Three-step year-round, all-purpose automotive maintenance plan
Here's the first rule of basic car maintenance...read the f**king manual. Tweet
Highlights
There are only three things you need to do to keep your car on the road...
...other than staying awake, of course.
The Main Thing: RTFM or read the f**king manual.
To make your car run until they outlaw internal combustion engines…
1. Change the oil.
The old rule of thumb was that you should change the oil every 5,000 miles, but today if you have a car that requires full-synthetic motor oil you might be able to go as long as 15,000 miles. In other words, RTFM. Bonus tip: Don’t ever change your oil without also changing your oil filter. And, duh, vice-versa.
Don’t change your oil without also changing your oil filter.
2. Change the air filter.
Wait, which air filter? The one for the engine or the passenger compartment, where all the seats are? Both get dirty and need to be changed regularly. How regular is that? You’ll know you need to change the passenger compartment filter when you start hacking every time you drive the car, of you’ve just spent the last two weeks driving up and down dusty dirt roads and mountains for fun. For the engine air filter, we repeat: RTFM.
3. Lubricate.
If your mind is like ours, this word triggers both some good and bad memories created in the back seat of a car. The same principle applies to your engine: you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to make all the parts move well together. What’s the best lube and how often should you use it? While the rules for the back seat can be left up to personal preferences, the rules for under the hood can be found, yes you guessed it, when you RTFM. Hint: It’s not the postal abbreviation for Kentucky.
One more click: https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/car-technology/a24676402/old-motor-oil/
