On most Hondas, when I need to loosen the serpentine belt, I can usually get a wrench in with enough room to turn it to loosen the belt enough to remove it. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s a tight fit, but on this Honda Element, I didn’t have enough room to swing my wrench. I don’t have a serpentine belt tool, which is a specially designed wrench setup that can fit in tighter spaces, so I had to get clever.
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-Dan
I’ve been writing on this blog for five years now, and this had been the biggest year yet.
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-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.
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.
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.
New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!
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-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.
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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| Michael Smith on Broken Flex Plate |
