5 Years of Mechanical Malarkey

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Dan

I’ve been writing on this blog for five years now, and this had been the biggest year yet.

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How Well Do Automotive Fluids Burn?

Posted on August 24, 2020 by Dan

New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Watch Mechanical Malarkey on YouTube!

Mechanical Malarkey T-shirts, hats, and stickers are available to order!

-Dan

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3 Mistakes To Avoid on Brake Jobs

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Dan

I’m all for people fixing their cars themselves. You can save a lot of money by not taking your car to a shop, but sometimes that doesn’t work out very well. I don’t know if this customer had done their brakes themselves or taken them to a shop, but there were three different mistakes I found on this one car.

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When New Parts Fail

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Dan

Nothing lasts forever, but usually when something is new, you expect it to last a while. When you replace a broken part on a car with a new part, you don’t expect to be replacing it soon after.

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When Big Jobs Get Bigger

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Dan

It all started as simply taking over a used car that another tech had looked at but was out sick and couldn’t work on. One of the problems with the car was that the wires to one of the airbag system impact sensors were broken. Trying to repair airbag system wiring isn’t the best idea, because it’s a sensitive system, and Honda always recommends wiring harness replacement, so that was one of the jobs I had to do.

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All About Automotive Fluids (and Honda specific fluids)

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Dan

New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Watch Mechanical Malarkey on YouTube!

Mechanical Malarkey T-shirts, hats, and stickers are available to order!

-Dan

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Lazy Parking Brake Cable Installation

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Dan

I was looking over a customer car that was in for normal service, and noticed that the parking brake cables had been replaced at some point, and whoever had done the job did not do it very well. I know from experience that parking brake cables can be a pain to replace, especially as cars get older and rustier, but I wouldn’t do it this badly.

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2011-2017 Honda Odyssey Rear Brake Replacement – Internal Parking Brake

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Dan

New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Watch Mechanical Malarkey on YouTube!

Mechanical Malarkey T-shirts, hats, and stickers are available to order!

-Dan

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Rounded-Off Bolt Removed Via Welding

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Dan

I was working on a car from the early 2000’s, and here in New York, that means it’s very rusty. I was replacing parking brake cables, and found that they ran above one of the exhaust heat shields. To remove that heat shield, I needed to remove a bolt, and so far I’d been pretty lucky with bolts coming out, but my luck ran out and I just rounded off the head of the bolt.

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Zip Tie Brake Line Separator

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Dan

I was replacing the brake lines on an old Honda Odyssey. Because of the age of the car, almost all of the plastic brake line clips broke while removing the old lines. This meant that I had to try to hold the brake lines in place using zip ties, because I didn’t have any replacement clips.

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