A MECHANIC has broken down an essential car part that very few drivers realize is there, but needs to be swapped once a year.
If it's not changed, you could be breathing toxic and moldy air in your vehicle.
Budget Mechanic Hawaii, a YouTube account (@BudgetMechanicHawaii) based in Hawaii, uploads videos to his channel on how to fix cars on a budget.
In a recent Short, he discussed an important part of a car that is often neglected: the cabin air filter.
In most vehicles, it's tucked behind the glovebox and is incredibly easy to access.
Plus, it rarely ever costs over $10 from any auto parts store.
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Its sole function is to filter the air from the outside before it's pushed into the cabin of the car, so every time the heater or air conditioner is turned on, air passes through the filter.
Due to its important function, the YouTuber said it's important to change the filter once a year to make sure that drivers and passengers are breathing clean air.
For the sake of comparison, he held up a used filter he removed from a customer's truck with a brand new one.
"This cabin filter out of this truck is pretty nasty," he said, showing the stark difference between a clean one and a used one.
"It's important to change these because when they get really dirty, they restrict the airflow coming out of your vents and they don't blow as hard."
However, there are other unpleasant results from not changing the filter.
"They start to smell," he said, grimacing.
"Because stuff can start growing in all this junk in the filter and it'll wear out your blower motor faster, which you don't want to replace before you have to," he explained.
In especially humid places, mold can grow in a neglected filter, which then is blown into the cabin of the car when the blower motor is in use.
One car owner said that the video was especially helpful for them.
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"First time owning a car after three years, never knew about it until I got my oil changed," they wrote.
"They wanted to charge $80. I went home and did it myself for $10."
Another admitted that their filter was neglected for a lot longer than one year.
"I didn't change mine for 10 years, you think that's dirty," they wrote.
A home mechanic indicated they needed special equipment when they changed theirs.
"When you do this please where an N95 mask because I didn't and that dust and nasty stuff got in my throat and lungs," they said.