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#21
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do buthave never done?
On 11/4/2017 12:24 PM, rickman wrote:
> RS Wood wrote on 11/4/2017 9:00 AM: >> But I've never replaced an engine mostly because I never drove an engine >> into the ground that needed to be replaced. I envy people who have >> done it >> because it must feel great to put a new engine in yourself. > > Same here.Â* Any car of mine that needed an engine wasn't worth putting > an engine in.Â* Older cars were not made to last and that was true for > every part of that car.Â* Even things like seats and headliners were shot > by the time the engine was shot.Â* My current truck has 240,000 miles on > it and the engine is one of a number of parts that shows nearly no sign > of going anytime soon.Â* The parts that have been repaired often were not > repaired right so some have needed repairing more than once, but > otherwise the truck is very sound. > Evidently you never owned a Buick or Olds with the 3.8 engine from the early 80's. I know of many being rebuilt/replaced. I had the engine replaced on my '83 Cutlass and drove it until the next one died. The car had 130,00+ miles. Not sure how many as the odometer stopped working. I was determined to drive it until it does. Left work one day, started the car, drove 3 feet and it died. Took the company pickup home and stopped at a car dealer on the way and bought another car. |
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#22
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do buthave never done?
On 11/04/2017 06:00 AM, RS Wood wrote:
> rickman wrote: > >> None, I've done a bunch of work on cars in my day, but I'm fed up with it >> now. I wish I could find someone who has half a brain who would do a decent >> job fixing my truck. It's old and has issues, but the repair people I seem >> to find these days fix one thing and break something else. > > My observation with repair people is that it's hard to find one who cares > to do what he was trained to do. > > Recently a bolt was missing from a repair job and when I came back to ask > why, the guy told me it didn't do anything. > > I reflected that the car still works fine without the bolt, but there is no > way they put that bolt there in the first place if it didn't do anything. > > He didn't believe me. Sounds like the Ford dealership jerk who replaced the starter on the 69 LTD. One loose bolt, one dropped on top of the starter and one completely missing. He was partially right, it ran for a couple of years afterward. -- Cheers, Bev I'd rather trust the guys in the lab coats who aren't demanding that I get up early on Sundays to apologize for being human. -- Captain Splendid |
#23
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
rbowman wrote:
>> I am pretty sure my biggest hurdle is that alignment takes KNOWLEDGE where >> you have to convert degrees and inches using trig and measure a lot of >> things to an imaginary centerpoint and to each other. > > After replacing the joints I aligned my pickup with a tape measure and > plumb bob. I was not at all confident so i took it to a tire shop. It > was within spec and didn't need any tweaking. Each has a hurdle that has to be overcome, both in measuring and in adjusting. For example, adjusting toe is easy (just spin the tierod ends), but the wheels have to slip under load, which isn't so easy. Measuring TOTAL toe would be easy if you can clear the undercarriage, but that's not really how the manufacturer usually specs it. Measuring individual toe (to an imaginary centerline) isn't all that easy, is it? How do you do it? Then there is the problem of specs. The toe spec is often in degrees whereas we measure in inches, so you have to think in order to convert. Likewise, camber is easy to measure with a plumb bob, but you have to clear the sidewall of the tire and then calculate from the centerline of the tire, so, you have to take precise measurements and then calculate an angle from those measurements after first clearing the sidewall somehow. Caster is the hardest to measure directly, and I don't think we can measure caster directly in a home setup. Can we? So caster will take thinking, which, after all, I think is the hardest part of an alignment. All the other jobs anyone can do - but alignment takes thinking because of the kinds of issues above, most important being that the spec is never (Murphy's Law) in the form of what you can measure directly. |
#24
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
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#25
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
rbowman wrote:
>> I don't know anyone who does their own tires but when I watch the guys, I >> wish I had that equipment, especially the air equipment, to just remove it >> and put it back and spin it in between. > > > I do the tires on the bike with tube type tires. I would do the tubeless > but I worry about not having enough air to get the bead to seat. I > brought the bike to an indy shop for a new set and everything was going > good until the front tire. Even with a high flow air systems and the > tools he had a hell of a time. The sun was sinking in the west before > the bead finally caught and he could inflate it. > > I've had problems getting the bead to seat correctly with tube tires but > with those you can deflate, beat on it, curse, inflate, rinse and repeat > until it goes. I'm glad to hear nobody scream that we're all gonna die if we do any work at home! The reason people don't do these jobs isn't that we're all gonna die from nuclear radiation if we do our own stuff. I don't know anyone who does their own car tires but many motorcyclists do their own bike tires and everyone does their own wheelbarrow and bicycle tires. Tires don't have the same problem as alignment because, other than safety, you don't have to think all that much to do tires correctly. Assuming you have a decently flowing air compressor I don't think seating the bead is the issue usually although we've all had all sorts of times when we just couldn't get something to seat, so I'm sure it happens. But they're designed to seat with air so if we have air, we should be able to seat the bead. I think the far greater issue with doing tires at home is that you need special tools that greatly extend your muscle power and worse - you will never have the tools to do the dynamic balance. So I don't see how you can ever do car tires right at home because you can't finish the job right. For some reason, motorcycle tires work just fine without dynamic balancing. That's an enigma to me. Why would bicycle and motorcycle tires work just fine without dynamic balancing while car tires require dynamic balancing to work right? |
#26
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
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#27
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
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#28
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
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#29
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
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#30
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What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
rickman wrote:
> Same here. Any car of mine that needed an engine wasn't worth putting an > engine in. Older cars were not made to last and that was true for every > part of that car. Even things like seats and headliners were shot by the > time the engine was shot. My current truck has 240,000 miles on it and the > engine is one of a number of parts that shows nearly no sign of going > anytime soon. The parts that have been repaired often were not repaired > right so some have needed repairing more than once, but otherwise the truck > is very sound. You make a good point which I don't know the answer to. In my kid days, plastic toys did not exist (transistor radios didn't exist either), so our Tonka toys were rubber wheels and steel bodies. Nowadays, if you leave a kid's toy car outside, the sun alone will destroy it within a year or two. So they certainly don't build *some stuff* the way they used to. However ... cars *seem* to be different. Are they? My Chrysler's and Dodges days (in the olden days, we had brand loyalties that sprang from the brand loyalties of our fathers) showed me that a tuneup was needed every year, bias-ply tires lasted something like 20K miles, and, as you said, the interior was shot by the time the engine went. And that was in the days before plastic bumpers and plastic headlights (they were real glass bulbs in those days). But yet, it seems to me, cars last forever now. In those days, 100K miles was a lot. Now, it seems, 200K miles is approaching a lot. Do they really make cars better but nothing else is better? How can that be? |
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