General > General Technical Chat

Never be so stupid as I was

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vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: Bud on September 22, 2021, 03:07:48 pm ---
--- Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on September 22, 2021, 05:42:20 am ---I snap-decisioned and pulled into a service station and bought a new car battery, fitted it myself and got home on the new battery with no air conditioning and shock horror, no radio.  :'(

--- End quote ---
More importantly, likely no airbag as well   :(

--- End quote ---

I doubt that the airbag has any situation where it isn't prioritised, so it would probably have been OK.
Aircond & radio are not priorities.

I had a similar thing happen just North of the Billabong Roadhouse, 248km from Carnarvon in West Oz.
One moment we were sailing along serenely, with the aircond keeping us nice & cool, the next, we were coasting to a stop.
The temperature on the road was 49C (around 120F), so we didn't want to stay stuck there for long.

Luckily, we flagged down a young couple in a Toyota Hilux, who towed us back to Billabong, where I played around under the bonnet, whilst sending my wife & daughter inside the roadhouse.

The battery was "dead as a doornail", so I decided to buy a new one, on the offchance it was what was faulty.
A charged one from Billabong started the engine okay, but, shading the dash with a towel, I could see the charge warning light was on-------Bummer!

The helpful couple suggested that, if we wanted to try for Denham in Shark Bay, they would escort us & charge our battery with jumper leads from their car, as required.

As the aircond used current for its magnetic clutch & fan, as well as the more esoteric matter of whether a greater mechanical load on the engine could cause the ignition, or Engine Control Unit to use more current, we opted to leave it off & wind all the windows down ----the old "4-80" system!
Off we went, stopping whenever the battery ran out, got a charge, & continued on.

Everything worked well, at least after I got my "hot weather mojo" back------so well, in fact that at the Denham turnoff, our helpful friends suggested we go on to Carnarvon, which we did, although the "duty cycle" of moving to stationary got somewhat worse towards the end.

That day was a Public holiday, but the next day, we organised for the local auto-electrician to pick the car up .
About four hours later, he had reconditioned our alternator & we had the car back.

Try getting service like that in the City!

eti:
We all make mistakes, it’s how we learn. Bless you my friend, don’t lose focus. :)

Trymon:
wow I was not able to look into the Forum for a few days and now there is a metric ton of replies. :D
Have still to read everything but can't resist to say that I fix a lot myself regarding my Car. Just oil change is a complicated topic. No really good possibility as I don't have access to a lift and I know that it would be possible to do it also on street level but if some neighbor sees this and thinks this should be reported or the police I would be in trouble. Changing Car fluids somewhere on the street is highly illegal in Germany, even if you don't spoil anything.

james_s:
When I was a teenager I used to change the oil in my truck in the parking lot of the apartment complex I lived in. It was against the rules I'm sure, but I was quick and never left a mess so nobody ever stopped me. It had enough ground clearance that I could crawl under it without lifting it though.

Zeyneb:
I do live in an apartment complex in the Netherlands. Before I was member of a DIY car repair shop I also did my oil changes in the parking lot. I did get a complaint from the woman who thinks she is boss of the entire apartment complex. Very awful person. But I learned in those cases it's very important to stand up for yourself. As these people use all kinds of bullshit arguments to get their way. After that they didn't bother me to work on my car in the parking lot.

As for doing some stupid thing, today I was at the DIY car repair shop. The objective there was to clean the throttle body. I successfully unmounted the throttle body and removed deposit from it with carburetor cleaner. I'm using these foam swabs (like a deluxe Q-tip) for this. But when using solvent like carburetor cleaner eventually the foam separates from the stick. That happened just when I thought I was a good idea to put the swab in the opening of the intake manifold. So, the foam portion dropped down in the first intake runner after the throttle body. That sucked! Eventually I was able to get it out luckily. So, I was able to drive back home and type this sentence right now.

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