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Best advice I can give is to know both ends of the job you are doing. If you are replacing the transmission filter and fluid, make sure you know how much and what type of fluid is going in, and where and make sure that you can put fluid back in before you take any out. VW likes to bury their air filters, and as said have had their share of electrical demons. I had a VW beetle that I could turn the key off and remove the key, but as long as I kept my foot on the brake, the engine stayed running. Realize this was a 1970 VW beetle with a relatively straight forward electrical system!
Asking in advance though will put you on the right track. Make sure you know your torque specs for the manifolds, etc….
There’s always someone working in a field they have no business in. In this day with the internet though, some of the basics of mistakes that have been discussed already should be eliminated by all but the select few ignorant/stubborn ones that think they can understand the engineering of an automobile they’ve never worked on by pure brain power and brilliant under-engineering.
I hate to be the guy, but I think Eric and his webmaster would prefer that this kind of talk wasn’t used on his site. While I don’t condemn torrent sites ( I have my own feelings on file sharing ), I don’t think this is the kind of place where you should be finding ways to “pirate” any software, at least in the open forums. I would leave that PM’s if you feel the need to share the information.
However, a nice piece of software for your Android smart phone that works very nicely that I can recommend is called “torque”. There is a free trial, but the actual program is only 5 bucks, and is very powerful for what it is. However, the bluetooth adapter is about $100. The cheap ELM 327 adapters on ebay and amazon will only last for about 2-3 days if you are lucky.
Beyond that, there are plenty of freeware OBD2 software programs that you can try before you buy that range in price from relatively cheap up to $800 that allows you to write to the vehicles computer.
Great place to start if you have the time to work your way up the pay scale. A similar situation happened with me a long time ago, where I started in “the pit” and had the opportunity to learn and grow and eventually become a technician. Unfortunately my circumstances at the time didn’t allow me the luxury of working for that low of a wage for an extended time and I had to move on. It is a great place to be to get experience and exposure though. I like to look at positions like that as being able to dabble in a profession without having to commit to that profession. Last thing you want is to be tied down into something you find yourself hating, only because you have too much invested in it to feel that you can leave it.
Me, I just usually take it out on the wife and kids when I get home from work.
I kid, I kid! No really, get a dog.
Just kidding! Sheesh…is it getting hot in here?
I usually quantify the reason for the jerk being a jerk by rationalizing why the guy is the way he is. In other words, I try to think of interesting reasons for that person to be the way they are, and feel pity for them. Like they must have been abused by their grandfather, or they have an ugly wife, or a thousand other things that would explain why this freaking idiot is cutting everyone off in traffic when he’s ultimately not going to get there any sooner, and possibly much later than anyone else. Or why is this Sally in front of me going so slow downtown? She must be unfamiliar with it and is trying to find an address.
Things like that help calm me down. It also helps when you don’t place unnecessary stress on yourself in the first place. Usually it’s the other person that is the catalyst for your own stress bubble to break. Stop worrying so much. If you needed that information, it certainly wasn’t the only way that you could have gotten it…you could have asked the instructor after class, or before the next one, or by emailing them or….. Cut that stress off before it gets a chance to get a little steam behind it and you’ll find that the other things you used to get upset about start becoming less and less.
Well, no new good news, but some more information gathering.
So, I did a little experimenting. With the new Air cleaner on, my STFT ( short term fuel trim ) readings were reaching into the double digits positive. So, since it’s winter and there isn’t much for environmental debris floating around, I decided to just run the MAF sensor open with no filtration. Huh, the STFT readings were right down close to 0 where it’s supposed to be ideally. However, when I started the van, it stumbled a little and the RPM had more fluctuation to it ( it would drop RPM slightly from time to time ). It is smoother with the air cleaner on, though you can see the needle dip slightly every few seconds.
This of course got me scratching my head. I’m certainly not a savant when it comes to deciphering engine data. I’m still working on figuring out the correlations between what the MAF and MAP sensor are telling the computer what’s coming into the engine, vs what the O2 sensor is telling it that is coming out of the engine. The cross talk and how the computer compensates for the values is still a bit of a mystery to me.
What my limited knowledge tells me though, is that there is certainly something wrong. If the Air cleaner assembly is causing a restriction, then any source of new intake air via a gasket leak or “Pirate air” as Eric referred to is going to be more evident due to a higher relative manifold vacuum. With the air cleaner off, the restriction is gone and the engine can breath freely. I put a plastic bag over the cone filter and restricted it down as far as I could without stalling the engine at idle. With a brand new filter, it seemed that the amount of filter area exposed was really small for a v8 engine. I had probably 90-95% of the filter covered with the bag and it still ran smoothly. I suppose at idle the engine really doesn’t require a ton of airflow though.
One other thing that struck me odd was that when I first started the van up ( with the air cleaner on ) was that I could hear the intake suction through the cone filter plain as day. It went away completely after a minute or so of idling.
I have to say one thing for sure, I probably would have been able to discover the problem on my own easier if I were dealing with a truck just due to the trouble I have to go through to access the majority of the motor.
That is insanity. However, from what I’ve read about Mazda’s, they seem to make everything impossible to service, including the HID components, you have to replace the entire headlight assembly instead of being able to replace the one part that is bad. Simple things like that are enough to keep me from buying certain cars.
I mean, having to remove the dash assembly to replace a heater core these days is pretty commonplace, it’s really not something that should need replacing for a very long time unless the cooling system gets messed with, and most of the time a reverse flush will take care of it, so I can deal with that. But having to go through that much trouble for a blower motor or even just the resistor is stupid. Electrical parts, especially those that require them to heat up to operate properly are going to have a higher potential for early failure and to put them where the sun don’t shine is just bad engineering IMHO.
The most recent for me would be my current Astro van, nicely equipped with a V8 installed by the previous owner. Another mans project as I find out is probably the worst thing I could have purchased to replace my old trusty Dakota. This summer, for whatever reason the van developed a coolant leak on the way to work on a fine Saturday morning. The reason I knew this was, we had stopped for donuts and coffee on the way in on our 25 mile commute. Look at that, steam from under the hood. So, we put some coolant into the engine and watch it pour out. That’s not good. So, I topped the overlflow up completely and put as much fluid into the radiator as I could and hightailed it back home. You’d think that I would have noticed the temp rising on the way in, as I have an actual temp gauge in the van.
Well, you see, a day before I was going to replace the knock sensor, but had mistaken the coolant temp gauge sensor for the knock sensor. The knock sensor has a wiring harness that goes to the sensor, the coolant temp sensor has a wire coming out of the sensor to the wiring harness. I had pulled that stupid wire off the sensor with no way to reattach it. Hey, the van had been running just fine, driving a day or two without it wouldn’t be a problem until I had gotten a replacement part right?
Apparently not. Ends up the drivers side gasket failed on the water pump from a loosened bolt. And that Water pump proved to be my nemesis as well. I replaced the gaskets 3 times before I finally got it to stop leaking. I had so much trouble getting the heavy cast iron pump in place and getting the first two bolts started that I kept damaging the passenger side gasket. I finally got smart and made two long bolts with the heads cut off and a slot cut on the end so I could unscrew them from the block with a short screwdriver. I slid the waterpump to the block on the bolts and used blue loc-tite on the threads. Thought I’d never deal with the waterpump again.
Ho HO! My fate with the cooling system wasn’t finished with me yet. Believing that I had finally exercised all the previous owners demons out of the van, I decided to give it a shake down acceleration test up the on ramp one night on my way back home. Sure enough, half way up the ramp, I see a hugh cloud of white smoke plume out of the back of the van and the temp gauge starts to rise. Seriously?! I pull over where it’s safe and have the wife bring me out some water so I can find out where it’s leaking from, because it’s dark and I can’t tell where due to all the coolant.
Here, it ended up beign that I blew the bypass hose off the water pump because when I had put the hose back on, I ended up putting the hose clamp on the ridge of the hose connector instead of past it. Fortunately, I carry a toolbox in the van and got it fixed in 10 minutes and drove the van home.
Sometimes it’s easy to lose focus on one detail because you are so focused on overcoming another obstacle.
I had a 1970 bug in high school and always wanted an oval. Of course, a split window would have been cooler, but chances of finding one of those, even in the mid eighties was getting hard to do at a reasonable price.
Of course, I’d have to convert it to 12v, get a adjustable front axle and put an 1800cc dual weber carbed motor in it…
You need the MAF sensor, don’t try to bypass it, and the air temp sensor does little other than to tell the computer how warm the air going into the engine is so it can make minute fuel trim changes. The MAF is the major player in determining fuel trim, so it needs to stay in the loop. If you are going to add anything to the stock engine, you may need adapters to keep the MAF sensor connected in the proper place.
Is the intake system you want to use designed for this particular application, or are you trying to make it work? A link to the component you are looking at will help determine if it’s feasible or not.
Yup and Yup. There’s only a short collar between the plastic intake duct and the MAF, so chances of it being any source of a vacuum leak are slim. However, I did replace that year plus old cone filter with an exact replacement. I’m now getting STFT readings pretty steady in the plus 10 range. I’d really like to get a smoke test done on this before I plunge into an intake gasket replacement, because I’ll tell you what, if it’s not the intake gasket and something else I’d really pop a cork.
Honestly, if I had a garage I think I’d have probably just bit the bullet and replaced the gasket whether it was the problem or not, just for piece of mind.
I hate any car that I have to work on on ITS TERMS. If it’s MY TERMS, then I really don’t mind the challenge. I did rear coils and plugs on a newer Avalon ( toyota ) the other week and I have to say that beyond removing the upper plenum being pretty common for a V6 car, the fact that I had to remove the windshield wipers, wiper motor and cowling seemed to be a bit of unnecessary work. It’s crazy that changing spark plugs on a car like that can cost an owner a lot more than they are paying for the platinum plugs and new coil packs. But I suppose, if you aren’t touching them but every 75/100k miles- a little work to get at them isn’t that big of a deal. At least they came out without any trouble.
Generally I don’t replace parts like that, but I got the part dirt cheap at the junkyard while there getting parts for my Astro. Just seemed to me that the TPS reading should read 0 on my meter, as it’s read 0 on every other car I’ve worked on, so that threw up a flag for me. The MPG had gone down on the Explorer so I started to go through some of the basics ( replaced the air filter, checked for loose connections, bad vacuum lines, etc ) and then looked at the scan tool to see what I was getting for Live Data readings, which is where I found that I had a slow O2 sensor and the TPS value and “load” reading. I know that the MAP shows the load on the engine, and there is always going to be a reading of a few percent, but 13 seemed a bit off as I’m used to seeing 3-5% on my scanner.
I’ll do some more checking of the actual throttle area to see if I have something gumming it up…give it a good spray with some MAF cleaner and see where we get with that. This unseasonable 45 degree weather in MN at Christmas time is just another present that I should be taking advantage of.
You need the MAF sensor, don’t try to bypass it, and the air temp sensor does little other than to tell the computer how warm the air going into the engine is so it can make minute fuel trim changes. The MAF is the major player in determining fuel trim, so it needs to stay in the loop. If you are going to add anything to the stock engine, you may need adapters to keep the MAF sensor connected in the proper place.
Is the intake system you want to use designed for this particular application, or are you trying to make it work? A link to the component you are looking at will help determine if it’s feasible or not.
Money no object? That kinda opens it up to just about any super car out there. If I could buy just one car that I really wanted to own though, I’d have to choose between only two.
1967 Hardtop Corvette 427 4 speed with the side pipe exhaust, in bright red paint
Or, a 2004 Ford GT White with Blue stripes.Money being no object, why would you want a truck?