Fixing Your Hybrid Car Can Be Easy Sometimes

Oh Two For You

Antiseize compound is wonderful stuff, when it works. But when it doesn’t do its job, you’ve got problems! And so it was with this fitful last minute chore, which ran against everything I’ve been telling my customers for years and years.

Don’t wait until the last minute! Don’t bring in your car for a major service the day before you’re driving out west on vacation. There’s nothing worse than to install a brand new spark plug – or set of plug wires – and have it fail when my best customer is halfway across the Great Plains and in the middle of nowhere.

If a part is going to fail, you want to be around so you can do something about it. And anyone who has been in this business for awhile knows that even a brand new spark plug can be faulty and begin to misfire a day or two after you install it.

So that’s why I tell my customers to have their vehicle serviced a couple of weeks before taking off on a trip. “Give it time for everything to break in and mellow out before you leave,” I always say. Then why didn’t I listen to my own advice?

Here I find myself on Friday night, Memorial Day weekend ahead, leaving in the morning on a seven-hour trip, and I’m going to replace the oxygen sensor. It was long overdue for replacement, with over 160,000 miles on it. And with the price of gas breaking the bank, I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and replace it.

I had been meaning to do it at work, where I could get the car up on a lift making the job much easier. But I had procrastinated until the last minute, and here I found myself having to do it in my home workshop, lying on a creeper under the car.

But, let me defend myself by saying that I had planned for the worst, and had my oxy-acetylene tanks freshly filled and ready to go for the extraction. I call it an extraction because the old sensor never wants to come out easily, and always needs assistance from the best nut buster of all times – the heat wrench.

I figured it would be a cakewalk. No big deal. No muss, no fuss. Easy pickings. Just heat up the sensor’s mounting flange until it’s cherry red hot and it’ll unscrew right out. After all, they installed it at the factory with antiseize compound, right?

Haw, Haw! What a joke. Sure, that slippery stuff is made to keep things from becoming stuck together, but after a dozen years it has turned to dust. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The sensor came out with nary a sweat. But when I held it in my glove, I saw the threads—or should I say what was left of the threads (see photo below).

The oxygen sensor has pulled out most of the threads with it, I didn’t have a heli-coil and the shop where I work was closed. We’re supposed to leave in the morning! Nothing like a little pressure to get the old mind racing. I rehearsed my speech to my wife, “Honey, I just broke the car so we have to rent a car for our trip!” Not! She would hand me my head!

I thought about running a tap in the hole to chase the threads. What threads? The threads would be so far gone that by the time I ran a tap through the hole, the new oxygen sensor’s threads would have practically nothing to bite into.

A vision ran across my mind of us driving along out in the middle of nowhere when the oxygen sensor blows out of its socket – POW! This would be immediately followed by the roar of the huge exhaust leak that was just created. My imagination continued the movie of us driving into the dark night with the exhaust roaring as we limped along.

I mumbled to myself, “It’s never easy.” Why is this always true? Why does Murphy’s Law always seem to rear its ugly head at the worst possible moment? And why me, why does it always happen to harmless me, me the good guy? I remembered my wife’s wise answer to this epic question, “God never puts more on your plate than you can handle.”

She’s right, I’m not defeated that easily. This old dog still had a trick or two up his sleeve. If the old oxygen sensor came out so easily with heat, maybe I could reverse the situation and use heat to get the new one back in. If I heated the flange up until it was red hot, it would expand. Right?

Then, while the flange is nice and hot and expanded, I could quickly spin the new oxygen sensor right down home in the flange socket. Then, when the flange cooled and shrunk, it would squeeze what was remaining of the threads nice and tight onto the new sensor. Right!

Well, it worked like a charm. That is, until the new sensor had screwed seven-eights of the way home, then it got hot and expanded and didn’t want to turn anymore. But I was determined. So I grabbed the heat wrench and once again heated the flange until it was cherry-red hot.

I worked as quickly as I could, laying under the car on my back with pieces of hot metal dust falling into my face. Grunt, grunt, groan. Creak, creak, the sensor let out a screech as it made its way home. I did it! The new sensor was in place firmly buried in the flange socket. And our vacation was not going to be ruined!

Then the doubt crept into my mind. “What if I ruined the sensor by heating up the flange?” And then I thought, “What if the new O2 sensor was defective right out of the box?” But, no. My mechanic’s nightmare had ended and everything was peachy-keen from then on. Our vacation was terrific!

Fixing A Howling Honda

THE RIGHT-HAND RINGER

"Intermittent stalling, especially on right-hand turns," read the repair order.
Tony thought it was peculiar. "Right-hand turns? What's that got to do with
anything?" He opened the hood on the truck and looked things over. "Must be in
the carburetor. Float or something. Maybe the float is sunk and it's flooding
out."

A new float and carburetor kit was ordered and Tony disassembled the carburetor.
It was pretty clean inside and he had a hunch someone had been there before.
Somehow he wasn't surprised when he took the truck for a test ride and it
stalled on the first right-hand turn. "Drat! Now I'm in trouble... Did a carb
overhaul for nothing. What-ta-do-now..." He thought.

Must be something to do with gravity. Maybe the manifold is somehow developing a
vacuum leak when the inertia pulls it to the side...on right-hand turns. He
pulled the manifold and resealed it. The truck stalled, like a clock, at the
first right-hand turn.

What about left-hand turns? What if I back up? Nope, it would only stall on
right-hand turns. Maybe something is shorting out inside the distributor. He
disassembled it, looking for a loose wire or something. "Nothing, zip, zilch,
nix."

Maybe it runs out of gas when it goes around the corner. He rigged up a gas can
and hooked a hose from it to the fuel pump. It still stalled. Could the
carburetor still be the problem? Maybe it had something wrong inside, something
that couldn't be fixed. He tried another carburetor. It still stalled.

Tony had to go to automatic transmission class that night, so he thought he
might ask the teacher for help. "Hey teach, what's the deal with this Ford
truck?" He told the teacher about his dilemma.

"Bring the truck to class tomorrow night and I'll show you the cause," the teach
said.

"Aw, come on, you mean you know the problem and you won't tell me?" Tony
lamented. "Just bring the truck, you'll see."

Tony could hardly wait for the day to finish. Avoiding right turns, he made it
to class in the truck without incident. "Okay, teach, show me the problem," he
said as he opened the hood. The teacher didn't say anything, but put his hand on
the fender-mounted starter solenoid. "Teach, this isn't a starting problem, it's
a stalling problem," Tony said with irritation.

The teacher reached over and pulled one of the two small wires from its
connection on the solenoid. "Go ahead and make it stall now... Bet you can't!"

He was right. The truck made right-hand turns without so much as a hiccup. "But
how is this connected?" Tony asked.

"The solenoid is loose inside and is grounding out the ignition terminal on the
solenoid when you make right-hand turns." The teacher said, "I disconnected the
ignition terminal and prevented it from shorting out the ignition primary
circuit. All you have to do is replace the solenoid, and you've solved your
problem."

Fixing Noisy Power Steering On Your Car

ENGINE BIRTHS AND BOO-BOOS

Men never get an opportunity to give birth. Never have and never will, But I do
believe that we get to have an experience that's somewhat akin to birthing a
baby. What on earth could that be? Now, I don't want to insult any of you ladies
out there, so please don't take this too seriously! But, I'm referring to giving
birth to an engine.

If you've ever built an engine - assembling it piece by piece, and then cranking
it over, watching it come to life - you know what I mean. First you must spend
countless hours measuring, checking, and determining what's needed to complete
the rebuild. Then you go out and find all the parts you need to complete
the job. Finally, there's the long and laborious assembling of all those pieces.

Everything must be done with extreme care and in a certain order. Certain parts
must be bolted together and then torqued to proper specifications. Gaskets and
seals must be installed in their proper places. The timing gears must be lined
up, and the cam timed properly. And all the parts that are normally lubricated
must be coated with a special grease. That's so they won't starve of oil until
the oil pump is primed and is able to pump oil to all the moving parts.

And then, after all those long painstaking hours of work, the moment of birth
finally comes. You twist the key and bring the engine to life. First, it cranks
and cranks over. It takes its first breath. It starts to fire as it sparks to
life. And the final reward is hearing it roar as it fires up. And everything
that you did, all those painstaking hours of tedious labor, must be right on the
money - or it won't work. Even the tiniest mistake can result in a disaster. But
this is the story of one particular engine rebuild that didn't go well, In fact,
it ended in a disaster.

I've certainly had my share of engine disasters in my time. Ironically, it was
because I didn't want to make a mistake - building this particular engine - that
the disaster happened. I let the machine shop build it for me, and they blew it
royally. And this was an important engine that was going into my personal
vehicle, my Ford camper. Unfortunately for me, my shop at that time was completely
open on one side and sand blew in the door making it impossible to assemble the
engine without grit contamination. So I let the machine shop build it for me.

Actually, I had the machine shop assemble the short block and grind the valves.
A "Short block" refers to the block sans the cylinder heads. I installed them
myself. I had the engine fitted with new pistons and a reground crankshaft. It
got a new camshaft, lifter, oil pump, and all bearings. The connecting rods were
reconditioned and the cylinders were bored oversize. The ticket was a couple of
big ones, like two grand plus. But, its the price you must pay for reliability.
After all, I wanted my camper to be as reliable as possible. That's what you pay
for. I mean, I could have just installed a junkyard motor and taken my chances
and saved big bucks. But who wants to break down in the middle of the Painted
Desert, right?

I know, I know. This is supposed to be a story about the joys of building an
engine and watching it come to life for the first time, right? Okay, I really do
love to build engines. Build plenty of 'em. In fact, I once had a job where
that's all I did - build engines day in and day out - engine after engine. I
guess I became somewhat jaded after "birthing" all those engines. After awhile
you get kinda' callused. You stop caring. I mean it works or it don't work -
and you could care less if it don't. Oh yeah, you care enough to be sure that
your productive - but not to the point of being insane about it.

I also remember those engines I installed when I worked at the Mercedes-Benz
dealer in Palo Alto. Hey, that was really a tight-run shop. Clean, clean, clean -
everything had to be as clean as a whistle. You had to keep your clothes neat
and clean. Shoes shined. Hands always clean. Wash your hands maybe twelve times
a day. Because if you didn't, and you left a grease smudge on a customer's car,
you were fired right on the spot. And we didn't build engines either. We only
installed Mercedes-Benz factory-built ones.

Oh, and what a strange sight those engines were, those beautiful Mercedes-Benz
engines sitting there in their cages. That's right, cages. instead of being
shipped in a crate like other rebuilt engines, they came in a cage - just like a
lion. In fact, it looked a lot like a lion cage - with strong metal bars and a
cage door. Only the door was on the top instead of in front. Wild! It was like
the engine was dangerous and had to be kept in a cage or it might get out and
run away!

As part of my initiation at that MBZ dealership, they tested my skills. And no
one warned me about it either. they just sprung it on me. When I came in to work
one Monday, there was one of those engines-in-a-cage sitting on the floor in my
work bay. Next to it, on my rack, a car was waiting to have it installed. By
five o'clock I had the new engine in the car and running. The old engine was
bolted in the lion's cage, waiting to be shipped back to the factory in Germany.
Now that was an accomplishment. There aren't many guys who can swap out an
engine and have it running in an eight-hour day. And remember, when I was done,
there couldn't be as much as one smudge left on the car either.

Then, the next day when I came in, there was another new engine sitting in a
cage, and another car in my bay waiting for a transplant. And once again, by
five o'clock, the new engine was running and the old one was bolted to the cage,
ready to shop, Then, on Wednesday, the same thing. Thursday ditto. And when
Friday came, things were different. This was the final test. Instead of being in
my bay, the car needing an engine was parked on the outside service rack, and
the engine was sitting next to the door. Chan, the shop foreman, had taken over
my rack and was using it for some other job he was involved with while his rack was
tied up. Actually, it was a setup, just so I would have to do the job outside.

It's not like I mind working outside. In fact, I love the opportunity to get out of
the stinking shop and work in the California sunshine. But, it was raining that
day. Bummer. I would have to do the job in the rain. So, I rolled my toolbox as
close to the door as I could, without blocking it, and went to work. Working in
the rain means slipping on the pavement, having tools slip out of your hands,
and rain trickling down your back while you worked. But, by 5 o'clock, that
engine was installed and running. I had passed the test. My initiation was over.

I'm sorry. I've strayed from the story. I was telling you about the Ford engine
in my camper, Anyway, as I was saying, I had this machine shop build the engine
for me because of the sand that would blow into my shop. I installed the engine
in my camper and went happily sailing around the country. Over the next dozen or
so years, I drove that camper all over. I visited Yellowstone, Yosemite, the
Grand Canyon, Arches, the Painted Desert, drove the Blue Ridge Parkway and even
the 7-mile bridge to Key West. I took I-10 from Tallahassee to L.A. and went
from San Francisco to Baltimore, and back again, camping all the way. Loved every
moment of it.

It was fifty-seven thousand miles later, and more than a dozen years, when I was
on my way into Denver that it happened. As I drove westbound, halfway across the
great western prairie that leads to Denver, I noticed one of the cylinders
beginning to misfire. How could I tell? After spending that much time in the
driver's seat of my camper, I could tell. I knew that engine intimately. And I
knew instantly, when it began to miss. I stopped and checked all the usual
things, but nothing appeared to be wrong. So, I decided to limp into Denver
where I could do a more thorough analysis of the problem.

The next day I began my diagnostic checking by pulling the spark plugs. Oh how
well I remember the sinking feeling when I removed the spark plug for
number-eight cylinder. It was completely oil-fouled. Not good. I figured that a
valve guide was probably to blame, and calculated that I was in for some repair
work to the head. No big deal. Maybe a few days delay, no more. Boy was I wrong!
I removed the cylinder head and popped off the valve keepers in order to get the
springs off so I could eyeball the guides. There wasn't anything wrong with the
guides. Damn!

With major depression setting in to my mood, I figured it had to be a damaged
piston. Wrong again! As I carefully examined number-eight cylinder, I saw a dent
in the cylinder wall. Not just a nick, but a big dent. I mean big! By now my
heart was in my stomach as the realization hit me. This engine was toast. A oat(?)
anchor. Scrap metal. What caused the Dent? I just had to know, But First, I
would need to find another engine or remain stranded in Denver! Luck was with me
and I located a used engine in a local wrecking yard. Only $350. Guaranteed to
run. Oh goody, I wasn't stranded.

Knowing that another engine was available, I rented a portable engine hoist,
jerked out the engine and began tearing it down in order to find the answer to
the mystery of the dented cylinder wall. I discovered the answer as soon as I
removed number-eight piston. The damn machine shop had failed to install the
piston wrist-pin clip and the wrist pin made the dent. Without the clip, the
wrist pin floated in its bore. And when the circumstances were just right, it
would slide over and kiss the cylinder wall. The dent was exactly at the place
where the piston changed direction from its upward to it downward stroke. When
this happened, coupled with the force of the air-fuel combustion, the piston pin
would shoot sideways and hit the cylinder wall at exactly the spot where the
dent was.

Funny, for years I had been hearing an engine tap or knock. In fact, it began
not long after I installed that engine. it would come an go, sometimes louder
than others. I figured it was a lifter or rocker arm. But since it never got
worse, and the tapping was so intermittent, I would just wait until it failed
altogether before digging into it. i(I) had no idea that I was hearing the wrist
pin banging against the cylinder wall!

I've seen this kind of mistake before, but it always looked different. The usual
scenario when a C-Clip is left out will result in the wrist pin gouging a long
trough in the cylinder wall - the whole length of the piston st(r)oke. but this was
only a dent. It looked like someone had taken a ball-peen hammer and hit the
cylinder wall in the same place a million times. Why wasn't there a long gouge
in my engine's cylinder wall? And why did it take fifty-seven thousand miles to
fail, instead of a couple hundred - as usual? What was different? Was I blessed
or what?

The answer was simple. The difference was that I used synthetic oil. The
synthetic oil was such a terrific lubricant, it prevented the piston pin from
digging into the cylinder wall. When the pin hit the wall, the synthetic oil was
there to lubricate it and keep metal-to-metal combat from taking place. It
provided adequate barrier protection, never allowing the two metals to bind or
scrape. Instead, the pin would just hit, bounce back, and go about its merry
way. And over the past dozen years, and all those miles, the pin had hit the
cylinder wall enough times to make a large enough dent to allow oil to bypass
the rings. And that's what finally fouled the spark plug.

So what was I do to? The machine shop screwed me totally when they built the
engine. What could that machinist have thought when he finished and discovered
the extra wrist-pin clip laying there? Did the jerk even know he'd made a fatal
mistake? Maybe he was on drugs. Was there anything I could do now, a dozen years
later? No way. Sorry. Too bad. You don't just walk in and say, "Hey, you screwed
up an engine rebuilt(d) that you did fourteen years ago and I want my money back!"

I don't think so. There wasn't a damn thing I could do except eat the mistake.
Welcome to the wonderful world of automotive repair. Anyway, I installed the
used engine and drove away with hatred and loathing for that machine shop. For
the previous week I had racked my brain trying to come up with a way to get even
with them for their dirty deed. Now, here I was, driving with a junkyard engine
after all. And all the money I had spent on having the other one built was
wasted.

Just for the record, the junkyard engine only lasted eighteen thousand miles
before it went south. And it was a total mess, needing everything to be rebuilt
or replaced, including a bent crankshaft. And as I went through it, and was
rebuilding the heads - which I had swapped with the junkyard engine - I found
another mistake. The jerk also installed the valve-guides upside-down!

Anyway, with the nightmare behind me, I drove away from Denver en route to Santa
Fe. As the miles disappeared, my anger began to abate. My hatred cooled, and my
thought(s) turned to my vacation once again. As I drove through the day and into
the night, lo and behold, another nightmare started to happen. I began hearing a
horrible noise coming from the driveline. A loud metallic nose, like a metallic
snap. But, that's another story.

Scotty Kilmer Car Talk: Answering YOUR Car Questions LIVE

Fixing Car Problems You Can't See

greedy shop owner's

You see, there’s this greedy shop owner who’s waging his own personal war against the knowing. You’d better look out if you wind up having an unsuccessful repair at this shop. When you show up at his door with a clunk on bumps, and the shop owner or his staff sell you shocks, you’d better not complain when the shocks don’t fix your problem! Because if you do, you’re history. Really!
If The Boss says you need shocks, you need shocks. And when the shocks don’t fix the problem, Mr. Authority comes back at you again saying that you most certainly needed them, and you also need ball joints and upper strut mount bushings. You’d better not question his diagnosis. You’d better not argue. Just curtsy and hand him your money. And just so long as you remain the unknowing, you’re business is welcome.
Customers who bitch and complain about the cost of the repair had better watch out! The boss man angers easily, and he’ll quickly tell you to take your business somewhere else and to never come back. And your name gets put on his black list. After all, there’s plenty more customers in the D.C metropolitan area. And even better, many of the customers are transient and will never come back anyway. Diplomats, attaches, and their staff. Lots of money and lots more where they came from. Mr. High and Mighty’s shop doesn’t need a good reputation, just lots of advertising, like full page ads in the Sunday paper.
Speaking of advertising, one foreign car repair shop in Tampa bought full-page advertising in the phone book. Hard to believe. No, it wasn’t a car dealership. However, they did sell used cars. They did have a parts storefront too. Thanks to tourist dollars, which are in abundance in Florida, and that big ad in the phone book, our phone never stopped ringing.
The person who you spoke with was Ed. Most convincing of all people I’ve ever met, Ed. He was the service writer and could talk a duck out of his feathers. Ed came on ever so gentle and mild, drawing in his prey with sickening sweetness. You’d never think he was capable of anything but your best interests. Then he would pounce on you, turning into a pirate. Once he got a hold of your car, man you were toast. He was so excellent at making up and creating so many wild scenarios. Non-existent problems. Once he got your car in the shop, your wallet would simply empty right out.
And of course you never came back after experiencing Ed turning from Mr. Nice Guy to Jose Gaspar, the pirate! It was an amazing sight to see. After the customer saw the bill, then had a moment to pick herself up off the floor, the screaming would begin.
Ed’s mild mannered face would turn into a Jose Gaspar, and he’d go into his scary routine. Systematically, he’d attack and belittle the customer for their negligence. He’d blame them for the way they treated their car. He’d harp on and on about how bad it was before we fixed it.
It was absolutely amazing how a clunk on bumps complaint could turn that money crank! By the time he finished with you, you got all four shocks, both motor and transmission mounts, a couple of ball joints, maybe both upper and lower ball joints if he figured he could get away with it, and some custom exhaust work to boot. Oh, including a complete set of exhaust hangers. Whew! He was brutal. And if you came in with a starting problem, you always got a starter. Maybe injectors or a carburetor, too. Not to mention the usual cap rotor, plugs, wires, and ignition coil. And maybe throw in a sensor or two.
But, the Ed story is unusual. Interesting, but unusual. As I have said again and again, almost all mechanics and repair shops are honest. The National Attorneys General study showed that the whole problem of rip-off auto repairs really stems from problems with communication. No Duh.
I just saw a statistic that said something about how mechanics spend eighty percent of their time trying to figure out what’s wrong. The rest of it is easy, with only 20% of the time needed doing the fix. Wow. Four-fifths guesswork. One-fifth fixing. Pretty scary, huh? Roger that. I mean, it’s gotten so complicated that even a genius can’t figure it out anymore.
They’ve got dealer service bulletins, independent service bulletins, dealer tech hotlines, independent tech hotlines, and of course, call-in radio shows. And still, people can’t get their cars fixed right the first time! And why not? Well, according to that Attorneys General study, the whole problem is communication. Right. Like the guy knows the service advisor is telling him the straight story when he says he needs shocks?
So, does the mechanic mean to rip off the customer most of the time? No. Usually the customer rips himself off by not communicating his problem. The rest of the unsuccessful and knowing people with problem repairs can be chalked up to a bad diagnosis. And the bad diagnosis resulted in an unnecessary repair. The unsuccessful as in unsuccessful repair and the knowing. The owner clearly sees that the problem is still there.
Then there’s poor preventative maintenance habits. And since lack of maintenance doesn’t fall into one of the four categories, we’re not gonna’ go there. To put a wrap on my lecturing, I want to share with you one of my favorite rip-off tales. A story that falls in the category of the unsuccessful and knowing. Over the years I’ve been told this story by many different techs, as well as shop owners and other auto industry personnel. Here’s it is, with a few embellishments of my own:
I hate my job. I am an assembly line worker at an automotive plant in Michigan. I build cars. Boring. Same thing hour after hour, day after day. Yeah, sure the pay is great. Yeah, sure the Union benefits are terrific. Yeah, sure. Dull. Yawn. Snore. ZZZzzzzzz. Someone wake me up when it’s quitting time. I’ll do ANYTHING to fight this boredom!
Hey, I know what. I’ll play a practical joke on someone. I’ll think of a real good one to pull. A real whopper. A real wing-dinger. One that will drive you nuts-o, daddy-o. It’ll be a real zinger. Not an easy one. No. A hum-dinger. A mind blower. Now lets see.
Okay, I’ve got it. I’ll make a time capsule. Put a message inside and seal it up r-e-a-l good. Seal it up in a nice piece of metal pipe, a nice little pipe with my note inside. And I’ll leave it behind for someone to find. Someone far away, far, far from today. Someone in the future. A message for someone to find real far off in the future.
I’ll just drop this nice time capsule in side of this body panel, and leave it for someone to find way off in the future. And it’ll rattle around in all its glory, clanking and clunking its way through the day, until finally someone discovers it’s there. Until someone cuts open this welded shut body panel and finds my capsule inside. He he, he he!
Noise? What noise? has been the routine for so many years. Dozens of techs have been assigned the job of finding the evasive Ssshhhh clunk noise. Hundreds of dollars spent, with nothing but the same old sad report, No problem found. Of course, the owners had to pay the diagnostic fee, along with environmental surcharges and shop fees. And the noise persisted.
Eventually, someone does find it. But not until the first owner of the car gives up trying to get his clunk on stops problem fixed. He trades it in. The next owner fights like hell with the dealership that sold it to him, claiming he got stuck with a lemon. And the car passes through a couple of other owners' hands until a savy repair tech uses a high-tech listening device to track down the location of the noise.
Inside a body panel. Something loose inside this panel. He cuts open the body panel to find out what’s loose inside, and retrieves the time capsule. Fishing it out with his long-skinny grabber tool, he retrieves the metal capsule. And when he unscrews the cap and looks inside, he finds the note left by the unhappy practical joker factory worker so many years ago. Unrolling the scrolled-up piece of paper he reads.......
Editors note: This shhtt..clunk! story has been around for decades, and has become an urban legend for auto mechanics. The kind of car is usually a Cadillac. The time capsule has been anything from a metal film can, prescription bottle, and pipe. The location has been inside the frame, body, and kick panels. The sound it makes is always the same: An intermittent clunk that’s accompanied by a hissing sound, but happening only when braking, sometimes. The owner reports hearing it come from under the seat, inside the door, in the dash, and the trunk.
The lessons to be learned from this Mechanic’s Nightmare are: • Always expect the unexpected. • Do whatever is necessary to be a witness of the problem. • Make it happen, then record the circumstances involved. • Look for connections (or clues) between the circumstances involved when it happens and the actual problem occurrence. • Beware that the problem you’re dealing with may have been built into the vehicle right from the factory.

Ron Ananian's- The Car doctor show(hour one)

Homepage of Ron Ananian: cardoctorshow and answer to monthly question from previous blog entry!

Hour one Link below!
http://www.tomrayconsulting.com/car_doc_audio/downloadpodcasts.php?file=car_doctor_2pm_03082014.mp3

Name that carshow- for Monthly question for March 2014

What carShow heard weekly corrently ends the show with this music?

how to find if your car's fuel pump is bad scotty kilmer live talk

Replacing Bouncing Rear Struts On Your Car

Choosing an Automotive Scan Tool -EricTheCarGuy

Trans rebuild part 17 .

Trans rebuild part 16 .

.Trans rebuild part 15 .

Trans rebuild part 14 .

Trans rebuild part 13 .

Trans rebuild part 12 .

Trans rebuild part 11 .

.Trans rebuild part 10 .

Trans rebuild part 9 .

Trans rebuild part 8 .

Trans rebuild part 7 .

Trans rebuild part 6

Trans rebuild part 5 .

Trans Rebuild Intro .

Bad Eyes Dykes

During my youth I was never afraid of the prevailing working conditions. I’ll never forget working nights washing dishes at a Ramada Inn to get some extra cash fast. Many of us have had to stoop really low during our working lives. I guess it all depends on the level you’re coming from. To a hungry man, washing dishes would be a terrific opportunity for free food.

And as I clearly remember, it all looked different. Being the low man on the totem pole was the pits. Everyone, all the waitresses, the cook, everyone treated me like I was a leper.

But it was a job. I can remember times when it seemed like I had been down so long that everything else looked like up to me. After all a job is a job. And you gotta’ work to get money.

I’ve worked in horrific phosphate mines and phosphate acid processing plants. One day they lowered me down into an acid vat on a rope. I had to hang there and operate a pressure washer, and could hardly breathe the acid stench was so horrible. I worked at a train car loader and the phosphate rock dust would accumulate on my shoulders faster than I could brush it off. The air was so filled with dust that a respirator quickly plugged and I wound up going without one.

I quit one plant when they asked me to take a jackhammer and go inside a hot phosphate rock drying kiln and break up the slag. I heard later that my replacement was badly injured when the slag broke loose at once, nearly burying him in hot rocks. One day I watched as my co-worker had his eyes burned by acid that came spewing out of the pipes we were dismantling.

Being a worker, with a hard working mentality, and the desire for money were all I needed when I was young. But I always knew deep down inside that I wanted to be a mechanic. And I also knew I’d have to work my way up through the ranks if I ever wanted to be any good.

I was willing to work just about anywhere, just so long as the pay was good and I was able to learn from the older tradesmen I met along the way. I wanted to learn all that I could. I was like a sponge, soaking up every trick and technique—lest they serve me well sometime in the future with a skill learned. I knew that the more skills you had, the faster you could complete a job and the more money you could make.

So being a mechanic also brought me into some pretty nasty situations. They don’t call auto repair shops “the back room” for nothing. Some nightmarish places I’ve turned wrenches will remain in my mind forever. Hot, poorly lit, filthy, stinking repair shops. I’ll never forget this one place. It was a real mess. There were old axles and rusty frame parts piled up in the corners, with pieces of fender and doors hanging from the walls. The lighting was bad because the fluorescent tubes were half flickering and half lit. The air smelled stale and the floor was crusted with layers of soot.

It was truly a hell hole that no one in their right mind would want to go to work in every day. But I had bills to pay and the money was good. My co-worker’s name was Godwin. He also liked his job, and he was an okay mechanic. He inspired me with how hard he worked, teaching me to always do the very best you can. But, he would talk about how hoped to find a better job someday. Like most mechanics, he was wrenching until he could find “something better.”

Maybe that's why Godwin didn't buy any new tools. He had kids to feed and big house payments. I was still young, footloose and fancy free. Much of my paycheck went to the tool dealer, as I was still building my tool collection. When the tool trucks came around every week, I couldn’t wait to run out and get a new prize. Maybe a new trick wrench or special socket.

But Godwin never bought anything. He mostly bought his beat-up set of tools at the flea market. He picked up some at yard sales, and always was happy to have our discarded and worn out stuff. I remember how his little beat up toolbox was much too small to hold all the old screwdrivers and pliers that he had. I felt sorry for him, and gave him the tools I no longer needed.

I remember how Godwin spread all his screwdrivers and pliers over his work bench. And how he would root through them until he found one he liked and wanted to use. I remember how much wasted time he would spend digging through those worn out tools, sometimes trading one for another that was in the pile. Maybe it was better than the last one he had just used, or maybe he just wanted a fresh one. I dunno. It was weird.

And when a screwdriver wasn't good enough, he sometimes would saunter over to the bench grinder and dress it up giving it a new edge. The worst ones, those that already lost their ability to be a screwdriver anymore, would get ground down into chisels. The old pliers would just get thrown onto the heap to keep company with all the other tired and worn-out tools.

As for a mechanic, Godwin was just adequate. His saving grace was that he was a hard worker. But he wasn’t real bright. If he had been, he would’ve realized how much time he spent each day rooting around in his tools—wasted time that could have been earning him money. Or maybe Godwin just did that to think. To the rest of us, he was just digging around in that useless pile of tools to find just the right screwdriver—or pliers. To Godwin, he was thinking about what he did last night, or what he was going to do tonight after work. Who knows?

And so the boss didn't give Godwin any real hard jobs—or anything too technical. He mostly did mufflers, brakes, belts, and hoses. He did have an air gun. He used it when he did tires and to break loose rusty muffler studs. But Godwin didn't really like to use high-powered pneumatic air ratchets and power tools. Most often he’d happily use his hands, arms, and a beat-up old Proto ½ inch drive ratchet. Remember, he was only wrenching for a short while. That is, until he could find a better line of work.

But even without air tools, Godwin was a pretty efficient mechanic. He could R&R a muffler just as fast as anybody in the shop. Oh boy, was he ever good with the “Heat Wrench!” That's what he used to call the oxyacetylene torch. He would light that puppy up and could get anything to come loose. No matter how stuck or frozen. He would get it cherry red hot and give it a good whack with one of his “beater” hammers…

Godwin was pretty handy with a hammer and chisel too. If he didn't have the right socket, in that cardboard box he kept on the floor alongside of the bench, he’d use a hammer and chisel. Never seen anyone so adept at getting a nut or bolt loose that way. I can still remember how he’d hold up the hammer in his muscular left arm and say” left or right handed thread, it works both ways!” Then he’d hold up the chisel in his right hand and announce, “This is the correct tool for all sizes, be it metric or S-A-E.

Godwin would never even consider borrowing a tool from the other mechanics. He would rather go without, struggling and struggling, sweat pouring down from his forehead rather than stoop to ask someone to loan him a impact hammer or air powered chisel. He may have not had any nice tools to show, but he was proud just the same. And that was the reason that he was such a good mechanic. Because he was proud of his accomplishments.

Godwin was my mentor in this way. From him I learned how to be proud of your work and to do the job right the first time. Without ever knowing it, Godwin passed onto me the importance of what you do and how it impacts the future. I can remember how he’d say, “You see ‘dis here brake job? You see how it’s goes all back together, right? But do you see how much trouble it’s gonna’ cause for you if you don’t do it ‘zactly right? You better believe it! You don’t want one of ‘dem cops come snooping around saying “Who done worked on this here man’s auto mobile. He’s kilt ‘cause of no brakes. Now who’s gonna’ take ‘da blame?’”

I’ll never forget that day Godwin was doing a routine brake job. He had done many, many brake jobs before. To Godwin, brake jobs were just like breathing or eating—they were second nature. He would whip off the old shoes and have new shoes hung before the other guys had the drums off. But little did either of us realize that this particular brake job would change his life. And mine too.

It all stemmed from the fact that Godwin wasn't in the habit of using special tools. That goes for brake tools too. Special tools were something he didn't believe in, because he figured he could just get by with the tools he already had. For example, rather than spend money on a brake spoon, he heated up a large screw driver until it was red hot, and then beat the screwdriver blade into a reasonable facsimile of the actual brake tool.

As I said, one of Godwin’s salient traits was his efficiency. He could really whip out a brake job. I watched him many times, and was amazed at how efficient he really was. It was like it was all planned and rehearsed. Every motion, every move. Not a wasted motion. Not an extra step. He used to say “I kin’ tell how outa-it I’m doing when I’m having a bad day. I can tell by all the extra times I gotta go back for some other tool I done forgot.”

He used to start out by picking through that miserable pile of tools until he had gathered up just the right ones. Then he’s scoop them all up in one of his meaty-big-fisted hands and carry them over to the car. Just one trip. No extra trips back and forth to the toolbox. Also, he had an uncanny knack of making more use of a tool than it was intended. Like using a screw driver handle instead of a plastic hammer when banging hubcaps back in place.

Godwin could double use an old pair of wire cutters to install brake hardware. Commonly known as "Dykes," for diagonal cutters, he would whip a brake job apart and back together using just dykes—like nothing you’ve ever seen. Holding them with his huge left hand, (he was a South Paw), he could not only pry off the big brake return springs, but catch onto them and reinstall them as well—all the while his right hand was removing and replacing the shoes, hold down clips and little springs.

I can still remember him remarking about why the other mechanics spent so much money on special brake tools when, “All that was needed was a tool you already own.” Dykes had to be Godwin’s favorite tool for doing brake work. Nothing fancy. Just a simple hand tool.

So, as I was saying, Godwin was doing this brake job and he had his favorite pair of dykes in his hand. They were pretty worn, like the rest of his tools, but to him there still remained plenty of life left in them. It didn't matter to him that the green plastic covers had come off on the handles of the dykes. It just made them appear ugly, "But they still work," he would say to himself loud enough for anyone in earshot to hear.

Brake springs are difficult to deal with, and require the use of a special brake spring tool in order to coax the strong brake spring back into place. Buy Godwin was a very strong man, and his grasp was like a pair of Vice-grips. With his muscle, he could easily get away with using a pair of pliers to grab the spring and pull it back home. But, he liked to use as few tools as possible. And armed only with the dykes he would R&R a set of brake shoes faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.

Godwin had rapidly popped off the hold down clips and stuff, and had just finished hanging the shoes. He was in the process of reinstalling the brake shoes and springs. And was pulling the main spring—the long and tough one—across to the other shoe when the dykes slipped off the spring and suddenly let go. He had been exerting so much force on pulling the spring that when the dykes slipped, his hand reacted and pulled the handle of the dykes into his right in the eye. It instantly put out his eye.

For the sake of a $5 brake tool, Godwin was permanently blinded in one eye. Godwin quit the job as a mechanic and became a security guard. It was much easier than being a mechanic and he thought the eye patch made him look mean. People now seemed to respect him much more than when he was a mechanic. Life goes on.

The original version of this story was published in Vol. VII Issue 6. It was rewritten and republished in July of 2000 for our Y2K celebration. 

The lessons to be learned from this mechanic’s nightmare are:

Always wear eye protection.

Always use the good quality tools. Using poor quality tools may not show up on the final outcome, but they compromise your safety.

Use the correct tools for the job

Follow the procedure for the correct way to use a special tool.

Never pull on anything in such a way that if something goes wrong, your hand or the tool will go flying into your face.

Learn from the mistakes of others. Let their lessons be yours too. 

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