What have you learned in your old age that you feel should be taught to high school students?

Ed's a long time poster and often has worthwhile comments. However he came down with a virulent case of TDS and hasn't been quite the same since.

The Suzuki/Yamaha dealer was like that. Both he and his wife were great people and would go out of their way to find Yamaha parts. It was an '82 that had sat in a garage for most of its life so it was past the 10 year spare part thing. I'd bought it used so they didn't have any skin in the game. I eventually did but the DR650 from them.

Like several businesses around here, they wanted to retire and the kids had no interest so they sold the business. So far, so good. The new owners picked up the Triumph and Suzuki line and were easy to deal with too. The problem was Mike had a grandfathered agreement with Suzuki and only carried the models he could sell like the DR400, DR650, and the V-Stroms. Suzuki told the new owner he would have to carry their floor plan, which included a lot of Suzuki cruisers that you can't give away around here so they dropped the line.

They still have a few parts left but mostly I have 2 Suzukis and no source of parts within 100 miles. Thankfully Bezos has no objection to selling bike parts.

Suzuki managed to kill their car division with stuff like that. You'd think they would learn.

This was a Giulietta Sprint. Like Sophia Loren, beautiful to look at but high maintenance. Later I had a Fiat Spider for a few months that fit the same profile. I learned though. The Harley dealer carried Ducati for a while and I walked by those really fast.

knuttle <keith snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net wrote

There can be when common sense should have fixed that.

Yep, that is certainly your problem.

Why? Large swathes of California get snow every year. Most drivers handle it just fine (and carry chains in the Sierra).

Even southern california gets snow (e.g. Palm Springs, for example, has snow at the top of the tramway) in the resort areas (Big Bear).

I80 was closed several times in the last few days, but then that's to be expected when you get seventeen feet in two weeks.

I don't know if there is a cure for 'lug'. Besides the whole fork of luggage, lugging stuff including engines, there is the mechanical branch that seems to mean 'that thing sticking out' except of course for pad eyes, aka lifting lugs, which is the thing you stick a clevis pin through. I suppose boot soles and dirt bike tires fit in someplace.

That will pass in 2024. Maybe even 2022 but not sure yet.

knuttle <keith snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net wrote

Haven't seen anything like that with my 2006 Hyundai Getz

Current cars have far more sensors which can fail.

True.

And the whole car does too.

Or none at all in the case of the ignition timing.

And they tell you what has failed, older cars never did that.

But arguably need need to given that modern cars last so long now and most will have replaced them before anything fails.

Corse quite a few buy those.

I've got a Garmin Nuvi that I put into a beanbag type mount. The first two Yaris's (Yarii?) had the instrumentation in the center and the rest of the dash sloped toward you. When going uphill on a rocky road the GPS would wind up in your lap. The new one has the instruments in front of you, creating a little pocket to corral the GPS. However it lost a couple of very handy cubby holes. I think they replaced one with yet another damn airbag.

No remote entry on this baby. Real live $2.50 a pop to copy keys.

When reality intrudes on dreams... This was the early '80s in the middle of yet another gas panic. Bill's first attempt to go upscale was a Merc with a diesel engine. This was a guy who leaned toward Camaros so 0 to

Enter the Cadillac. Cadillac was trying to emulate the Eurotrash, so enter the Cimmaron, another of their disasters. It spent a lot of time in the shop but the final straw was when he parked next to his secretary's new Pontiac which was about the same.

CAFE shrunk the Lincoln too. It was a far cry from my 5200 pound Continental with a 430 ci engine but it still looked more or less like a Lincoln. He was happy with it.

I went from an '80 Camaro to a '82 Firebird. Not exactly an upgrade but I really like hatchbacks. I'm not an Uber driver so the rear seats are folded down permanently and the cargo space filled with all sorts of strange stuff.

Yeah, I've in LA when it rained. I was driving a truck at the time so I'd crank Slayer up on the tape deck and let it fly. I figured if I ran over one of those little grey cars hiding in a cloud of spray it would be their problem. I'd really like to see the silver/gray hide in the rain color choice go away. My real preference is black but I usually wind up with whatever is sitting on the lot.

I've got a couple that I use sparingly. One resides in the kitchen junk drawer. I must be turning into a wuss in my old days and can't always get the screw top off jars. Even for that there are better tools.

Disclaimer: I'm left handed so twisting a lid counterclockwise is sort of like using a pipe wrench backwards. You're pushing your thumb out rather than sucking it in

Oh, you're talking about the belt tensioner. The car that I mentioned has a belt tensioner like that for the timing belt, but for the serpentine belt, no tensioner. You put tension on it by putting leverage on the alternator, then tightening the 12MM bolts to fasten the alternator in place.

I have too much fun buying and selling old cars. Of the 4 I have right now, one is for parts, a junky convertible that I drive around, a very low milage one in a storage unit, and a hatchback sedan that I also drive around (well, until the headlight wiring bit the dust).

You have 4 Geo Metros?

True, new cars do need less maintenance. In my opinion, that still doesn't make the repairs any easier when they need done (if anything, the repairs are usually more complex than old roomy engine compartments, when it can only be a basic few issues for a problem).

I disagree on tires. I've owned multiple 40+ year old vehicles and the full size spare is still solid.

I have a 1968 full size bias ply spare tire on my '68 Galaxie right now. I've put 200 miles on it. The only reason that it really needs to be replaced, is because it's basically bald.

Old bias ply tires last FOREVER (at least in storage). I will agree, that the tread on a bias tire does not last as long as a radial in use.

True, but that's also relevant to modern oil technology. I always use semi synthetic and good filters for 5K miles between changes, no matter the car.

The trouble with computers, sensors, and the like in new cars, would be that all too many times one OBD2 code could mean any number of sensors failed. I've had enough frustration chasing these problems down in some of the late 90's S10s that I've owned. One truck had 13 codes... yes,

1. I said to heck with it, and didn't bother again on that one.

I agree that you have a point, that the basics should be taught first. I'm in my mid 20's, and I'm self taught... I had no one to teach me. It's amazing what one can learn from YouTube videos these days.

I have exactly one OBD2 era car, and if a code pops up, that's off to auto zone to read the code, and try to decipher from there. OBD1, just jumper terminals and count the check engine blinks to find the code. That's been reliably easier for me, in early 90's cars.

Nor have I with my 2005 Hyundai Elantra, but I have seen the likes with vehicles from the last 5 years. Read into high end vehicles like BMW's.

Very true, and some OBD2 codes can have multiple meanings to chase down.

Very much so, especially with rusting bodies.

That depends on the person. I won't spend over $1k on a car, usually far less.

I have a set of Pittsburgh wrenches, both quarter inch and 3/8 inch drive, that my grandfather bought new years ago, both are metric-only. Likely because he only had standard tools up until that point. Perhaps quality has gone down hill since, but those things are very solidly built, and I always keep them in a car that I take on road trips.

I don't know about modern cars but they used to be machined into the head. For a light cleanup you lapped the valves manually. One video is

Grinding the seat also means the valve is sitting lower than the original design. If life really had turned to s*it and the seat was bad enough that it couldn't be cleaned up, then they would machine out for a pressed on seat.

There are a lot of variations when you get into performance engines. A multi-angle seat has one angle where the valve actually seals and two or more angle to try to smooth the flow. Porting the heads tries to smooth out the flow. Cast heads are usually pretty rough and can introduce turbulence in the air flow. The shade tree mechanic goes in with a die grinder and smooths angles until it looks shiny and pretty. More sophisticated people put the head on a flow bench to measure the actual effect. Fluid dynamics aren't always intuitive. More people than one have ground away little bumps that were there for a very good reason. DI fuel injection may have changed that game too.

You'd have to ask a shop guy but I think valve jobs may be rare for modern engines. Carbed engines tended to lean out, raising temperatures, and raising hell in general. Of course lean is good for emissions and epa averages so it's a balancing act. Screw up and you wind up in Dieselgate. Volkswagen had finally come up with a usable diesel in the TDI and got f***ed by the EPA bloodhounds.

I had a 4 cylinder. If you read Consumer Reports it was an uncomfortble, slow deathtrap only suitable for short city trips. I made a few runs from Montana to southern Arizona with no problems. True, there are 3 passes in Utah where it would slow down to 55 or so. otoh I've driven those same passes in a big rig at 27 mph. you just have to be patient.

The only complaint I had with the car was its green color. Park the thing in the desert to go hiking and you'd better drop a GPS breadcrumb if you ever want to find it again lurking in the saguaros.

I would immediately disable that.

I've noticed that in lots of newer cars. My Hyundai sits me up too tall, yet I still can't see the hood. Backing up is easy since it's a hatchback, but it's difficult to judge the front end.

I'm glad that my cars are too old for those chipped keys. Those are a money racket. The 2005 Hyundai does have a key lock remote thing. It wasn't worth it to me to replace the dead battery in it.