Clutch bolts and locktite

On 07/28/2018 08:01 PM, Arlen Holder wrote:
> All I can say is I have higher degrees in both.
>
> My point was I know nothing whatsoever about auto mechanics, so that's why
> I very much appreciate your advice and help.
>

At least you know your limits. I had a friend who ultimately got a PhD
in EE who was a danger under a car. We were working on his Buick and had
dropped the pan on the transmission. We left the pan in place to catch
any little drips. He was taking the screws out that held the valve body
when I realized he'd removed the last one. Fortunately th body hung just
long enough for me to get out from under the car before the tsunami hit.

Come to think of it, he wasn't too good at practical electrical stuff
either. I'm sure he could do a circuit analysis of the momentary current
flow when you short out a fully charged 12 volt wet cell with a length
of 14 gauge wire. My informal analysis was it gets real hot and it
smells bad when the insulation catches on fire.

On 07/28/2018 09:01 PM, Arlen Holder wrote:
> Do you think there would be a market for such a car-specific (completely
> unlike Hanes/Chilton/FSM) perfect no-step-missed DIY as I write?

The problem is addressed on some forums. With digital cameras and the
ease of putting stuff on line quite a few people have done step by step
logs. Unfortunately they're model specific. The Toyota forum has saved
me a lot of pain. I've got the manual but I'm sure the replace the radio
page starts with 'remove dash trim'. Yeah, right. You start down at the
transmission hump with a plastic putty knife popping off little plastic
bits until you work your way up to the speedometer housing.

Bikes are getting just as bad. I had a driveway full of plastic pieces,
a gas tank, and other odd and ends before I could get to the regulator
to unplug the stator to replace it.

Some days I dream of finding a 1965 VW in good shape.

On 07/28/2018 11:04 PM, Vic Smith wrote:
> Nah, no market for it. The manufacturer has shop manuals for sale.
> I've had them for my last 4 cars. They can be costly, but I've managed to buy used ones on
> Ebay. I think the most expensive was about 45 bucks, but my cars were 10 years old when I
> bought them.
> But they can lead you down the wrong road. For instance, the procedure to replace the
> motor mounts on my '97 Lumina looked way too complicated and costly.
> I found a simple procedure on Youtube, and did it that way.

Yup. I've got the shop manuals for everything but the pickup. Some parts
are good, some not so good. Then there are the five pages of specialized
tools that you absolutely need which somehow I've never needed.

On 29/7/18 4:46 pm, rbowman wrote:
> On 07/28/2018 09:01 PM, Arlen Holder wrote:
>> Do you think there would be a market for such a car-specific (completely
>> unlike Hanes/Chilton/FSM) perfect no-step-missed DIY as I write?
>
> The problem is addressed on some forums. With digital cameras and the
> ease of putting stuff on line quite a few people have done step by step
> logs. Unfortunately they're model specific. The Toyota forum has saved
> me a lot of pain. I've got the manual but I'm sure the replace the radio
> page starts with 'remove dash trim'.* Yeah, right. You start down at the
> transmission hump with a plastic putty knife popping off little plastic
> bits until you work your way up to the speedometer housing.
>
> Bikes are getting just as bad. I had a driveway full of plastic pieces,
> a gas tank, and other odd and ends before I could get to the regulator
> to unplug the stator to replace it.
>
> Some days I dream of finding a 1965 VW in good shape.

I would consider that dream a nightmare.

--

Xeno

"The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
is a match."
-- Will Rogers

On 28 Jul 2018 23:46:49 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> Unfortunately they're model specific.

There is no perfect situation.

Either it's a Hanes or Chilton which covers too many models, or, it's the
FSM which covers your model, but the factory re-used the diagrams from
previous models so a good proportion are wrong.

The manual I'd write is EXACT since I would have done EVERY STEP, so it
would be model specific for sure.

It would only pay, I think, for cars that I can get a junker for cheap, to
tear apart, and it would have to be a "common" enough car to have a market.

The actual work would be easy, I think.
1. Buy a complete car (it doesn't have to run even, but better if it does)
2. Tear it apart, piece by piece, putting each piece back since my DIYS
cover reassembly where it's almost never the reverse of removal.
3. Sell the book.

I think it "could" have a market, simply because it would be unique, as
nobody does the detail that I do ()and I've had shop manuals since the dawn
of my driving days).

I don't have Mitchells though, or AllData, so I don't know how good (or
bad) they are. Clare might know more.

On 28 Jul 2018 23:50:18 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> Yup. I've got the shop manuals for everything but the pickup. Some parts
> are good, some not so good. Then there are the five pages of specialized
> tools that you absolutely need which somehow I've never needed.


Hehheh ... that's a good point. The Bentleys are filled with that crap.

On 28 Jul 2018 22:04:46 GMT, Vic Smith wrote:

> Nah, no market for it. The manufacturer has shop manuals for sale.
> I've had them for my last 4 cars. They can be costly, but I've managed to buy used ones on
> Ebay. I think the most expensive was about 45 bucks, but my cars were 10 years old when I
> bought them.
> But they can lead you down the wrong road. For instance, the procedure to replace the
> motor mounts on my '97 Lumina looked way too complicated and costly.
> I found a simple procedure on Youtube, and did it that way.

Agreed. I have the Toyota FSM and Hanes somewhere. They suck.
My Q45 came with an FSM in the trunk, if you can believe that.
I get them for my bikes. I have the Bentleys for my Bimmer.

They all suck.

Yet, they each suck for different reasons.
None ever are as good as my DIYs. Never. Not even close.

You know why they all suck so I won't belabor the issue.
Suffice to say they're better than nothing - but not much better.

On 28 Jul 2018 23:10:01 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> You didn't even get the requisite trip back to the parts store to get
> the right clutch and pressure plate. Ford was creative that year and you
> were never sure what you were going to find. Buy something and
> inevitably it was the wrong one.

Once, decades ago, I was doing the pitman arm, idler arm, and tie rod ends
for a Dodge Dart of the 70's vintage, where, it was winter so I had to ride
my motorcycle in the snow to get the parts, and, they gave me the wrong
tie-rod ends.

I had to go back, in the snow, cursing them, and they didn't give a ****.
They just handed me the right part and that was it for them. It's no skin
off their back. But it's a lot of effort on your part.

I learned to bring in the old parts, which is how I knew all the pilot
bearing tools would never work, because I brought the new pilot bearing
with me this week. I even brought the old flywheel to match with the new
one.

Short side note related to alignment... when I did the idler, pitman, and
tie rod ends, I marked everything, as you can tell I am wont to do. Then I
tried an alignment, but only did the toe (which was easy, of course).

Then I paid Sears to do the alignment, and when I got home, I looked and
not a bolt was touched. I took it back to Sears and they tested it and
found out the guy didn't even do it. He said his charts only went back 10
years and so he didn't have the numbers. And yet they charged me. I as
livid, but in those days, I didn't scream bloody further. Nowadays I'd have
told them to give it to me for free or I would go to the prosecutor (or at
least the home office).

Can you believe that they just didn't do it, and didn't give a ****?

Mechanics, for the most part, I'm sure, are honest, but don't even get me
started about the shysters at AAMCO and MIDAS. The point is that I learned
that you can't trust any of them, unless they're related to you. I'm sure
most are good - but plenty are bad (I have too much experience with MIDAS
where I provided evidence which, (I'm sure with other data) got them kicked
out of the TireRack recommended tire program, since I provided firm proof
of what they were doing).

Again, don't even get me started on AAMCO. We old men have too many stories
of how we were screwed when we were young and innocent.

I taught my kids that very many are crooks (AAMCO is the worst, IMHO).
Sigh.

On 28 Jul 2018 23:18:52 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> At least you know your limits. I had a friend who ultimately got a PhD
> in EE who was a danger under a car.

Dunning-Kruger plays a role, where, it's not about being dumb but about
self assessment of skills. In general, the less someone knows, the more
they think they know, and vice versa, the more someone knows, the more they
realize that they don't know a lot of things.

Quantum mechanics still drives me nuts because nothing in it is intuitive,
which is another point -- which is that anyone who thinks they're intuitive
- is wrong.

> We were working on his Buick and had
> dropped the pan on the transmission. We left the pan in place to catch
> any little drips. He was taking the screws out that held the valve body
> when I realized he'd removed the last one. Fortunately th body hung just
> long enough for me to get out from under the car before the tsunami hit.

Yaeah. We've all done "dumb things". I once grabbed a rope tied around a
tree that I had placed there months ago, so that I could drop down a short
ten foot cliff.... guess what? I never tied it to the tree, and I forgot
that I didn't, and I only remembered on my way down.

Staring up, on my back, luckily mostly unhurt, I just said to myself...
"that was dumb".

How many times have we looked at electronics momentarily after forgetting
to turn it on ... thinking it's broken.

> Come to think of it, he wasn't too good at practical electrical stuff
> either.

There are LOTS of "electrical" stuff, but what they don't generally teach
us in school is "house wiring" nor "power distribution" except in the
broadest sense.

They really don't even cover ground all that well in circuits, so it's
funny that an op amp has 3 connections, but once a professor drew in the
other two, and half the class asked what the other two connections were.
The rest of us just laughed thinking "Jesus ... they can spout Maxwell's
Equation, but they don't know what ground is?)

> I'm sure he could do a circuit analysis of the momentary current
> flow when you short out a fully charged 12 volt wet cell with a length
> of 14 gauge wire. My informal analysis was it gets real hot and it
> smells bad when the insulation catches on fire.

That's another thing. We had labs, and in the labs we used caps, of course,
but they never teach you PRACTICAL stuff, like the difference between
tantalum and electrolytic, and pancake caps, and what happens if you stick
a 10VDC electrolytic water tower into the electrical socket (that's fun if
you haven't tried it).

None of that is covered. All caps are the same in EE classes. It's amazing
that this is what they teach - but that's how they teach it. It's all
theory. Of course, you have to calculate poles and zeroes and be able to
handle polar diagrams and do all the math for the systems class, but
nothing PRACTICAL is covered (except by accident in the labs).

On Sun, 29 Jul 2018 08:33:18 -0000 (UTC), Arlen Holder > wrote:


>
>Then I paid Sears to do the alignment, and when I got home, I looked and
>not a bolt was touched. I took it back to Sears and they tested it and
>found out the guy didn't even do it. He said his charts only went back 10
>years and so he didn't have the numbers. And yet they charged me. I as
>livid, but in those days, I didn't scream bloody further. Nowadays I'd have
>told them to give it to me for free or I would go to the prosecutor (or at
>least the home office).
>

Same thing happened to me at a Firestone shop. I bought a '66 F100 and it was pulling a
little to the left. I dropped it off for new front tires and an alignment. When I picked
it up from their parking lot, first thing I did was crawl under it. Same grunge on the tie
rod ends. Went back in and asked the desk guy why they didn't do the alignment.
He shouted to the mech and the mech shouted back. "We can't do twin I-beam."
I had him refund the charge. Pretty close to your experience.

>Can you believe that they just didn't do it, and didn't give a ****?
>

Sure can.

snip
>
>Again, don't even get me started on AAMCO. We old men have too many stories
>of how we were screwed when we were young and innocent.
>

I heard the stories, so did some looking around when the trans went out on my '67 Skylark.
AAMCO wanted $700 - hell, I only paid $475 for the car.
Went to the used car dealer I bought it from and he told me what trans shop he used.
They rebuilt the trans for $125.

>I taught my kids that very many are crooks (AAMCO is the worst, IMHO).
>Sigh.

Just avoid the franchise operations. Still have to deal with finding a competent mechanic,
but when you do, you're set. Until they retire or die on you.