Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "The Car Care Nut" channel.

I think this video should underline more that "cleaning oil additives" are not something that you dump into the engine and then run it for a thousand miles. Those additives are meant to be used for about half an hour max before draining the oil.
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Always check the required oil spec for your engine. I have VW TDI engine with engine code AJM and something like fully synthetic Mobil 1 is not even nearly good enough oil for that engine. It requires special oil with VW 505.01 spec and that ".01" is critical here. Oil from any manufacturer will do just fine as long as it fullfills the spec.
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Are there super robust boots available as aftermarket parts? For VAG cars, the OEM ball joints are too weak and keep failing but Meyle HD aftermarket parts last forever. Is there something similar for these Toyota boots? I'm especially interested in products that handle freezing conditions without cracking because here in Finland, it's not unheard of that you have to operate your car in –35 °C (–31 °F) where any "soft plastic" style boot is going to simply crack. I guess one would need thick silicone boots here to survive for extended time periods.
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Do you know if any fuel or oil additives can clean the oil rings if they are already in stage 1 state?
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I've yet to see a car where frameless door window design is worth the compromises it causes.
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This whole design seems like a copy of VW door latch setup. For some reason, VW desided in late 1990s that the doors should not have visible switch so they embedded a small microswitch inside the door latch mechanism. The microswitch is really poor quality and probably every VW car manufactured during two last decades have had at least one microswitch failure. The switch itself costs maybe $1.50 but you're supposed to replace the whole latch every time the switch fails which costs maybe $70 and requires hours of work with the panels and stuff. If only they had used more robust $3 microswitch and this design would have been accetable. But manufacturer wanted to save $1.50 per door and caused multiple hundreds worth of extra expenses in billable hours when the cheap microswitch fails. And some cars require that the window is some specific predefined height (not fully open or fully closed) for the door panels to be extracted without trouble. Lots of fun if you're taking the panels off to repair the window movement mechanism! And obviously all the connectors are designed only for the initial factory build. It makes zero difference to designers how hard the car is to repair in the future because that's additional billable work from the customer that already purchased the car. I would much prefer functional design where the mechanism can be seen if it improves reliability or repairability. Modern cars are more like Apple devices where the customer is supposed to pretend that there are no screws anywhere so either you hide all the screws in imaginative ways or glue everything in place. Glueing is getting more and more commont these days, unfortunately. See smartphones and laptops for worst examples.
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43:15 My current thinking is that German car manufacturers do have the handling but they definitely make everything over-engineered. I'm just wondering why other manufacturers do not simply copy the suspension from some well known car such as BMW M3 or VW Golf GTI and then do the other stuff as they have always done. If I could have a small Toyota with BMW M3 suspension, that would be the best of both worlds.
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47:00 I think you should have also verified that the mechanical backup key does work. It's only matter of time when (not if) you have to use it to get the door open and it would suck to learn at that time that the backup method doesn't work because of installation error.
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A true experienced engineer has simply done all the possible mistakes already.
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Wow! That door design really sucks. I can only imagine how much work it would be to replace the door window after a thief cracks it. And even VW design is not insane enough to require removing the rail for the window to replace the locking latch.
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German engineering: if it's not over-engineered, it requires more design work.
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5:03 This is the real problem – it's insane that Toyota doesn't sell you that small part so you have to get full replacement axle just for getting that small part damaged! This would be a great use case for a 3D printer and modeling such a simple part should take about 5 min. The fact that car manufacturers no longer sell actual spare parts but complete modules (for example, here complete axle with two joints with all the milled surfaces and rubbers) is the biggest problem for right-to-repair movement when it comes to cars. The same happens with VAG DSG gearboxes where you cannot purchase a single solenoid but officially have to purchase full gearbox in case a single solenoid inside the gearbox fails!
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It's also worth mentioning that if you live in a place that has real winters, condensation causes additional water load to the oil and unless you regularly drive the engine hot enough to basically boil the water off, you should be changing oil even more often. And driving your car hard (that is, full throttle acceleration and going up to the redline) helps burning sooth off and if you don't do that, you'll end up with more and more carbon deposits over time which will also cause problems. However, do not go to redline full throttle before engine has been heated enough because otherwise you'll end up with more crap in the oil instead. Cold engine block with cold piston rings is going to leak a lot if you try to burn lots of fuel to make power.
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33:00 I think the reason this is so complex is that the exterior designer was not given any rules about what kind of hardware there needs to be inside the door. Once the exterior was designed, some poor door handle and latch designer was told that there's the door with exterior (and inside paneling) already decided. Make it a door handle mechanism that's fast to install in the factory. And to make things more complex, they were probably told that if there's any way to use some existing part (e.g. the latch mechanism without any electronics or plastic parts) they must re-use the same part even if it makes the overall design way more complex as a result.
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