Google, Amazon & the art of automobile maintenance

[thewrenchbender]

Middle daughter is home this summer doing a grad school internship locally. Aside from a medical incident a couple years ago (she broke her freaking neck) first time she's lived at home since she left as a freshman.

Texts me a video w/sound of her '08 Impala making a grinding noise & the check engine light on.

By the time we both got home, Google came up with a blend door actuator losing a gear tooth for the noise, and the HF scan tool netted a minor evap code. Cleared the code & ordered a gas cap from Amazon. AC-Delco for the same price as big box house brand.

Light came back, told her to schedule an appt at the local Chevy dealer. They said needs a blend door actuator and an evap vent valve solenoid. Cost her $150 ($75 per item) to get her car back instead of the $740 quote (including sales tax) for the repair. She asked them which blend door actuator was bad and the tech told her he hadn't looked, just pulled the codes.

Hauled her over to the $tealership to pick up her car-she told me she looked up the vent valve, and could the price for it be $25 ? Told her yup, the only thing she missed (thanks again Amazon) was a $15 jumper harness to adapt the new valve to the existing connector on the car-and that there were 2 different blend door actuator a, but they were like $25 also.

She hauled me to work the next day to get all the people/vehicles back where they belonged and en-route I popped the glovebox and positively identified the blend door actuator exhibiting the problem.

$74 to Amazon + her student Prime account for 2-day shipping + the 23 minutes I just spent changing both parts later...

 

[majicmaker]

Wow! That's fantastic.

 

[gixxerjasen]

Yep, two weeks ago, after 170K miles, the Honda CRV had a condenser fan stop working. I opted to change both that and the radiator fan (they both really work together but have different names it seems). Google led me to the problem of the broken fan and Amazon got me two new fan motors. I spent an evening in the heat cursing and sweating but realized that changing the fan that wasn't broken was easier with the broken one out. Glad I decided to do both because I know that second one would have broken a week later.

Now, about all those little broken fasteners...apparently Amazon is bringing those on the slow boat from China. Any day now...

 

[garyahouse]

Must be nice. Short and sweet, now ya got the job done.

My daughter just got her first house. The inspector told her it had an active leak under the bathroom floor. She asked me if I could fix it. Three months and hundreds of hours later, I'm just finishing sanding the drywall mud on the new walls in that bathroom. A full remodel was necessary due to the water leak, which took out some of the floor and the joists below it. What a job this has been. Of course it's a labor of love as they say, but I would have loved to spend 70 bucks and 23 minutes to fix the problem.

Dads rock.

Gary

darksider #44

 

[HotRodZilla]

I have fixed so much stuff after watching YouTube, it's not even funny. The Internet has saved me a LOT of money a few times. Really, just regular high mileage maintenance shenanigans.

THIS is what the neenernet is for!

 

[thewrenchbender]

Heh. Have spend most of my life dealing with "regular high mileage maintenance shenanigans". By choice. And like you say-the interwebz is a huge source. Can't all be about cat and gixxers-are-LBGT memes for crying out loud...

Less $$ spent on cars means more $$ spent on toys (and food, AC, all that other good stuff).

 

[Warpdrv]

hahahaha next thing you know - you'll get instructions on how to fix your broken mini nuclear reactor.....

Sweet - Thanks Google...

Seriously though - I do love how much info is out there on the interwebs, it seriously makes some people, better people for trying to get something fixed themselves. But then there are those others that are, and will be completely useless for their entire lives....

And thankfully those are the ones that show up at our service station with "THAT LOOK" on their faces, where the eyeballs are spinning in opposite directions while your trying to explain whats going on with their vehicle....

 

[gixxerjasen]

gixxers-are-LBGT

Hey!

 

[eflyguy]

Ditto.. appliances, HVAC units, TVs, and of course autos. I can't imagine how many thousands of $$ I've saved by doing work myself.

 

[ionbeam]

Heck, I bet if you had a problem with your FJR and went to Google and typed in your FJR1300 ????? issue you would find repair resources too

I used to keep a library of magazine articles on motorcycles, cars and home repairs. One day I realized that the internet had obsoleted my collection and not only replaced it but improved on it by quantum leaps. My carefully collected and filed library had become dumpster fodder.

 

[gixxerjasen]

Ditto.. appliances, HVAC units, TVs, and of course autos. I can't imagine how many thousands of $$ I've saved by doing work myself.

I bought a refurbished monitor for my computer. After about three years it went out. I work in IT so was familiar with the capacitor issues from that time frame so looked into it online. Found and identified the issue on my monitor. I could have saved a few bucks and sourced each capacitor individually but found me a complete kit for my specific monitor for $12. Watched videos, learned a bit and swapped the caps. That monitor is still going four years later.

 

[mcatrophy]

... by quantum leaps. ....

How many "quantum leaps" does it take to make a noticeable difference?


Whenever I google something about maintenance of FJRs, I usually find lots of hits to this forum. So I usually short-cut and put the "site:fjrforum.com" as part of the search .

 

[Fred W]

"But then there are those others that are, and will be completely useless for their entire lives.... "

It seems to me that as time passes more and more men are qualifying for the "useless for their entire lives" category. This may be partially driven by the phenomenon of single Moms raising boys. Without a handy man in the household to show the son how to be useful, they never develop the knack at an early age. Before long they start playing piano and liking cats.

Then they grow up and have their own son(s) and of course they have no handiness to pass along, just piano lessons and cats.

 

[ionbeam]

Some will be completely useless and sometimes it is their own doing. With an average teacher, a classroom will have ~10% that master the lessons and maybe more, 80% will get by in some fashion and 10% may as well have taken nap time. The outcome of the class is more about the personal motivation of the student than their average teacher.

I find that people (men and women) who are curious and interested pick up broad and varied knowledge. When I hire technical people curiosity is one trait that I look for. "What hobbies and/or interests do you have", is one of the more powerful questions I can ask a potential designing engineer. I would often trade strong interest and curiosity over experience, you can't make people learn more than just the job in front of them but a curious person will lean broadly and usually deeply and typically will follow an interesting subject well outside their normal field of education.

My father was useless everyplace, all the time except at work where he excelled as a Fortune 100 Company level business executive. He had 1 microsecond of patience when working on things. He would start to sweat just approaching a task, would almost immediately start screaming swear words and throwing things then stomp off in a fit of anger leaving a pile of destruction behind. Believe me, everyone in the household did everything in our power to keep him from trying to 'fix' anything. When I was 5-6 years old I got a model airplane which my father was going to build with me, it took mere minutes to realize he needed to go away and let me learn on my own. Such was my fix-it education from my father.

 

[Fred W]

Well, I know you have the cats. How about the piano?

 

[FJReady]

hitting below the belt, Fred..

funny though.

 

[Fred W]

I'm sure Alan knows I'm joking.

We used to have a piano. Nobody ever learned to play it, but we got it when my folks downsized from a big log cabin to a condo. I eventually gave it away on CragsList to the first person that would give us two cats for it.

 

[HotRodZilla]

Um, Fred, the useless dipshits being discussed don't have the drive to learn to play the piano. Now, the cats thing, well, I know a grown man that's into cats, and he's a creepy ****.

The days of most people doing any type of manual labor are quickly coming to an end.

 

[Redfish Hunter]

Enough already! I can barely play the radio, much less a piano. The cat belongs to my wife, and I am not as lazy as you think!

Oh what? You weren't talking about me?

Dad always had the correct shop manual for whatever vehicle he owned. Where my mother used to buy those things I cannot recall. I can remember his co-workers that owned 4WD vehicles would come over to service the locking front hubs while "The Book" lay on the table. No one EVER touched it with their greasy fingers until he was obligated to loan it to my uncles. He never forgave that either.

Now, there is a YouTube video for nearly everything (except how to change the fog lamp on a BMW 328i) and those precious shop manuals are almost forgotten. They gather dust on the shelves and in our memories but they were a precious resource in their time. Such is progress.