Real Mechanic Reacts to Horrible Tiktok Car Advice

You can see how nervous James is with that old school mechanic, he didn't wanna say anything goofy 🤣

All the guest stars were amazing. The guy with James really radiated "stern but super knowledgable dad" energy

I always questioned how plastic wedges could stop a car from rolling until I forgot to remove them and tried to drive. That thing didn't budge and now I trust wheel chocks completely 🤣

11:00 I used to work for a roadside company, and the advice they gave us when doing tire changes was 2 things: always use the stock spare change tools in spite of issuing all of us hydraulic jacks, and make sure you use the jack points. The reason for these two points is simply liability coverage. Several times I had jack points fail to live up to their purpose(IE damage the car), but because I used the included tools and designated point, the company and my job were safe.

That bit where the car started rolling on the guy scared the hell outta me. In 1982, when I was 8 years old, I was playing in my friend's back yard while his dad was changing his oil in the yard with the front of the car on blocks. Unfortunately, he neglected to chock his wheels and, considering the blocks were on dirt, he wasn't in a very safe location. He was under the car when it rolled backwards off the blocks, crushing his chest. His mom called 911 and my friend and I watched his dad die over the course of about 5 minutes. The ambulance arrived only a couple of minutes after the man passed. I can still hear my friend's mom screaming and the gurgling that man made as he tried to breathe with a shattered chest. This was an awful and excruciating way to die and I had nightmares almost nightly for the next year or so. Hell, I still have occasional nightmares about it today (40 years later). Do yourself a favor. Chock your friggin wheels!

The forged vs. cast joke in the beginning made me do the half swallow half laugh and choke on hot coffee. Real mechanic stuff.

Belts are good for removing all kinds of things from cars... like filters and shafts The wire trick is used by electricians all over

My dad used to be a farmer and he worked on all of his own equipment and I was brought up with this fundamental dislike of engineers and their inability to foresee real world application, problems and solutions… Engineers!?! I feel you on that one

You can tell a real mechanic just by the way he talks. Dude knew the lines were backwards. My mind went to the GM issue where the angel sensor fails and tries to “find center” but it does a 5° spin to either side.

As an ASE certified master tech this is great to see. Most yt videos and tiktoks are full of misinformation

11:15 a good tip when using jack points from the side is make sure the wheels on your jack are pointing the right way and its rolling a little each time you lift. The jack should be able to roll or your jack point will move instead and slip off. This can happen if the ground you are on is pitted, too soft or there is something stuck under the jack wheels.

As someone who fiddles with first surface mirrors, lenses, and optics for lasers, telescopes, and microscopes, the coffee filter as a low lint/lint free wipes is 100% true! I tried so many other wipe alternatives, including making an updraft hood, and a filtered cross flow hood to keep stuff off of optics I was cleaning to avoid buying kemwipes all the time, cheap basic no frills coffee filters absolutely work for cleaning surfaces without leaving fuzzies. HOWEVER, you can still scratch mirror finishes or optical coatings, so be careful (if you're doing optics stuff, that is. I imagine steel cylinder walls are a bit more resilient that a few atoms of optical coating).

Real mechanic stuff

My favorite mechanic anecdote came from a letter a pilot had wrote to Readers Digest & went (something) like this.. During the last hundred miles or so of my flight I was concerned about a noise coming from my left hand engine although there seemed to be no effect on performance. After landing and taxing to the hanger I found the overnight ground crew mechanic was on his break so I left him a note that said "Unfamiliar tapping sound coming from lefthand engine" On arrival at work the next day I was handed a note from the previous nights mechanic that said.. "Ran engine all night, noise is now familiar"

i have used youtube and google but i am always so so SOOOOO glad i bought the repair and maintenance manuals for my vehicles. even if some things aren't really very easy to figure out from the terrible pictures and jargon filled instructions, far more often than not it makes things easier, and at least from the number and complexity of the steps you get an idea of how long it will take and if you want to do the job or get help with it

The coffee filter thing is pretty neat, would have to see the oil filter after running it, lint from regular and heavy duty paper towels will actually clog an oil pickup tube and filter, you may not even see the lint when assembling the engine.

As a retired Bureau of Standards Lab Tech, I TOTALLY approve of the Coffee Filter Hack. It's a trick we used in the Lab to clean or lubricate extremely precision equipment.

The comment in the vid about mechanics hating engineers is very true hah. When I was doing my mech eng degree an ex chief engineer from Ford was our lecturer. I quizzed him on why their designs made it extremely difficult to work on some models, and whether they put any thought into that - the answer - basically zero thought. The vehicle was designed to last for five years, after that it would be scrapped and the difficult parts would theoretically never actually need replacing. As you can guess, I hate working on Fords!

I find this all funny as I am a seasoned diesel tech, Id love see one of these for the heavy duty side of things. Not pickups but commercial trucks. I've seen a lot of funky or off the wall repairs that have been made previously by either drivers or other mechanics.

This format of video actually works well in this genre. You guys are the pioneers of a tried and true formula. Good Shiiii!