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

I'm ignorant of valve seats as I've never rebuilt an engine at that level. Is it a pressed-in seat like the steel cylinders are in an alloy engine?

A guy in the "geo community" is well known, "Glenn Gibson". He also professionally rebuilt aircraft engines.

I'm not familiar with the 4 cylinder variant, but I've owned at least 10

Such fancy tools... I've done several Geo Metro serpentine and timing belt jobs... just use whatever wooden stick is on hand to tension the serpentine belt via leverage on the alternator... lol.

Same story with most newer vehicles. My point being, that you have to be a tech genius to get around some of the purposeful road blocks that manufacturers install. As you know, my vehicles are basically all older than me, and if I don't do the work myself, I'm paying someone else a lot more to do it.

Fair point, I need to read into it. Me, I like the feel of and control of manual steering, much like I prefer manual brakes. The Galaxie has 4 wheel manual drum brakes from the factory.

I'm in my 20's for reference. I can pull out my grandfather's tool chest and get most of the work on vehicles that I need to get done (plus a set of metric wrenches) until we get past the 2000's. I don't have these specialty tools, etc.

Maybe you're right, I couldn't say. I don't care for the technical "hacking" aspects of it. I'd rather get in and get it done.

My first (and last) Chrysler was a '97 LHS. I wondered why such a clean looking maintained car was only $500 circa 2017. I learned. On top of all of the little electrical issues, the automatic climate control panel would randomly wig out and blast heat in the middle of summer, and could not be turned off. Eventually I learned that repeatedly punching it will eventually shut it off (LOL). I ended up buying a whole climate control panel out of a junk yard car. I consider manual controls and switches a feature ;)

Of course you can return things purchased at HF.

If you get 10 years of service from a tool purchased at HF, you probably got your money's worth. Toss it and start over, IMHO.

Nope, not a single question when I returned the pot-metal wrenches and bought a better set. I don't think they could sell any hand tools without such a warranty.

I think "Pittsburgn" is a HF-only brand. If it's not that it's some other studly-sounding name. I think those wrenches are the only thing I've needed to return.

Heh. The guy up the street collects and repairs Spiders -- He has at least 9 of them, and every once in a while buys or sells one.

The engine and trans worked great for 30 years. The plastic stuff decomposed, the connection to the passenger-side mirror broke pretty damn early and required removal of the AC to fix (according to the lying-bastard dealer), and the throttle system tried to kill me repeatedly. Using it as a trash-hauler is appropriate.

The seats were comfy and the steering was OK, although the thing wallowed. The AC and heater stopped working long ago. The thing that kept the seat from flopping forward in a hard stop may or may not have worked; I was afraid to actually test it, but it definitely didn't work when the car was just moving.

I wonder if I'll live long enough to bitch about my 2013 Corolla. I can complain about the ergonomics (apparently designed by somebody's unemployed brother-in-law who said "Hey, I can do that!") but the works seem bulletproof.

o Steering wheel uses too many turns lock-to-lock.

o Seat doesn't go high enough -- and I'm NOT a midget.

o Doors lock as soon as I get in the car and close the door. Surely this should be a choice rather than a nuisance.

o I can't see any edges, making it difficult for me to tell where the car ends. (In my defense, I used to be able to parallel-park BIG cars easily, and I could even back a trailer as long as I could see it.)

o The "power socket" is right behind the shift lever in park, and there is only one.

o It's a real bitch to clean the inside of the windshield unless you have ape-arms.

o Only being able to put a floor or bottle jack under the [invisible] jacking slots. It used to be nice to just shove the thing under an obvious place. If you actually CAN do it intuitively I'd be really happy, but I've never heard that.

o No flat horizontal place on the dashboard to put a phone, and it's pebbly-surfaced so the semi-sticky things won't stick either. I don't want to have to look down by my right thigh to see the next GPS direction, and using one of those things that attaches to the AC vents seems stupid. Cup-holder things are too short and would get in the way of the shift lever.

o Android GPS voice won't dump into the radio unless the radio is dedicated to the bluetooth connection. Why not listen to the radio until a voice comes from the phone? Not certain what happens with a phone call.

o Extra transponder key cost $150. Local smith gave me a deal -- two plain keys for $150 and he disabled the transponder requirement. I had a use for two plain spare keys and NO use for an extra transponder key. All I REALLY wanted was a goddam spare plain key :-(

Yes. Rain too. We really don't know how to deal with this stuff. I had chain-type chains for my Sentra. Nobody told me you weren't supposed to drive 45 with chains -- worked fine until one broke :-(

The bummer is when you buy something on sale bacause you just KNOW you are going to need it some day - and when the day comes to use it for the first time it is FUBAR - - -

Or you buy 2 because you KNOW you will need a spare for whenthe first one dies - and the un-used one dies at the same time as the used one -

- -

I don't have a clue. I did everything involved in replacing a blown head gasket except the machine work on the head and the final torquing of the head bolts (not strong enough, I'm ashamed to say), but I never noticed whether they were inserts or just case-hardened. I don't even know if I'd know.

The only people saying it's much harder to work on cars are those who never learned how to work on cars in the first place it seems.

I think it's the other way around in that cars have gotten vastly _simpler_ over the years in terms of what breaks and what needs to be maintained.

Many things lasts longer. Most things need less maintenance.

For some reason (probably radials) even tires last longer but most rubbery stuff doesn't last all that much longer than it did long ago.

Luckily rebuild kits abound for rubbery stuff in calipers, master cylinders, slave cylinders, and drum brake cylinders (where youtube videos show you ever step of the way). Even rebuilding alternators is still rather easy.

Almost everything on cars is easier now than it was ever before. There's no need for the yearly tuneup anymore, and even oils last longer.

The major change I think is electronics simplified auto maintenance because they only fail (in general) one way as they don't necessarily "wear out."

The ever growing amount of electronics in cars makes the maintenance so simple that the only ones complaining are those who never did maintain their cars (they never learned any of the basic fundamentals of auto repair).

What they never learned is what, I feel, should be taught to students today.

I don't think you understand what a tensioner looks like when its tension is released by turning a 19mm hex bump (it looks like a bolt head but isn't).

No wooden stick on this planet is going to budge that 19mm hex "bolt" a bit.

There is only one thing on this planet that will work and that's a 19mm socket but even then you still need a long thin bar to allow you to work the belt across the pulley when the alternator is not adjustable and you need all your hands and all your tools in the same spot in the tight compartment.

"Merchandise may be returned within 90 days of purchase" "You must provide the original receipt to receive an exchange or refund."

In both ways, that's _nothing_ like the Craftsman warranty. Is the Snap-On warranty as s***ty as the harbor freight warranty?

Reading the link that was posted the warranty for most things at harbor freight is no better than that at target in that you have only 90 days and you must keep your receipt (which isn't at all like the Craftsman warranty).

However the warranty for hand tools seems to be better than for the rest.

It doesn't mention how you need to prove you bought it from them though. Anyone have experience with that?

hand tools === stuff without a cord. Stuff with cords is 90 days. I have no idea where rope, bungees, tarps and so forth fall but I'm guessing in the 'Well that was s*it' as you toss it into the garbage. HF isn't the only merchandiser that hopes you find returning stuff more trouble than it's worth.

That works two ways. I've gotten inexpensive stuff from Amazon that obviously was a ripoff. Their attitude has been 'keep it. We don't need to see it again. We'll just credit you.'

There may also be differences between me walking into the brick and mortar HF store down the street and dealing with mail order.