worry about it for a while.
LIVE
Hey folks, Lenny Lawson here.
Welcome to this special edition of my car, Goobering.
I had a breakdown this weekend, no, not mental, and not with an automobile.
It was with my tractor.
Yes, I decided I was going to do some bush hogging.
You know, that's kind of a brand name used in a generic manner.
Bush hog is actually a company.
So let's call it brush cutting.
That's what I was doing.
My fields have gotten extremely tall because the guy that normally comes around and cuts
my hay didn't show.
And he said it was because he had too much hay.
It was a really wet summer and he had too much, so he wasn't going to cut it this
year.
I'm kind of glad he didn't because it's beautiful.
When the wind blows, it just flows across those fields and you can see the hay just meandering
as it flows in the wind.
Okay, I'm getting carried away with myself.
But I decided I needed to clean around the edges.
I did find a guy to come and cut.
So he's going to do it and he's going to fertilize it.
He gets to cut next year because the other guy flamed out on me.
But yeah, I was driving my tractor along and I was mowing up and down this hill.
I'm very careful with my tractor.
Always wear my seat belt, keep my rops bar up so in case it flips over, I'll hopefully
survive it.
But bush hogging, that's what I'm going to call it, is dangerous.
A lot of farmers get killed every year because of accidents that happen with their tractors,
specifically with all that weight on the back of it when you have a brush cutter
like that.
Mine's a six-foot brush cutter.
But I heard, I had my ear buds in because I was listening to a murder mystery on Dateline.
I do that a lot when I'm mowing and on my tractor.
Thank goodness though, there was a buzzing noise that was loud enough for me to hear
over the murder mystery.
And I looked down, got my attention, looked down and I had a red light on.
And I wasn't exactly sure what that symbol meant, but one thing that I do know as
a car guru, when you get a red light that you're not familiar with, you pull over and
shut it off.
If more people would do that, there'd be a whole lot fewer engines destroyed.
But what do we do?
Ah, we just look at it and say, I wonder what that is?
It's just another light in our lives.
And then they get home and coolant is spewing all over their driveway and the husband
comes running out, what did you do?
No, this light came on and I just figured I could come home.
You told me that I didn't have to worry about some of those lights.
Yeah, that was the tire pressure light and the check engine light.
You don't have to worry about them.
Well, how am I supposed to keep track of all the lights?
That's kind of the way it goes.
Do you like my acting job?
But just in the interest of not offending the ladies, you can reverse those roles
if you want to blame the husband or the boyfriend or whatever significant other.
You know, the moral of the story is pay attention to the lights.
Had a lady called this morning said, Lenny, she knows me well.
I said, hello, Vicki.
And she said, Lenny, I've got my tire pressure lights on.
And just wondering, I'm going out of town.
Is it possible for me to stop by the dealership and you air up my tires?
Vicki, I'd be more than happy to do that.
Just pull into the Ford service drive and we'll do that in a flash.
So you can get back on the road.
Thank you, Lenny.
See, that's the advantage of knowing somebody that like works at a car dealership.
I know I'm more the work at a car dealership.
I own it.
However, if you have somebody like that, you can handle those minor emergencies.
Of course, was that emergency or tire pressure light?
Is that really an emergency?
No, it's not an emergency, but it's just another one of those lights in our
lives.
And if you ignore it long enough, it'll cause premature tire wear.
So why is it coming on?
Well, because temperatures have dropped.
Does that make sense?
Because what happens to air pressure when it gets cold goes down.
You know, when tires warm up, air pressure increases in the tire.
It just happens.
It expands.
Heat makes things expand.
And that's why you're seeing a lot of lights going on right now that have
the little tire pressure symbol.
You know, I think it's probably important to get that owner's manual out.
If you turn your ignition key on, not all the way.
Just turn it to the accessory position.
All the different lights on your instrument panel will light up.
And you can sit there with the book and identify what each one of them means.
And I think that's important.
You know, you might have to move all those pictures of your grandkids and
children and your favorite dog off the dash.
Please don't put pictures up there.
I know your kids are beautiful and so are your grandkids.
But that's not where the pictures go.
Put them in frames on your desk or on your dinner table but not on the dash of your car.
Okay, so yeah, those nagging TPS sensors.
It got down to 42 this morning in Greenville, Tennessee.
And I'd say there were a lot of lights going off for tire pressure warning.
But like I say, it's not one of those really bad things.
But anyway, so my tractor got overheated.
So I jumped off and I raised the hood and looked up under there.
And I saw that my filter, my air filter screen was completely clogged up.
That can cause that.
But I had been, we had a huge, huge bonfire.
And it was really not a bon, I mean it's not one of those fires where you sit around
and sing Kumbaya and roast marshmallows.
This was, they cleaned out my woods and there were monster trees in there.
It was probably one of the biggest brush piles that I've ever had on my property.
And it burned for almost six days.
It still had embers in it, so it was big.
But when it was all said and done, I had a lot of ash and so I had to spread it all
out and my tractor sucked up a lot of ash into the air filter and on that screen.
And that was irresponsible of me because basically I should get my blower and blow that off
so that it, you know, it doesn't clog up my filter and clog up my radiator.
So that could have been the cause.
But the main cause I saw was the coolant overflow tank.
Now your car has one of these.
They're made out of cheap plastic and occasionally they will crack.
They will break.
They will develop holes.
Well this is on a relatively new tractor and it had already cracked for some reason
and it was spewing antifreeze.
And so I was upset when I saw that.
I was glad I shut off my tractor because you know what the end result of that could have
been if I had ignored that.
If I had had the volume turned up too loud on my earbuds, then I could have destroyed
that very expensive diesel engine.
And that's not something I wanted to do.
If I had, I would probably not have admitted it on this radio show slash podcast.
Because that bad probably is.
I do make mistakes though and one of them was not cleaning out my filter.
I did pull my filter off the tractor and looked at it and it was completely clogged.
I mean beyond, it didn't even look like a filter anymore.
It looked like some kind of a furry creature.
But when I did pull it off, I looked inside around my finger around the hole that goes
into the engine and it was perfectly clean.
So the filter had done its job.
One of the blessings of using factory filters, not cheap aftermarket filters, in your tractor
or in your car.
You know I talk about that a lot.
I don't know why somebody would buy, you know I don't care what you spend on a
car even if it's an inexpensive car.
What is an inexpensive car anymore?
I mean the average selling price is just under $50,000, you can still buy a car
for $25,000 to $30,000, maybe a Hyundai, a Lantra or something like that.
But even at that, I mean if your monthly payment is $600, $700 a month, why would you
go to a quick lube place and put a $2 oil filter on there and a $3 air filter?
Just you're not thinking about what the ramifications of that could be.
Put the best filters on there that you can.
Use the top quality oil, use the best gasoline, your car will last longer.
Okay I'll take my first break, I'll be back in just one minute.
Okay, I am back.
Let's talk about something just fascinating.
Let's talk about sales tax on cars, you know that can add a lot to the price of
a vehicle.
The sales tax in the state of Tennessee on automobiles is 7%.
The highest in the country is in Nevada, or Nevada.
What do you say?
What do I say?
I say Nevada, yeah I had to think about it for a second, 8.25% in Nevada.
Kansas is 7.5%, California and Illinois 7.25%.
I'm sure there are other fees that are charged, maybe wheel tax charges and
things like that when you register the vehicle.
Rhode Island, Tennessee and Indiana are the next highest at 7%.
Those are the top ones.
I live in one of those states and that is sad.
Now it's not so bad if you have a trade in.
Now does your state give you credit for your trade?
Well it does if it's not California or Virginia.
That's surprising to me.
Of course Virginia can be a somewhat liberal state because it's right around
Washington D.C., all that population there.
They must have voted for that.
But yeah there's no credit for the sales tax that you paid on your trade in.
How is that fair?
I just don't think it is at all.
I mean you already paid sales tax on the full amount on that one, shouldn't you
get credit?
Well 48 other states think you should.
So we had an issue this past weekend in the dealership.
We sold a vehicle to a guy and he refused to pay us the sales tax here.
He wanted to take his title and the bill of sale and take it to the registration
office and register it himself and pay his sales tax down there.
And for some reason he was just irate because we would not let him do that.
And that's because we are liable for that in the state of Tennessee, I'm sure in most
other states there are sales tax audits.
And because car dealers are a major collector of sales tax, probably the only business
in a town, our size or mid-sized town, that pays more sales tax or redeems more
sales tax to the state would be somebody like Walmart or grocery stores.
Car dealers have a lot of sales and the transactions are really big so there's a
lot of sales tax collected.
And the state of Tennessee takes that really seriously so they come in and
audit us every three years whether we want to or not.
They look at every transaction and they want to make sure that we
collected sales tax.
And if we don't then they're going to charge us a sales tax on that transaction.
So we can't let people out of the dealership and not pay sales tax.
But I want to register the vehicle myself where you can still register it yourself.
You can go down to the courthouse and register the vehicle.
We'll give you the title and the bill of sale and you can go do that.
But they won't collect sales tax down there.
We're going to collect it here and redeem it to the state.
One way or the other.
Okay, so I have another confession to make.
I'm actually succumbing to pressure from my daughters who are telling me that
you need to get the windows tinted on your Porsche.
Why?
I want to be able to see out of my window because it makes it look better.
Don't you think it's pretty enough as it is?
No, it would look better if the windows were tinted.
Well, I'm not getting that really dark tint.
Well, you don't have to.
It would look better.
Anyway, I'm breaking a personal rule.
I'm getting the windows tinted.
Now, that's on the Porsche 911.
I will not ever get the windows tinted on a vehicle that I drive a lot every day,
like my F-150.
But window tinting is, I think it's a youthful thing.
Let's see.
What am I?
I'm a baby boomer.
What came before me?
I don't even remember.
Gen X.
I think they're a bunch of window tinters.
I'm an anti-tint tight.
That's just what I am.
I'm a guinea.
But let's talk about why people do it.
I understand.
I mean heat reduction.
Maybe is it more comfortable?
Well, according to the experts,
tinted windows can block up to 60% of solar heat,
keeping the cabin cooler and reducing the need for air conditioning.
So this can also lead to better fuel efficiency.
Okay, I can buy that.
So what about this UV protection?
Well, quality film, if it's the right kind of film,
can block 99% of UV rays protecting your skin.
Now, I can appreciate that because I am of Scotch Irish heritage.
Every time I go to the dermatologist, he reminds me of that.
Well, Lenny, it's just your Scotch Irish heritage.
I'm about sick of that.
I had perfect skin until about 15 years ago,
and then everything went south.
So maybe if I'd gotten window tinting earlier,
it would have been better.
Apparently, UV rays can fade your seats
and cause cracking in your seats, dashboard, and trim.
Now, I'll tell you this.
I am not getting any tint on my windshield, not doing it.
I don't like that little bar that they put across the top
because my head, my line of vision is right there at that line,
so that's not happening.
I'm just doing the sides and I'm doing legal tint.
It will not be illegal.
So anyway, glare reduction, tint significantly reduces glare
from the sun, headlights, reflective surfaces,
sorry, improving visibility and driver safety.
I don't know about that.
Driver safety?
You know, that's what concerns me.
When I drive my daughter's expeditions
with that illegal tint that they have in it,
I hope they get pulled over someday and the police say,
you're going to have to take that out
because it's too dark.
I can't see, especially with my developing cataracts.
Privacy and security, darker tints provide greater privacy,
preventing outsiders from easily seeing inside.
That's another thing I don't like
because if somebody pulls in front of me,
I want to see who I'm mad at.
You know, I can't, I can't see them.
And you know, if they're mad at me
and decide to flip me off or something,
then I won't know it.
So anyway, that's a kind of a silly reason.
Aesthetic appeal, see this was the appeal
that my daughters are hitting me up with.
Tinting can enhance a vehicle's appearance.
So we'll see.
I've got an appointment at North Main Audio.
Yeah, they do window tinting as well.
And so they're real excited about doing my little P car.
It can also compliment the paint color
or the body styling according to the experts.
So tint film can hold shattered glass.
So it is a safety thing.
I don't know about that, but maybe it does.
But you know, here's some of the arguments
against window tinting like legal restrictions.
But I'm sorry, it's just not being enforced.
I mean, I see too many windows
that you can't even tell anybody's inside the thing.
And I know that's not safe.
And I would just like,
I'm going to ask another one of those rhetorical questions
because I can't hear your answer.
Do you think it makes a vehicle look better?
Is it important to be able to see out of the vehicle clearly at night?
I mean, I personally think it is.
Visibility and safety concerns excessive tint
can reduce visibility at night or in low light conditions.
Absolutely.
Law enforcement and emergency responders
may object to very dark tint.
What if you get pulled over?
And that happens.
And you're just thinking about the police officer
walking up to a car.
He can't see anything that's going on in that car.
Seems like every, you know, criminal video
that I watch on YouTube,
all of them have dark tinted windows.
You know, it takes a lot of courage
to walk up to a vehicle at two in the morning.
And it's kind of a shady looking vehicle anyway.
And you're pulling them over.
And you can't see if they've got a oozy pointed at you or what.
I mean, I just can't imagine having the courage to do that.
God bless those people.
Another reason to get rid of that dark tint.
Maybe they were perfectly innocent folks,
but I hope he wrote them a ticket for the dark tint
and made them get it taken out.
Also, some of the negatives are just crappy installation.
You know, if you have a professional to do it,
it looks good.
But if you've seen those windows
that look like they have bubbles all over the back glass,
it's usually because of the poor installation
over a rear window defogger.
That's what causes that.
But it's just like, you know,
they do a great job on the driver and passenger windows
and a little strip across the windshield
and maybe the back seat passengers.
But when they get to the back window, they're exhausted.
And they just can't get it clean enough
or, you know, get the air bubbles out of it.
And they say, oh, the heck with it.
Let's see.
What else?
Technological interference.
You know, certain metallic or ceramic films
can interfere with radio, GPS, or keyless entry signals.
So, you know, these are just some of the reasons for and against.
But I'm going to give it a shot.
I just hope it's not too hard to take out
in case I don't like it.
We shall see.
I'll give you a report.
I'll be back in just one minute.
Okay, back to the question of, you know,
what happened with me on my tractor.
I do want to caution you that if you,
if you don't want to know what any of the other lights are,
that's fine that come on your dash,
but know where the oil light is,
the oil pressure light, or the oil pressure gauge,
the coolant light.
You need to know what that looks like.
It's not the same as your check engine light.
You know, if that light comes on, just wait a little bit.
And that car just keep getting hotter and hotter.
Next thing you're going to notice is steam coming out
from the gap between your hood and your fender.
And you'll put your foot on the gas and nothing will happen.
Or you might hear a knocking noise in your engine.
Because it has no coolant and it's gotten so hot
that there's no protection, the oil can't protect it.
And you have destroyed your engine.
So know what the oil light is, what it looks like.
Know what the coolant light looks like.
Transmission.
You may have a warning light for your transmission.
But if you're not sure, just get your owner's manual out,
turn it to the accessory position,
and just identify what each light is.
Just go ahead and do it.
Do it tomorrow.
Or just when you have time so that you know,
especially if it's a new car.
I mean, if it's a car you've had for a long time,
hopefully you know what all those indicators are.
But if it's a relatively new car,
it's going to have a lot of different lights on it.
And you need to know what they mean.
And like I say, if it's a check engine light,
it's not an emergency.
But it can become one if you let that go too long.
So a lot of people, they'll just go to advanced auto parts
or old rallies or someplace.
And they'll have, would you scan this for me
and see what my light is on?
What this is telling me?
And they can scan it.
All they'll do though is tell you what they think it is.
The only way to find out for sure
is take it to a certified independent repair shop
that knows what they're doing
or preferably to the dealership
that sells that particular vehicle.
Because they have the parts to fix it.
And on a lot of these things,
you don't want to put aftermarket parts on it.
You want to make sure you get the OEM,
the original equipment, manufactured parts
to solve that problem.
Because the cost of not solving a check engine light problem
could be a catalytic converter.
Once that gets stopped up due to a faulty sensor
and you're not paying attention to the underlying problem,
then that's getting real expensive.
And it may or may not be covered by your factory warranty.
Most emission warranties go for five years
or 60 or 75,000 miles.
That was mandated by the federal government.
But even if it's a mandate,
it doesn't mean that you're going to pay attention to it.
That's up to you.
So you have been warned by the guru.
If you need me for any reason,
423-552-2020, just send me a text.
And I'll send you a copy of the My Car Guru guidebook
that deals with a lot of this stuff.
Just text me your email address
and I will send you a PDF version
of the My Car Guru guidebook.
If you need one printed out,
just call the dealership at 423-639-5151
and I'll print one out and stick it in the mail for you.
You can't beat that with a stick.
Well, thanks for listening to this edition of My Car Guru
and I'll see you next time.
About this episode
Lenny Lawson shares a personal story about a tractor breakdown while bush hogging, emphasizing the importance of paying attention to warning lights on vehicles. He discusses the consequences of ignoring these alerts, like engine damage, and offers practical advice on identifying dashboard indicators. The episode also touches on tire pressure lights, the significance of using quality filters, and the nuances of vehicle sales tax in Tennessee. Lenny humorously debates the pros and cons of window tinting for his Porsche, blending automotive knowledge with relatable anecdotes.
