What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?

I generally did when doing any major brake work (drums, rotors, pads or shes) - just s thorough bleed.

Took tech courses at high school - not typing!! - but you are right. Tears of frustration

Snipped

Likewize. Thousands of tires. likely at least a hundred transmissions of different stripes, and between total rebuilds, head jobs, timing chains, and other major internal work, several hundred engines.

SNIPP

Untill it does finally totally wear in - when it will have more - so either way you can't win with grooved/worn rotors.

Thats a GOOD tailwind and a GOOD downhill. My 850 was the only car I've owned that would go faster in third than in forth - and I owned a '49 split-window bug. The mini was faster, but the bug could hold it's own in top gear.

It's marketing bullshit and it's track related, but it has nuggets inside it just like all bullshit does.

For example, it's interesting they don't mention the rotor (but of course, they're selling pads) when they say "Brake fade is caused by overheating of the brake pad".

It's also interesting they talk about 'green fade' which makes sense since a more complex look at friction reveals that there is a microlayer of pad deposition on the rotor which "covalently bonds" in a way that I don't completely understand, with the hot pad, where *breaking* those chemical bonds adds to friction but only after a good bedding occurs.

They skip all that, and concentrate on water, surface area, and volatiles, but I think the early fade is due more to the lack of covalent bonding than anything else.

I gotta run so I'll get back to this, but it's a typical marketing job trying to make believe they're being scientific when they don't mention even once the pad ratings nor the word "warp", but I have to go before I finished it as I have to pick someone up at the airport.

When I listed transmission in the original post, I meant manual, and specifically I meant clutch which, as you know better than I do, means a few more parts like a. clutch b. pressure plate c. pilot and throwout d. slave and master e. flywheel

I'm not sure what else offhand, but had I just done the job once, I'd know.

I think the only "special" tools needed are a transmission jack and the tools to align the clutch and pull out the old bearings where people jury rig all sorts of solutions but where I'd likely buy the right tool.

Seems to me the special tools are about $200 to $300 at most, which is about what the labor costs would be. And the job isn't like an alignment where you have to do a lot more than normal thinking.

Maybe some day I'll do it but probably never. I lost my chance, and I regret that.

I agree with you that the so-called "pros" say a lot of things that are pure horseshit, but usually they're just super overly conservative (like have your tires balanced every 10K miles or something like that).

You can't call them "wrong" but you can say "nobody does that".

I would agree with you on two things related to those articles: a. I don't agree with everything they say (they don't even agree with each other). b. But the net is that what most people call warp isn't warp at all.

There are few technical car topics on the net more filled with bullshit than rotor warp for street cars.

Nobody who says they have seen warp ever proves a single word they say. That's a fact.

Just try to find a picture or video of someone testing their rotors for warp (not runout!) and you'll see my point.

I'm done with warp because I provided references and I said it "can" happen but it's not happening in 99.9999999% of the cases.

Anyone who wants to dispute the references need only provide a reference.

Rotors are cheap. $50 for Brembo or Myle. I measure runout. I measure thickness. I measure thickness variation. I look at scoring. I look up the specs when I need them.

In practice, it's pretty simple:

1. Replace the OEM Jurid/Textar pads with Axxis/PBR FF equivalents.
2. Measure the thickness of the existing rotor
3. If it's too thin, replace with Meyle/Brembo for /wheel

I don't blame any shop for replacing *everything* they can. The more they replace, the more they make and the less people come back.

That's just logic.

The only time you don't have to mention the friction rating is when you purchase OEM pads. Otherwise, the friction rating is critical to mention.

I have nothing against OEM anything, but in the case of the bimmer, the FF Jurid pads in the front make a black dust that is objectionable.

For some reason, which I don't believe the marketing of, the PBR/Axxis FF pads don't have that objectionable dust.

Nobody has ever given a good answer since "dustless" doesn't cut it.

All pads and rotors must dust. So we just assume that the dust from Axxis/PBR pads is not as objectionable as the dust from the OEM Jurid pads.

Both stop as well as indicated by the FF rating for both.

That must be it because you don't feel the effect of the primary pad imprint. You only feel the effect over time when it builds up to enough of the teeniest tinyiest amount to make the shuddering occur at speed.

My main point is that if people think their brakes actually 'warped' (ad in a potato chip), the short term solution always works but their long term solution can't possibly work.

The long term solution is, most of the time, to change their braking habits. Until they realize that their brake rotors didn't warp, they won't realize that the long term solution is what it is.

To me, that's the crime of people thinking their brakes actually warped.

I know. I know. But I was summarizing.

You can scrape the deposit off a bunch of free and easy ways.

1. Easiest is to run the re-bedding procedure
2. Easy but harder than that is to put some scratchy pads on
3. Harder than those two by far is to have them machined or replaced

I do what you do, which is I rebed them which is easily enough done if you have a long downhill straightaway with no traffic or a highway straightaway with no traffic.

In summary, the *crime* of people believing that the rotors actually warped is that they never implement the correct long term solution. So they're constantly complaining that their rotors warped.

Actually, I paid $100 to watch him and ask questions where I watched EVERYTHING he did, since I want to do the job myself, some day.

I'll probably NEVER do it ... but I want to.

I should have made it clear that I was just kidding about making them illegal.

I fully understand the *need* for the adustable wrenches, and I have a Craftsman 3-piece set myself, which I almost never use.

I've probably used one about twenty times in forty years.

My beef is when people use them on "my stuff" when they have a perfectly good socket wrench in the truck just 100 feet away.

The problem I've had with dealers is they lie like a rug.

I'm sure Indys lie like a rug too, but dealers don't know *more* because they lie just as much.

More than a few times I brought cars to the dealer under warranty where they said there was nothing wrong when, years later, I find out that it's a common problem.

It has happened so many times, in fact, that I assume now that the dealer is lying to me every time I go there.

If you want examples, I'll tell them to you, but my main point is that it doesn't matter if the dealer knows more because they lie just as much or, what they know doesn't trickle down to the guy who tests the vehicle.

This is Toyota and BMW and Infiniti and Nissan mostly though as when I had American cars, they were used and therefore not under factory warranty.

I went to the Toyota dealership last week for a part and I was dismayed totally at the lack of knowledge of the guy behind the counter.

So I UNDERSTAND you that the dealer *SHOULD* know better. My experience is that they're worse than the Indy in terms of knowledge.

I'm not saying the dealer doesn't do a booming business. I'm just saying that their prices are twice those of everyone else. And their work is no better than anyone elses and the parts are the same.

Never gonna happen. Never. I can *always* find parts at Camelback online for example, for my Toyotas that are about half the price of the local dealer every single time.

For my bimmers, autohauzax and Max in Texas are always half the dealer's prices for the exact same parts.

The dealer is NEVER the place to go for anything, other than something you need out of inventory. Most of the time when I call ahead, they don't stock the part, and then I give them a lecture to the tune of "how you gonna sell anything if your prices are double and you don't even stock the part?".

They tell me they sell plenty of parts at their prices (just not to me). :)

That would be just after the cat, right? I wonder why then, they made the last half of the system SS too?

I was just making up numbers to show what I had meant by the spread, but your point is perfectly valid that it can only be applied against the same type of oil.

We've all seen the never-ending "what oil" threads, where, in the end, the oil change interval matters more than what oil.

This is logically tenable.

Also tenable in that changing the oil is more important than what oil.

When I have a choice, which is usually at Costco, I take the dino juice with the lowest spread but I agree that synthetic juice would be better (for a couple of things) but in the end, the same cost since basically it lasts twice as long and costs twice as much.

So it's a wash on cost, and on slipperiness, the dino juice works fine.

Yup. Oil changes matter more than what oil we use.

I get my news off the net.

But someone must be watching TV or cable (I don't have cable either).

My point is only that people spend time watching TV so they can't say that taking your sweet time doing an oil change is wasted time if they're wasting time watching "As the World Turns" all day.

Thanks. Had I done the job even once, I'd know more than I do, so I will gladly take your word for it that there are three choices and we must pick one of the three.

1. Gear
2. Belt
3. Chain

We have to pick one. Which is the most reliable?

As I said with my lawnmower example, if someone makes a cheaper tool and passes on the savings to me, I'm all for that.

I buy Craftsman and not SnapOn. Is SnapOn better? Probably. Almost certainly. Right? But I don't pay SnapOn prices. I pay Craftsman prices.

However, if someone sells me a cheaper hammer and then tells me it works better in the snow at breaking ice, I'm gonna call him out on his marketing bullshit.

I get it that a hammer can be made cheaper. I do. I get it that a hammer's main job has nothing to do with breaking ice in the snow, but that 10 days out of the year, the snow is deep enough when I need to get to work that I have to break the ice with that hammer.

But for 355 days of the 365 day year, I'm stuck with that crappy handling hammer. That's OK if the REASON I bought that crappy handling hammer was because it was cheap.

It's not ok if I say that the crappy handling hammer handles better than my hammer in the snow because losing handling 355 days of the year to gain a smidge of handling in *deep* snow on the 10 days of the year that you have to drive in it - is just not logical thought processes.

It's OK to admit FWD is cheaper. It's not OK to lie about what it can do.

That's marketing's job.

It would be interesting to look at the normalized price.

A car then, was $5K, and now is $50K so 10x doesn't seem too much off from even given inflation.

Spoken like a true Marketing person! :)

My RWD car has never seen snow in 20 years except a few runs to Tahoe where they legally required chains to get there.

Even when I lived in the snow belt ... deep snow was only on the road when I needed the road for 1 or 2 days of the year, and at max, 10 days out of

Think of that. Lousy handling for 355 days and just barely ok handling in deep snow for the other 10 days.

The real FWD tradeoff was *never* handling. It was profits.

I have nothing against a cheaper tool. Nothing. A car is a tool. A FWD is a cheaper tool.

I just have something against someone seriously trying to tell me that his cheaper lawnmower works better in the snow than does my more expensive lawnmower.

I work off of logic. Not marketing bullshit.

I never said I was always right though ... so if someone can show me fwd in the best handling cars on the planet and at a cheap price ... count me in.