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
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
I was replacing the exhaust on an older Civic, and ran into a problem. One of the rubber exhaust hangers had torn, and it was one that went to two pegs on the exhaust instead of one, so to replace it I would’ve needed to wait a day for one from Honda.
I’m a little over six feet tall, so the majority of customers are shorter than me. This means that the driver’s seat is usually a bit farther forward than is comfortable for me to drive. I usually try to avoid moving a seat unless I need to test drive the car on the road and the customer’s seat position puts me in a very uncomfortable or unsafe position, especially with manual transmission cars.
If I had to guess, I’d say that probably the majority of cars sold in the United States in the last two decades have come under some sort of recall at least once. Recalls usually address safety issues, or sometimes problems that make them fail emissions requirements. Most notably, hundreds of millions of airbags have been recalled in the last several years. It’s always a good idea to get recalls done as soon as you are notified that your vehicle has one.
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
This might be the cheapest tool review I’ve ever done.
Auto repair shops are everywhere, but it can be hard to find a good mechanic. Even if you find a good mechanic at one shop, somebody else at the same place may not be so good, so when you find somebody with a good reputation, try to stick with that one person. A good mechanic isn’t just one that does good work, but also one that doesn’t try to sell things a car doesn’t need.
As I test drove a used car at the dealership, I noticed that the exhaust was a little bit loud. When I got it up on the lift I found that it was leaking from the join where one pipe slips over another and has a clamp around the two. I could tell I would have to replace the exhaust, but there was one problem that would make that harder. These joints are meant to not be welded, but this one had, and very badly.
Cars can make all sorts of noises. Suspension squeaks and clunks, grinding brakes, uneven tires, leaking exhaust, all of these are mechanical noises from outside the car. Inside the car there can be squeaks or creaks from trim panels rubbing against each other, or just noise from a pile of coins in a cupholder.
One of my pet peeves, and something that I was taught early on when learning about fixing cars, is that when you’re doing a brake job, it’s not good to just let the caliper hang by the hydraulic hose. This stresses the hose and if you do it too much it could lead to a premature failure.