There's a limit to what I can do

[Javarod]

I was told (by the roadside assistance guy actually) that I shouldn't be using the jack in my parents' van, because it's not entirely safe to use it. And said van doesn't have a spare - just a dummy spare, which, when you're 100km away from home, don't know any route other than the 401, means that after the local repair shop closes you effectively don't have a spare at all.

I hate the donut (except glazed ), i have a full sized spare thanks to Discount Tire (they repaired my unrepairable tire for free and sold me a tire and rim for $65 compared to $75 for a replacement tire from Firestone), only thing is that it doesn't fit right in the trunk despite the shop's assurance that it would, though i expected that, just have to move the battery one of these days.

Best tire story i have has to do with my POS Chevy Venture i had while a courier. I lost a tire on the freeway, annoying, and interfered with a deadline, but no big deal, i have the donut. Six hours later, my other front tire goes flat, and guess what? Yeah, called a Mexican tow company, and told them i needed the nearest llantera shop, since that would be the only way i'd afford a tow and two tires.

[Shalom]

I mean, I don’t know of any situation where a big, bright, RED light means something good is happening. Flashing ones usually are even worse.

I never saw a flashing light on a dashboard until just recently when my 99 chevy started misfiring (bad coil wire, turned out) and the check engine light started blinking. I asked the mechanic afterwards why it did that, and he said that means you pull over and stop right goddammit now. Of course I hadn't known that. This may be why the inside of my catalytic converter melted into a lump resembling the ball inside a check valve.

(regarding spare tires)- “I don’t think the car has one” You “don’t think” alright… If you’d just read your owner’s manual, you’d see that there’s a spare in the bottom of the trunk, along with a jack and all the tools and a step-by-step instruction on how to do it. This in theory should be one of the few things you should be able to handle on your OWN, but that’s a whole nother’ rant on how people can be frighteningly auto-illiterate, especially the ones who don’t even know what make/model of car THEY OWN.

You're assuming that the factory spare is still in there. For all you know, they took it out of there because they needed more room in the trunk, or Junior needed it for his go-kart.

-Presented with a tire, just a tire, no rim, and expecting me to be able to mount it. (...) The last time you could mount a tire roadside was when something called “tire irons” were commonplace. And this was more than a few years ago, come to think of it, it was back around the time the Nazis marched in to Poland.

Heavy trucks (tractor-trailers and the like) generally carry only an unmounted tire, don't they? I always wondered how they expected to mount that at the side of the road. Maybe those are two-piece rims or something. In any case there are commercial tire services that come out to heavy trucks with flats, but god knows how much they charge. They probably don't take AAA, either...

-Anti-theft lug nuts, with no tool to get them off.

Yaargh. Don't remind me. My old '88 Blazer was getting a saggy hind end, so my mechanic sent me to some shop in Paterson that specializes in leaf springs. Mostly they work on heavy stuff like garbage trucks and school buses (one of each of which was on a lift minus their rear axles), but they don't mind working on the small stuff as long as it's got leaf springs. So I get back there, the rear end is up in the air, and the guy asks me where's the security nut driver. It's in the center console, no? No. How about the glove compartment? Not there either. Under the seats?? Nope. We can't help you then, until you get those nuts off...

(I still don't know where it went. My father had been driving that truck recently, and he had been going to some hamfisted "mechanic" who ruined my steering column trying to change the ignition cylinder (with an angle grinder I still have pits on the inside of the windshield where the sparks hit the glass) and basically did a lot of "work" that either didn't need to be done or else had to be done over, and I wouldn't put it past them to have lost it for him.)

They sent me to a tire shop who had a special tool, looked like a regular 19mm socket, but the inside was spiraled; you whapped it on to the nut with a mallet, and then used the impact wrench to take it off. So now I have 4 - 21mm nuts and 1 - 19mm nut on each wheel, because that was all they had in stock. This toolset might be a good investment to carry on your truck, just in case. Obviously you don't perform this service for free...

I remember the factory scissor jack on a then brand-new 07' Suzuki Aerio bending over and collapsing when I tried to use it to pick up the car.
It wasn't in the wrong place, it was directly under the manual's stated jack point.

I once got stranded trying to change a flat on my truck. It was 3 o'clock in the morning on I-81 south of Syracuse when a front tire blew out. I jacked up the vehicle with the scissors jack, pulled off the flat, then found that I'd put the jack in the wrong jacking point, and the truck wasn't high enough, even at full extension, to get the (full-size) spare on. Nor could I finagle the flat back on either, so I couldn't move the jack where it was supposed to go. I had to wait for the AAA to show up with a real jack to get me out of that. What can I say, I was half asleep by then.

Which reminds me, the old Mopar Slant 6s are beasts. Lost all its oil on the freeway in under 2 seconds, going 85MPH, got pulled over and stopped asap, and the engine's still running like a champ.</offtopic>

They never ran in the rain, though. At least mine didn't.

Best spare story I have goes back to '90.

Me - Driving an '85 Mazda GLC
Friend - Driving an '82 Caddy Fleetwood. Classic Lead Sled.
Friend has a blowout and it's a scramble to find the tire iron.
He has a donut spare.
I have a full-sized spare even though I am driving a car that could almost fit in his trunk and had been referred to as a recycled beer can.
Much laughter/embarrassment ensued.

Oh yeah. I had the 1979 Sedan De Ville, with the 7 litre V8 in it. Huge car, but with a surprisingly shallow trunk, the reason being that the whole rear end of the car was taken up by the 26 gallon fuel tank. For this reason, they put the "doughnut" spare in it. Not the skinny ones they use today, this was a full size rim with what looked like a strip of rubber tread around it. When you needed it, there was a can of CO₂ that inflated it to a fullsize tire in a matter of seconds. When the car was given me by my grandfather, he couldn't find the CO₂ can, so I called the Caddy dealership. "Oh we stopped making that can years ago." How come? "Well, because when they got rusty they tended to detonate and blow your trunk lid off." OK, that's a good reason. I invested in a 12V compressor that could fill the thing up in about 8 minutes; never had a flat in the year I was driving that thing, so I never needed to use it, $DEITY be thanked.

--
Shalom

[SuperRTL]

I can, and have done, most of the basic maintenance on my car. Not allowed to do it in the parking lot of my apartment so I take it to a shop now. Also, kinda awkward to change oil while pregnant. Not impossible, just awkward.

Last time I went in to rotate my tires, about a month ago, they said I had about 3 months left on them. A couple days ago, I noticed one of them was looking a little low. I filled it up, and promised myself I'd get them replaced after I got off work today, since I had to work while the shop was open the last week. Walked out this morning to 3 flat tires. No way was I getting that to the shop on a donut. I love my friendly neighborhood tow truck driver.

[TheSHAD0W]

It is actually possible to mount a tire on a rim without using a tire machine. I've done it before myself. And it is only slightly hazardous...

http://www.break.com/usercontent/200...re-695083.html

http://www.alpharubicon.com/prepinfo/emrgtiresam.htm

Perhaps not something you should be doing routinely, but if someone offers you that $500...

I should also mention that I actually do have two spares in my main vehicle; I bought a full-sized spare, and also decided to leave the donut hanging on the bottom of the van. (Donuts are NOT going to work when you live down a dirt road.)

[Midorikawa]

They never ran in the rain, though. At least mine didn't.

Yeah...mine runs like crap for the first 15 minutes after a rain, or if I hit a puddle just right. It's definitely the old water under the distributor cap bit. I need to find a way of sealing it without it being a permanent "replace the distributor rather than the cap" seal.

As far as jacks...I still have the old original Widowmaker that came with my Duster. It's gotten me out of a few annoying binds, too, although the jack was 1) never built for that (put the car up on a ramp, the ramp slipped, and went behind the front wheel, between the back side of the tire and the tire well next to the door. The widowmaker was all I had.), and 2) I know better than to crawl under the car with that death trap in place.

[Argabarga]

Let me show my ignorance, but what happens when you have a parent and a few kids that require tow? I assume they don't ride in their own car for safety reasons, so do they call a cab?

They will have to have a cab or friend come to pick them up, the maximum number of passengers I can carry is two. DOT law prohibits riding in a towed vehicle, and we once had to refuse a tow a leave a person stranded because they refused to ride in the truck OR get out of their car.

Have to agree with the Slant 6 being virtually bulletproof. It wasn't called the Leaning Tower of Power for nothing, even after it got throttled and corked to a shadow of its former might.

A suprising number of them and thier direct descendants (The straight six in older Jeep Cherokees for example) are still kicking and will continue to do so until the bodies rust away around them.

[protege]

It is actually possible to mount a tire on a rim without using a tire machine. I've done it before myself. And it is only slightly hazardous...

I've done it too. Pain in the ass, but it can be done.

As to jacks, the only one I won't use...is the one that came with the MG. If that thing happens to slip ever so slightly, you're looking at either a damaged mounting point, or one hell of a scrape up the fender Car has it, so the trunk area looks "original," but I prefer my trolley jack

I've also driven cars with the "check engine" light on. First one, was that goddamn Tempo I once had. Sitting in traffic one afternoon, the blasted thing started overheating. Not wanting to stop in the ghetto, I dropped all the windows and turned the heater full blast. I had no choice, considering the alternative--I didn't want to get shot! Anyway, the car made it another mile, before the engine blew up, and someone hit it

I had that light come on one cold night when I still had the Tercel. One of the ignition relays was failing. Car was fine when I left work, but suddenly started to misfire. Again, I wasn't about to stop in the ghetto. Even on 3 cylinders, I made it to the nearest garage. Those little 1.5s are tough

[Seshat]

Some things you should do when you buy a car.

1. Read the manual.

2. If there's anything in the manual in the 'users' section that you don't understand, get help to understand it. (There are checklists for the mechanic - it's okay for you to not understand the details of that, but you should know what the checklists are.)

3. Find out if the jack is a decent one, or a piece of (*#&^$. If the latter, replace it with a good one.

4. Make sure the spare tyre is one you can genuinely drive on.

5. Make sure the tyre iron/spanner/whatever is one you can use. If you can't change a tyre with the current tyre iron (stand on it if necessary), get one that magnifies your muscle power. They do exist.
Every driver of the car should be able to take the nuts off, and put them on to sufficient tightness to get home safely, with the tyre iron kept in the car.

6. Get a tyre pressure gauge, tread depth gauge, spare bulb kit, spare fuse kit, and first aid kit.

7. Make sure all drivers of the car can use the gauges, the bulb and fuse kit, and can perform all the regular tests such as oil level, transmission fluid, radiator fluid, tyre pressure, etc. Make sure they don't forget to check the lights, or the spare.

8. Make sure all drivers and passengers can use the first aid kit. Passengers younger than 16 should be able to use the age-appropriate parts of the first aid kit.


.... yeah, okay. Ranty.

[Javarod]

Always learn why the check engine light is on, sometimes its for a really stupid reason, and i've driven cars with check engine lights on before. I believe it was during the nineties for example, that BMW check engine lights would come on when the vehicle was due for service, but the problem was that turning the light off required a special BMW exclusive tool that most private shops weren't willing to spring for. There really needs to be some kind of standard for check engine lights as to why they come on, and how it communicates the severity of the problem.

[Argabarga]

Always learn why the check engine light is on, sometimes its for a really stupid reason, and i've driven cars with check engine lights on before. I believe it was during the nineties for example, that BMW check engine lights would come on when the vehicle was due for service, but the problem was that turning the light off required a special BMW exclusive tool that most private shops weren't willing to spring for. There really needs to be some kind of standard for check engine lights as to why they come on, and how it communicates the severity of the problem.

There is now, all cars now must use the OBDII system of standardized fault codes and standardized ways to read them. Prior to that, everyone had thier own systems that had thier own ways of getting them to tell you what was wrong and some were pretty much designed to be uncancellable by anyone but a dealer. A common way to do it was through a dashboard button that wasn't used for much (like the clock reset button, or a button on the car's stereo) that could be held in for a set ammount of seconds that would clear the computer memory, but such was never stated in your manual to try and keep you from "Messing" with it. A buddy of mine had a VW that threw a check engine light at him for no other reason than 50,000 miles had passed and the car was desgined to have the light trip so he'd take it into the shop for a "service interval" (i.e. - Here's a chance to SELL him something)

[ArcticChicken]

Sitting in traffic one afternoon, the blasted thing started overheating. Not wanting to stop in the ghetto, I dropped all the windows and turned the heater full blast. I had no choice, considering the alternative--I didn't want to get shot! Anyway, the car made it another mile, before the engine blew up, and someone hit it

Reminds me of this one time some friends and I were driving back from the comic shop on a Saturday night, well, technically Sunday morning. Anyway, we're in West Philly, dropping off one of the guys, and when we pull into his street we realize there's an absolutely massive fight going on. There are no fewer than three cop cars between us and the fight, and there are at least four on the other side, but everyone is still screaming at each other and this thing looks like it could break out into a massive brawl at any moment.

My friend who lives there ducks inside, and we idle for a few minutes trying to decide whether the cops are gonna break this thing up anytime soon or if we should back up the block. We decided to back up when a renewed round of screaming broke out, but the car doesn't want to move much.

My cousin (who's driving this thing) looks down and says "Oh, shit." Turns out the engine is so massively over heated that the needle is straining at the edge of the dial.

He manages to squeak the car into a parking spot, and we sit there for a few minutes panicking about what we're gonna do. Firstly, it's not our car, we borrowed it so all five of us could sit semi-comfortably on the 45min ride to the comic shop. Secondly, we're about a block from an area where people have been shot just for being too white. And thirdly, there is a massive sprawl of angry people between us and our friends house.

Eventually we decided to make a break for it and ducked safely into our friends house. We called up the car's owner, and decide to wait for about 1/2 an hour to an hour for the engine to cool off and the fight to disperse.

When we went back out to check the engine we discovered that the radiator was dry as a bone. We filled it and were able to drive the car home safely (and very, very slowly, just in case), after idling it for about 15min to make sure the radiator was, in fact, the problem and not a symptom.

[Cymberleah]

My former car ('97 Kia Sportage) had some... issues. I think I ended up driving it with the check engine light on more often then off.

The first time the light came on, I panicked, paid attention to how it was driving (normally) and got it to the dealer ASAP to be checked out. I was told that the sensor to check smog was in a place where it could get corroded, and that it would be replaced under warranty.

Awesome.

Then it happened again. And it was no longer under warranty, so I ignored the issue.

Then I had some odd power-stutters while driving on the freeway, so I took it to the dealership. Whereupon I was chided for not coming in to get the chip replaced every time it started to wig out. At $100 a visit for their design flaw, that just wasn't going to happen.

Knowing that the car was... special, it did get well maintained. Oil changes at 3000-3100 miles, regularly scheduled maintenance a few hundred miles before called for. If not for the woman who was unable to comprehend that left hand turns at intersections have to yield, it would still be around.

And at least it had a full sized spare and a decent jack. When the work truck got a flat, the jack was both not able to lift the truck high enough to get the tire off/on, but the handle also broke. Thanks Toyota! And thanks, boss, for being close by and having a 2T jack from his drag racing days.

[Andara Bledin]

One of my previous cars, the Boobyprize (a pre-K class, Friday-afternoon, Dodge Aries that was given to us because it kept stalling but stopped after I had my dad pull the tank off and filter out the 2 flyers worth of paper from it), was a special beast. It had a few parts on it that served absolutely no purpose whatsoever and left more than one mechanic scratching their head over the mere existence of them. One in particular didn't even fit in the space it was supposed to and was really in the way, but the car wouldn't work without it due to some designed set-up, even though the part itself did nothing.

The check engine light on that finally started coming on. Intermittantly, at first, and then more on than off. But it didn't mean a damn thing, since the engine was in good shape. I figure it must have been one of those superfluous parts causing it to register that it needed work. Either that, or one of those manufacturer-requried resets.

Doesn’t anyone even work the spare into their tire rotation anymore? Oh wait, tire rotation? Heh, silly me, thinking anyone out there still knows what that is who isn’t also collecting Social Security checks.

You'd like me, but you'd never meet me, since I keep a spare, rotate my tires (sort of), and can change my own tire.

Except that one time when I couldn't change it. And Nekojin (my 6'2", 250lb+ boyfriend) couldn't change it. And the Auto Club driver looked at us like we were both idiots. But he couldn't change it, either. It took three of us and some damage to our cross tree to change that tire because the asshats who'd fixed my mom's brakes last had used the pneumatic wrench to put the lugs on and tightened them on to something I suspect is just shy of breaking them.

I was told (by the roadside assistance guy actually) that I shouldn't be using the jack in my parents' van, because it's not entirely safe to use it. And said van doesn't have a spare - just a dummy spare, which, when you're 100km away from home, don't know any route other than the 401, means that after the local repair shop closes you effectively don't have a spare at all.

It's really, really unfortunate that so many car companies are cutting corners on such things. Which is why I like to have a decent floor jack and a real spare on a real rim for any car I own. (I currently don't have either, which I've been procrastinating on acquiring...)

^-.-^

[JPD]

I will admit to being one that doesn't know how to change a tire. I know the theory behind it, and hopefully I'll get someone to walk me through it some point soon. I had a tire blow on me just a couple of weeks ago. I am so thankful for the two guys that put the spare on for me a couple weeks ago when a tire blew on my moms car. One of them had to go back to the fire-station where he worked due to the fact the the lug wrench that came with my moms car was the wrong size for her tires.

The things I do know how to do: I know how to check the oil, and where the oil goes in. I know how to use a tire gauge and put air in the tires. In Ford Probes I can visually check if the alternator belt is there, and by watching the gauge I know about how long I have until it completely dies, so I can get it into a parking space. (I miss that car)

The car I drive right now is a 92 Honda Accord with 322,000 miles on it. I was told by my dad who does most of the maintenance stuff himself to ignore it. Why I don't know

Thanks for the reminder that I need to get my oil changed, as it's overdue.

[BlaqueKatt]

I will admit to being one that doesn't know how to change a tire. I know the theory behind it, and hopefully I'll get someone to walk me through it some point soon.

at least you know the theory and are willing to learn-short storytime-

Working at the gas station(just a c-store, no garage) we had a group of college aged guys come in-all very strapping young bucks(you could tell they all worked out)-had a flat and actually a full sized spare and a good jack, problem being none of these four young men knew how to change a flat. They walk past me(doing nothing really) to ask my co-worker G(6'3" 315# of pure muscle-obviously busy with paperwork-he was the shift manager) if he can help them...nope he's busy-but he'll send "Bert" out to help. Guys go out and wait...now G is quite "mean" at times...Bert is his nickname for me, and yes I know how to change a tire, so does G-however G wants to teach them a lesson in humility why it's important to know how to do things yourself, and not assume a woman can't help you.

Guys have jack and spare out when I step out of the store-"Hi I'm Bert, I hear you need help-no problem, give me five minutes and you'll be on your way"

Needless to say all four guys payed very close attention to what the 5'5" 105# bleach blonde was telling and showing them.