Itinerant Air-Cooled

Not my bus, but my daughter's car. Called me in somewhat of hysterics that her car was 'bucking' when she accelerated, stopped, or in park. My initial thought was fuel pump, maybe motor mounts.

Got home, and fired the car up. Started quickly, and was running fine. Took it out, and drove it 6 miles,still seemed fine. After finishing the ride, I was thinking an intermittent ignition problem can cause that symptom too. Lucky now that we are off daylight savings time, it was pitch dark. Popped the hood, and I could see electric sparks that seemed to be coming out between valve cover and the head on the left side of the front bank. Took the cover off the individual ignition coils and had a little techno show going on. Called O'Reilly's 5 min away, they had the part. $45 dollars and another 5 min later it was all fixed!

TrollFromDownBelow wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:03 pm

Not my bus, but my daughter's car. Called me in somewhat of hysterics that her car was 'bucking' when she accelerated, stopped, or in park. My initial thought was fuel pump, maybe motor mounts.

Got home, and fired the car up. Started quickly, and was running fine. Took it out, and drove it 6 miles,still seemed fine. After finishing the ride, I was thinking an intermittent ignition problem can cause that symptom too. Lucky now that we are off daylight savings time, it was pitch dark. Popped the hood, and I could see electric sparks that seemed to be coming out between valve cover and the head on the left side of the front bank. Took the cover off the individual ignition coils and had a little techno show going on. Called O'Reilly's 5 min away, they had the part. $45 dollars and another 5 min later it was all fixed!

Good for you. Did you charge her? I say that's a nice home-cooked meal.

Me? Yeah, my brother washed "his" "new" Lexus engine and it began to throw codes and tremble:




See, we don't have simple coil packs on these things (had to dry out each spark plug well):




Then spend the next hour putting all the decorative wire and plastic garnishes back on:

Family, eh?

At least you got to spiff up the plastic garnishes to like-new condition before putting 'em back on. Did you install new spark plug wires whle you were in there?

Each time my stepdaughter visits I get to see the results of her obliviousness to mechanical maintenance evident on her poor Tacoma. If asked to help fix it, I can only shrug and say that she needs to give me more time than the 5-hour window of her flying visit... Those Toyotas are tough, but eventually something's gonna give.

Those pics almost qualify as engine porn. You have a thing for Lexus as I do for Saab. I loved my E39 BMW 5 series. It was a quality car through and through. But it did need quite a bit of maintenance as a DD to keep/bring it up to spec. I had two Saabs, and they seemed to have the right balance (for me) of quality and performance vs. maintenance. A little lower on the performance and quality vs a BMW (okay, and lets not even bother with the argument about front vs rear wheel drive), but significantly lower on maintenance as compared to a BMW.

Amskeptic wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 09, 2017 11:44 am

Good for you. Did you charge her? I say that's a nice home-cooked meal.

No, didn't charge her. Although it is her car, it is technically still in my name. She's a full time student, and works part time, so we take care of most car repairs and maintenance (she does come out and help when I'm doing routine maintenance stuff). She is very appreciative.... I prefer to barter with house chores...especially those that I don't like doing

SlowLane wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 09, 2017 1:11 pm

Family, eh?

At least you got to spiff up the plastic garnishes to like-new condition before putting 'em back on. Did you install new spark plug wires whle you were in there?

Each time my stepdaughter visits I get to see the results of her obliviousness to mechanical maintenance evident on her poor Tacoma. If asked to help fix it, I can only shrug and say that she needs to give me more time than the 5-hour window of her flying visit... Those Toyotas are tough, but eventually something's gonna give.

Every time my gals two early 20's girls come over I have to go check their vehicles. Low air inflations on their tires. Add oil to their engines so it will register on the dip sticks. I've begged, pleaded and everything else for them both to check their oil levels at each gas fill up. Both cars have 110k plus miles on them. Bonus points for checking their tires too. I've bought them spare quarts of oil, air gauges.. all for naught..

Deep sigh..

wcfvw69 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:24 pm

Every time my gals two early 20's girls come over I have to go check their vehicles. Low air inflations on their tires. Add oil to their engines so it will register on the dip sticks. I've begged, pleaded and everything else for them both to check their oil levels at each gas fill up. Both cars have 110k plus miles on them. Bonus points for checking their tires too. I've bought them spare quarts of oil, air gauges.. all for naught..

Deep sigh..

Guess what ...stop checking that stuff, have the engine seize up, and they have to go out and buy a replacement vehicle...guarantee that they will start checking.

My daughter who is 20 years old and a full time student, we pretty much pay for everything except for gas (mind you, it is a 20 year old Liincoln, that was my DD). However, my 'ace up my sleeve' is "This is the last car we will provide you...suggest you keep it well maintained until you can afford to buy a replacement. "

Well, I do need to hand it to my girl that she did her research on the tacoma, and she bought it all on her own without any help from us. Well, until one of the shitty firestone tires shredded itself on her. That's when safety-dad took over.

I sprang for a new set of tires, installed new pads and rotors up front, unstuck the frozen parking brake ( wisconson car with typical rust). Fixed her leaking rear axle seals, new oxygen sensors and other typical tuneup stuff. Tried to impress upon her the importance of always using her parking brake to keep the rear shoes adjusted, and how that translates to less wear on the front brakes. Not sure if any of it sunk in.

I started jokingly wanting a bus young, and when I enough money saved in college to buy a really terrible bus for my first car, my dad bought me my first car, a Jetta, so I could concentrate on my studies and have an airbag/crumple zone, and all the “safety dad” stuff. ;)

I still have the car, and it’s never let me down or needed a replacement part in almost 100k miles... but I have had some weird cheap/easy fixes...

My favorite was this spring, after sitting out in the rain for a month of inactivity, the ECU went into “limp home” mode, and governed the car to 2,000 RPM and second gear maximum. I had the codes scanned at a FLAPS, and the car said both knock sensors were bad. Since parts don’t fail in pairs like that, I removed both, cleaned the corrosion off them, and ignored the ominous torque wrench mandate as I installed them by feel. I cleared the code and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.

The same car’s new brake pads also squealed like a greasy pig when i installed them, so I took a page from my IAC appointment and cross-hatch sanded the pads and rotors. Perfect. :)

Easy is nice, but I don’t have the kinship with the connecting rods like I do with my bus..
Robbie

asiab3 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 11, 2017 3:19 pm

Easy is nice, but I don’t have the kinship with the connecting rods like I do with my bus..
Robbie

I did with my Rabbit. It was a customer's four year-old 1976 two-door Rabbit. Terrible rod knock in the 1600 straight four with CIS FI. Dropped the pan, replaced the connecting rod inserts, buttoned it up . . . . still had a rod knock. By this time, the customer had given up and sold me the car for $1,000.00 and no bill for the engine work.

Discovered by accident that the distributor breaker plate had gone all weird and was *ignition knocking* only one cylinder.
Great little car. Great connecting rods. Great connecting rod bearings. I should know, I replaced them in three hours flat.
Colin