Posted on 11/29/2004 1:59:05 PM PST by Clive
My fella and I were going out of town. He was driving his "super reliable" car into which he pours nothing less than premium gas and synthetic oil and which, incidentally, is so much better and safer than my car that the two can never even be compared.
To boot, his car just got a tune-up and that became the launching point for a lecture about car maintenance habits and how I do not have any.
He should know. He's been working on my car all weekend. So blah, blah, I never check my oil (I forget), my tire pressure (um, my tire pressure measuring stick is broken), my radiator fluid (as if I even know where my radiator fluid is ...) and so on and so forth.
In fact, my car is in such shoddy shape, I should not even drive it anymore. Instead, I should just drive his car (which I'll simply refer to as super reliable from now on) but I have to remember not to start it in second gear because that WRECKS HIS CLUTCH.
In passing, my car-savvy fella mentioned that during his tune-up, the mechanic told him to consider replacing an ignition module or something of that sort. The mechanic, my fella concludes, is probably wrong and there is no problem with the car.
You should listen to the mechanic, I said, using up all the car advice I felt authorized to give. With your luck (he has the worst luck of anyone I know) the car will break down in the middle of a road trip and you'll be stuck there forever.
About 45 minutes later we were sitting on the side of the highway with the hazard lights on waiting for a tow truck.
That's right, Mr. Awesome-car-care-premium-gas-guy was digging around under the hood swearing and, to make matters worse, we gave the tow truck the wrong directions and were stranded for almost two hours at sub-zero temperatures in a car that would not start.
Two hundred bucks later, super reliable was in the shop and is there still, waiting for several hundred bucks worth of parts and labour.
In the meantime, the car's owner is driving my car (the one that does not have enough radiator fluid, the back doors do not open and is, overall, totally unreliable) to work.
Before I point out why this episode confirmed my attitude towards vehicles, consider this.
A couple of years ago I was driving my super junky K-Car along Highway 2.
I was just past Leduc when my tire seemingly exploded.
I pulled over, stupidly, on the left side of the highway and immediately realized I was stuck in the middle of six lanes of whizzing highway traffic.
I got out of the car, examined the tire (yep, it was flat) and pondered what to do next. I decided to walk to Nisku and call someone.
But before the traffic subsided for long enough to cross to the other side of the highway, some guy had already pulled over, put on my spare and asked me out for coffee.
Now I know I should learn how to change a flat and check my air tire pressure, but where's my incentive?
Obviously obsessive car maintenance, synthetic oil and all, does not eliminate breaking down on the side of the road.
Furthermore, if all of a sudden I learned to care about my spark plugs or my air filter, then so many guys would be deprived of the car-related lectures and rescues in which they secretly delight.
Besides, not knowing anything about cars means I generally listen to my mechanic when he says something needs to be fixed.
And let's face it, if it had been me driving ol' super reliable when it broke down, I could have got a ride back to town, and probably coffee, instead of trying not to die from the frost while waiting for the tow truck.
Sets feminism back twenty years - good.......
I used the hole in the end of a bottle opener as a washer once. My radiator hose had bulged and was spewing coolant at the end where it connected to the radiator.
So I pulled off the clamp, sawed off the bad part with a pocketknife, then put it back on but in the process dropped the washer that was part of the clamp under the car. I was in the office parking lot and couldn't find the darn thing as it was getting dark.
Luckily the bottle opener worked fine until I could get another clamp for it. It's always good to have a lot of miscellaneous crap lying around in the car, you never know when you're going to have to McGuyver something out of it.
LQ
Thank you! My husband is monitoring this thread. I will be deferring to him in this situation. I'm hoping to someday change my own oil and rotate my own tires, but that is probably my limit.
If you have any questions, ask and I will forward them on to him.
I had to do that once when I couldn't get the $#%&#@#@$% wheel off because of the too-tight bolts. Luckily it was only around the corner.
LQ
Is this what passes for professional writing these day?
Fuse 8 is a 15 amp fuse which supplies power to the following circuits:
Left/Right Vanity Mirror Lamp and Switch (I think these are the mirrors on the sunvisors)
Sliding Door Dome/Courtesy Lamp Switch (does this fuse blow when the door is opened?)
Right Dome/Courtesy Lamp Switch (same question as above)
Glove Box Lamp and Switch
Radio (!!!) do you have an aftermarket radio installed???
Main headLight Switch (feeds the dome/courtesy lamps through the mail light switch when it's in the dome light position)
Instrument Cluster
Based on this, I would verify that the dome lights are not causing the problem by replacing the fuse without opening the doors and then turning the headlight switch to the dome position to turn on the dome/courtesy lights. If the fuse then blows, the problem is in the dome/courtesy light wiring.
If you have an aftermarket radio installed, whomever installed it may not have properly taped/insulated the connections and the short may be due to that.
You could probably get away without rotating tires. Not many people do that anymnore.
No, I don't have an aftermarket radio...same one it came with. The only thing that I have ever put it in was a jack for my laptop...it went into the lighter in the back. It's out now and the lighter works (I checked just now...no dimes in it.) But you're right...all the things you listed are out.
I'm sending your info to my husband...have him check it.
The engine light will likely be due to losing the vehicle speed signal when fuse 8 blows. Once the cause of that fuse blowing is fixed, the engine light should go off withing a couple of stop/start cycles.
You need to figure out where the power steering fluid is leaking. It could be something as simple as a loose hose clamp or a rotted hose.
The ABS light is also probably likely due to fuse 8. These vehicles use something Ford calls a "PSOM", a "programmable speedometer/odometer" module that takes input from the ABS wheel speed sensors and converts it into a vehicle speed signal. That PSOM module gets power from fuse 8.
You've got to wonder what the hell the engineers at Ford were thinking when they put these important things on the same circuit as the courtesy lamps and the radio!!!! Actually the courtesy lamps are OK, but the radio?
All it takes is some teenager with a Wal-Mart stereo, wire cutters and duct tape to blow fuse 8 and the whole vehicle runs like crap.
Coming back from Mexico after a hard night, the old Ford stopped running about a hundred miles from home.
By taking the fuel line off and cranking the engine with a screwdriver shorting out the starter posts, I figured out it wasn't getting fuel.
After I pulled the fuel pump out, I could see that the push rod was flattened out too much to make contact with the cam.
I cut the tongue out of my leather shoe and wrapped it around the end of the push rod, shoved it back in the hole and bolted it down.
The old Ford took me the rest of the way home and then some.
Heh! This is the reason we're wanting just a Bug for me to putz around in...for just a "round town" car, this van isn't worth it.
Ok, if you need any other info let me know. But I do believe, based on what I saw, that the problem is with the courtesy lamps.
You might try unplugging the radio just on the off-chance that something has gone wrong with it that's making it blow the fuses.
ROFLMBO!!!!
Those muffler bearings exchange the gases so that everything 'runs right', eh?
Hubby and best friend THOUGHT they had me convinced on the the 'duty' of muffler bearings.
TO THIS DAY, they think they got away with it.
Ok! Gives us somewhere to start, anyways. Taking it in to get fixed is really out of the question right here before Christmas...except for the two days over the weekend that it worked, it's sat in the garage for almost a month. I start it up, back it out...let it run, then pull it back in the garage.
Thanks so much for your help.
LOL, that's a good one! I'll have to tell my dad about that. He's a master at using oddball items to repair cars with.
My dad had an old Buick that was rusted out around the bolts that held the body to the frame (it was pre-unibody - 1966 I think). The car body would bounce up off the frame when he hit a bump.
So he cut out the rusted metal, then drilled a hole in a plastic hockey puck and used it as a giant washer around the bolt, and squeezed tile grout around the puck to hold it all in place. I think he drove it for another 5 years like that.
::sigh:: We all miss that car. He didn't sell it until I was in college (1982). It was like a family pet.
LQ
I am--if Ford decided that the Motorcraft filter for my car should have a silicone anti-drainback valve, then there must be some benefit to it that will result in improved engine reliability.
I don't pay $12 for a filter and I don't pay $15 for oil, neither does Jiffy-Lube. I pay $3 for a filter, I suspect that they pay less than $2. I pay about $1.20/quart for oil (6 quarts), I suspect that they pay under $1/quart for oil. (If I really wanted to be cheap, Wal-Mart's house brand of oil, which meets API specifications, is 88 cents a quart).
That leaves me with an oil change for my car costing about $10 in oil and filter.
I change the oil myself and eat out with the remaining $20!
Well if you want to get rid of it, I'd love to troubleshoot and fix that fuse problem :)
Dont listen to them. If you need a manual to do an oil change you probably shouldn't be doing it yourself in the first place.
Ask him if he's ever put sawdust in one of those old 4-11 rear ends to quieten down the pinon howl.
I probably would need a manual to figure out how to change the oil on a Bug!
That might be because the oldest car I've ever changed the oil on is a 1986 model..
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