I tested several methods out to see what would be most effective at keeping birds from pooping on the side mirrors of a car. These methods also deter birds from pecking at and attacking your side mirrors as well. These are all pretty easy methods to employ, but you’ll have to consider the steps required every time you park your vehicle somewhere. Here are the methods I tested and my results from testing each one.
It has been almost two years now in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic and we are all by now aware of the importance of keeping our hands clean. We’re now accustomed to constantly washing our hands and using hand sanitizer whenever hand-washing is not possible. I’ve been playing with the idea of making a hand washing station for our vehicle because my family and I are always trying to find ways to wash our hands while on the go. After making this hand wash station and placing it in the back of our Toyota 4Runner (with a bottle of hand soap), we’ve found that is has become extremely useful in keeping our family’s hands clean. We are always transporting the kids around and running errands, and it’s not always possible or convenient to find a restroom to wash our hands. Now, it’s as simple as opening the tailgate and having soap and water to wash our hands whenever we need to.
It is without a doubt that checking the tire tread depth of your tires is one of the most important maintenance items you can do on your vehicle. This can be done using a tire tread depth tool and measuring the tread depth at different points on the tire to determine whether or not the tires are still adequate or if they need to be replaced. Not everyone always has a tire tread depth tool on hand, so another easy way of checking the tread depth is to use a penny. I’ve laid out the process for checking tire tread depth using a penny and how you can various indications on the penny to determine the level of the tire’s tread depth.
I’ve written this guide for installing a Lamphus SoundAlert PA system, which should apply to almost any other vehicle. The vehicle I did this on was on a 2003 Toyota 4Runner. The more difficult parts of this install was getting wires through the engine firewall and figuring out which wires to tap off of for power and ground. I already knew where I could connect the ground and power wires to on my car, so if you don’t know where you can tap off for power and ground on your specific vehicle, you’ll need to do some further research. Much of the wiring that comes with the Lamphus SoundAlert PA kit looks intimidating, but half of it either gets taped off, or not used if you are planning to just use it for the alert functions and the PA system.
You may have seen one of these air conditioning recharge kits at your local auto parts store, which usually consists of a recharge hose with a gauge and some refrigerant. The way this AC recharge kit is advertised lends itself to appear as if it will take care of any issue you might be having with your air conditioning system. The reality is that a recharge kit such as the one below will essentially fix only one issue: if the air coming through your vents is not as cold as it used to be.
Spark plugs play critical role in the engine combustion process by precisely igniting the mixture of air and fuel in order to produce power. There are several different ways of checking and adjusting spark plug gap with various pros and cons of each method. Most commonly you will see coin style and wire loop gauges being used, but feeler gauges are also used too. Here’s a guide to checking and adjusting spark plugs using the coin style and wire loop gauges, which will work perfectly in majority of cases.
The No Spring Compressor Method is a way of disassembling your coilover or shock assembly without the use of a spring compressor tool. In your coilover/shock assembly, you have a spring that is compressed by a shock between the top and bottom hat, which are connected to the shock. This assembly of shock and spring can be mounted to the frame of the vehicle (via the strut mount on top) and then to the lower control arm (on the bottom). Rather than using a tool to compress the spring enough for you to remove the shock, the No Spring Compressor Method uses the the weight of the vehicle as well as a floor jack, to decompress the spring.
Typically brake lines are pre-bent to the exact specifications needed for that particular line on the vehicle. However, if you’re doing custom lines or like in my case, you need to get the line in right away, you will need to bend the lines to fit. Here is a guide on how to bend brake lines with a tubing bender.
Whenever air has been introduced into the hydraulic brake system, a brake bleed needs to be done. This air needs to be purged out of the system, otherwise the air does not allow the brakes to work optimally. Typically bleeding the brakes is a two-man operation, however it can done by one person. I will show you how to bleed brakes by yourself using a bleeder bottle.