by "The Stig's former college room mate" (das-stig)
Published 03/06/2017 at 14:20
by "The Stig's former college room mate" (das-stig)
Published 03/06/2017 at 14:20
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STARS: 1
...get out from under the hood!
Just fixed a car for one of my wife’s friends. She was having intermittent issues with the vehicle not starting so she brought it over for me to look at. (side rant- people need to give better descriptions of symptoms! “it won’t start but it feels like it wants to” is worthless info! A better description would be “it cranks real slow 2 or 3 times, then just clicks.” End rant)
A quick check of the system revealed a massive voltage drop between the battery and starter. seeing new, clean terminal ends on the battery, i go down to the starter and find a lot of corrosion on the cable. i take it apart quick and clean it and reassemble. try cranking engine and no better. I figure i’ll have a look at the cables under those new terminal ends (thinking they may be corroded). I touch the negative and the cable falls out. the positive does the same thing. The terminals are much too large for this gauge wire. I swap them for two properly size ones I had lying around and retest. the thing cranks over nice and fast and starts right up. turns out her boyfriend installed those one day because the old ones “didn’t look good.” She’s been stranded 3 times since then thanks to him.
Why is it people think they can fix cars, even though they have no experience, knowledge or training? Don’t they realize someone could be injured or worse because of an improper repair?
"facw" (facw)
03/06/2017 at 14:24, STARS: 2
Never! We are engineers, we like tinkering with things!
"MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner" (montegoman562)
03/06/2017 at 14:27, STARS: 4
Gotta learn somehow!
"MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s" (mastermario)
03/06/2017 at 14:39, STARS: 1
Those damn engineers who designed the car don’t know what their doing either, I’m just fixing what they did wrong in the first place!
"CalzoneGolem" (calzonegolem)
03/06/2017 at 14:49, STARS: 2
No fuck this. If you don’t know what you’re doing then get under the hood.
"The Stig's former college room mate" (das-stig)
03/06/2017 at 15:01, STARS: 4
if you want to practice, learn on your own vehicle. Don’t let other people be your guinea pig.
"The Stig's former college room mate" (das-stig)
03/06/2017 at 15:02, STARS: 1
get under your own. don’t fuck up other people’s cars.
"MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s" (mastermario)
03/06/2017 at 15:08, STARS: 0
Or at least add a disclaimer to your work. I’ll look at a friend’s ride and give my opinion and if they ask for help fixing something I’ll do what I can, but I make sure they know that I am not a mechanic. If it’s something I’m not comfortable with I’ll recommend they take it to an actual mechanic.
"MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner" (montegoman562)
03/06/2017 at 15:10, STARS: 0
No you’re right, I’m partially goofing around here. I try to leave the more experimental automotive work to my project car/race car so that I can still drive to work.