331–340 of 515 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tangent, but what's the rationale for car doors requiring slams? They are the only door I know, at least in common, daily life contexts, that require slamming them with the force of Thor to properly close them.
I think one of the reasons is air pressure inside the car. I've always found it amazing how much less slamming the doors needed when a window was left wide open and the air inside the car could escape freely.
Well this is timely. I have a parasitic draw on my NC Miata. The first mechanic just replaced the battery. The second told me it's normal for the battery to die if you don't drive it for 3 days (because "cars have computers now"). It seems like mechanics really don't like digging into the electrical part of the car... but these days that encompasses more and more of what can go wrong. Without time to dig into it myse…
I solved one recently. Really wish there was a simple time logging multimeter that you could leave plugged in 24 hours.
Just need to hold a button when turning on the meter to disable the auto power of timer, then you run software on a laptop to log the data to csv
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you like watching amateur YouTubers rip out their hair chasing electrical problems, I recommend checking out Tavarish and Samcrac. It turns out cheap flooded auction cars have tons of those
Pine Hollow Auto Diagnostics South Main Auto Watch Wes Work musty1
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's fair, but it's funny because that's how I always felt about BMWs. My buddy loves them but I always felt like they were so... sterile. Unless you are at a track or love cutting off people in traffic it feels really hard to have any fun in one.
Agreed - the last 5 that felt good to drive was the e39, and the rest probably peaked with the e90 or e8x. I felt the same way with the corvette - my c5 was the most fun to drive. C6 was an upgrade in comfort but significantly number, and the C7 was horrific. I took a C7Z for a spin and it felt slower and more boring than my c5 despite having 2x the HP.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats insane... To consistently not close the door like that
My wife, bless her heart, leaves everything partially open. Not even just open, but she'll screw the lid on jars just enough where if I pick it up by the top they'll drop. It drives me crazy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with specializing in these issues is that most customers will be dissatisfied when you charge them thousands of dollars to reset a minor module on their car. How many hours of shop time are you willing to pay for with no guarantee of a solution, and very few (if any) parts replaced?
> How many hours of shop time are you willing to pay for with no guarantee of a solution, and very few (if any) parts replaced? Imagine opening a computer software support business where you bring in your old proprietary binary programs that you got from who knows where, and the business is to fix bugs you've found. Maybe some really big enterprises would pay for that sort of thing. But I doubt it would be feasible f…
Having had a 2006 model car in my workshop forever rebuilding the engine, I have though it might be worthwhile starting a business doing that kind of trouble shooting but nobody will want to pay, because the vehicles involved are inevitably old and worthless. It's fun to do it for yourself, but as a business your typical customer who needs you won't be able to justify paying you.
My other thought was to possibly set up the tools and whatnot to support local businesses in doing that kind of troubleshooting on older cars but building the knowledge and tools to distribute would be a very expensive exercise.
I’ve been wondering if my old HOUSE has parasitic electrical currents but I’m not sure where to start.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that's dumb. I've never heard of that before. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Thanks!
It gets even more fiendish than that - you can have entire linked dependencies of locked modules. My old Saab’s key was locked to the security computer, to the column immobilizer, then to the engine computer. Lost one key? Bummer. Lost all your keys? $2500, several hours of reprogramming time at the dealer, and a bunch of new parts shipped over from Trollhattan. Thankfully the hacking scene has managed to bypass lots…
That will be quite hard to overcome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With my car, trying to lock the doors just doesn't work if one is left open — not always the most obvious failure mode, but it's been enough to get me to notice something's wrong.
> With my car, trying to lock the doors just doesn't work if one is left open for suburban single family residence dwellers with their own garage, they may not always (or ever) lock the doors while the car is parked in their locked garage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My mechanic won't do it because he won't confirm that's the cause. My experience is that a lot of independent mechanics will do what you ask them to do, so long as they think it’s not unsafe and have confidence that you’ll pay the bill without complaint when the task is done whether or not the problem is fixed. Probably not a good “this is my first time meeting you, but please replace my flux capacitor” but if you’…
Yes. I had a problem with a leaking transmission once and the shop refused to accept my diagnosis because "in all my years servicing transmissions, I never heard of that failing." Finally, the service manager agreed to check it out with the understanding that if I was wrong, I still had to pay for the time they spent investigating. I was right :-)
I once moved into a place that was great, except the shower would start out hot, quickly drop to warm, and then stay warm for as long as we cared to try it. I hated this, so every time I showered I'd spend some time trying to debug it, despite knowing nothing about plumbing.
Eventually I asked myself: why do normal hot water heaters work the other way, where they stay hot a long time and then get pretty cold? Clearly, there's some way of keeping the incoming cold water separate from the already-heated hot water, like by putting the output pipe at the top and the input pipe at the bottom. But if you reverse them, you might get what we had.
I leapt out of the shower and felt the hot water heater pipes and sure enough, reversed. My landlord came over shortly thereafter and fixed it, and I felt very smug when I had my first properly hot shower.