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

Correct. The "service" is more than checking pads. It's PRIMARILY making sure all moving/sliding parts are free - and knocking off any rust scale build-up on the edges of the rotors.

a hand full of loose nuts and bolts thrown into closed body sections by disgruntled union workers during "job action" was the worst one I had to deal with - AMC in '72??

A friend found a full can of beer inside e tire that wouldn't balance

- I believe it was a GM in the sixties? Early in the canned beer era, anyway.

Depends what you mean by "how long does it typically last?"

Timing sets on OHV engines typically wouldn't totally fail at under

100,000 miles. Most of those sets were used in the days when cars were junked at about that mileage. Alot of those cars were junked because the timing set failed.

But I'd guess timing set wear would retard cam timing around 1/2 to 1 degree every 10,000 miles. If we set an arbitrary failure spec of, say 3 degrees, then the set would have gone out at 30 to 60,000 miles. Of course, the car would run even if the camshaft were retarded more than this and the driver usually became acclimated to the poorer performance and gas mileage.

I don't know. My car requires belt replacement every 100,000 miles or six years. I replaced the belt at eight years and it looked perfect. There's no significant timing change as the belt ages, until it fails. An insignificant number fail before the required maintenance time.

I don't know what you're getting at. Most US pushrod engines drive the cam with sprockets and a chain. A few used gears. A few antique motorcycles used tower shafts and bevel gears. Maybe some auto engines? dunno.

Pushrod engines can be interference engines. Not sure what you're getting at.

Easiest belt replacement I ever did was on an early Fox body Mustang with the 2.3 liter 4. Take of the drive belts, take off the timing belt cover, swap the belts. With some practice and preperation, it would be a clean, 15 minute job.

Much easier and cleaner than replacing a chain timing set!!

Camshaft timing.

Belts became important when Overhead cams became important. A worn chain in a cam in block engine has, off the top of my head, 10 links between the crank sprocket and the cam sprocket. What about a OHC motor? Say 30 links? 10 worn links might retard cam timing 5 degrees. What about 30 worn links?

Bullshit. Here in Chicago, traffic flows much better in the snow than it did 30 years ago. In fact, I haven't seen a car stuck in the snow in at least a couple of years.

Stuck RWD cars used to impede rush hour traffic on a routine basis. Nowadays, I haven't been late to work because of the snow in those two years.

Or, maybe it's the FIRE OF MARKETING HELL that's taking care of the snow. Either way, I'll take it.

I know. The "donut in a snowy parking lot" crowd is almost extinct.

Correct. What I taught all my students (and apprentices). The first step in diagnosis is understanding how it is supposed to work, and why. Then understand what the results of any malfunstion would be - - When you see those symptoms, you have a pretty good idea what has gone bad and where - as well as, very often, WHY.

People who believe in marketing bullshit never follow basic logic.

Here's simple logic (which may be too difficult for you to follow).

1. How many days in a year are you *driving* in *deep* snow?
2. Tell us what percentage that turns out to be.
3. Now, take that percentage and subtract it from one hundred percent.

That's the percentage you're getting the *other* handling out of FWD.

You may not want to answer the question because it's too logical a question for someone to ask about handling tradeoffs given your extremely carefully cherry-picked hand-crafted situations versus normal situations.

Everything is simple and seems logical when you don't know what you don't know.

On a 1965 Chevy small block, measurable improvements can be had with modern ring technology[1]. Here's a big block, but the principles are the same:

check out the chart #5/10! Discussion of materials, coatings, temper, tolerances and fitting on that page as well.

That's just a specific engine with which I am very familiar. Web's got thousands of other examples.

[1] Not the only improvement to be had, but you mentioned classic vs modern rings.

No. Synthetics have a natural "spread" that conventional oils don't. Conventional oils need additives to achieve their spread. I suppose it's the multigrade additives that coke up the most, not the oil itself.

As I understand it, conventional oils are a mishmash of hydrocarbons which react more strongly to temperature.

Maybe this doesn't relate exactly, but consider water. The viscosity of water doesn't change much from freezing point to boiling point. The molecules are all the same and they're all acting the same.

Ideally, motor oil wouldn't react to temperature. A perfect viscosity oil would flow the same at a cold startup as it does at normal temperature. That doesn't happen, but synthetics are much better in that regard and is why a much wider spread is possible with a synthetic.

Coking matters to the extent that it plugs filters and oil passages. The coke is hard and can abrade bearing surfaces.

That's been a pet peeve of mine for decades. I hate inappropriate use of air tools - and final torquing nuts with them is one of those peeves.

Used to be on cars. Noise was the issue. Phenolic resin gears solved that issue but then gear longevity was sacrificed to the god of noise. Used to change a lot of stripped phenolic resin gears back in the 60s and 70s.

On larger diesel engines noise isn't a factor and longevity is. Cost is less of an issue when long life is the requirement.

Or performance with reliability as in this BMW F1 engine

Gears become an issue with distance, as is the case with OHC. In that case you need too many idler gears so a chain or belt is more efficacious. From memory, the Toyota KZ engines had both gears and then a belt to the OHC.

It is the balance of the torques.

Had it happen on a Mazda I owned. I wasn't happy and complained bitterly. You can put a lot more torque of a wheel nut than is required.

You have not looked

With so many late-model engines running thinner, low-tension moly-faced ductile iron and steel rings, one might think cast iron rings are fading into history. They are at the OEM level, but it looks like cast iron rings will be around for a long, long time in the aftermarket. According to several ring suppliers, there is still a very strong demand for plain cast iron rings. The main reason is that cast iron rings cost less than more durable materials ? and they hold up well enough in light-duty stock rebuilt engines. Even so, plain cast iron rings can?t provide the durability of a chrome or moly-faced ring set, or a steel or ductile iron ring set that is engineered for high output, late-model overhead cam engines.

I replaced a lot of timing chains and spockets on OHV engines particularly The GMs with the plastic cam sprocket

Except the little Chevy Optima? where virtuallly NONE made it much bast the recommended change point and many failed well before. Bad korean belt.

The early Riley, for one.

.>clean, 15 minute job.

I replaced the broken timing belt on the side of the road south of Sydney NS on my '72 Firenza (Vauxhall HC) in less than half an hour after getting a friend of a friend to pick up the only belt available west of montreal - which just happened to be hanging on a nail at the GM dealer in, of all places, Sydney NS - - -

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!!!! 2 days later I was in the USA - where NOBODY would have had the part because the car was never sold there - - -

Since you've decided how I'm thinking, what's the logic in responding?

OK, let's say it's 1% of the days. I don't want to be needlessly late on ANY of those days. More than that, the FACT that traffic is now flowing more smoothly on snowy days makes driving less stressful.

I will say that, last year, I was driving home on a snowy day. Traffic was light and what traffic there was, was making safe progress. Some dumbass decided to pass me fast on the right, lost traction on his RWD vehicle and spun his car across three unoccupied lanes and smacked his passenger side wheels against the curb on the opposite side of the road. Pretty uncommon now, but things like that used to happen frequently in the RWD days. I don't miss it.

Fine. It makes driving safer and smoother a few days out of the year. It is NEVER a detriment to me. For me, there is NO handling downside.

For me, there is no trade off. Whatever difference there is, is positive. I didn't need any marketing bullshit to convince me of the superiority of FWD. All it took was getting through the winter. And I like the extra interior room, too.

Ford used the same sort of cam sprocket and they failed the same, too. I don't think the timing sets with the cast iron/sintered metal cam sprockets held up much better. Once timing chain wear starts changing the pitch, it's setting itself up to jump a tooth on the crank sprocket even if it can no longer break the teeth on the cam sprocket.

Another problem with timing chains is the metal swarf they'd put in the oil as they wore.

Remember, we covered this in detail DECADES ago.

Everyone confuses *runout* with *warp*.

They're not the same thing.

One requires *permanent bending* of the rotor.

You have to do that without snapping the lug bolts.

Two logical questions HAVE to be considered:

1. How much torque *can* you apply?
2. How much torque does it take to *bend* a rotor?

Without logic - it's just politics or religion.

There is a huge difference between runout and warp.

Are you talking warp? Or runout?

I'm only talking pure logic here. Not religion.

I have seen what amounts to black sand in the outside sleeve of the crazy BMW dipstick tube which doubles as part of the PCV system but where the clearance is too small (so people drill holes in it to solve that).

I had to dig out the "black sand" which was pure carbon it seemed but rock hard and packed in there.

Around here, it's the rust that thins the rotors. The braking surfaces don't rust significantly, but the rust just flakes out of the vent holes.

Replacing rotors every other brake job is about right in the rustbelt.

I don't know how well the retrofits held up. Long life and race engines don't go together.

Does eyeballing it count? I bought a used car in which I could see about

1/16" of warp as I rotated the rotor and looked through the top of the caliper. It was one of those cars with the rotor captured behind the hub and the shop price for the repair probably contributed to the previous owners desire to get rid of the car.