Basic Auto 101

Basic Auto 101

Recent events concerning a certain automobile, known as the filthy red jeep, have prompted me to jot this article, even though I haven’t really fooled much with car repairs since I was a teenage tomboy (now I’m an adult tomboy, so why not, eh?)

What does it take to be a mechanic?
I’m not trying to tick off anyone - honestly, but seriously, when was the last time you had a competent mechanic fix your car correctly the first time? Back in 1993 when I wanted to get out of my Radio Shack geekdom and get into computer assembly and repair, I though, “man, how do you get into this business? Do you go to a special school? Do you have to get a license? Do you have to pass a test?” I was utterly surprised to find out that anyone could open a store and advertise themselves as a computer specialist. As long as you talked the talk, the average person never knew if you knew what you were talking about or not. Now, I’m not saying that’s what I did - I took my computer knowledge so seriously that within the particular shop where I worked, I became the “knowledge bank.” I was responsible for reading all the magazine articles, hunting down emerging technology, knowhing about device and software incompatabilities and basically anything else that might affect how we ran the business… but there was no means of “certification” back then for anything we did - we just learned as we went and it was up to our clients to decide if we were competent enough to keep a job.

Now back to cars… A few weeks ago, I noticed water leaking from my car… no, scratch that, a few MONTHS ago a friend of mine noticed water leaking from my car. When I got married, I took a haitus from car fixing so I reported the leakage and my observation of it and the man of the house ordered a new radiator right then, based on my telling him where the water appeared to be dripping from - even though it seemed to me like a rash decision… that weekend he took the car to his brother’s house and they prepared to “fix” it. Now to his credit, my brother-in-law said “hey, let’s pressure this up before we tear into it and see exactly where the leak is.” Guess what? It reportedly never leaked while they sat there with the engine running for over an hour. That’s what they told me anyway

“Maybe it was just overrun from the antifreeze reservoir.” Or not…

In mid-July, I moved about 200 miles west, in the dead of summer, and discovered, about two weeks after getting moved in, that my vehicle was indeed leaking again… and this time it was a little more serious - as in I saw a puddle in the rearview mirror after I sat for a couple of minutes at a traffic light!

The Mobile Mechanic Experience
Ok this seems too coincidental, but about three days prior to my major leakage discovery, someone left a flyer on my windshield for a mobile mechanic service, which is pretty handy when you live in an apartment complex and you can’t drive your car anywhere to have it worked on, and you’ve become lazy about working on cars. So I called the guy up and he came out to look at my car. He asked me a few questions, then we filled up the radiator and let the car run. All this time, my “light” on the dash for overheating never worked, so we talked about adding an after market guage, then sat there for a while waiting for the car to either leak or boil over or something. Nothing ever happened. So he fiddled with a few things and asked about a secondary fan, which to my knowledge, only came on when the AC was running. The mechanic disconnected the fan switch and the fan started running. He looked at me and said, “well there’s your problem.” Now, a little voice in the back of my head (that is sometimes quite annoying) said, “but wait, you haven’t turned on the AC yet.” My background in computer troubleshooting means that the little voice in my head is always busy telling me this or that, but I figured, this guy is a mechanic. What business do I have telling him that I think he needs to refine his troublshooting methods because they don’t match mine?

So he quotes me a price for a new fan switch, which he says is also tied into the dash light and may be why my overheating indicator light never lit up. So I agree to the price for the fan switch and he leaves to get it, and returns about half an hour later to put it in.

I watched the mobile mechanic remove the fan switch (which goes into the top of the thermostat housing) and replace it. While he was tightening it, I heard a pop. In my experience, there are two kinds of people in the world - people with finesse and people who beat the hell out of things to make them work. These second types of people are also the ones who think that you have to hammer on the rachet to tighten a bolt. This is what mister mobile mechanic did. Not realizing at the moment that I was a fix chick who just didn’t feel like farting around with an automotive repair, the mechanic simply went on about his business while I watched and wondered what broke. Five mintes later, when we started the engine, it became apparent that he had cracked the thermostat housing - apparent because there was now a two-foot tall stream of water shooting from the seam in the housing where it cracked. Hmm, there hadn’t been a so much as a spec of water coming from anything BEFORE he replaced the fan switch.

Without admiting what he did, the mobile mechanic simply said, “I’ll have to go to the Jeep place tomorrow and get another housing - this one’s cracked.”

“I see… “

He showed up around noon the next day (a Saturday) with a new thermostat housing AND a new thermostat, which he had not previously quoted to me as part of the repair. He installed them both while we made small talk. He noticed that there were new spark plug wires and commented about them - when I told him I replaced them he looked a little weird. “You work on this car yourself?”

“I do now.”

I let him finish his job and paid him (he didn’t charge for any of the extra time to replace the housing and thermostat, even though I did end up paying for the parts that I didn’t originally require.) The bill came to over $180.

The next day I drove 4.3 miles down the road, pulled into a parking lot and noticed a literal waterfall of water and antifreeze streaming from my engine… Let’s just say that the filthy red jeep was not the only thing that was severely overheating at this point.

Thanks to a really nice chinese man who owned an egg roll shop, I got the radiator filled back up and went straight home, where I proceeded to get down and dirty and find whatever was wrong with my cooling system myself. It didn’t take too long - a little pushing and pulling on the hoses was all it took. To my surprise, the culprit all this time was a leak in the lower radiator hose that only leaked when under a certain amount of pressure, or when you pulled on the hose itself. Oddly enough, right on top of this leak was an extra, non-standard hose clamp - the kind you tighten up with a screwdriver instead of those funky pliers. Apparently, someone before me, like maybe my brother-in-law, had seen the crack in the hose and rather than replace the hose (because all they had was a radiator) they just clamped over it and it happened to have held for a month or two.

I don’t know what I was more annoyed about - the fact that the whole time the culprit had been a leaky hose, or the fact that rather than replace the hose the first time someone found the leak, they just put a clamp over it and didn’t tell me that’s what they did. Then there was the whole bit about the $180 that I paid a “mechanic” to fix the thing.

So $30 and two hours later, I had a new lower hose, new easier-to-use clamps - I hate those stupid spring clamps that dealers put on these hoses - and the car has run just fine ever since.

So I guess my first lesson in Automotive 101 is never assume that whoever is working on your car knows what they are doing just because they are willing to do the job. Take some time, look around, read, look up things on the internet, buy a Chilton’s manual, play with an old wreck - whatever you need to do in order to make yourself somewhat competent with the HOWs and WHYs of autmobiles. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or point out inconsistencies in what mechanics might say to you. Get multiple opinions if you can. Don’t just take someone’s word that you need a certain part or a certain procedure - ask questions so that you understand what’s going on (and maybe figure out if the person you’re talking to knows what they’re doing).

And if you are so inclined, get a little dirty. Despite all the computer-controlled equipment on cars today, there are still lots of things a shade-tree fix chick can take care of themselves - oil changes, replacing belts and hoses, replacing batteries, and checking fluid levels regularly. A little comfort under the hood is all you need.

~ .\\

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