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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#61

Post by NamTaf »

My parents have an early '50s MG, which they rarely drive. For most of my adult life, I've lived about an hour away from them so I'd sometimes take it out if I was there. Needless to say, it had a never-ending list of quirks due to being so old and also rarely being driven, but it's a lovely old car all the same.

One day, I dropped by to say hi, but they were both out. I decided instead to take the car for a spin around the local beachfront to give it a turn over. A few minutes into the drive, I started to lose engine power, so I pulled over. The engine then completely died on me, so I let it sit for a moment before trying to kick it over again.

The fuel pump is such that when you first turn the key to power the accessories, you hear it go tickticktick tick tick.. tick... tick...... - the ticks slow as the pump builds up fuel pressure. It's a good audio cue as to when you can then turn it to ignition and kick the engine over. In this case though, the ticking wasn't slowing - just the same tickticktickticktick. I tried to kick it over several times, but no matter which deity I invoked, no luck.

Empty fuel tank then. I checked the fuel level (walk to the tank on the back and poke a special bit of wood in to see how full it is) but lo and behold, plenty there. So I let it sit for a few minutes more and try again, hoping it may be to do with a flooded carburetor after my several attempts to restart it. The same: tickticktickticktick.

I gave Dad a call, describe the problem, tell him what I'd done to solve it and that I'd concluded the fuel pump must be cactus. I asked if he was going to be home soon to come give me a tow home. At this point, I learnt that he was some hours away and Mum was overseas, so no luck there. As I'm mentally preparing to push the car home for over an hour, he interrupts - "open the bonnet, grab the spanner out of the toolbox there and give the pump several hard whacks".

"...what?"

"Beat the bejeezus out of the fuel pump a few times."

So I did, and I turned back on the accessories. Ticktickticktick ticktick tick tick... tick.... tick.......

Dad then explains that this problem's been around for decades. Very occasionally, a bubble of air will end up in the fuel feed line. It then blocks the pump, which can't clear it, but a bit of suitably percussive maintenance consistently dislodges it and the pump can draw fuel in again.

As they say, old cars definitely have character, and I think that comes about largely because people can understand, fault-find and fix these sorts of analogue issues that arise. New cars are much more reliable and don't face nearly as many random faults, but those that do happen are almost impossible for Joe Public to resolve on the side of the road.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#62

Post by rectang »

reedf1 wrote: post #45
rectang wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heisenbugs are manifestations of whole-system design failings, where projects are not engineered to facilitate troubleshooting, subsystems are strongly coupled, and everything is just barely held together with baling wire and bubblegum. That GM vehicles from this infamous era would suffer from maddening, mysterious electrical glitches makes perfect sense.

Tell me you only use memory managed languages without telling me...

But I don’t?

A formative early experience of mine was learning valgrind to track down a Heisenbug for a C project I was working on (which turned out to be an invalid read in a dependency). I’m indeed thinking of this anecdote when generalizing about whole-systems failings, since troubleshooting memory errors is so difficult.

I think there’s an analogy to be drawn when designing large systems on top of unsound foundations.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#63

Post by convFixb »

huehehue wrote: post #12

Oh man, I'm currently fighting a problem with a mid-70s coupe that's driving me equally batty. Randomly during longer trips, the car will just die for no discernible reason. It's the Car of Theseus at this point with how much I've replaced, but the issue persists, and the nature of these intermittent problems makes debugging a nightmare. More puzzling still that the car starts up fine after a short nap.

Cracked fuel line? Might let air into the system in certain operating points; might make the fuel pump unhappy (refuses to prime) in some situations. I figured mine out when it finally broke completely: All the other issues went away after replacing it.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#64

Post by hinkley »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #25
hinkley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned a lot of things from my father. Unfortunately a lot of them were what not to do. Don’t buy cheap tools that you’ll have to replace three times in the lifespan of one that costs 50% more. And don’t buy GM. Mechanically they may be reliable, but 90’s GM forgot how to make paint stick to metal and had to pay to repaint a massive number of vehicles that simply pealed if parked outside for too long. How? And the…

Why in the world did GM make a car with the name Citation? Are there any good connotations of that word?

Technically Chevrolet did but the entire thought process for that vehicle was questionable so the name is IMO a harbinger. This is not a place of honor.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#65

Post by PaulHoule »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #25
hinkley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned a lot of things from my father. Unfortunately a lot of them were what not to do. Don’t buy cheap tools that you’ll have to replace three times in the lifespan of one that costs 50% more. And don’t buy GM. Mechanically they may be reliable, but 90’s GM forgot how to make paint stick to metal and had to pay to repaint a massive number of vehicles that simply pealed if parked outside for too long. How? And the…

Why in the world did GM make a car with the name Citation? Are there any good connotations of that word?

I think it's funny how GM came out with the "Cavalier" to compete with Honda's "Civic". Or that matter, there was a Chevy Cobalt (e.g. a "Kobold" is a demon that causes mine accidents) or an AMC Gremlin.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#66

Post by dumbfounder »

This is a secondhand anecdote, but it’s pretty funny. Back in the days of server rooms, a friend’s server for his company would reboot every day around 5pm. They checked everything they possibly could with the OS, they would be logged in and running checks on it and it would spontaneously go offline for about 5 minutes and reboot every day. Finally they decided to go stand in the presence of the server around the time it goes down every day. They watched a cleaner come into the room, unplug the server rack, plug in their vacuum and vacuum around the servers, and then plug the server rack back in.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#67

Post by LanceH »

pphysch wrote: post #39
LanceH wrote: post #36

My wife's car right now is low on windshield wiper fluid. It warns us at a particular spot while we are driving. Not a particular distance from home, a specific geolocation. First thoughts were that it was the amount of time as she went to something and came back. But it does the on screen and audible warning at that location every time, no matter what was driven before that, whether it was 5 minutes, 5 miles, an hou…

Is there anything notable about the terrain at that point? A sharp turn, bumpy road, etc.

Long slow bend on completely flat road, 40mph. No braking or acceleration for a quarter mile each direction.

The road is like that for miles with some lights, traffic circles, etc... Only warnings in one spot.

I really didn't believe my wife, or thought maybe it was happening a few times when she made a regular trip like getting drive thru coffee and coming right back. But then we ran a bunch of errands all afternoon and got one warning there on the way out, and one warning on the way back.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#69

Post by gwbas1c »

yosser wrote: post #52

So this guy never ever restarted his car after a short interval except for when he bought vanilla ice cream? Additionally, he never varied the time intervals in the shop when he was buying aforementioned ice cream? Is it is an understatement to suggest this is a highly unlikely circumstance?

Doubtful. We all fall into patterns in life; and regular activities where we go in and out have very predictable times.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#70

Post by hydrok9 »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #25
hinkley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned a lot of things from my father. Unfortunately a lot of them were what not to do. Don’t buy cheap tools that you’ll have to replace three times in the lifespan of one that costs 50% more. And don’t buy GM. Mechanically they may be reliable, but 90’s GM forgot how to make paint stick to metal and had to pay to repaint a massive number of vehicles that simply pealed if parked outside for too long. How? And the…

Why in the world did GM make a car with the name Citation? Are there any good connotations of that word?

Citation just means to be noted for something ("Cited for valour.")
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