asemaster:
I loved driving. From May 1979 to Nov 1989 I was a commercial driver. It didn’t take very long until I didn’t feel like driving anywhere during my off work hours. I made a full recovery with my new 1996 Miata. I probably put twice as many miles on the odometer having fun on the “twisties” as I did using it for transportation only.
@asemaster … it makes total sense you wouldn’t enjoy spending your spare time changing oil, b/c you do that on your job 50 hours a week or more. But folks who’s job might involve a lot of pushing paper and at home are just driveway diy’ers , they maybe do work on their car 4 or 5 times a year. So simple car repair jobs which are straightforward like changing the oil are not seen as much of a chore, and give them a chance to do something different from their work job.
Triedaq left his computer logged in, so I am going to comment. As a woman, I am smart enough to read a dipstick. I check the oil before I start the lawnmower. When I was on the road doing recruiting for the university where Triedaq and I were employed and using a car from the university’s fleet, I checked the oil when I stopped for gas. I didn’t want to have a,problem miles from home.
However, Triedaq doesn’t know how to check to see if the bag is full on the vacuum cleaner. In fact, he doesn’t seem to even be able to find the switch to turn it on.
Good for you, but I’m the one checking the oil around here. I told this story before but in college, my future FIL bought my future wife a 61 Plymouth to use at school, but he said to check the oil and put oil in it. Well she did and proceeded to fill the engine up with oil, to the top. She never asked me and I wasn’t a part of it and can’t imagine how many quarts it took. At any rate she drove it 100 miles home and it was fogging the mosquitoes like crazy all the way home. My FIL figured it out and drained about a gallon of oil out of it and all was well again. That’s OK honey, I’ll take care of the oil.
:naughty:
Good post @Triedaq 's better half … lol … about the vacuum cleaner, my suggestion is to buy one of those bagless models. The kind with the clear container you can see the debris whirlwind around in. And on it is a label saying something like “ultra cyclone” … something like that appeals to the mechanically inclined. I know it does for me, I enjoy vacuuming more after buying one of those models. Inside that case, it really is like a mini-tornado. Pretty cool. Plus emptying it is fun too, it creates such a mess you have to put on old clothes, go outside and put on a dust mask, the dust goes everywhere ! Which is even more fun for the mechanically inclined … lol …
@Bing----Mrs. Triedaq. again. I had a. similar situation some 22 years ago. I agreed to drive a rented van to take some youth from our church to a work camp 400 miles away. The can was rented from “Rent a Wreck” and there was a sign posted on the dashboard to check the oil at each gas stop. Our minister was driving another vehicle and when we stopped for gas, he offered to check the oil. We made 2 gas stops on the way to the camp and added a quart at each stop. Before we left to come back home, I checked the oil and it had been overfilled. The minister misread the dipstick. I had some oil drained out before we started back home.
One of my riding mowers is very good about reminding me if it is even overfilled a TINY bit. When mowing under load with the nose pointed downhill, you will get massive mosquito fogging a few times until it blows all the excess through the breather. I now just make sure it is above the add line because it is quite easy for this to happen.
I have heard plenty of stories about people thinking the are draining the oil but really draining a transmission or differential. Then they add the specified amount of oil and have it double-filled, causing a smoke out situation or pushing seals out.
I’ve mentioned this before, but my dipstick is just about unreadable. I can take 5 measurements and get 5 different results. (15 Forester). The problem seems to be that the stick picks up oil from the tube due to a sharp curve near the bottom.
A Subaru engineering bulletin says to read both sides of the stick and take the lowest. That doesn’t work well either, although it tells me Subaru is aware of the problem.
Bottom line, it reads between zero and 1 quart high, so if it reads full it may be 1 quart low.
Luckily (or on purpose?) this car has a low oil warning light, but I don’t know what it’s threshold is.
b
jtsanders- see, thats what I don’t get. I had a friend whose dad was a mechanic and worked on all his own cars (plus mine and his mostly ungrateful daughters). I used to love watching him work and sometimes helping out. He taught me a lot, but I never understood why his daughters brushed him off.
Do you know what one said when he was trying to explain an issue with her car? She said ,'I’m a girl, dad, just fix it,"
I thought it was great he had something to share. I think it does bleed into the over-paced, no time to visit your neighbors, modern society.
Ase, you’re spending your weekends doing far more important things than oil changes. Keep at it. You can always get back to cars, but once your kids grow up their childhood is gone forever.
Teaching kids basic stuff like changing the oil is important!
I stumbled upon a mother with a van load of kids broken down on an isolated rural road over the weekend. It just stopped running according to what she said. In about a minute I spotted the following… She had opened the radiator cap HOT before I got there and it blew a bunch of coolant out so “It must have been overheated” according to her. It had thrown the alternator belt because someone had been in the van before and didn’t tighten the tensioner properly. The tensioner pulley was about to fall off as the nut had backed off so far. The oil looked like tar. The starter was spinning but not engaging once jumped. She had no clue about ANYTHING and had planned to spend the night there with all the kids if the van couldn’t be started in the middle of nowhere.
Knowing a few basic things about cars such as how to do basic maintenance and not to open the radiator cap HOT is important for the kids. Any one of the issues she had would stop a car and she had multiple!
For the regulars on this forum who understand car maintenance, if you grew up today where:
- - fixing cars as a pastime has been replaced with "playing with everything electronics", (e.g. computers and all the creative opportunities they create, video games, etc),
- - shop classes in high schools have disappeared,
- - the "older brothers, cousins, uncles, parents" who yesteryear's youth learned from, because they were fixing cars in their spare time, no longer exist. Nor do they possess those skills.
- - corner gas stations with repair bays are history,
- - your families and teachers are pushing you toward studies that don't include "hands on" work.
- - cars need less maintenance,
- - many cars that don't get maintained don't cause problems for the owner,
Both My Kids, 20 Year-Old Daughter, And 27 Year-Old Son, Carry Code Readers In Their Cars And Know How To Use Them. They Do Under-hood Checks, Top Off Fluids, Inflate Tires, Etcetera. Both Can Speak In DTCs.
My daughter helps with car repairs and maintenance when I work on our cars. My son, now on his own, who can easily afford to pay for repairs and maintenance, changes his own oil and tackles brake jobs, wheel bearings, etcetera.
They got the ideas from me. What’s interesting is that while I was growing up, my Father did none of the maintenance or repairs on our family cars. He paid to have it done. I picked it up on my own and passed it along.
Now, if I could just get my daughter to finish college (Junior this year) and get a full-time job and start paying for her car insurance…
CSA
I think everyone has a certain skill-set or abilities that help us find our way in life, both personally and professionally. Sometimes they include things mechanical and technical and sometimes not.
I have a friend who is a great mechanic, metal fabricator, and welder. But sometimes he misspells his own address.
I have a friend who can’t change a flat tire but is a published poet and a screenwriter.
My father only did minor car maintenance, was successful in his line of work, but couldn’t feed himself. When he was single or if my mom was gone, he literally ate out for every meal because his cooking abilities end with toast.
All of these people know what they are good at and have found their callings in life. They put their time and effort into what they are good at and pay people to do the things they can’t do for themselves.
I think its really hard to generalize. Most of the folks in our neighborhood only did minor maintenance but about half of us kids had engines or go karts we would mess around with. A couple of the older kids did major engine or marine work so we had some exposure. I guess for me it was more aptitude, opportunity, and necessity to save time and money. If you ran 100 miles a day and 10-12 hour days for 30+ years, you really didn’t have time or money to have other people do your work. It had been about 40 years since I paid anyone to do an oil change, but it was really nice to sit and read a book while someone else did the work. I still do most of my maintenance though-although I have to be careful, I’m not as good as I used to be and can get in trouble.
My wife does NONE of this ‘‘car’’ stuff herself. It’s all for me to do. If I don’t keep track of the maintainence and repairs on HER car…it doesn’t get done. But this is not a problem just an accurate description of life for many car owners.If…something…is amiss I hear ‘‘go drive my car.’’…that’s it . It’s now my puzzle.
My wife is a nurse.
SHE will ask YOU the same relative question about your personal heath as you’re sitting in the doctor’s office two weeks after your injury or sickness for which YOU should have pro-actively checked things out for yourself.
’‘Why didn’t you come in sooner ? you should have had a clue.’’
It works both ways.
Car owners.
appliance , computer, musical instruments, houses, bodys…etc
There are things we do for ourselves and things we depend on others for.
My wife has a number of friends who are now widows. They relied on their husbands to take care of the cars, but now have had to learn the rudiments of checking things, and look for signs of danger.
My wife, a medically trained professional, is quite OK with checking cars when I am out of the country for an extended time. We’ve never had a serious problem due to something going wrong; she always caught things on time and called the AAA or took the car in for service or repair.
To become “car smart” does not take much.
People should at least know how to check the oil, tires, and coolant from time to time. I just saw on another car forum that some guy was driving his car when there was a loud bang and the engine locked up. He checked the oil and none was on the stick.
I went and looked at a car like this once. The owner knew it didn’t run but had no idea why. The engine had been rebuilt 10,000 or so miles ago and was locked up tight. He hadn’t opened the hood since that time and there was no oil on the stick with this one either.