My kid has one (he's a pro mech) and I've used it with him a few times on various cars. It just works good for filling coolant systems with hardly a drop spilled. It's a "must have" for him. The cap goes on the rad, then drop the funnel in the tube and pour away until the funnel is half full. The coolant sits there until it gets sucked down, burping. Basically hands off, so you go on to other things. In the case of my Lumina we did Saturday he opened the 2 burp screws. I saw the funnel level go down about a pint when he did that. The stick plugs the hole when you're done, then move the funnel to the overflow tank to drain the rest there, or back into the jug. He paid 60 bucks for his from his Mac guy some years ago, but it's the older model. I would never pay 60 bucks for it, but I don't fill cooling systems much. But for those willing to dish out the 35 bucks it cost now, you might want to indulge yourself. Or just use a 99 cent funnel. That's what I'd do. And if there's no funnel around, I just splash a little more coolant here and there. I mean 35 bucks is 35 bucks.
On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:13:55 -0400, Hachiroku ???? wrote:
I'll make sure to let him know (-: He's pretty good about resisting the tool sellers at the shop, but the Mac guy got him. A guy at his previous shop had one they all used and he missed it when he went to the new shop. I used to be a fool for tools when I went into Sears or any tool seller, but it's a lot more costly buying from Mac/Matco/Snap-on trucks. Speaking of watching pennies, we picked up a couple o2 sensors at O'Reillys' for my daughters Eclipse GT with the 3.0L. Her SES is on full time. From the code reader and the O'Reilly's book it looked like we needed the upstream and downstream. We were getting other parts for my Lumina and weren't paying attention much to price, as O'Reilly's is usually in the ball park. The Mitsu parts were almost an afterthought. He hates that car. When we got around to the Eclipse the kid found 4 sensors on it and we were basically lost until I plugged the codes into google. Turned out the 3 codes were really for the left and right downstream sensors. We had one of them from O'Reillys, and an upstream we didn't need. We were going to take the unneeded one back to O'Reilly's and get a second downstream. But first I confirmed the Bosch number I got from a Mitsu forum at the Rockauto site, and saw they sold it for $57 + $3 shipping. We paid $120 at O'Reilly's, plus the 10% sales tax we have here for a total of $132 for the same sensor. It's the OE exact fit. I took both sensors back to O'Reilly's and got a refund. They already get plenty of my money. Started to do the order with Rockauto and for kicks I plugged the Bosch number into google and the first of the hits was Amazon selling it for $52 with free shipping. Did that. So if I went the O'Reilly's route the 2 sensors would have been $264. With Amazon the total was $104. Now I just have to decide if I keep the $160 diff for myself or pass the savings to my daughter. Just kidding (-:
On Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:37:52 -0400, Hachiroku ???? wrote:
There was an earlier Eclipse gen that was much worse than the gen my daughter has. A co-worker had one and warned me off the earlier gen and I did some study before my daughter bought hers. I like the wicked looks of the 3000GT. Not my type car though. I have 7 kids and basically gave each $2500 upon HS graduation for their first car. After that they were on their own for insurance and upkeep, except one son and I did much of their labor. Six were just happy to have a free car, even if was an old Corsica, Grand Am, or Cutlass costing $1800-3500. As you can see, I'm not wealthy or even very generous. Biggest reason for making sure they had a car is so they could get to work or school and eventually out of my hair. And it worked. I do love them, even if I don't miss having them at home that much (-: But this daughter HAD to have the Eclipse. She resisted buying any car I suggested, and I let her drive my "extra" Berreta to work and college as long as she picked up the insurance and maintenance costs. I thought she would give up on wanting an Eclipse. After about a year of whining and fighting with me and the wife WE gave up and co-signed the Eclipse loan. Little miss fancy pants won. It's a 2001 and had about 25k miles on it in early 2003 when she bought it. Cost about $15k but the note was about $10k after my $2500 and money she had saved. She paid the 5 year note off in 2 1/2 years. I'm glad we gave in, because she's been happy with the car since. Except when her trans needed $3k of work. Or when her harmonic balancer cost her a few hundred. And she wasn't happy to pay about 6 hundred recently for a new timing belt and water pump which I insisted she get done because the car has near 100k miles now. Anyway my son will only do mostly simple work like brakes and tune-ups on the Eclipse because he doesn't like it. Outside of work he's pure GM car/Ford truck and basically hates all other brands. Sometimes I have to tell him to just shut up when he goes on a rant about Mitsu or Chryco. He knows quite a bit about many brands because he wrenches them all day. But when he repeats the same rant I tell him I already heard that, so lets get back to work. I can understand the Chryco stuff since his girlfriend's Stratus burned to the ground after he did a lot of work on it. He was driving it and it burst into flames when a PS hose or fitting came loose. Something he had never touched. Never had that happen to me, watching your ride burn to the ground on a busy street while you wait for the fire trucks. Probably very embarrassing to somebody who knows his cars well and takes pride in keeping them in near perfect condition. Two weeks after the blackened hulk was crushed they got a recall notice from Chrysler about fire danger from PS hoses coming loose. So I understand why he's pissed off at Chrysler. He'll do the Eclipse o2 sensors, but wouldn't touch her balancer or timing belt so she had to go to a dealer. Just won't dig into the car much. He'll do some suspension work for her that he says the car needs, but he's a pro suspension guy anyway and works all brands. Maybe he doesn't like the Eclipse because he's just jealous that his sister spent so much for a car. That's what I think. And he likes to fight with her and needle her. Anyway the car still looks good and everything works and she's still happy with it, so all is well. It never stranded her. I'm glad we gave in and co-signed the note. Took me a while to come to that. In terms of repair, it's needed less that the GM's, but the repairs were much more costly and the car has more down time. With the GM's it's always nickle-dime stuff. If you jump on it there's no pain. But that's just my experience. Aside from the trans and balancer and the cost of the timing belt/pump the Eclipse has been good. No nickel diming. When it asks for some cash, it doesn't play around. Keep in mind we caught the balancer early and got it right to the dealer before the crank key got screwed.. Only other thing it needs that I consider a defect is a headlight socket. The left side is dim and my son says the sockets are known to corrode/melt. We'll put new sockets in both sides soon. I guess some chicks just need their chick car. I never even drove the car except to move it to the street or garage. And nobody ever wants to borrow it from her either. Hey. Maybe she's smarter than I thought.
Couldn't talk her into a Miata, huh? your son might be less resistant to working on that because it looks like a scale model of a "real" car underneath and the drive wheels are at the right end...
Never even came up. Nor the Del Sol (sp?) which might fit the category. Eclipse is all she ever wanted from the get go. I would only push her to GM cars I know, because...that's all I know, and had no problem telling her me and kid could wrench it. Just wouldn't leave my comfort zone, so she didn't get much choice from me. Her comfort zone was the Eclipse, and she was willing to pay for that. She has, but she's still happy with it. Just a completely different car philosophy than mine. I think the Sunfire is a chick car, but I never heard anything good about it, and too much bad, so it never came up. Wouldn't matter anyway. She just wanted an Eclipse. I'm not sure exactly how that "eye appeal" thing works with cars. Looking at a woman, I understand how eye appeal can overrule common sense - it has (-: - but not with a car. Sure, some cars look better to me than others, but I always let the "fix it" side of me make the final decision. Maybe if I was drunk at 2 AM and the only car in the bar was an Eclipse I would hit on her. Nah. (-:
With no intention of sounding preachy or patronizing, I sure hope that the 02's are the problem. The downstream 02's are there to measure catalytic converter efficiency.. so if the cats are compromised the 02's wont help. When chasing those codes, I always check the cats with an infrared no- touchy thermometer... after running for 3 minutes at 2000 rpm the outlet of the cat should be at least 75 degrees hotter than the outlet. Hope this helps Ben
Thanks for the thermometer/cat tip. All the excuse I need to buy an infrared thermometer. I mentioned this to my son and he doesn't have one so I'll surprise him with one for his tool chest. The codes themselves are pretty clear. PO136 o2 sensor circuit malfunction (Bank 1 sensor 2) P0141 o2 sensor heater circuit malfunction (Bank 1, Sensor 2) PO156 o2 sensor circuit malfunction (Bank 2 Sensor 2)
These sensors supposedly have a 100k mile lifetime, and the car is right about there. There are threshold codes that are supposed to show for a bad cat, I think from measuring the upstream versus downstream. But I'll take your advice and measure the cat temps before we put new sensors in the cats. Good test for the new thermometer (-: Thanks again.
--Vic
ps Speaking of chasing codes, my son's buddy was over the other day and my son read his Audi A6, which was throwing an intermittent code. No info on the code from the reader, just the code. I don't remember the code. We googled that and found it for about 4 different brands of cars, and it was always TPS or pedal sensor. The kids were ready to go out and look for a wire problem on the TPS as a starting point. I said keep looking until you find the code with the Audi A6. They kept digging and found that for the Audi the code was for an o2 sensor. hehe. What do they say about assumptions? And I think that was a PO prefix code, which are supposed to be generic.
Undeniably, and they have a reputation for performance. Unfortunately, barring the older Eclipse, which seems to be mostly OK, they also have a reputation for breaking spectacularly, expensively, and often.
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