Owners Manuals How to Answer Questions About Your Car Truck or SUV

So, five, two... Oh, hey, are we doing this now? Well, I guess we'll do it now. So, we're gonna talk about car manuals. I know it's that subject that no one likes to talk about. We have YouTube nowadays, which I love, but there's a lot of information you need to know about your car and what if you break down on the side of the road and you don't have any data, you can't get a signal, you don't have YouTube access. I've got the antique YouTube right here, it's in your glove box. I found a lot of things in here that I was kinda shocked about. I need to reset the clock because of our time change and I was like, "Oh... " messing around in there. I opened this up and in five seconds I figured out how to do it. Now, I could've gone to YouTube, which I did by the way, and there wasn't anything there. Maybe it's too small or minor, nobody cares about putting it on YouTube, but it's right here. And I'm finding all sorts of cool discovery things about the car that I thought I knew and I didn't know. So, let's talk about manuals, how to use them, what you can find in them.

So, we just grabbed some manuals that we had in the shop. No specific and no favoritism here, but we did grab a domestic, European car, and an import. So, just to see if the books were categorized differently, if they always put the index in the back and pretty much in general, they all put the index in the back. But I wanna touch base on things that you always think about, "What do I need to know, what do I need to know?" I always get questions like, "What is this light?" Well, I recently received that from a young 20-year-old. She's like, "What does this light mean?" Took a picture of it because they're all phone-savvy. And I had said, "Hmm, where's your manual? Look inside the manual." She was too far for me to get to, so several hours away. So, she opened up a manual and she read it to me and it was pretty easy. I already knew what it was, but I wanted her to get involved so that she felt at ease and knew it wasn't a problem.

So, on this one, I pulled up the indicator warning lights. So, you can always do this yourself real quick, have your child do it if they're driving their car, they just got their license, maybe have them hang out with the book for a little bit. Some people put it by the nightstand so they can read it before they go to bed, it will put you to sleep. It's not information that you're like, "Ah, I can't wait to know it." But just the security of knowing that the information or the question you have is in there. I grabbed this one and I flipped the page open and I found child safety, how to install child seat and restraints correctly in this particular car. And you know, every parent wants to know that and they go to the police station, the fire station, they'll install it for free, but you also have it here. So, knowledge you get to know and is sometimes more secure, makes you feel easier than having a stranger do it. Even though it's...they know when they're trained, which you can get yourself updated before you go there and say they're correct or they're incorrect.

And then on this one, I grabbed fluids. All these manuals have fluids in it. So, instead of going to your guy at the parts store and saying, "Hey, I don't know what kind of oil my car takes." Look it up because what if they're wrong? You're not gonna get anything out of them if they were wrong if something happens to the car, but most manuals will have the fluid type when it comes to coolant, oil, transmission, and it tells the capacity too. And another thing that I like to know, and I tell a lot of people all the time and they get all excited, they never think about it is your fuel tank capacity. They just know when it's almost empty or if it says how many more miles they have to empty. But wouldn't it be cool just to say, "Hey, I know for a fact I have a 15-gallon tank?" It just gives you another set of like, "I'm in control, man." So, things like that, it's all right here in your manual. You don't need to read it back to back, I don't care, but just write your questions down and maybe thumbnail through it and you'll know them. You know, I never even knew this. Thirty-four years and I really never looked inside one of these enough to memorize it.

They actually have the bulb sizes to every car in this manual. I just checked it. So, I've got domestic, import, and European and I found them all. They all actually give the bulb size and the type, it tells you how to take the sockets out and the type of bulbs it takes and how many of them it takes. That's pretty cool. And I noticed that on the newer car, we have '18 here. It didn't give a bulb size, it just said LED. So, you know that you can't put a domestic type of bulb in it or a filament type of bulb, it's LED light bulb, so there's no size or number. That's pretty cool. This older car gives me the bulb size and everything and the ones that are LED, it says LED. The other one's 3457. So, this car has a mixture of both filament or LED light bulbs in it and it actually tells me the ones that are LED, the ones that are amber, clear bulbs, and gives you the number of the size. That is great information to know and it is right there.

I know that sometimes these manuals are looking up a dictionary and it's hard to find where you're gonna go, but the indexes are always right here in the back and they do break it down. So, I just went to the index and I was like, bulbs, it's not there, headlight, it tells you about headlight aiming. Then I went to lighting and I looked up lamps and there's my bulb replacement. So, it is a bit sometimes of a fish and find. You got to look around and just read the writing and Bluetooth menus. So, it's gonna depend on how they word it. Just don't give up. Don't think, "Oh, they don't have it here." They'll have it in there, you just got to think of how they worded it, and every book can be different. This one actually gives you really great pictures to look at in details and it tells you, "Turn the wheel." It gives you step-by-step. So, if you don't have access to YouTube and you can't watch one of our videos, shame on you. Get some Wi-Fi, but they are right here. So, if you needed a quick reference, I say go to your manual.

One more real important thing I wanna talk about is towing. Heaven forbid you're on the side of the road, you get your book, open it up, call your tow company and they're on their way. While you're waiting, especially in low profile cars, a lot of your mid-sedan vehicles nowadays they come, if you've ever noticed on your car, check to see if you have it. Do you ever notice these little plastic squares on your bumper? There's one in the front and one in the rear. So, on the mini, I found it in the manual under giving and receiving assistance. They show you to tow and where to put the tow hook, the show you the two locations of those little plastic doors. And in the trunk, this is where you're gonna find your jack and your assessors. You can see right here, it comes with a screwdriver, it has a flat bit on it. On the inside is a Phillips, you flip it around, but you would just pop this little plastic cover out of the way like that. And then inside this compartment here is a tow hook. So, you're gonna take this and thread it right in.

Now, you don't have to be out in the field or in the middle of the woods for this to work. Even for a tow truck, that's gonna just tow you up from a flat surface. The cars are so low and the suspension is really delicate, so it's best to tow it from here. Tow truck driver should know that. So, it's under giving and receiving assistance and also it has tire torque in here. You can look it under tire inflation, how to change your spare tire, it's gonna give you your wheel torque of each car. Always pay attention to that when you have tire you're going to take off at home or even if you go to a tire company or a garage, ask them to write down your wheel torque because that's a key. If they use a torque wrench, they're professional and that's what you want. They write it, then you know your wheels are torqued and you're safer going down the road. Then if they forgot or if they did it with an air gun and over-torqued.

The last thing I wanna say about car manuals is my opinion. And it's my opinion is the size these things come in. Yeah. It's overwhelming. Look at the size and they put them in the glove box. Can't even fit a pair of gloves in the glove box after these are in there. Well, also, all the Dunkin' Donut napkins, but what I like to put mine is in the trunk. There's always a spare tire access, a little clearance. Open that up, I put my manual down there. So, it is in my car if I do need it, heaven forbid I'm on the side of the road. Nobody wants to do that. And it's not sitting on the counter at home, it's in the car, but you get plenty more room for those Dunkin' Donut napkins.

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