I would not claim to be a mechanic, however, my father has instilled in me a sense of do it yourself when it comes to vehicles.  I won’t tackle major jobs but I have, many times, taken on routine maintenance tasks.  Today, Tadpole and Guppy helped me with one of the easiest tasks of them all: changing the air filter on the car.  Some homeschool dads may not do car maintenance but this is seriously easy and a great way to get any child interested in car maintenance as well.  

After popping the hood, I showed Tadpole and Guppy where the air filter box is located.  Its typically pretty easy to find and on 99% of vehicles there is a large tube that runs from the air box directly to the engine.  

The procedure will vary from car to car.  For ours, I had to send Tadpole into the garage to find a Phillip’s screw driver and thanks to many other projects out in the garage she got it back to me in record time.  The actual process is easy, remove a couple screws or a couple clips and pull the old filter out.  

Even though the manual says to replace at 20,000 miles, it was pretty dirty at 15,000.  Guppy was the first to notice there were even a couple bugs in the filter.  Both got to see first hand the importance of this car maintenance step.  I explained to them that they breathe better when their allergies aren’t working overtime like they are right now.  The car breathes better with a new filter as well because there is no dirt (or bugs!) keeping it from being efficient in its breathing.  

When I did this, I decided to go with a K&N air filter.  The primary reason why I chose this is that it lasts longer and is reusable rather than a disposable product.  The fact that past cars got better gas mileage didn’t hurt either! 

They enjoyed themselves, learned a little something about cars and Guppie got to go for a “test ride” afterwards to make sure what we did worked.