At Home Mechanic

Just a quick note today to suggest that we all make a donation of money (even a small amount can help) to the Red Cross or similar charity organization to help our fellow Americans in their time of need.

Back to car stuff tomorrow.

Scott

Only a very few species create and use tools. Chimpanzees strip the bark from a twig and stick it down a hole to scoop out termites for eating. Egyptian Vultures use a rock to smash open Ostrich eggs and Green Herons will toss a pebble into a pond to lure fish to the surface. But the all time champion of tool usage is the human species; if Stanley Kubrick’s movie “2001: A Space Odyssey� basic premise is correct, the assent of modern man is a direct result of our primeval ancestors discovering the use of tools. Nearly everything we touch in our life can be considered a tool and we use them without much thought about the process. The At Home Mechanic knows just how important tools are for enjoying our automobile hobby and has a large investment in a wide variety of hand and power tools.

Size matters. Now take your mind out of the gutter because I am talking about something entirely different from what you are thinking about. I am talking about the size of your car and the effect size and weight has upon performance. As we all know from Physics 101, a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion. It requires energy to make a car go and stop; the less mass that needs to be moved into action or stopped from rolling the easier it is to perform those tasks.

Get control of yourself, or at the very least get control of your car. So many times I see postings on auto enthusiast web forums blaming a car’s poor handling for traffic accidents. But with a little examination of the relevant facts, we find that excessive speed for the condition of the road is the main culprit.

It is time to start planning my next project for my hobby car, a1987 Honda CRX Si. Right now the car is at the very peak of performance, it is running better now than it has ever run before. I am not one to leave well enough alone, like Tim Allen’s character on the old TV show “Home Improvement� I believe that batter is… well, better. And I will not rest until I have made another improvement to my hobby car.

I like to think that I am a better driver than writer. Writing requires thought and thinking has never been my long suit. It also occurs to me that driving requires thoguht so I am totally out of luck. Regular reader Dave Darling corrects my article about car control:

If movies are a reflection of our culture at any given time in history, then the cars in movies are also a reflection of the times when the movie was made. Just as style of dress, manner of speaking and social interaction in the story lines of movies are an indication of what is important to the American culture at the time that the movie was made, the cars that the propels the hero on his quest to resolve the story’s conflict are an equally important indication of how the car relates to the American culture at that time.

The words, “Made in Japan� does not mean the same today as it once did. Today we associate Japanese designed and manufactured products with the highest quality and the ultimate in desirability. But back in the 1950’s and 1960’s Americans treated products from Japan and the rest of Asia with distain; it was conventional wisdom of the time that products imported from the Far East were cheap, inferior imitations of quality American or European originals.

As you may remember, I published a warning about the car enthusiast magazine trade. I pointed out that the car magazines are not in the business of telling their readers the best information, but rather the information that will help sell their advertiser's products. In many instances, a magazine will shamelessly feature an advertiser's product in an article on the pages facing the very advertiser's ad. Rather than truthfully helping readers by suggesting less cost effective ways to solve a performance problem, the article will lead the gullible reader to believe that the ONLY solution to the problem is to buy that advertiser product.

Over the course of the last couple of weeks my girlfriend has become my fiancee. Along with the happiness and excitement of an impending wedding come the adjustments to one's life when you go from being a solo to a member of a pair (In my situation neither my fiancee or I are truly "solo" as this is a second marriage for both of us and we both bring two children to the marriage). The adjustments from your previous "single" life to "married" life includes domestic issues like where will you live as a couple, how to deal with household bills or who does the dishes after dinner. But the one issue that may be unique to the At Home Mechanic has to do with cars in the family.

A serendipitous event is the happy result of one good thing that comes equipped with an even better thing attached. We can not count on something so good happening all the time; in fact we are lucky if we experience serendipity once in our lifetime. But there is one place that can usually be counted upon for a regular series of serendipitous moments and nearly every middle-sized town in America has at least one of these magic playgrounds. Could this be the store that sells beer AND lottery tickets? Could this be the United States Postal Service that loses bills but delivers large checks in a timely manner? While those are both wonderful, the answer I am seeking is.... Your local junkyard.

I get comments and I do not often get the chance to respond directly to them. Being the lazy sort and not motivated to think up a whole new blog topic on my own I will respond to your many kind comments.

Perhaps the scariest event in a car owner’s life is when the “Check Engine� light comes on. What does it mean? Should I get the car to a repair facility as soon as possible? Is the car safe to drive? Is my engine about to fall apart? That light does not come on randomly for no apparent reason, there is something going on with your car. But most times it is a relatively minor problem and your car is safe to drive until you have the problem fixed.

In a previous post we discussed the Check Engine light and the associated electronics that are attached to that light. Basically, the modern automobile engine is controlled by a central computer system that monitors and regulates fuel, ignition and in some cars cam timing to make your engine as powerful, fuel efficient and clean burning as possible. And this type of central computerization makes your modern car smooth and efficient to drive.

An unexpected oil discovery made TV’s most famous hillbilly Jed Clampett a wealthy man, allowing him the money to move away from the backwoods to the Hills of Beverly. But an unexpected oil discovery on the driveway under your car is probably going to make you a bit poorer. But worse than the mess on the ground is the specter of engine damage that looms over an oil leak. Just about the only way to damage a modern engine is to run it without enough oil so it is imperative to keep the oil in the engine and off of your driveway.

The thrill is gone. The bloom is off the rose. It is official, I am tired of my car. My daily driver is a 2003 Honda Accord LX four door, a perfectly fine family automobile. It is quiet, comfortable, spacious and economical. It has never failed to deliver all that it has promised to be, a reliable source of transportation. But familiarity breeds contempt and after nearly three years together it is time to move on.

I saw one on the street today! I have seen the TV commercial, read about them in the magazines and even have pressed my nose against the dealer’s window, but until yesterday I have never seen a real live FORD GT being driven on the street. The new FORD GT, a retro reinterpretation of the Ford GT40 that dominated the 24 hours of Le Mans during the late 1960’s, is the stuff of Baby Boomer dreams. And after being released to the public for nearly a year I finally saw one on the street in my hometown.

I appreciate the beauty of a highly polished, carefully detailed show car. I admire the dedication it takes to get every seam on a car’s body straight and spaced proportionally. No one is more reverential to a car that has every period correct optional feature added to make a car a complete example of the make and model. I can understand the desire to customize a car with chrome, candy flake paint and cushy upholstery as an artistic expression. But for me, I want my hobby car to be light and fast, pared to the bone, nothing onboard that is not absolutely necessary. If it does not make my car faster or safer, I do not want it on my hobby car. If given the choice between a beautiful car or fast cars… well, that is not a good example because a fast car is automatically beautiful to me.

I enjoy getting comments and suggestions from my legions of readers (both of you) and you have responded quickly to my musings about buying a new car. As I stated in that post, I am tired of my boring, but reliable 2003 Honda Accord LX four door that has served me well for the past three years. My daily driver has been some sort of four-door sedan since I became a parent. But now that my kids are older and more independent it is not necessary for me to drive a bus-like vehicle to haul the entire family and I am considering what kind of car I can buy to replace the Family Truckster.

Acquiring a used car is an adventure; selecting the make and model you want, tracking down just the right car, inspecting it for mechanical defects and then negotiating the price are all part of the used car experience. I enjoy the thrill of the hunt for just the right used car, and I see the task as an exercise in detective work to determine exactly what kind of life a used car lived before it came up for sale.

In a previous post I wrote about the adventure of tracking down and buying a used car. I also pointed out that a used car can also hide some interesting treasures that are waiting discover under the seats and within the nooks and crannies of the trunk. Hopefully, the used car buyer has enough information to sleuth out any serious mechanical defects and use that information as negotiating leverage. One of the clues to potential electrical problems is if the original factory stereo has been replaced.

Patina is not the name of the fanciest Italian restaurant in town; it is the word to describe the faded, dusty finish of an old car. In the old days a car worthy of collecting was worthy of an extensive and expensive restoration that would refinish the car to a lustrous shine that was every bit as good, if not better, than the finish that came from the factory. But today there is an appreciation for an original car with its faded finish. The feeling seems to be that anyone can repaint and recondition an old wreck of a car and breath new life into a hulk, but a car that is untouched yet still in servable condition is rare and special.