A mechanic with over five decades of experience working on cars has said there is one thing that is the biggest enemy to your car’s battery. Scotty Kilmer, an American mechanic who has been working on cars for decades, was talking about the best ways to preserve the battery in your car.
The car battery is normally located under the bonnet and helps to provide electrical power to the motor vehicle. Without said battery, which turns chemical energy into electrical energy, a modern car won’t move. Speaking about the matter on his YouTube channel, Mr Kilmer pointed out that the worst enemy to such an important part of the car is corrosion.
As to why, he explained: “Corrosion creates electrical resistance and makes the battery work harder.” Mr Kilmer recommended checking the battery every two to three years, and changing the car battery before it dies completely.
Mr Kilmer also named a series of other factors that can affect the life of one’s car battery including alternator failure, long periods of inactivity or non-use of the car, and loose or dirty cables.
This isn’t the first time Mr Kilmer has given out advice of this nature, with the mechanic also suggesting that people should replace their tyres too because over time, the tread wears out.
Tyres are essential for keeping the cars on the road, the less tread they have, the less grip the car will have, especially in slippery conditions.
On why they were so important, Mr Kilmer said: “Now if you’ve ever noticed, drag cars have big wide tyres with all rubber, no tread, on the ground. All that rubber lets them accelerate fast. But a tyre with no tread and all rubber, when it rains, it’s useless and will slip like mad.
“Now your car’s tread may be running real thin. It will run fine when it’s dry but when it’s running it will slip all over the place. So every once in a while, look at your car’s tread, make sure there is still a lot of tread depth like this one.”
Under UK law the tyre tread depth of a car needs to be at least 1.6mm. However, many specialists recommend changing the tyres once they get down to as low as 2mm, whilst safety experts advise changing them as early as 3mm.
Experts at TyreSafe told the Express that waiting until the last minute to change your tyres, even if they were strictly speaking legal, is not a good idea.
They said: “Waiting until the last minute to replace your tyre can prove risky as a significant amount of tread can be worn in just one emergency manoeuvre.
“Did you know that the difference between illegal and borderline is just 0.4mm – that’s half the thickness of a bank card!”