Dad, how do I?
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Transcript by Youtube. Slightly edited with AI.
Hey kids, so today I’m going to show you how to change your car’s engine filter. This is different from a cabin filter, but this is the one that’s in your engine. It might be a little different on your vehicle, but this is how you do it on mine. But first, I have a dad joke for you. Did you know that Marty McFly didn’t really drive his DeLorean very often? Yeah, you might say he drove it from time to time.
Okay, let’s locate the engine’s air filter. It should look something like this. Here it is on mine. There are four clips located here, here, here, and here. Then I have a screw that I’m going to loosen to remove the hose that’s attached to it. So I open the clips—one, two, three, and four. On the backside, now I’m going to loosen the clamp that’s holding that hose on. You could probably get by without that and just kind of lift it up, but I thought this was easier. Just go ahead and loosen that clamp, and then remove the hose.
Now just lift off the cover, and there’s our filter. Let’s go ahead and remove it. You can see it’s a little bit dirty. Just pay attention to which way it’s facing. Sometimes there’s a notch on it to show you which way it’s facing, but in this case, it’s just a rectangle, so it’s pretty easy. Then just go ahead and put the new one back in. Make sure it’s seated well down in there, and then we’re just going to replace the cover. Do just the opposite of how we removed it. First, I would put that hose on. Go ahead and attach that. Make sure that’s good, and then you can just adjust it to get it seated properly so that the clips can clamp back on. We’ll go ahead and clamp those back on, and that will force it back down. You might have to wiggle it a little bit to get it to seat properly.
Then just go ahead and we’ll screw that clamp back on to make sure that hose is good and tight, and you’re good to go.
The first thing you want to do is locate the positive and the negative terminals on your car battery. You want to disconnect the negative first. The positive will be red or have a plus sign on it, and the negative will be black or have a minus symbol. So you want to disconnect the negative one first. I’m using a 10 mm socket, which is pretty common for this particular task. Now we’re going to disconnect the positive now that the negative is disconnected. So we just disconnect the positive. My battery had this insulating cover that was just around it. Maybe that helped with the life of the battery; I’m not sure. Your battery will be held in place somehow, and this has got this little tie-down at the bottom here. See that? There’s just a little bolt on it that I’m going to have to loosen to lift that out of there.
To get down in there, I actually needed two extensions, so I have a shorter extension and a longer extension to be able to get all the way down there. Then I just loosened that up. This is a 12 mm socket for that bolt, and once you loosen it with the wrench, you can just spin it by hand to remove it the rest of the way. I pull that clip out of there, and just make sure you put this someplace where you can find it, right? It’s easy to get excited and dive into the job, then forget where you put this stuff. So set it somewhere obvious so you know where to find it when you need to put it back.
I like the design of this tie-down; you just slide the battery forward. It’s clipped on the back just by sliding it back there, and then you slide it forward to pull it out. So we’ll go ahead and get the battery up here. You can see there are covers on the battery terminals, right? You’re going to end up removing those. I have seen memes showing those things still on, so you need to make sure to remove those. But we don’t need to remove them just yet; let’s get the battery in place first.
Make sure you’re putting the battery back in the correct way. The positive side should be on the left side, just like you removed it, and the negative should be on the right side. I’m just checking to make sure it fits, but we still need to actually put that insulator back on. So we need to make sure you have the cutout on the bottom right. That allows for those clips that are going to hold the battery in. That’s why those cutouts are there.
Then there’s a cutout on that other side. I’m not sure why that’s there—maybe to make room for the positive side—but you don’t really need that. So anyway, we’re going to slip that down, and then we can go ahead and slide it back. Okay, now it’s in place. Then we just got to put that other clip back in. We’re just going to go ahead and see your hole down there so you know what you’re doing. Put that clip down in there because you’re going to have to kind of feel for it as you’re putting the bolt back in. You want to kind of feel for that bottom hole. It might take a little bit to get it started, and then once you get it started, you can go ahead and use your ratchet and tighten it all the way down.
Okay, so we want to connect the positive first—your red one right there. You need to remove that red cap. Let’s remove that, and then we’ll go ahead and connect the positive just the opposite of how we removed it. When we removed it, we took off the negative first, and we removed the positive second. Now we’re putting the positive back on, and then we put the negative on last. Make sure it’s seated down in there well.
This one has a cap that might fall off like that. That’s okay; just snap it back on, and then it’ll cover back over the top. Before we do that, we want to just tighten it down to make sure it’s a good connection. Right? And then tighten it back up. Don’t overtighten this, but you want to make sure it’s snug so that it holds.
Now we’re going to attach the negative. You just need to make sure to remove that plastic cover first. You don’t want to leave that on; otherwise, you won’t have good connections. So you have to remove that, and then we’re going to go ahead and attach it. Basically, what we did with the positive side we’re going to do with the negative side. Put that down in there and then tighten it up well, and that’s all there is to it.
Okay, so the first thing we want to look at—unless you left your lights on and you know that your battery just needs to be charged—is to examine the connections. A lot of times, if you don’t pay attention to your engine, these connections can be horrible. My connections are pretty clean, and I’m pretty sure, actually, in my case, my battery’s life has just run out. But as you can see, my connections are good. There’s no corrosion here. However, a lot of times when you lift this up, there’ll be a lot of corrosion, and that’s what this tool is for.
This cleans the post; you just stick it on the post and twist it around. Then this fits up inside that connector to clean that out. Okay, so we’re at the dead battery, right? That’s where we start, and an easy way to remember this is “Red Dead.” So we’re going to connect the red to the red on the dead battery.
But before you do even that, you want to look for a place where you’re going to put the black one—that’s the ground. You would think it would go here, but that’s actually what everybody’s scared of because that can cause a spark when you connect it. I used to do that when I was younger; I never had a problem. But just for safety reasons, we want to connect the black to a ground.
In newer vehicles, I think there’s an obvious place where a ground is, but you want an unpainted surface that is a ground. To be honest with you, the best one I’m seeing is right there. That little nut right there is a ground that I’m going to use. Okay, so we’re going to go ahead and connect it, leaving the black aside, and we’ll connect the red to the dead.
This battery is dead; there’s really nothing going on. It’s just sitting here. We’re going to go over to the other car—the car with a good battery—and I’ll show you what we do there. So now we’re at the car with the good battery, and we go ahead and connect those, connecting the red to the red terminal. You can just put it right on there. That’s good. Make sure that this is clean too. We’re getting good connections, so make sure you get a good connection.
Now we’re back at the dead vehicle’s battery, and like I said, you might think you’d connect it there to the negative, but you’re actually not because that can cause a spark, and if there are some gases, it could cause a problem. You want to connect this to that ground that we talked about. Okay? So right here, connecting it to that. Make sure you get a good connection.
Okay, so we’re back in the car with the good battery. We’re just going to go ahead and start it up. Okay, and so depending on how dead that other battery is, you might need to let this run for a couple of minutes. Especially if you’re working with two people, they could rev the engine while you go ahead and try to start that other car.
When you’re in this car, make sure everything’s off—no heater, no radio, nothing. We just want all the juice to go to the dead car’s battery. Okay, so we’re back in the van—the one with the dead battery. We’re just going to go ahead and give it a shot. The other car has been running for about a minute or two, and we’re just going to go ahead and give it a shot.
Okay, oh, it’s starting! There we go; it’s running. In my case, I think my battery is just over its lifespan. They usually last—depending on the quality of the battery—anywhere from 6 to 12 years. It really depends. But if you just left your lights on, and you know that’s why the battery was dead, you would want to drive around for 10 to 15 minutes. Don’t go too far in case you need to jump again. Just be smart about that—drive around for like 10 or 15 minutes, then come back to where you have a good vehicle, and then you can go ahead and turn it off and see if it starts back up.
Now that this is running, I’m going to go ahead and show you how to take the cables back off. Okay, so now we’re just going to remove everything—just the opposite of what we did before. Okay? So you’re going to remove this. We took that off, and really you could just go ahead and remove this right now if you wanted to. The only tricky part is you just want to make sure that the ends don’t touch.
So just to be safe, we’re just going to set this here, and you just want to set it somewhere where it’s not touching anything metal. Okay, so we’re back at the good vehicle’s battery, and we’re just going to remove it. Like I said, just the exact opposite of what we did to put things on. We’re taking off the negative now. Nothing’s going to spark, right? There are only the two reds connected, but then just remove that.
Now there’s nothing—there’s no spark—because that connection only was connected to the red on the other side, so there’s nothing to be scared of there. Okay, let’s go back over to the other vehicle.
Okay, so this is the last step. We’re just pulling this red off of here, right? I want to remove that, and then actually all I did is put that other cap back on the positive. You always want to put that back on. We’ll do that on the other one. Make sure when you remove the cables from the good car that you put them back how they were when you started.
If we look down here, this cap just needs to go back on top of here. That protects against corrosion, and you just want to make sure that that’s going to stay good for a long time for you.
Okay, first we need to actually open the hood. That’s usually somewhere right over here. It could be underneath your dash, somewhere along here, but this one is right here, and I just pop that. Now once it’s popped like this, there’s a safety latch here, and you just have to feel around for the safety latch. I found that they’re usually on the left side of the car. So you feel around for it, and I can feel it right there. Here it is.
If you remember the term “wash boats,” that’ll help you look around your engine and look for the fluids that you need to check. I’m going to show each one of these as a close-up at the end. “Wash boats.” Okay, so the “W” stands for your washer fluid—that’s the fluid that goes into your washer for your windshield wipers.
The “B” stands for your brake fluid, which is right over here on my car. That’s what this is. You need to take a look at that. The “O” stands for oil. Okay? Here’s your engine oil; you need to check that. The “A” stands for antifreeze, which is right here. It goes in here; it’s also right here too, but you never want to open this when it’s hot.
The “T” stands for transmission fluid, and in this particular car, my transmission fluid is right here. The “S,” which stands for your power steering fluid, is my particular power steering fluid, and you can see on the side whether it’s full or not.
Okay, so I’m going to get a close-up of each of these, and then we’ll wrap up. Here’s the washer fluid for your windshield wipers. You just open that up, and you’d add some if you needed it. You’ll be thankful that you checked this if you’re on a trip and you get mud thrown on your windshield. You’ll be thankful that you remembered to check this.
This is my “B,” this is my brake fluid right here. Okay? And I can see on the side; it tells you minimum and maximum. You want to make sure that that’s up to the max. I like to keep it—don’t go over, but you need that for your brakes to work. Your brakes work with hydraulics, and that fluid needs to be there for your brakes can work properly.
The “O” stands for oil, and it’s usually yellow. You just pull that out and check it. This looks good. I have a video on that, but anyway, this is just for quick reference for things to look at.
This is the coolant; it keeps your engine cool. It flushes water and antifreeze through, so that’s what the “A” stands for—antifreeze. You want to double-check that and make sure that it has enough fluid in it. This is also your coolant, but you usually don’t want to even touch this; just leave this closed and use the other reservoir. That’s what you want to keep an eye on.
You especially don’t want to open this when it’s hot, and you can look right here on my particular engine. This red cap says “automatic transmission oil.” Okay? So that’s something you want to check when the engine’s running. You pull it out and check it while it’s running.
Okay, and that’s the “T” in “wash boats.” This is the power steering; it says it right on top of it. That’s the “S.” You look at that, and you can see it on the side whether it’s full or not. If not, you just open that up and add a little. That’s usually good for the life of a vehicle, so you shouldn’t have to mess with that. But if your steering’s tough or something’s wrong, you might want to take a look at that, and you might have bigger problems. But at least that would give you a sense of what’s going on.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
Transcript provided by YouTube then edited with AI
Link to my book: https://amzn.to/3idKKzq Official Website: https://www.dadhowdoiofficial.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dadhowdoi/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dadhowdoi
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This video is produced by “Dad, how do I?” and it is provided for informational, educational, entertainment purposes only. Some of these projects, materials, and techniques may not be appropriate for all ages or skill levels. “Dad, how do I?” does not make any claims of the safety of the projects, techniques, or resources listed on this site including this video, and will not take responsibility of what you do with the information provided by this site. Viewers must be aware by doing DIY projects on their homes or vehicles, they are doing it at their own risk and “Dad, how do I?” cannot be held liable if they cause any damage to their homes or vehicles. “Dad, how do I?” assumes no liability for property damage or personal injury incurred as a result of any of the information contained in this video. Use this information at your own risk. “Dad, how do I?” recommends safe practices when working with tools seen or implied in this or any other video on my channel. Due to factors beyond the control of “Dad, how do I?“, no information contained in this video shall create any expressed or implied warranty or guarantee of any particular result. Any injury, damage, or loss that may result from improper use of these tools, equipment, or from the information contained in this video is the sole responsibility of the user and not “Dad, how do I?”.
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