351–360 of 515 posts
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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.
At a guess it has something to do with needing to withstand 70+ mph winds. There needs to be considerable force holding the door against its seals at all times, and in a mechanical latching system this force must come from a spring, which must be charged with energy via a good slam. However there are minivans with electronically operated sliding doors, which either power the latch allowing you to gently close the doo…
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If you can identify the fuse for the unit, it might be less annoying to pull it when parking rather than hooking up a charger.
I wired in an aftermarket DVD player in an old car and tapped into a fuse that was supposed to not draw power when off. Of course, it did draw power so the DVD player never shut off. It wasn't too much of a draw but I didn't want to end up with a dead battery situation because of it so my solution was to just plug the fuse tap in when the kids were in the car and wanted to watch something. I'm sure there was a more e…
I avoid very new cars like the plague though, so not sure how different they are.
It makes me anxious thinking about all the bullshit in new cars - touch screens, coded parts, 4G connections with GPS tracking, etc etc.
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Lol. This sounds like my house. My spouse and my nephew (who lives with us) cannot for the life of them ever close any kitchen cabinet doors. They both always leave them ajar, never leaving them fully opening but never fully closing them. It drives me nuts.
Do the cabinets have those magnets or latches that have an annoying sound? Some people avoid the "hit" and leave them slightly ajar.
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> It seems like mechanics really don't like digging into the electrical part of the car... Tell me about it. I'm in a similar boat. My audi a4 has had a parasitic draw for the past 10 years. My mechanic didn't want to take the time to address it because that sort of thing takes a serious amount of time and he's always backed up. I got out my fluke and narrowed the cause to what I believe is the comfort control unit.…
> I can’t replace it myself because it’s a coded part. Can you please explain this? Why does it need ‘coding’? It’s not a VIN specific part I’d think - i.e. engine controller. Also have you explored Ross Tech VCDS tool? You might be able to identify the coding on your part and use it on a new part. Replacing an ecu should be straightforward imo.
Really? I would have thought that'd be one of the most complicated things to replace.
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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.
At a guess it has something to do with needing to withstand 70+ mph winds. There needs to be considerable force holding the door against its seals at all times, and in a mechanical latching system this force must come from a spring, which must be charged with energy via a good slam. However there are minivans with electronically operated sliding doors, which either power the latch allowing you to gently close the doo…
I'm not sure how much money I'd pay for it, but it's a nice feature.
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At a guess it has something to do with needing to withstand 70+ mph winds. There needs to be considerable force holding the door against its seals at all times, and in a mechanical latching system this force must come from a spring, which must be charged with energy via a good slam. However there are minivans with electronically operated sliding doors, which either power the latch allowing you to gently close the doo…
It's not about wind pressure. It's that the door when properly closed becomes an integral, load-bearing part of the car's structure. In the event of a crash or rollover, an incompletely-closed door makes the car much weaker and less protective of the occupants.
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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 :-)
Debugging spider sense is definitely an upside of spending years working with terrible code. 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…
Turned out the installer had failed to put in the high altitude kit which told it to expect a smaller pressure differential. Mostly it was fine, but on rainy days with low barometric pressure, the difference would drop below threshold. But I had to be home for enough rainy days to figure it out.
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…
> It seems like mechanics really don't like digging into the electrical part of the car... Tell me about it. I'm in a similar boat. My audi a4 has had a parasitic draw for the past 10 years. My mechanic didn't want to take the time to address it because that sort of thing takes a serious amount of time and he's always backed up. I got out my fluke and narrowed the cause to what I believe is the comfort control unit.…
It's with the price just to see the looks on the faces of stranded motorists you help jump start in one or two minutes after they've been trying for an hour to jumpstart a minivan with a hatchback.
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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.