Fun with Mechanicry
DEMachina.
Posted to Diary on Tue Jul 08, 2008 at 03:36:50 PM EST. RSS.
Working on cars is one of those things I wish I knew a lot more about.
It seems like every male over the age of 35 knows a lot about cars, and a lot of those younger. Somehow I seem to have missed that part of my education.
Take this past weekend, for example. My girlfriend and I took her aged car back to my parents' place for the Fourth. Since my dad has a garage, I figured I'd take care of a much-needed oil change on my girlfriend's car. Bought the stuff after having the auto parts store look up how much oil it needs (since the owner's manual is MIA).
July 5th. I get the thing up on the ramps my dad owns for this purpose, find the drain plug for the oil pan and drain it. Fine. Next I go hunting for the oil filter. It's a small (1.9L) engine, and they tend to put them in bizarre places. So when I see the tell-tale cylindrical orange thing sticking out in a fairly awkward place, I'm not especially surprised. I manage to get the thing off by hand (which you're supposed to be able to do with an oil filter), and drain the blackish gunk that comes out into the container we have for used oil.
Then I try to put the new oil filter on. Try as I might, it leaves about a 1/4 inch gap between the engine housing and the filter. Of course, I don't see this because of all the shadows (like I said, it's buried in the engine) and only discover the gap after turning the engine on and hearing a splattering sound. Oops.
So, there's more black stuff everywhere...nuts, I guess that means I just wasted a quart or two of oil. I call the auto store back to make sure they gave me the right filter: it looks like the threads don't quite line up.
Eventually, after consulting with my dad when he gets home, it turns out that orange cylindrical object was the transmission filter. Figures. So we put the old one of those back on, and plan on making another trip to the auto parts store to replace all the AT fluid that's now on the floor of my dad's garage.
We finally manage to find the damned oil filter, and it turns out it's on the passenger's side, above the suspension, directly over the CV boot. And of course the lackey at whatever oil change place she'd gone to back in December cranked the thing on there but good, so it takes us the better part of a day (after buying a chain-based wrench) to get the thing off. Pour some more transmission fluid in there and the car's running better now than it was when we started.
It seems like mine was a pretty honest mistake, since it's so rare to find external transmission filters, and the thing was so covered in grime that there was no way to see the faded "transmission" written on it. Then combine that with the fact that the stuff that came out of there was black with a slight red tinge.
I'd love to learn how to do more maintenance myself, both because I love tinkering and because it'd save me a fortune.
So, do any of you have any good car maintenance disasters to share? And how did you learn to do what you know how to do?
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