What have you learned in your old age that you feel should be taught to high school students?

I don't have a clue. I did everything involved in replacing a blown head gasket except the machine work on the head and the final torquing of the head bolts (not strong enough, I'm ashamed to say), but I never noticed whether they were inserts or just case-hardened. I don't even know if I'd know.

The only people saying it's much harder to work on cars are those who never learned how to work on cars in the first place it seems.

I think it's the other way around in that cars have gotten vastly _simpler_ over the years in terms of what breaks and what needs to be maintained.

Many things lasts longer. Most things need less maintenance.

For some reason (probably radials) even tires last longer but most rubbery stuff doesn't last all that much longer than it did long ago.

Luckily rebuild kits abound for rubbery stuff in calipers, master cylinders, slave cylinders, and drum brake cylinders (where youtube videos show you ever step of the way). Even rebuilding alternators is still rather easy.

Almost everything on cars is easier now than it was ever before. There's no need for the yearly tuneup anymore, and even oils last longer.

The major change I think is electronics simplified auto maintenance because they only fail (in general) one way as they don't necessarily "wear out."

The ever growing amount of electronics in cars makes the maintenance so simple that the only ones complaining are those who never did maintain their cars (they never learned any of the basic fundamentals of auto repair).

What they never learned is what, I feel, should be taught to students today.

I don't think you understand what a tensioner looks like when its tension is released by turning a 19mm hex bump (it looks like a bolt head but isn't).

No wooden stick on this planet is going to budge that 19mm hex "bolt" a bit.

There is only one thing on this planet that will work and that's a 19mm socket but even then you still need a long thin bar to allow you to work the belt across the pulley when the alternator is not adjustable and you need all your hands and all your tools in the same spot in the tight compartment.

"Merchandise may be returned within 90 days of purchase" "You must provide the original receipt to receive an exchange or refund."

In both ways, that's _nothing_ like the Craftsman warranty. Is the Snap-On warranty as shitty as the harbor freight warranty?

Reading the link that was posted the warranty for most things at harbor freight is no better than that at target in that you have only 90 days and you must keep your receipt (which isn't at all like the Craftsman warranty).

However the warranty for hand tools seems to be better than for the rest.

"We guarantee our Hand Tools to be free from defects in material and workmanship for the life of the product. Limitations apply. Harbor Freight Tools will replace any hand tool that fails to properly work during the lifetime of the original purchaser. "

It doesn't mention how you need to prove you bought it from them though. Anyone have experience with that?

hand tools === stuff without a cord. Stuff with cords is 90 days. I have no idea where rope, bungees, tarps and so forth fall but I'm guessing in the 'Well that was shit' as you toss it into the garbage. HF isn't the only merchandiser that hopes you find returning stuff more trouble than it's worth.

That works two ways. I've gotten inexpensive stuff from Amazon that obviously was a ripoff. Their attitude has been 'keep it. We don't need to see it again. We'll just credit you.'

There may also be differences between me walking into the brick and mortar HF store down the street and dealing with mail order.

What's a little smoke? A friend had a '59 chevy and thought a dose of STP would help. We understood smoke was involved so we adjourned to a country road at the old swimming hole where there were no houses. To make it even better, the Chevy was filled with random camping gear.

He was having trouble getting the STP down the carb throat, but there was enough to generate a cloud. During the process a wandering NYS Trooper stopped to check things out. He determined he was dealing with two clueless but non-criminal nerds and that the camping stuff wasn't stolen.

His parting words were 'By the way, gomer, that's STP oil treatment you're trying to force down the carb with a butter knife. STP gas treatment works a lot better.'

The friend went on to get his PhD in electronics and had a very successful career but could be pretty dangerous in the real world. He wasn't Indian but fit in with the common wisdom at RPI: 'If you wind up with an Indian lab partner you've lucked out because they're brilliant. Just don't let them anywhere near a screwdriver.'

Ed's a long time poster and often has worthwhile comments. However he came down with a virulent case of TDS and hasn't been quite the same since.

The Suzuki/Yamaha dealer was like that. Both he and his wife were great people and would go out of their way to find Yamaha parts. It was an '82 that had sat in a garage for most of its life so it was past the 10 year spare part thing. I'd bought it used so they didn't have any skin in the game. I eventually did but the DR650 from them.

Like several businesses around here, they wanted to retire and the kids had no interest so they sold the business. So far, so good. The new owners picked up the Triumph and Suzuki line and were easy to deal with too. The problem was Mike had a grandfathered agreement with Suzuki and only carried the models he could sell like the DR400, DR650, and the V-Stroms. Suzuki told the new owner he would have to carry their floor plan, which included a lot of Suzuki cruisers that you can't give away around here so they dropped the line.

They still have a few parts left but mostly I have 2 Suzukis and no source of parts within 100 miles. Thankfully Bezos has no objection to selling bike parts.

Suzuki managed to kill their car division with stuff like that. You'd think they would learn.

This was a Giulietta Sprint. Like Sophia Loren, beautiful to look at but high maintenance. Later I had a Fiat Spider for a few months that fit the same profile. I learned though. The Harley dealer carried Ducati for a while and I walked by those really fast.

knuttle <keith snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net wrote

There can be when common sense should have fixed that.

Yep, that is certainly your problem.

Why? Large swathes of California get snow every year. Most drivers handle it just fine (and carry chains in the Sierra).

Even southern california gets snow (e.g. Palm Springs, for example, has snow at the top of the tramway) in the resort areas (Big Bear).

I80 was closed several times in the last few days, but then that's to be expected when you get seventeen feet in two weeks.

I don't know if there is a cure for 'lug'. Besides the whole fork of luggage, lugging stuff including engines, there is the mechanical branch that seems to mean 'that thing sticking out' except of course for pad eyes, aka lifting lugs, which is the thing you stick a clevis pin through. I suppose boot soles and dirt bike tires fit in someplace.

It is shorter than thing-a-ma-jig.

Why have you gone thru so many ?

Ditto.

That will pass in 2024. Maybe even 2022 but not sure yet.

knuttle <keith snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net wrote

Haven't seen anything like that with my 2006 Hyundai Getz

Current cars have far more sensors which can fail.

True.

And the whole car does too.

Or none at all in the case of the ignition timing.

And they tell you what has failed, older cars never did that.

But arguably need need to given that modern cars last so long now and most will have replaced them before anything fails.

Corse quite a few buy those.

I've got a Garmin Nuvi that I put into a beanbag type mount. The first two Yaris's (Yarii?) had the instrumentation in the center and the rest of the dash sloped toward you. When going uphill on a rocky road the GPS would wind up in your lap. The new one has the instruments in front of you, creating a little pocket to corral the GPS. However it lost a couple of very handy cubby holes. I think they replaced one with yet another damn airbag.

No remote entry on this baby. Real live $2.50 a pop to copy keys.

When reality intrudes on dreams... This was the early '80s in the middle of yet another gas panic. Bill's first attempt to go upscale was a Merc with a diesel engine. This was a guy who leaned toward Camaros so 0 to

60 sometime today didn't impress him. Then the college educated idiot son tried to fill it with unleaded. He caught him in time to avert disaster.

Enter the Cadillac. Cadillac was trying to emulate the Eurotrash, so enter the Cimmaron, another of their disasters. It spent a lot of time in the shop but the final straw was when he parked next to his secretary's new Pontiac which was about the same.

CAFE shrunk the Lincoln too. It was a far cry from my 5200 pound Continental with a 430 ci engine but it still looked more or less like a Lincoln. He was happy with it.

I went from an '80 Camaro to a '82 Firebird. Not exactly an upgrade but I really like hatchbacks. I'm not an Uber driver so the rear seats are folded down permanently and the cargo space filled with all sorts of strange stuff.

Yeah, I've in LA when it rained. I was driving a truck at the time so I'd crank Slayer up on the tape deck and let it fly. I figured if I ran over one of those little grey cars hiding in a cloud of spray it would be their problem. I'd really like to see the silver/gray hide in the rain color choice go away. My real preference is black but I usually wind up with whatever is sitting on the lot.

They're sort of a sawed off open end wrench that you use with a square drive. I'd have to look up the hack when you use them with a torque wrench since you're messing with the beam length. Like I said I never needed one desperately enough to buy a set. I do have a set of flare nut wrenches. Those I have used and they save mangling the fitting particularly on brake lines.

I've got a couple that I use sparingly. One resides in the kitchen junk drawer. I must be turning into a wuss in my old days and can't always get the screw top off jars. Even for that there are better tools.

Disclaimer: I'm left handed so twisting a lid counterclockwise is sort of like using a pipe wrench backwards. You're pushing your thumb out rather than sucking it in