Dealing with automotive fluids might be one of the more miserable the
unsung inconveniences of being your own mechanic. And even if you pay
somebody to maintain your car, it’s important to know the age and
condition of your car’s various bloods.
Changing your car’s fluids is critical, and, usually, designed to be
pretty easy. Your oil, brake and clutch fluid, transmission fluid,
coolant and even power steering fluid are meant to be serviced, and
changing them on time keeps your car sweet and responsive for more
miles. But it still leaves you with vessels of toxic poison to dispose
of. Here’s a front to back guide on what to do there.
Why Flush Fluids
All automotive fluids expire after so many
heat cycles and months in service. It happens to your motor oil going
sludgy; it happens to everything.
Car fluids are chemically
engineered to flow a certain way and maintain specific temperatures. As
they age, they lose these properties and become less effective. As that
happens, the components they’re in wear down more quickly and don’t work
as well as they should.
Brake fluid, for example, has a high
boiling point, low viscosity, and anti-corrosive properties. When you
hit the brake pedal over and over again, the fluid that flows down to
your brakes to clamp them closed gets hot. That’s not a problem when the
fluid’s clean.
But brake fluid is hygroscopic, which means water
in the air eventually contaminates it. Once that starts to happen, it
boils more easily. If your brake fluid boils off, there will be less of
it in your brake system. By then, if you go to pump the brake pedal,
there will be less juice to flow to the brake caliper, and that will
mean you won’t be stopping in a hurry.
Splurging on a $10 bottle
of brake fluid every few years could make the difference between your
brakes working well enough to prevent a crash, or, not.
When It’s Time For New Fluid
Generally
speaking, automotive fluids start clear or nearly-clear and get darker
as they age. You usually pour them in looking like Miller Light, and you
want to change them when they start to have around the opacity of Sam
Adams. By the time they look like Guinness, you definitely want to think
about refreshing.
But actually, you’re just going to want to
Google around for your car’s factory service manual then consult said
manual’s index. The correct change intervals will be findable from
there, and that book will tell you exactly what type of fluid you’ll
want to add, which is important too.
If you’ve got a new-to-you
used car and you don’t know how old its fluids are, it’s not a bad idea
to baseline everything and do a full refresh.
Why Flush Fluids Yourself
Changing
fluids on most cars isn’t hard, but it is time-consuming. That makes it
the perfect task to avoid outsourcing since you might pay a lot for
labor time on something you might be able to do yourself.
But more
significantly, if you change your own fluids, you get to pick out the
best chemicals for your car. And you’ll get very familiar with the
underside and underhood areas of the machine.
Why Have A Pro Flush Fluids
Again,
changing fluids on most cars isn’t hard, but, again again, it is
time-consuming. Some people find their time more precious than a
mechanic’s fees, so if that describes you, go ahead and outsource.
It’s
also pretty icky–dealing with toxic fluids isn’t everybody’s bag, nor
is rolling around under your car, and it can be hard to grab a buddy to
bleed brakes with you.
Don’t let anybody shame you into feeling like you’re not a “real car enthusiast” if you don’t change your own oil. But do take
the time to research a reputable repair shop, maybe even one that
specializes in your type of car, if you want someone else to do it.
How To Prepare To Deal With Fluids
Assuming
you do decide to attempt your own fluid flushing, let me emphasize the
most important piece of advice in this post: Always wear eye protection
and skin protection when doing this kind of work.
Once more, for
the people in the back: Get good safety goggles and gloves, and wear
them, before you start cracking drain plugs. The time I got carburetor
cleaner in my eyeball was one of the most painful experiences of my
life, and that’s saying something... I’ve had a UTV roll over onto my
hand, I’ve had my AC joint split by a kangaroo, I’ve had my share of
knockouts and pain.
Anyway, besides being suited up like it’s
eighth-grade chemistry class, make sure you’ve got plenty of trashy rags
around and a good vessel to catch old fluid in.
I’d recommend
using a vessel you don’t mind surrendering when you dispose of your
waste fluids, as some places might make you just leave your whole
bucket. More on that later. Whatever bucket you do use, keep in mind
that the fluids you’ll be catching are caustic enough to eat through
some plastics. A glass jar might be a good option if you can find a
cheap one (check the home goods section at a joint like Ross and
Marshalls or TJ Maxx). Finally, you’re going to have to cart this to a
disposal site, so use something that won’t easily be spilled from.
Draining And Refilling
Each
car and, of course, each component is going to have its own flushing
process. Consult that factory service manual I mentioned for specific
instructions and online forums for people who own your kind of car for
wisdom that might help you preemptively prevent mistakes.
Generally
speaking, you’re going to want to avoid letting a hydraulic accessory
run completely dry, and never start a car with any of its fluids
depleted.
How To Figure Out How To Dispose Of Fluids
Pretty
much every home-wrenching car enthusiast I talked to gave me the same
response when I asked what to do with old auto fluids, something to the
effect of “I don’t know, I’ve just got a big vat in my garage.”
Listen, you don’t have to live like that.
Pretty
much any auto parts store will take used motor oil, which is fairly
common knowledge, but it’s not that much harder to find out where brake
fluid, coolant, and all the other juices need to go when they go bad.
Start
by Googling household waste collections in your area–some towns run
events every so often where somebody might even come to your house to
take castoff poisons.
Auto fluids are typically considered
“household waste” and while they can’t go in your regular trash, your
town or a town nearby will have some provision for taking it which I bet you’ll find by searching “your town + waste disposal” or something similar.
Bigger
cities will have permanent collection centers for such things. You can
start by calling or emailing your town hall, or skip straight to your
local sanitation department if you can find its number.
Here in
west Los Angeles, about five minutes of cursory research revealed I can
take the jar of old brake fluid I just extracted from my Mitsubishi
Montero to a placed called the Hyperion Treatment Plant, and lucky me,
they’re even open on the weekend.
Now that I know my truck’s got
fresh brake fluid I can rest easily knowing not only that I’ll be
stopping as well as I can, but also that I can throw out the toxic old
fluid legally and ethically without being inconvenienced that much. It
feels good!
You might hear about people pouring waste fluids down
drains and into holes dug in yards. You may also realize that you can
just leave some of this stuff out to evaporate. I don’t have any proof
that government disposal centers really do anything “better” for the
environment than that, but I’ve got a pretty strong hunch they’re not,
say, harvesting these fluids and using them for mind-control devices or
sending them up to HAARP.
If
nothing else, disposing of your chemicals the right way makes all auto
enthusiasts look good. Dumping it in a big puddle behind your house
makes us look like greasy cretins. Do it for us!
