Winterize a Car - Exhaust & Fuel System

Ed Kriston: Hi! I am Ed Kriston from AAA Mid-Atlantic's approved auto repair department. While talking about winterizing your car, we should talk about the Exhaust System on most cars. On this car for example, the exhaust system starts at right at the back of the engine; on this car, it happens to be a V8. Coming off of the engine, then you go first to the catalytic converters on this one which has one on the right and on the left; or bank 1 and bank 2, as they referred to quite often. Up head of the catalytic converter, up by the engine and behind the catalytic converter you also have oxygen sensors. Those are inputs into the computer for the engine to help it run and maintain the machines. Then you have the wide pipe which is the two front pipes as they come together here. Then we walk along a series of pipes back to the muffler.

As the front exhaust pipe comes down and into the muffler, that is this large piece of metal that you see right here and that is going to take care of keeping the sound down that is coming out of the back of the car, from the loud noise that actually the engine is making. And then down to the weep hole at the back of the Muffler. Years ago when they didn't have as much stainless steel almost they do nowadays, this was really important. What happens is, when the engine starts up and the exhaust system is cold and you start putting a hot exhaust into the system, you are going to have water starting to condensate inside the exhaust system. You will notice that from when you start the car in the morning and there is water dripping out of the tail pipe on some cars. Well this little weep hole is to get rid of that water so that it doesn't stand inside the muffler and rust it out from the inside out. So you are going to have carbon and rust and scale and a whole bunch of other impurities that are going to take and fall down and cover that hole up. Once it covers that hole up and it doesn't allow the water to get out it is going to increase the chance that it is going to rust the inside of the muffler out.

As it comes back out of the muffler, it goes up over top of the differential and continues on through towards the back of the car. And on this vehicle it would go into a resonator or a second muffler, if you want to call it that. Then as it goes through that second muffler or resonator out to the tail pipe which, of course, is the end of the exhaust system, we are trying to make sure that all the exhaust makes it outside from underneath of the car. We want to make sure that the exhaust system doesn't have any holes in it. Specially in winter time when you are going to be possibly sitting with the engine running for quite a bit of time since exhaust is odorless and colorless it makes it into the passenger compartment and it is deadly. So we want to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Next segment is going to be Heaters, Defrosters and Wipers.