First Car Maintenance
2023-10-02 22:19 - General
Last year I got a car. It's just reached 90k miles, and I have no idea how it was maintained by the prior owners. So I've elected to do some of the 100k-mile scheduled maintenance now. So I: Did an oil change, with filter. Replaced the air filters (engine and cabin), and replaced the spark plugs.
The engine air filter and spark plug replacement both require removing a plastic cover from above the engine, which houses the air filter. Some of the screws holding the air filter in are not accessible when this cover is in place, and the cover completely blocks the plugs. I looked into this cover, and all the things attached to it, first. But then I did the oil change, and stopped with just that for the day. Started the engine to check it afterwards, and oh no: it was not running right. After a little extra time checking how/why it was running poorly I realized it was the easy/obvious problem: I didn't plug a sensor back in, while investigating removal of that engine cover. Plugged it back in, all is well!
Both air filters and the spark plugs had clear Ford branding on them. They're either original and never changed, or likely changed at a dealer, with official parts. The engine filter had a very poor quality date code looking thing that would imply it was never changed, but only if I read it to say that it was four years older than the car, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
I plan to do a tire rotation as well, but that turned extra complicated. So it's not done, and I'll talk about that later!
