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

Basically almost smoke!!!

And also making the pedal a bit "spongy" from trying to squeeze the gas.

Never bought two in one yer even when my wife was still driving. She usually got my hand me down. I just bought a new car two weeks ago. I honestly can't give you a valid reason for doing so other than I like the color better.

The guy that gets my old one with 38k miles is getting a real cream puff.

Any shop can do a starter, water pump, but most don't have the expertise for some of the electronics. Dealer may be 1 hour at $75 versus the indy at $50 but takes three hours to figure out the problem. If my adaptive cruise control stopped working I'm not trusting the corner gas station.

If your brother worked for a particular brand dealer for a long time I'd not hesitate to take that brand of car to him as he knows it well. Of course dealers do work on all brands but they have lots of expertise on the core brand.

After an unfortunate shifting incident in Arkansas, we hobbled in to a local repair shop in Fort Smith and had the pleasure of watching the guy rebuild the motorhome trans by hand. He had Parkinson's, but it disappeared while he was working. I swear he looked like a machine programmed to pick gears up and put them down in exactly the right place.

In life there are always tradeoffs :-(

It's amazing how far one can be thrown when it's discovered that its stuckness is the cause of the engine overheating.

Intelligent people question Arrogant people think the know everything.

On page 10 of that example the Master's Thesis covers the set of piston rings, where nothing said is the least bit complex.

The author talks about the compression and oil ring, and that each has its purpose. He talks about the location of the piston ring. And that the first ring takes 75% of the pressure.

The paper suffers enormously from lack of English language skills, which is to be expected in a paper from Europe, where, for example this is a verbatim sentence: "The choice of the number of rings should be the result of careful analysis, with one hand, depends on to the gas that passes into the crankcase should be the minimum, on the other, the number of rings determines the mass of the piston, engine height and friction losses."

But that's as "technical" as the paper gets with respect to piston rings, which makes the paper essentially a summary of piston rings that anyone who isn't even an engineer could easily do.

Then the guy shows a diagram of piston rings in action, with a few typos (so the paper isn't all that well reviewed), and then he talks about how bad it is to have burnt oil.

The only slightly technical thing in the paper is a chart of clearances for the sealing and scraper rings that he clearly crobbed off the net somewhere and where he doesn't discuss any of the engineering tradeoffs involved.

On page 34 he defines a temperature for each of three rings (finally spelling the word "scraping" correctly) and then he shows a trivially simple picture showing, essentially the same thing (so why does he do it?).

That's it for page 34, so we move on to page 49 and page 50 for the last discussion of the piston rings.

On page 49, he seems to be covering the same thing, in effect, as he did on page 34, starting with the verbatim sentence "The piston rings take a very important place when cooling the piston." Um. OK. Tell us something we didn't know before we read the paper please.

He then chooses a heat for the piston crown that is high, saying the rings won't work at that temperature based on his simulations, but that they work at a lower temperature. Um. OK. (This is basic high-school level stuff.)

Lastly, on page 50, he tells us "Increase the high of the scrap ring in order to adjust to reality". He doubled the height from 3mm to 6mm and lo and behold, it worked where it didn't work at 3mm! (Notice the tolerances here ... we're talking *huge*.) He also added channels to the rings which is, again, high-school stuff.

In summary, while I am not going to fault the guy for his poor English, I will fault someone for not reviewing the poor English - because it just means that this paper is not a reliable paper because it was clearly not reviewed.

Worse ... this paper didn't say *anything* that any high-school student doesn't know, about piston rings. The changes he made were enormous, where all he simulated was that it didn't work before he made the enormous changes, and then it did work when he did.

Let's get back to reality, shall we. I never said that the design of *anything* is super complex at the stage of designing the perfect system. I even said that a spark plug is complex at that level.

But at the level of using the thing in fixing a car, you already have very limited choices since all you're doing is fixing a car. To say that fixing a car by replacing piston rings is scientifically complex is just pure bullshit.

And it's even worse that you backed up that claim with a high-school level paper (yes, I know it's a thesis but that doesn't change the sophomoric level of the paper).

As an engineer, I'd be embarrassed if I claimed that paper said anything that is even remotely related to proving that, in practice, the selection of replacement rings for repairing an engine in your driveway is in the least bit complex.

I give up if anyone thinks that paper proved otherwise because I'm only using very basic logic here because that's all I do.

That's a joke, right?

I realize in *some* parts of the US, the dealer may be more than half what they are here, but it's closer to $200 and even an Indy is at $100 an hour here.

In a sense, it makes even more sense to DIY here than wherever you are, since the price difference between you and me for the shop rate is enormous.

Let's give up on the FWD. If you think they're made for handling in the snow, then they'd come with snow plows on the front.

OK. I'm joking, but they're not made for handling. They're just not.

No logical person on this planet can argue that with another logical person.

Since at least one of us isn't thinking logically, and since you think it's me and I think it's you, let's just give up, because both of us can be right on that but given that, we'll get nowhere.

You think it's all about handling. OK. You keep believing that.

88 Caddy driver's window/door controls stopped working long ago. Stupid motor-driven passenger-side mirror just unstuck itself from the mirror and would have required removing the entire dashboard and AC to replace. Whoever thought of the stupid electrical trunk-lid grabbing latch should have been flayed alive. Engine ran fine up to the 90K end, it was just the rest of the stuff that died.

They claimed that power windows would work long enough to allow them to be rolled down. Do they assume it would take minutes for the electrical system to short out? Is that reasonable?

Our 70 Dodge pickup has them. What you can't get is the stuff that keeps the windows from rattling.

For a while I thought I wanted a car intended for third-world repair capabilities -- everything possible manual, etc. And then I discovered the joy of pushing the tiny button on the key that unlocks the doors :-(

That made me laugh! Thanks.

I think I'm only going to respond though, to the posts that aren't already in the dirt (the fwd is in the dirt, the warp is in the dirt, the piston rings is in the dirt, and the drilled rotors are in the dirt).

But there was a lot more in this thread than those few topics.

I learned a LOT from you all. Thanks.

I haven't touched any part of my brakes for 4 years.

I've owned ONE new car in my life (actually a truck) - 1976 Dodge Ramcharger SE.

Did you even *read* that paper? Or did you just look at the pretty pictures?

It didn't cover ring complexity any more than a high-school student would.

That's a fact.

If you read the paper, then show me where in that paper it covered

*anything* the least bit complex about piston rings?

I'm waiting....

Ford and Chrysler dealers I worked for amc/Mazda/ Jeep and Toyota.

I've always said it's what you learn AFTER you know it all that REALLY counts - - -

Correction.

"I never said that the design of *anything* /isn't/ super complex at the stage of designing the perfect system."