Weekly Blogs
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5/18/2022 0 Comments Week Ten 5/14/2022Week ten. This week for my second to last blog post I am going to try and fix my speaker in my trunk/ my speakers. Ever since we got the car there has been a sub-woofer in the trunk. It plugs into an amp that's also in the trunk but recently my friend's dad hooked it up but messed with the amp settings. Now the driver's door speaker is either busted or rattling. I don’t know if my friend's dad busted the speaker or not but I hope it is just the bass setting on the amp.
His dad worked on it for a good 30 minutes trying to get the sub-woofer to sound the best it could. I think he played with it too long and over did one of the settings and I need to dial it down. I may need to watch some YouTube videos on how to set up your amp. He was using a screwdriver to turn the amp settings up. There are a lot of different dials on the amp and I don't know which one it is that may be hurting the speakers. My brother said that he would try and work on it at some point because I feel like he would get the best sound in the car. My mom is thinking about just taking my car into the shop and getting the mirror fixed and the speaker at the same time. In a couple of weeks I will go to Arizona for summer vacation. Hopefully we get my car into the shop while we are in Arizona so I will not need to go places since I won’t be home. My family and I will be in Arizona for around 6 weeks so when I get back the car should be done by then.
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5/11/2022 1 Comment Week Nine 5/2/2022Week nine. We are coming to an end on this project. One of the final things I want to do with my car is learn how to drive my car with the paddle shifters. This past weekend I was going to my friends house and we wanted to go out on a drive in my car. We went out driving for a little while, and while we were out one of my friends called me and asked if we wanted to hang out so we said yes. We went and got dinner and when we came back we went on another drive. This is when I knew He could teach me how to use them.
So we went on a back road where we wouldn’t run into anybody and we got right into it. He first showed me how to do it by driving my car. I was nervous about letting him drive my car since it is such a nice car and I don't want him to mess it up. He had to show us what gear to be in when driving a normal speed and how to go up gears when going a little faster. What I didn't understand was when to switch, like when he got up faster, sometimes he would go down a gear and it would go faster, and I didn’t understand that. I feel like I need another lesson so that I can really understand it better. The gear thing is my biggest struggle because I didn’t know when to go up and down or what gear to stay in. He mainly told me around three is a steady speed. Even though I don’t need to know how to drive with the paddle shifter I just wanted to learn. It was really fun for this first time 5/1/2022 2 Comments Week Eight 4/28/2022Week eight. This week my step dad and I will be exploring the interior of my car. There are a couple of things I want to do now that the golf season is coming to an end. This week I am going to learn how to clean the inside of my car. I felt like this was the perfect week to do this since golf is coming to an end, and there is a lot of grass in my trunk from my golf shoes. I also have a subwoofer in my trunk that keeps coming unplugged. So I will be re connecting it again, and this time I hope it will stay connected.
I am going to make sure to clean every part of the inside of my car. I am going to be cleaning the seats, dash, windshield, floor mats, backseat, trunk, and steering wheel. Most of these things I will be cleaning with will be wipes, vacuum, and microfiber towels. I give my friend a ride to school every now and then, and so now the passenger side of my car is also really dirty. There will also have to be a deep cleaning on the passenger side now. I’m glad the golf season is finally over because of all the clothes in my car from all the matches we had to go to. Every time we had a match I would go to my car and change, and now the clothes have just built up in my backseat. A lot of trash has also accumulated over the past couple weeks and it needs to be taken out. There is a lot of stuff my step dad and I could do to clean it out, but the big thing is all the grass in the trunk from golf clubs and shoes. 4/24/2022 2 Comments Week Seven 4/20/22Week seven. This week for my blog me and my step dad worked on my broken mirror. A couple weeks ago I was on my way to school and swiped a trash can and it destroyed my mirror. Please don’t judge because the trash can was over the white line. The orange cap is the only thing that is really broken so we just had to get a new cap for the mirror.
This week the replacement cap came in. Sadly it is black and the other cap is still orange so I still have to decide if I want to paint it orange or get two black carbon fiber caps. Last night we tried getting the bottom of the mirror to go back on. We got some double sided tape but it still was not working that well. Eventually we screwed a screw through the bottom to hold it in a little better. The back of the bottom is still loose so we may need to glue it on. It took forever to try and get the back of the mirror to stick. The tape we got was supposed to be really strong but it was still not working great. I drove the cra to winston today to see if the mirror was staying on good. The bottom of the mirror came unattached a little bit because of the wind on the highway. We may try to put some more tape on it or we will hopefully glue it, but my step dad doesn’t want to do that since we may need to get it to come off again. We would get a whole new mirror, but it would be very expensive and we would have to take the speakers out of the door. Then we would have to hook up the mirror from the inside of the door. 4/10/2022 1 Comment Week Six 4/6/2022Week six. This week I will be filming a video of me learning how to charge car batteries. Today my stepdad was going over to his parent's house to charge some car batteries. He allowed me to go over there and learn about how to work with charging batteries. So I went and we filmed a video on how to charge with trickle chargers.
We filmed various old cars that we don’t drive much because they are collectibles. Most of these cars don’t start anymore but two of them did. In the videos, I showed how to hook up jumper cables to the car and start up a portable car charger. Sadly even after the portable car charger, the car still wouldn’t start. We kept trying but it never would startup. We ended up going to a different car and luckily it had a new battery that my stepdad got the day before. This car started up so much easier. For those car lovers if you wanna hear the engine go watch the video. Something I also learned was how to start a stick shift. To start a stick shift your left foot has to be on the clutch, which I did not know. After we were done with the purple Corvette we switched to the Camaro. The Camaro is the newest car in the garage and it would start easily, but since we don’t drive it and it only has 600 miles on it we keep a trickle charger on it that keeps a little charge. Once we took the trickle charger off of it we started it up to make sure it would work, and it worked fine. This week in my video I learned how to start a stick shift, learned how to hook up jumper cables, and work with trickle chargers. I feel like this is a very valuable lesson to learn because your car battery could die at any time, and you need to know how to jump your car. 4/3/2022 1 Comment Week Five 3/29/2022Week five. This week my step dad and I will be learning how to replace windshield wipers. Windshield wipers are the rubber blades that are attached to the thin arms that gently move across the windshield to wipe the water that has accumulated off your windshield. This mechanism is important because it ensures that when you are driving in the rain then you can clearly see the road. It is also important that windshield wipers are in good working order to make sure they work properly and don’t leave any streaks behind.
The first step is to make sure the rubber on the wiper blades has not gotten weak and started to crack. Over time the blades are exposed to all kinds of elements including rain, snow, ice, and sun. These things can cause wipers to become brittle and end in replacement. After checking them and you think they need replacing you can buy replacement blades at almost any auto parts store. The blades are usually made to fit your specific vehicle. Once you have bought the proper blades they are fairly easy to replace. The wiper arms have small metal clips that hold the blades in place. Generally you just pinch the clips to remove the old blades. Once they are removed you can easily slide in the new blades and clip them into place. It is important to make sure the new blades are installed properly because if not they can come loose and the meatal wiper arm could scratch your windshield. In addition you can also check the windshield wiper fluid. This fluid is usually held in a small reservoir near the rear of the engine. This reservoir is connected to a small hose to pumps that are aimed at that windshield. Most cars have a small button that allows you to activate the pumps to spray the fluid onto the windshield. This fluid helps you clean bugs and debris from your windshield while traveling down the road. 3/27/2022 0 Comments Week Four 3/23/2022Week four. This week there will be another video uploaded. This video will be about washing my car. This week I am going to make sure to wash my car thoroughly and wax it. I will also be working on the inside of the car making sure it looks great.
This weekend the temperature is supposed to be a little colder sadly, but we will still wash the car. Luckily, we already have all the equipment to wash a car. First you start by filling a bucket with soap and water. Then you rinse the car down and start scrubbing with your brush. I have to make sure to cover every part of the car including wheels. After each time I go over the car with the soap, I have to be sure to wash off the suds fast otherwise it will leave water spots. After we were done cleaning the car, my step dad showed me how to wax a car. He says all I have to do is get a rag and a little bit of the wax and go in circles. I have to wait a few minutes to let the wax dry, and then I take a clean rag and wipe off the wax. My step dad said the best way to do it is to pick a section of the car to do both steps in sequence. Once that section is complete I will do another section. For example I like to do the hood first and then work my way around the car. After cleaning and waxing my car, I feel good about doing it myself now. It seems really easy, and I feel like you should know how to do it so you don’t have to pay $10 to get a car wash. 3/20/2022 3 Comments Week Three 3/16/22Week three. This week for my project, my step dad and I are going to be checking the oil level manually in my car. If the car is low on oil then we will add oil to it. I didn’t understand what oil did for a car until my step dad told me that motor oil ensures that the pistons, valves, camshaft and other components travel or turn smoothly while simultaneously minimizing friction and reducing component wear.
To check the oil we first have to pop the hood and to do that I have to find a button on the inside of the car. When the button pops the hood, it doesn't fully come open. I still have to find a lever that is underneath the hood and pull it to make sure it fully releases the hood. Then I look for the dipstick. It should just be a little yellow handle. When I find it I need to remove it. When it’s removed, I clean it off and put it back in to get an accurate measurement. Then I pull it back out and look at how much is in it. Since I had to put oil in it, I had to make sure it was the right amount. So I had to make sure we had the right oil, but we didn’t. So I had to go to the store and find the right kind. Once I found the right kind of oil to put in my car, I had to get a funnel too because the hole for the oil is really small. When I got home I put the funnel into the oil tube and started pouring. Again once I’m done, I reinsert the stick and read the measurement. When I’m done I put the stick back in, and close the hood, and I’m all done. 3/16/2022 1 Comment Week Two 3/9/22Week two. This week I will be uploading my first video. My first video will be on how to maintain the correct tire pressure. We have an air compressor and my step dad is constantly using it to keep all our cars with the right tire pressure.
Since I recently started driving to school, I have been noticing when I get in my car that my tire pressure is low. My parents told me that it’s due to the cold weather. The cold weather causes my tire pressure to decrease. When I’m driving sometimes I will get an alert on my dash that says my tire pressure is running low. I usually get this about once a week since we are in the middle of winter. Spring is coming soon so hopefully I will not have to fill my tires up as much anymore. Whenever my tire pressure has been low in the past I just let my stepdad know and he fills it up, but now I get to learn how to do it. First he said that I need to know how much air each tire is supposed to have. There is a label on the inside of the driver door which lists it. Next I can either check each tire with a gauge or rely on my diagnostics that the car will show if I scan through each of the screens. Once I determine which tire needs air, I will need to get the air compressor ready. You can’t just hook it up, but instead you need to plug it in and give it a few minutes to build up the pressure. Once it’s ready, you just remove the tire cap and slide the hose onto the air valve and wait for the tire to fill. You can see the tire get fuller and once it feels hard, you can check the pressure again. Once it is complete, you just need to put the cap back on the valve so that air doesn’t leak out. Now that spring is almost here, I don’t think the tires will get so low since the air will expand in heat. Even if I’m not at home, gas stations often have air hoses that you can use for free or for less than a dollar in case you need to fill them up while traveling. I’m glad I know how to do this small thing for my car to help my tires get the most life out of them. My step dad said new tires can be over $100 a piece so it’s important to maintain them. 3/16/2022 1 Comment Week One 3/2/22For week one I don't know how everything is really going to start. But for my project I will be learning and getting hands on experience in how to perform maintenance tasks on my car. This will require me to focus on specific areas of my car, and learning things that are essential to knowing about how to maintain your car. My stepdad will be guiding me in this project, and will be teaching me and helping me perform most of our lessons. He grew up working on and cleaning cars. For my first video I will be learning how to put air in my tires.
I don’t know how to put air in my tires but I’ve seen my dad do it before so it looks pretty easy. My stepdad says the first step is to check the air pressure in the tires. My car has warning lights if the air pressure gets too low, but in order to know how much air to add to the tire I will need to know the current pressure and how much air is recommended to be in the tire. Then all I have to do is to plug in our portable air compressor. After you wait a while for the pressure tank to fill, you put the nozzle on the tire cap and push down, and to check if it worked you measure the pressure with a little hand held air pressure gauge. I really want to learn how to change a tire so hopefully we will cover that in one of my videos. We may cover it in my first video. My stepdad and I will be covering a lot about cleaning cars and studying cars. I do not know anything about cars so I feel like this will be a very interesting project. I want to learn more tricks about my car. Me and my stepdad have already found a couple on the internet but I want to see if there are more to find. |
Weekly BloggingEvery week I will write a blog about my weeks study and how the practice worked out for me. You can find my weekly videos on the Videos page.
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