How to do repairs videos on Utube and other sites are very helpful to DIY’rs. I found a video on how to repair a door gasket problem on my fridge so I ordered the parts online and it was a simple job. Auto repair videos are great also.
Perhaps the site master should find a way to provide links to auto repair videos on the Car Talk site. What say you @cdaquila? Even when the pro’s do the job it is great to see exactly what is involved in a video.
I’d think they would have to be screened to weed out the bogus ones. And then sorted by make, model, year and process. Not an easy task. And ongoing as new ones get added.
Some of the repair videos on YouTube also have ads. If CarTalk linked to some of those the site sponsors would most likely be a little upset. Also there are so many it would be a chore to verify which ones should be used.
This is not car related but I found one that showed how to replace the drive belt on my TORO rear drive mower but I looked at 4 videos before I found the same mower I had.
This was a major Ford problem in the past. I don’t trust the Park position and apply the hand brake as well when parking on the slightest incline.
VDCdriver: Thank you for confirming I am not the only driver in the known world who uses the parking brake with an A/T! I’m guessing you even turn the wheels in the appropriate direction when parking on a slope. Upslope away from the curb. Downslope toward the curb.
When my youngest son took drivers-ed…the teacher asked which drivers and their parents use the e-brake…My son was the only person who raised his hand. And from what the teacher said…most people these days don’t use the ebrake. I guess I’m old school.
Almost everyone here uses the parking brake. It’s the law in MD. I’m sure someone at my old job didn’t, though. Their car rolled about 50 feet across the parking lot during the workday. Good thing it hit another car. If it kept rolling, it would have end up up in the creek another 100 feet away after picking up a lot more speed. It’s a shame that expensive BMW rolled away Nd cost the owner a bunch of money to fix his car and the one he ran into. Preventable, of course.
jtsanders: I don’t think a law would have much impact in OR. We have had a cellphone law for years with no noticeable effect.
I was visited by a friend who left a Porsche 924 parked in my rather steep driveway. It was a manual tranny and it was in gear but no parking brake applied. It rolled down the driveway across the street and down a neighbors lawn and stopped in a gulley. Best guess is the clutch was shot and couldn’t hold the car on the hill. The car had some body damage and had to be winched back up to the road. Stuff happens.
Yeah, but it does mean the person that doesn’t set the parking brake is guaranteed a ticket at the site of the crime, and probably guaranteed to be automatically declared at fault.
Here’s something interesting about applying the parking brake and putting it in Park. One time I visited Bangkok Thailand for 6 weeks, and there it is customary when you park your car to leave the transmission in neutral and not apply the parking brake. As long as it is a flat area, which is usually the case in Bangkok. Why? B/c parking spots are at a premium, and if your car needs to be moved out of the way, whoever needs it moved can just manually push it to where they want it. Folks will double park routinely, and so the car that gets blocked in, they’ll just push the double parked car out of the way. It’s a very common sight to see people pushing cars around. I had to do this myself several times, and sometimes I came back from shopping to find my own car had been pushed somewhere else. No harm, no foul I guess.
And good call @insightful , that’s an interesting vdo you posted.
“I’m guessing you even turn the wheels in the appropriate direction when parking on a slope. Upslope away from the curb. Downslope toward the curb.”
Yup!
And, I can say that I find it disturbing to see how many people turn their wheels toward the curb when they are parked on an upgrade.
It’s not necessary to apply the parking brake before shifting into Park. It is only necessary to keep your foot on the brake until you have applied the parking brake. The car will not move and put pressure on the parking pawl in the transmission unless the car moves after it is placed in Park. The car will not move in Park if your foot is on the brake until you apply the parking brake. Of course, this technique is best if you have a HAND brake, as opposed to one of those extra pedals that operates the parking brake, but it works either way. It comes down to preference and habit.
One of the big reasons people have started to “forget about” the parking brake is that rear drum brakes are quietly going away. The parking or e-brake adjusted the rear drum brakes simply by using it. Now that MOST of the vehicles being sold have rear discs that adjustment is no longer required so many people assume that they don’t have to use the parking brake any longer.
I used to work as a letter carrier, and “curbing your wheels” was a BIG DEAL at the time–you could be written up for it, if you were observed not curbing your wheels while out delivering. I think the DJ5 postal Jeeps had an annoying tendency to slip out of “park,” and the handbrake was a “binary” on/off: you couldn’t modulate the force, and if improperly adjusted, there’s no guarantee it would hold you on a steep hill.
I remember the USPS wound up selling off all those DJ5s at dirt cheap prices. Today, for whatever reason, they don’t sell off vehicles from the motor pool: the Grumman LLVs that replaced the Jeeps must get destroyed: I’ve never seen them up for sale, at any rate.
Some automotive trivia: for what it’s worth, the DJ5 was powered by the AMC inline-6 (plus some others, but all the DJ5s I ever drove had AMC engines). The LLV which replaced the Jeep was a Grumman aluminum body, atop an S-10 chassis (with modifications). It used an Iron Duke 4-cylinder as an engine. One of the “quirks” of the LLV was that the front wheel track was considerably narrower than the rear track: it made it possible to parallel park without backing up…pretty useful…but at the cost of poor snow performance, as the rear tires didn’t “track” behind the front. The cash-strapped USPS intends to extend the life of the LLV, originally from the 1990s, by keeping the Aluminum body and putting out a bid for a company to supply an upgraded rolling chassis/engine combo.
meanjoe75fan: The military hasn’t sold vehicles retired from service for a long time. They are cut up and scrapped for liability reasons. USPS must have the same requirements.