A Bogie of a Battery Re-thinking cheap parts and cheap diagnostics

A Bogie of a Battery

I’m an avid golfer. You can ask my wife; she’ll tell you. There’s hardly a weekend that goes by that I’m not out on a course somewhere. I’ve got a regular group I play with each weekend. None of us are all that exceptional, but we enjoy the game and the company. We all know what it takes to play the game, and understand even more that practice does not make perfect, but perfect practice makes for perfect play.
I try to keep this in mind when I’m at the shop. The best practice for me is doing the job correctly, and not cutting corners for the sake of cost or time. When a problem is compounded with cheap parts, it doesn’t make the repair any easier. Especially if the customer doesn’t recognize the difference between a good quality part and those cheap knock offs out there.
A referral job came into the shop the other day. He said he had a battery drain problem, but had tried everything to solve it. The problem had been going on for years. Each and every time he would take it into a repair shop the answer was always, “It’s the battery.” He wasn’t buying that anymore, there had to be more to it.
Hole no#1
That afternoon the Jeep Cherokee was dropped off for me to try my hand at solving the problem. I didn’t get off the first “T” box, before I found a problem The battery tester showed a faulty cell in the battery, and to top things off the battery was the wrong size for the car. Not only that, it was one of those cheap second rate batteries sold at some of the discount stores. I guess for some people that’s OK with them, but for me it’s a for sure “Bogie”.
Off to Hole no#2
Of course, there are some people who believe there is no difference between the higher priced batteries and the cheap “off brands”. I beg to differ… they’re cheap for a reason. For some, the realization of this only happens after they have had a couple of triples, or the dreaded “snow man” (that’s an “8” for the non-golfers out there), before they realize that there is a difference in quality and price.
Hole no#3
After replacing the battery (with a good one) I did find a small draw on the system. It happened to be coming from the instrument cluster. On this year and model the horn fuse also sends a constant voltage to the tachometer in the cluster, even while the key is off.
Hole no#4
The draw was extremely small. I might have overlooked this small draw, but since this was an on-going problem I thought I would check into it a little further. There wasn’t anything else wrong with the vehicle. It was a clean well kept ride, no extras added on, and even the engine bay was well detailed.
Holes no#5&6
As it was a back-up vehicle, and not his daily driver, any sort of abnormal draw would definitely turn into a dead battery. I called him, and gave him the bad news. His main problem wasn’t so much the draw that I found, but the battery situation. Since this is what everyone else was telling him, he wasn’t convinced that it was part of his problem. I started to sound like all the other shops that had looked at his car, so there was some doubt.
Making the turn
He showed up later that day to grab his battery for replacement. I carried the battery out to his car for him. He still wasn’t convinced that the battery was part of the problem, but because the printout from the battery scanner showed the bad cell he was willing to replace it, again.
“How many times have you replaced it?” I asked.
“This will make the 4th time I’ve taken the battery back within the last 6 months. The first one leaked, the next one had a loose post, and the last one went dead after the first day, and never would take a charge,” he tells me, while lifting the tail gate to his daily driver.
Hole no# 15
There in the back of his car was a set of golf clubs. As he slid his golf clubs off to one side to make room for the battery, I couldn’t help but notice they looked like new clubs.
“New clubs, Calloways right?” I said.
“Yea, just got them. I traded in my old set for these. What a difference it makes to play with good quality clubs,” he proudly tells me.
Even though I’m a weekend hacker, I thought I might use this opportunity to give a quick golf lesson.
“What did you play with before?”
“Oh, just some knock off clubs, they were alright, but you sure can tell the difference when you play with the good quality stuff,” patting his clubs carefully while placing a towel over them.
“Did ya ever think that automotive batteries are manufactured just like those golf clubs?”
“I’m not following you,” he says.
“There are cheaper golf clubs that can do the job, but better equipment can improve your game. The same thing with car parts; if you buy cheap parts, you’re more than likely adding to the problem if the cheaper part fails prematurely. Golf clubs, car batteries, it doesn’t matter. There’s always better, best, and of course a whole lot of worse out there,” I told him.
“So you’re suggesting buy better parts?”
“Just like the golf clubs,” I said.
“Hey, that makes sense. I wonder why I never thought about that? More people need to know about cheap parts, and what you gain by paying just a bit more… I get it… thanks.”
To the 17th
“Cars are my business and knowing cheap vs. good parts is part of my job. This is where my experience pays off for you, the consumer. I’ve been around long enough to know what a good part is, and what’s not,” I told my golf playing customer.
“That makes so much sense. It’s unbelievable I would ever think I knew enough about car batteries to know which one was a good one, and which one is not. (Laughing now) Funny you should tell me all of this, because that’s what the guy at the pro shop said when I was looking at changing clubs. The pro at the golf shop suggested letting him use his expertise to find that right set of clubs for me,” my birdie putting customer tells me.
Mulligan
That afternoon he called back, seems the department store’s battery department didn’t want to give him his money back. And their reasoning behind it?... Oh this is priceless… they told him:
“The battery they originally sold me is not the correct battery for the truck, so they can’t warranty it any more, or give me my money back. Then they tell me that if I would have purchased the correct battery size in the first place they would have no problem warranting it.”
For real? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve heard of all kinds of reasons why you couldn’t honor a warranty, but the fact that they sold him the wrong battery is a new one on me. You’d think after 3 attempts at replacing the battery that someone there would have checked to see if it was the correct battery. Unbelievable. Needless to say, I had to get involved and press the battery salesman to cough up the cash.
18th hole
With the draw repaired and a decent battery installed, there wasn’t much else to do except look forward to the next weekend golf game. At least now this guy could get back to driving golf balls, and not worry about his Jeep sitting at home.
I think he learned a valuable lesson that there is a difference in the manufacturing of quality automotive components and where you purchase them. Using golf as a comparison worked well for this customer. I’m not a pro golfer, but I’m a pro in my field, and sometimes I might know a thing or two about my favorite pastime. At least as a golf playing-mechanic I can show my expertise where it counts. Maybe even putt for an eagle once in awhile, or shave off a stroke or two on my handicap.
Whether it’s a round of golf or diagnosing automotive problems it still comes down to the same thing-- quality, good information and practice.


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Cold Air Intakes

I have heard that installing a cold air intake can increase performance and improved gas mileage. Is this so?


















Yes, for years performance minded auto aficionados have installed cold-air intakes to increase the power of the internal combustion engine. These products route cooler, denser air from outside the car, rather than the warm air under the hood, into the vehicle's engine. Available in a variety of colors and sizes, cold-air intakes usually range in price from $100 $250 and are a relatively inexpensive way to increase performance and improved gas mileage.

Are you Proactive with your Automobile?

Listen to the opening statements from Pat Goss on how to be Proactive when it comes to your automobile, with respect to maintenance? Listen by clicking on the audio clip below.

More on tire date codes

If one knows how to read tire date codes, then what is the oldest tire manufactured date code, one should accept when buying new tires? One year, two years?

Two years. It isn't uncommon to find a two year old tire in inventory. This is due to manufacturing, shipping to a warehouse, then distributing to a retail outlet which can consume several months. Add to that the time it takes for someone to need that particular tire and it is often between one and two years. That would be on the less popular styles but on the really fast movers, I would expect not more than six months in most cases.

Special Video!

Rare footage of Pat Goss on his weekly television series as seen on former Channel 8 every Saturday at 9:30am. These two episodes dealt with The Excel Institute in Washington DC. See http://www.theexcelinstitute.org/ .

Electric Drag Racing

Oregon Field Guide: Electric Drag Racing
Go out to the drag strip for some racing gone green – without a drop of gas.

http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/segments/view/1686

Lights Out ---- A little shocking to say the least

Lights OUT!
It was a hot summer day and the humidity was high in the shop when I starting working on one of my regular customer’s new found gems. It was a late 50’s Chrysler, a big old boat of a thing with lots of bells and whistles under the hood and dash. Nothing was added, everything was original and in fairly good shape. You could tell this car has never been left outside for any length of time. The paint finish showed no signs of aging or fading. The interior was very clean, and without a single defect. Even the carpet and headliner had that new “old” look to it.
He wanted me to go thru the electrical components on the car and see if I could get it all in working order. It had it all, radio, electric seats, power windows, power antenna, and just about anything else they could think of putting on a car in those days. I would try each window switch and each knob on the dash to make sure everything worked correctly. The turn signal indicators blinked on the tips of the fenders as well as in the dash. The heater blower motor hummed as if it was brand new. All the speeds worked on the wipers and even the reverse lights worked. It was truly a time piece of early Americana ingenuity.
The only thing I found “not” working was this contraption under the hood. It was about the size of a shoe box. I took the cover off of it to see what all the wires were leading to. Inside the box were several early glass vacuum tubes and a dusty old circuit board with a few resistors and what appeared to be a voltage controller of some sort. Luckily, the new owner had the factory manuals with the car. Even the manual was well taken care of. Not a single torn edge or creased page. I carefully went thru the old manual so as to not do any damage to this priceless book. In the back section were all of the wiring diagrams right down to the size of the resistors on the circuits. (Let’s see the manufacturer put that info out these days…)
I studied the diagram carefully and found out what this thing was. It’s an early automatic dimming headlight system. Way cool, wow, I’ve never seen one of these. But I could tell by just reading the prints how this thing worked. I went straight to solving the problem. Luckily (I think) I’m old enough to have had some training in the old TV tube era. Those classes sure were coming in handy now. It really didn’t turn out to be all that bad. The photocell in the front grill was disconnected, and the shoe box of tubes was in need of cleaning and attaching all the connectors back onto the board.
I reached in and turned on the “auto” system… the tubes started to glow… wow… this is exciting! (Can ya imagine… a grown man getting a thrill out of watching old TV tubes warm up… I really need to get out in the real world a little more often…). There was a hum and a crackle of the tube grids… I could hear the unmistakable sound of the tubes coming up to temperature. The humming subsided a bit, and leveled off to a light electrical buzz of an old TV set. By now I was expecting to see the headlights come on by themselves. Nothing, nada, zip… crud… it’s still not working. I went back to the old manual and followed the diagram some more.
At the very bottom edge of the page it showed a single lead going to the floor dimmer switch. Ok, I guess I’ll look there. By now its mid afternoon, and the humidity level in the shop is at its highest. I’m all hot, sweaty, and probably a little dehydrated. I stretched across that huge metal threshold and pulled the carpet back. Lying right there next to the dimmer switch connection was that single wire. I plugged it in… waited a second… nothing… so I reached over and pushed the dimmer switch with my hand. JumPin’ Gee’ ZaPPin’ ZING! WTF was that! I was jiggling around as if I was holding onto the electric fence at my Granddad’s farm. Now I know exactly how bacon feels when ya throw it into that hot skillet. I’m glad nobody saw me, because I probably looked like a fish flopping out of water the way I was wriggling around. HOLY Shhhhht! That smarts! ! !
After the ringing in my ears and the tunnel vision vanished, and everything returned back to normal I gave up on the wiring diagram and instead read how the system worked in the front section of the book. It turns out that driver’s “soled” shoe acts as the final ground to activate the system. It used a high amperage circuit to make the connection between driver and the automatic control unit out under the hood. To activate it you merely rested your foot on top of the dimmer for a moment. I guess if you were barefoot… you’d be in for quite a shock. It’s probably why the whole thing was disconnected in the first place. But, I’ll have to say… it does work, the headlights will dim and come on by themselves.
Just don’t lay on a metal threshold on a hot humid day… all hot and sweaty, then grab hold of the dimmer switch with your sweaty palm… cause it won’t be lights on… it’ll be LIGHTS OUT!

These stories are here for your enjoyment, before final editing and publication. Visit my website for more stories and information. www.gonzostoolbox.com

Ethanol Blues

Pat Goss gives a detail explanation as to the problems with Ethanol, especially if there is going to be 15% as mandated by the EPA! Listen to the clip below.