In this video, we're going to be going over
the top five problems on this second generation S10 pickup. Now, there's nothing wrong with this truck. There's nothing wrong with owning one or buying
one. I actually used to own a truck just like this
myself and I loved it, but every truck or vehicle has their problems, and we're just
going to go over the top five for this. Number one, the heater core.
So two of the symptoms for a faulty heater
core are, one you don't have any heat. You go to drive around, the engine is warmed
up, you turn the heater on, and there's nothing coming out. It's just cold air. What most likely happened is the heater core
is plugged up. Now the coolant, maybe you didn't flush the
coolant enough, or maybe it just happened to have some extra sediment in there and cause
the heater core to plug up. In that instance you have two options. You can either try to flush the heater core
out and maybe get a couple more miles out of it, or you replace the heater core. To replace the heater core, you're gonna have
to pull this whole dash out, you're gonna pull the steering column out, and the heater
box out to replace it. When you pull the heater box out, then you
can access the heater core, put the new one in, put it all back together. It's a big job, but it's not that hard. The other symptom you may notice is the windshield
fogging up while you're driving, and you may smell something sweet.
What's going on there is the heater core is
actually leaking. You may even notice it on the passenger side
on the floor, some coolant. In that case, there's nothing else you can
do. All you have to do is replace it. Number two, the intake gaskets. Now, this is a V6 engine, and you have a head
on each side, and in the middle is the intake gaskets. And coolant actually flows through the intake
gaskets, so you're gonna have a coolant leak somewhere behind the water pump, and you may
think it's a water pump, but chances are it's just the intake gaskets. Now to do the intake gasket, you have to take
all this stuff off from up top. You have to take the distributor out and access
it underneath.
You don't have to take the upper intake off. There's a separate gasket there. You can leave that all attached. You do have to take the fuel lines out. And you don't have to take the valve covers
off to do this intake gasket, which makes it a little bit easier for you to pull this
AC compressor out of the way, but you do not…you don't need to evacuate the AC refrigerant. You can just take these four bolts out for
the compressor and then with these hoses, just move it aside. So that makes it a little easier.
It's kind of a big job, but not that bad. Some of the symptoms you may find, your coolant
level is low, or you may see coolant dripping on the ground. But if the coolant level is low and you don't
see anything, it could still be the intakes. Because of the way that gaskets are, it's
right next to where the oil is on the intake, so it could be actually dripping coolant into
the block itself. So if you see coolant in your engine oil,
if you check your oil and it's really high, and it looks milky, chances are you got coolant
in it. And you definitely want to replace the intakes
at that time, because eventually it's going to be bad, really bad, for your motor.
You may also notice in the coolant reservoir,
there could be oil in there, some cross contamination. So make sure you replace those intake gaskets. It's pretty important. Number three, the distributor. Now it's located right back here. Here's the distributor cap. Underneath there is the rotor. Now you want to make sure you routinely change
the cap and the rotor. Check your owner's manual for how often you
should do that. Normally around 60,000 to 100,000, not only
the distributor cap and rotor but also the distributor…the internals sometimes wear,
and could cause some problems. Now what you might find is, you're not able
to start the engine.
It'll turn over just from catch and also misfire. You may end up with some P0300 codes, and
that could have been the cause. Something you can check on this is if you
take the cap off, there's two screws, one on this side, one on the other side, and take
a look at the terminals on the distributor cap, and then also look at the rotor itself
and see if there's any corrosion, or if there's any carbon tracks or anything, then those
definitely need to be replaced. One thing you can do is the caps themselves
are numbered. So, like this is terminal one, or this is
cylinder one, so just mark that with one.
This one's five. Just take a felt tip marker, and three. That way when you go to put it back together
you know where they go. Number four, front wheel bearings. You may notice while you're going down the
road at certain speeds normally over 30 miles an hour, you will hear a growling in the front
wheels, and it may not just be the tires of the truck, but it may be the actual wheel
bearings. And this one, you don't really hear it too
much, but you can jack the front of the vehicle up and try to spin the wheel and see if you
can hear it. And a lot of times if you grab the wheel at
the top and the bottom, see if there's any play there. If there's any play, you want to check it
out. It could be the wheel bearing itself. Number five, the fuel pump. Now the fuel pump's located inside the gas
tank, and to replace it, you're gonna either have to pull the gas tank down, or if you
feel like it, if you have a lot of friends, you can take the bed off the vehicle and move
it to the side, and then you can access the pump.
Depending on your vehicle's age and the rust,
it might be either easier to do it one way or the other. So one of the symptoms that you get from a
bad fuel pump is the engine won't start. It'll just crank and crank and crank. It won't start. The other symptom is that it has an extended
crank. So you go to start the vehicle and it just
cranks and cranks and cranks and eventually kicks on. What you can do in that instance is turn the
key on. Don't try to start it, then turn the key off,
and then turn the key on again and try to start it and it should start right up.
What there is is there's actually a valve
inside the fuel pump itself that when that valve goes bad, all the gas goes back into
the tank, and then there's no fuel in the lines or no pressure. And then when you go to crank it, it's not
readily available, so it needs to prime the system first every time you go to start the
vehicle after it sat for a couple of hours. Some of the things you can do to prolong the
life of your fuel pump is keeping more than a quarter of a tank of gas in the fuel tank. That's gonna keep the fuel pump cool, and
also replacing your fuel filter, located right here. You want to replace that about every 30,000
miles or less. Keep the good flow of fuel.
Don't put too much strain on the fuel pump. Now I have a bonus one for you that could
save you a lot of money. On the actual transfer case there's a vacuum
switch at the top. Now what happens when you engage the four
wheel drive, you push the button, it sends a signal to the encoder motor which electronically
is going to shift the transfer case into four wheel drive. And then that pushes on this little switch
right here that is vacuum actuated. That is going to send vacuum to an actuator
on the front differential that's connected to this cable right here
that's going to engage the front differential.
Sometimes this vacuum switch gets stuck in
the open position where the vacuum's gonna be continually feeding the front differential. So, in that case when you shift back into
two wheel drive, the front differential is still engaged, and that's going to cause excessive
fuel mileage and wearing of front end components, and you don't want to do that. So to take this out, it's pretty easy, just
use a 7/8 wrench. You just pull the vacuum lines off. Now this little ball, if you see that ball
flush with the bottom of the sensor, then that ball is stuck. This should normally be like this. And the transfer case just pushes that in. Now, that's one bad symptom of this being
bad, but the worst symptom is actually this leaking transfer case fluid. If the seals inside there go bad, it can cause
a lot more issues. So that vacuum switch when the transfer case
fluid goes through the switch, it's going to go up this line, this vacuum line, where
it gets the vacuum from the engine. Now that doesn't seem too bad that, okay,
you know, you're going to lose some fluid into the engine, but that's not the bad part.
The bad part is the fact that this line is
also connected to your HVAC system. The HVAC system in this vehicle are vacuum
actuated, and when those get fluid on them, they're gonna cause the rubber part of the
actuator to deteriorate and go bad, and then your HVAC doors aren't gonna open and close
to do their job. It's really expensive to fix. So behind the glovebox, if you flip the glovebox
down, there's this junction right here, this goes to your HVAC system. You just get a little screwdriver in here
and you just pull that out. You're going to actually see if there's any
fluid in there, if you see any oil type fluid.
There shouldn't be any oil in there at all. Now if that happens, you want to replace that
switch but you also have to clean out all these lines, and that can be somewhat difficult. And these are some of the actuators. Here's the fresh door actuator or recirculation
door actuator. And then this one right here, this is another
actuator, and it goes to the vehicle. And there's a couple others. But put that back in. So the fluid can destroy all those actuators,
and it can destroy the control unit, if it gets into the control unit. Then you're gonna replace that. Overall, this job gets really expensive so
it's a good idea to just replace that switch regularly. I would recommend doing it every couple years
or three or four years, you know, depending on the mileage you drive. So those are our top problems that we have
found with this vehicle. If you needed any of those parts, make sure
you check out 1aauto.com. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe
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