While driver’s education may teach a person how to drive, it doesn’t teach everything a person needs to know about their car. Here are 15 ‘car hacks’ that all drivers need to know. These things could also help you in the case of an accident or emergency situation!
1. Use A Plunger to Remove Small Dents
Those annoying small dents in the car can amount to thousands of dollars to fix up! But a simple hack that works for most small dents is to use a toilet plunger by placing it over the area of the dent and getting the air pressure tight and giving it a nice little tug. Works for small and medium sized dents most of the time!
2. Make Sure You Have A Good Dashcam
According to the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA), car accidents occur every minute of the day. Yes, you read that correctly. Every minute of every day, someone is involved in a car accident. That’s why it’s so important to have a dashcam that you can rely on. A dashcam can serve as an invaluable tool for drivers. In the event of an accident, a dashcam can provide valuable evidence for settling insurance claims or legal disputes.
But not all dash cams are created equal. Some are bulky, low-quality, or hard to use. That’s why we recommend the Vital Dashcam, the best dash cam of 2024. The Vital Dashcam is a compact and powerful device that offers a bunch of features and functions to enhance your driving safety and convenience. It can record high-definition video with a wide-angle lens and a night vision mode, overwrite the oldest footage on its memory card when it becomes full, save and lock video files when it detects a sudden impact or collision, record location and speed data with GPS functionality, monitor and record while the vehicle is parked with parking mode, and connect to your smartphone via Wi-Fi connectivity.
3. Have A Flat Tire? Carry This Device With You & Inflate Your Tires in 60 Seconds
AirMoto is a small and compact, completely wireless device that can pump tires in just 60 seconds.
It comes with a nozzle that plugs into the top of the device and into the tire. The minute you plug it in, you’ll see your current tire PSI on the LED screen.
Set the PSI you need on the base of the device and hit the power button, AirMoto will instantly start inflating the tire up to the set PSI.
Once the set PSI amount hits, the AirMoto will shut off automatically, meaning you can start it, set it down and get back to what you were doing before-hand. It even doubles as a power bank, which means you can even charge your phone with it!
4. Change Your Air Filter Every 6 Months
If you want to help increase your fuel efficiency, make sure you change your air filter every six months or as recommended in your owner’s manual. A lot of people often neglect doing this, and they find that they just aren’t getting the fuel efficiency they were promised by their car manufacturer. This alone can save quite a few hundred dollars yearly.
5. Know What Your Check Engine Light Means
While it may not always mean you’re going to destroy your car if you continue to drive it, in many cases, the check engine light does indicate a major problem. There’s a new device though that can actually save you thousands of dollars in car repairs. It’s called FIXD and plugs into cars manufactured after 1996. If your “check engine light” comes on it will tell you the exact reason why. This is great because it means that mechanics won’t be able to lie to you in the hopes of taking more of your hard earned money (you’d surprised how many do).
6. Increase Your Car’s Weight on Icy Roads
When there’s snow and ice on the roads and there’s a lack of traction to get up hills, or you fishtail going around curves, it’s a sign you could use more weight. Adding water softener salt bags in the trunk of your rear-wheel drive vehicle increases the weight on the backside of your car. This helps with traction on ice and snow during the nightmarish winter driving season.
Note: This tip does not hold true for front-wheel drive vehicles, although stashing some emergency salt in the back of your car will help with urgent icy situations.
7. Make Sure You Have A Seatbelt Cutter & Window Smasher
Car safety experts have argued for years that drivers should carry window smashers and seat belt cutters that are easily accessible in a car wreck. Do you? Fortunately, there is a revolutionary new device called the Auto Rescue Tool which is designed to be within arms reach in any car emergency. It’s tiny enough to carry with you in your pocket and it includes a window smasher as well as a seat belt cutter.
The window breaker is a blade made of tungsten steel. With just one tap on any corner of the vehicle’s window, it magically shatters the glass within 1 second so you can easily push through and away from danger (NOTE: it is designed for the side windows and not your windshield or back window, as they are made with tougher glass that is harder to break).
The seatbelt cutter is a sharp notch hidden safely inside an ABS plastic cover. You simply glide the blade over your seatbelt to cut it off so you can quickly get out of the car and move to safety.
You have less than 1 minute to react, and Auto Rescue Tool takes just 1 second to save your life.
8. Free Frozen Locks With Hand Sanitizer
Even if it’s only parked out front, getting from the front door to your car in the middle of a harsh winter can be pretty miserable. It’s worse if you get there only to find the door locks are frozen shut. Hand sanitizer is your key to getting inside. The alcohol works to thaw the ice, so you can hop in and get the heater turned on high.
9. Keep Your Car Clean & Organized
Crumbs spilling out of chip bags in the back seat…
Beach sand in every nook and cranny of your car…
Dirt and mud clinging to your interior furnishing…
Spilled drinks on your center console and on the seats…
Whether it’s taking your kids to the beach, out camping, or just on a nice trip…
It’s basically guaranteed that your kids are going to make a mess. Of course that’s not to say that it’ll be entirely on them. After all, things like sand and dirt are impossible to dust off before getting back into your car. And what about liquids? Liquids seep into your seats and are a completely new level of headache to deal with.
That’s where EzVac Car Vacuum comes in. First things first, it’s USB rechargeable and the battery actually lasts a few hours not a few minutes. So you know all those other “car vacuums” that run out of batteries after five minutes? Not this one.
EzVac also comes with an extendable nozzle and two attachments that’ll help you get into hard to reach places.
It’ll get rid of dirt, sand, mud, hair, fur, liquids, and food in a cinch. It’s light, compact, and comes with its own carrying case. You can store it in your trunk for months at a time and only use it when you need it. One of our staff used the EzVac vacuum last Winter during a ski trip. It tackled spills, crumbs, snow melts, twigs, and dirt no problem.
10. Use Toothpaste To Clear Cloudy Headlights
After many miles on the road, your car’s headlights are going to get scuffed up and cloudy. It might not majorly affect their performance, but it certainly doesn’t look good. Smear a little bit of toothpaste on a clean rag and start scrubbing the headlights. It contains mild abrasives that can remove a thin layer from the headlight housing and fill in any tiny scratches. Toothpaste is an easy and convenient compound to get your headlights clear again.
11. Transform Night Driving By Using Clearest Sight Driving Glasses
Did you know that the vast majority of car accidents happen at night and right before dawn? A lot of that has to do with glare and the problems with vision many people experience. These Clearest Sight Driving glasses promise to reduce night driving glare and eye strain, and dramatically improve seeing at night during snow or rainy conditions. They let you see enhanced colors, are durable, lightweight and fully equipped with polarized lenses. Unlike clip-ons they protect your eyes from all sides, and you just slide them over your existing pair, if you wear glasses.
12. Fill Window Damage With Nail Polish
Small stones and other road debris can leave chips and cracks in your car’s windows. Oftentimes a crack can grow, meaning you need to shell out for an expensive window replacement. Try filling in window damage with (clear) nail polish. Carefully apply a thin layer to the damaged area. When it dries, it will be almost completely invisible, and might even help prevent a crack from growing. The money you’ll save against a whole new window is worth it, but use this advice with caution.
13. Stop Your Car From Getting Stolen
A vehicle gets stolen every 39 seconds in the United States, and unfortunately that problem is only getting worse. That must be why the Tactical Car Lock is flying off shelves. The Tactical Car Lock is an ingenious device that physically locks the steering wheel in place, preventing the car from being used.
So even if a car thief hacks the security system of your car, they will not be able to take the vehicle since the physical lock prevents the steering wheel from being moved. That is, if they even attempt it in the first place. Most of the time when a thief sees the Tactical Car Lock, they don’t come anywhere near your car.
Although it looks like it would be easy to cut through, we tested it out and it was able to withstand bolt cutters. Thieves are opportunistic and look for easy cars to steal, if you have the Tactical Car Lock chances are the thief will move on to an easier target.
14. Know When Your Oil Needs Changing
This is an obvious one that every car owner should know. While the rule of thumb used to be every three months or around 5,000 miles, that’s no longer true for all new cars. Read your manual to know when your vehicle’s oil change is due, we recommend setting the date on your calendar. If you’re not sure when you should change your oil, some signs to look for are if your oil looks black & gritty, your engine sounds louder than usual, or you notice the oil level drops. Some newer luxury models will also provide you with an alert when you need to change your oil.
15. Park Your Car Facing East to Defrost Windscreen in the Morning.
Although it seems simple you can save some considerable time in the morning. If you live in a place where frost is a big problem on winter mornings and leave your car parked outside then this is for you.
Whenever you can make sure you park your car facing east. As the sun rises in the east you’re using the suns warmth to defrost the ice on your windscreen rather than you having to stay outside in the cold and scrape it off yourself. With this trick you should be able to use your windscreen wipers to do the not so heavy lifting for you. Who doesn’t want a little bit of added comfort on a cold winters morning?
Bonus #1: Save Up To 35% At The Gas Pump With This
As gas prices explode, this might be the biggest gift for yourself and your family: A simple plug-and-play device that can reduce your car’s fuel consumption by a whopping 35%!
So if you’ve helplessly watched as gas prices increased 70-100% these past 12 months, this is your chance to strike back.
Fuel Saver Pro reprograms your car’s fuel efficiency and works for all cars built and sold in the US after 1996.
Although the fuel giants aren’t happy about it, this device is 100% safe and legal. A small group of testers tried it out and saved a combined $594.01 their first month. The only question is: how much will you save?
Demand for the Fuel Saver Pro has been soaring, so make sure to get yours before it’s too late!