Going on a Road Trip How to Ensure Your Car is Ready to Hit the Road

So you're going on a road trip. Well, lucky you. Wish I was going, but some of us have to work. Let's talk about the things that you should be checking out for before you go on that road trip. Now, say there's five things I'm gonna say. Five things I wanna talk about. They are no particular order and I could go on for five, 10 hours about what little fine nitpicking things that you should do, but let's talk about the five most important things, no particular order. But while I'm under the car, I'm gonna say, check your oil change. When is it due?

Say you're going on a road trip and maybe going 1500 miles away, 800 miles away, 3000 miles, that sounds like even better fun. But say you only have 800 miles left til your oil change, and you're like, "Well, I don't want to do it too soon." Just do it. Do it where you're used to getting it done. Don't do it on the road. Heaven forbid you go on the road and you go to a shady place because you don't know, right? And it just doesn't work out for you. Something happens and you're stranded. You don't want that to happen.

Go to the place that you always go to or if you do it yourself, even better. That's the best way as far I'm concerned. It's only one person you know and that's you, trust yourself. Do the oil change even if it's early. While it's jacked up and you're underneath, take a gander behind the wheels. Look for shiny things on the back of the rotors. You'll feel the pedal. You'll hear the noises. Just make sure they're good. If you don't have any records, maybe it's been 30,000 since you've done a brake job. Take a look at it. Just look at it, feel the brake pedal, because you get used to how brakes wear after a while, you know, and aware you get unaware of things because you're so used to it. You're the only one driving it. So do an oil change.

Hey tires, let's talk about tires. So if you don't have a lift or a jack, just turn the wheel all the way out to one side and then I use a tire gauge. But if you don't have a tire gauge, you can use the mighty penny, a coin. It does work believe it or not. So I wanna look at my tire tread depth, make sure it's good for the road. There it is, we have 8/32 on this tire. That's barely worn. Brand new, this is probably going for like 10 or even 12/32. So eight's halfway worn. So I scrounged up a penny and I wanna do a quick test. So they say, if you bring your tire tread to the top of Lincoln's head, that's a 2/32. Well, I just measured it with my tire meter and gauge and it's correct. It is 2/32. So what I would do is take a penny and I'm gonna draw a line right on the penny where the tread meets. Now, I'm gonna take my depth gauge and I'm gonna mount it right there and push the gauge out till it meets the line. Let's see where we're at. Holy moly, it worked, 8/32. And my gauge already told me I had 8/32. So if you only have a penny, if you go across Lincoln's nose, the bridge of his nose, you have 8/32.

So I guess that's a pretty good little tool to have and everyone has a penny somewhere. And then check the date on the side of the tires. I've talked about this several times. Maybe you're getting tired of it, but I think it's kind of cool. Let's check the date. Also, tire pressure. Let's make sure our tires are inflation at the proper spec. And if you need the spec for your car, don't go by the sidewall of the tire, please. That is in general manufacturer's specification that they made for their tire because this tire could go on 12, 15 different brands of cars, but they don't know what kinds of suspension the car that is on has and the weight capacity of the car. So go by the manufacturer of the car, not the tire. Check your driver's door for the manufacturer specifications for the tire pressure for that vehicle.

What is going on here? Battery, the battery is wow, it's pretty sad. It's kind of common in cars nowadays. The more modern they get, the more electronic stuff going on with them. This corrosion is common, not this much corrosion, but maybe this much corrosion. If she had this done regular maintenance place at the same place all the time, that was actually a garage and not one of those specialty for just one item, company, that would have been taken care of. If they are not capable of taking care of it yourself, meaning you, if you can't clean the battery terminals, which you should be able to, and I'll tell you real quick watch videos, we have it on there. Don't do the old baking soda. Throw it on top of this battery and then you rinse it down with the garden hose, especially this kind of battery. It's not maintenance-free. It will seep into these caps and it will neutralize your battery.

The best thing you can do here, put some gloves on, take this terminal end off, clean it with just water, clean the terminal end, separate, pull it away from the battery, put the baking soda on it or I like to use a cup, ceramic cup that you're never gonna drink out of again. Put some baking soda in it, a couple of teaspoons, hot water. And I would take those terminal ends and dip them right in and hold them in there. It'll bubble up like a nice frothy.

It doesn't have to be full. Halfway is good. We'll mix that up. Good way to clean teeth. So we're gonna do the negative side first and a little quick reference if you have any favorite radio stations that you must have, and you don't know what order they're in, write them down before you disconnect this negative, because they're gonna go bye, bye.

Also, if you have a Honda, make sure you have the radio code. Should be handwritten in a card in the manual. You don't have that code, call the dealer with the VIN number. They'll give you the code before you disconnect the negative, or you will have no radio. So now we're gonna take our negative cable and we'll spill some. It won't matter. Look at that pretty color green.

That's the key is inside there. You want that little, you wanna make sure it's a good contact. So like I can see a little bit of copper, which is perfect. That's what I want. See a nice shininess in there. That's great. This outside stuff, you've gotta clean that off. Sometimes you can take a small screwdriver or a better wire brush. What will happen if you let this get out of control, which is, I'm kind of worried about this side being like this is actually because it's copper, it'll eat, the corrosion eats away this terminal end and it'll be split.

And then if you're on the road and that splits no contact, what happens? Lights come on. Your battery light comes on. And your lights might come on, gauges fluctuate, headlights dim, nightmare on the side of the road. Yeah. I don't think this is gonna be a good terminal end. Wow. So this is a 12-millimeter socket because that's look at the problems they would have had. I'm glad they asked me to check this up before a trip. That tells me this terminal end might need to be replaced.

Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Copper broke. See, there we go. I'm not even cleaning this up because there is no connection there. Wow. They're headed away too for like a nice eight-hour road trip. Something might've happened. Maybe it wouldn't have happened, but either way that needs to get fixed.

Fluids, let's talk about fluids. They're pretty important especially on a road trip. Got to check your washer fluid, check your oil. Like I said earlier, if you haven't had an oil change, get it. If you had recently say, I don't know, you had 1500 miles left on your oil change or you just had one done, let's check the level anyways. Pull your dipstick out. You're gonna wipe it down. Make sure the car is not running. That's basic facts, but sometimes we get forgetfulness. Make sure the stick goes all the way down in and then pull her out and check it. Now this car is going on road trip. Isn't that kind of ironic? That's why we're doing this video on it. Well, she's a quart low. And I'm not gonna say much about where she's at with her oil changes, but she's a little over the mileage. Let's just say. So we will be doing an oil change on this.

Check your coolant. Don't forget the coolants. Now, this car's been sitting for a couple hours, thankfully, so I can take this radiator cap right off and I'm gonna check and I wanna make sure my fluid is right there at the top, which it is. My fluid looks a little overfull in the actual overflow tank because it shouldn't be up that high. It's way past the max line. And I'll tell you right off, if you haven't noticed already, this is a Nissan. Nissan has a blue coolant.

Now I was never a fan of the import blue coolant. Why? Because America in general, uses blue for washer fluid or washer fluid period is blue for most part. And you get that fine line. Look at this. They locate this coolant overflow next to the washer. Now, I can only hope that somebody hasn't added washer fluid to this and not here. You think you can tell the difference when it's in there right below in the comment.

Check your drive belt while you're under the hood, checking your fluids. This is the serpentine belt on this car. Now, I'm just gonna look for dryness. Make sure it's not fraying. You don't see anything like little fragments coming out of the side of the belt. This thing looks pretty good. Brake fluid. Let's talk about your brake fluid. Yeah, your brakes feel good. Everything feels good. Well, what if, what if this is wicked low for some reason? Like I said, this is down to the minimal line. Well, it's right above, hair above minimum right before max. Probably just evaporated away. You don't know, but hopefully, you know, you know your own maintenance.

Oh, how about the air filter? Let's talk about the air filter. Let's see what we've got here. Oh, now cabin filter also is something I would think about, especially on a road trip, but I can tell you that my car has regular maintenance done to it on a regular basis. But if you're someone that does not, should have this checked out. Wow, look at that. A couple of leaves, not bad. So I like to look down in between here. Look for any severe amount of oil or dirt buildup. These are not cheap. You can run these for anywhere around, anywhere from $20 to $60. I've seen air filters. So this one, particularly I would just take an air gun, blow it out, tap it against the tire.

Gently because we don't want to break it, fold it over, take an air gun and just blow it out. That'll work great. Make sure you clean the box. Take the box right outside. Hello world.

Oh, it's a cold day. Cabin air filter, so we checked the air filter. Let's check the cabin air filter. Now, on this particular car, it is located down here in this kick panel. So you're just gonna grab the plastic passenger kick panel and pull this out. Get that out of the way. And it's right back here. There's a little door that says cabin air filter. We're going to pop that free. Let's see what we get. Kind of scared. Feeling like Robinson Crusoe.

I think we better get an air filter, cabin filter in this. It's stuck in there. Well, that was a battle. I bet I looked good. So something tells me, yeah, that needs to be changed. I think it should have been changed before the road trip. I need a road trip now. Whew. So let's talk about inside the car because this is where you, face it, you're gonna be spending your whole time on this road trip.

Well, make sure you got perfect road music, right? Whatever your favorite music is going around the clock. Visual, let's talk about visual stuff. I see a lot of this in a lot of people's cars. This isn't bad. I don't mind things like this. And not that I'm the spokesperson for all about cars, but sometimes people from the mirror, man, oh man alive, they get their whole life around that. They got their graduation tassels. They got the baby shoes. They got all sorts of air fresheners. That's a visual block.

Now you're in a new environment obviously, if you're going on a road trip. Exploring, you're learning places, you're in a different country, maybe a different town. And you wanna see things. Don't be getting in car accidents because you don't have a clear visual. And if it's in your budget, why not get a car camera? Because what better way to actually see your road trip in memory form. You can replay it back and show people the cool things you saw, especially like landscaping and different times of states.

Well, other than the obvious, you know, I said things about hanging from the windshield and rear view mirror. That's my personal preference. But wiper blades, you don't know if you're gonna run into rain, what are you gonna run into especially if you're going for a good road trip. Check them out, check for tears in them. Use them, use a washer, see how they wipe. Make sure it's a clean sweep when it goes across, there's no streaking. Heaven forbid you're in a new environment, you don't know where you're at and a good rainstorm comes and you've got these puppies on and you really can't see, oh, that could be a disaster.

Of all the five, get ready for a road trip is the most important one. And that is to have the greatest time you can. Have fun. Don't look back. Let's do it. Well. I hope you enjoyed the video. I enjoyed making it and don't forget if you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. And don't forget to ring that bell because it turns on all your notifications. I'm distracted because my ride should have been here. Vacation started an hour ago. And if you enjoyed it, please leave a comment. Have a great day. Come on, man. You said, "Be ready." I'm ready.