Surprise Passenger

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Dan

It’s a regular Saturday morning at work, when one of the techs finds some fur in the engine compartment of a car he just pulled in. It turned out to be a live cat that rode for 45 minutes next to the engine. Luckily it was on the far side of the car from where all the belts and pulleys are, which are what usually kill stowaway animals.

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Don’t Plug the Sidewall

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Dan

When a tire gets a puncture, usually it can repaired with a tire plug.

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Blown-out Run-flat

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Dan

Usually when you get a flat tire, you need to immediately put on your spare tire. Some cars don’t have the space for a spare tire, so they come with either liquid tire sealant, or the car is equipped with special tires that are okay to drive on after they’ve lost all the air.

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Punctured Tranny Pan

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Dan

Once in a while I see cars with damage on the underside. On a truck or SUV I would assume that the damage was from off-roading, but then there’s the damaged compact sedans. Did they run over something in the road? Get run off the road? Go driving on a rough dirt road? In any case, sometimes the results aren’t good.

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Pet Peeve: Messy Oil Changes

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Dan

One of my frequent pet peeves is when the design of a car makes every oil change messy. Often times it’s the placement of the oil filter. Sometimes it’s just on the side of the engine, causing oil to run down the side of the engine when you take it off, or it’s positioned right over a frame rail, so you get oil all over the frame.

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Two Time-Saving Tools

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Dan

For a mechanic, time is money. The more we get done, the more money we make. So it’s often worth spending some money on tools that help us get jobs done faster.

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Exhaust Is Hot

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Dan

You may have heard that your car’s exhaust pipe is hot when your car’s running…

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My Car: A/C Fixed?

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Dan

Earlier in the year I made a post about four things I wanted to fix on my car this year. Halfway through the year and I’ve finally accomplished a second repair.

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Purple

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Dan

Driving through a parking lot one day and came across this.

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1999 Buick Century Drum Brakes

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Dan

For my first side job for someone other than a family member, one of my friends called me to find a brake fluid leak on her 1999 Buick Century. I found it pretty quickly; it was the short piece of brake line between the right rear wheel cylinder and the brake hose.

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