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I agree with you SpawnedX to a point. Scotty just has a different viewer in mind and a different understanding of what an automotive video should be… clear, crisp and concise. Straight to the point and very short, and I think we as a viewer (whether a current Tech, a former Tech, A DIYER, a shadetree mechanic, or general viewer) all have our OWN thoughts on what to do and not to do. Hell I’m a carpenter and I have tons of insight on ways to properly install a jam or things not to do that many of you outside the field might not know or even agree with. We all grew up and learned different ways and we each think “OUR” way is the appropriate and best way. C’est la Vie.
I will however disagree with your point about MOTORZ. If someone asked me where to get a specific tool or brand the answer would UNDOUBTEDLY change depending on the tool. A good wet-vac… try a Ridgid. A decent Torque wrench… Snap-On… an air Impact Wrench… Ingersoll-Rand. The best electric impact driver… Makita or Hitachi. And you yourself probably have your brands that you would recommend, many of you are big supporters of Dewalt or Mac or Matco. My point is, neither of us would recommend a single brand to cover everything.
Motorz does… because SEARS are the sponsors. That’s fine and dandy (everyone’s gotta pay the bill for a show/ video and even Eric has BBB), however in this particular situation… the guy was asking for cheap tools (not a cheap brand) but where he could find quality tools on the cheap.
Any number of answers would be reasonable such as… Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon, buying old estate sales, yardsales, going to a retired Mech… anything.
Instead, on EVERY SHOW, at every opportunity we have to hear the Sears Blue Tool pitch. That’s over advertising in my opinion when you have to have several SEARS ads during the show, the stickers everywhere, every tool on the show a SEARS brand, SEARS listed as the sponsor and when asked for advice told “Go to SEARS.” We’ll agree to disagree… but to me personally… that’s overkill.I always am buying some new tools ( automotive, electrical, plumbing, carpentry) whether it’s the cheap Harbor Freight, the midline or going all out and snagging snap-on, Makita, matco, Bostitch, etc.
For the most part I’m usually pleased with what I buy (even the cheap crap) but man… are there times when I’m flat out disappointed. Let me give some abysmal reviews and then lighten it up with some stuff I’m impressed with that I didn’t think I’d be.
Kobalt… Oh where do I start. “BUT WILL!…. THEYRE GREAT AND THEYRE CHEAP TOO!”
… In my heavy use of tools, Kobalt (specifically the ones outsourced in china, Taiwan by Danaher) break, snap, chip, and shatter on a daily basis. I’ve stopped buying Kobalt. They’re overpriced… Not ergonomic for the most part… Not Heavy duty… Not long lasting… and not really that innovative.
All my extended hex’s (the ones with the little Hex balls… snapped or rounded off.
My nail pullers… shattered on the tips from pulling (go figure) nails.
My needle nose pliers… Chipped
Impact Sockets… Blown.
Grips on anything and everything… break loose and wiggle around.And the worst offender was actually something I was looking forward to, My Innova Equus 3320 DVM. Doesn’t read continuity on a consistent basis which means I have to keep to testing just to “Make sure.” The fluctuations make you dizzy and makes it harder to get a stabile voltage read and the wrist strap is useless. HOWEVER… I do like the rugged rubber corners so… uhh… that’s a plus.
And my BIGGEST surprise… my Milwaukee Impact Driver and Drill. On the pricey side and we weren’t really sure if we were going to get 300+ dollars out of it. Drop dead fantastic. Dropped off a roof, tortured by horses, left in mud, worked in the rain, drove 7 inch lags screws through solid oak, tile bits through porcelain, tapcons through any masonry surface, broke loose rusted exhaust bolts… And I’m not gonna lie… I told myself this stuff would be dead within a month and that the fancy little lights and battery meters would be dead within a week. Half a year later and I am man enough to admit… I was wrong. Badass cordless tools indeed. Milwaukee… I tip my hat off to you good sir. Keep making tools like these and you might build up a rep again.
Oh and I have a cheap Equus compression tester, a Craftsman torque wrench, Master Hand hose pliers and some Stanley and Craftsmen socket stuff I just bought as well. Too early tell on any of this but I’ll post something if they work out or utterly crush my spirit. ;D
What’s up with the sudden surge of yoyomax… Negative ladies and Gents… we have to crush this Rebellion. We need to Squash any and all resistance… WE WILL NOT GIVE UP… WE WILL NOT GO ALON…. oh wait… it’s just a contest. Scratch that.
This is war. ;D Just kidding…
… No but seriously… yo yo max 12 is going down.
Now I’m not saying YoYomax’s crowd is cheating… but there was a very suspicious “influx” of votes that happened every second with only a few thousand more subscribers than Eric. If they are cheating one might suspect that they simply told their web-browser (like Chrome) to delete all cookies every time the browser shuts down and then just keep closing, opening the browser and then voting… *Halo appears around head*
Welcome to the forums Alex and glad to hear that nothing is getting in your way of getting dirty and having fun ;p And I do believe you’ve found the place for learning and passion.
Also Dreamer you are a beast for keeping up with every single one of these ;D
If you’re seeing bubbles still, then there’s still more than likely air in your system. Air doesn’t transfer heat as efficiently as coolant does, so those bubbles can cause erratic heat situations as they get circulated in your system (areas of very hot). Do another full flush and refill and let us know how it goes 😛
I’m with Beefy on this one, Oil pumps do not normally (that I’m aware of anyways) seize up other than from lack of oil or neglect in some other area. I’d be wary of what the P.O. and the buddy mechanic said, friends or not. If this thing is starting to seize then there’s probably considerable wear to other parts in your engine too. This is outside my scope or abilities to help but keep us posted on what you end up doing.
*update*
Didn’t flush the coolant because it was raining, but I did get a chance to run some more diagnostics this night.Thorough clean of PCV, rattle check, and checked hoses for blockage (none), and checked for vacuum while engine running (Check).
MAF sensor and IAT sensor checked and clean (it was pretty much spick and span but I went through and cleaned it anyways)
Cleaned all vacuum tubes, replaced cracked ones and inspected intake all the way to the manifold. Check.
Removed fuel injectors and cleaned contacts.
Taped up Crank Shaft Sensor wires that had not been properly fixed and sealed (did not re-solder them) with Cold Shrink Electrical tape.
Replaced Fuses.
Checked Accelerator cable, tension is fine.Tests.
Ran a voltage leak test tonight, no visible voltage leaks, even after spraying plug wires and cap with water.
Ran a spark test on every wire, and with every wire we are getting spark.
Used a stethescope and listened to fuel injectors, they are all clicking away (working).
Voltage on battery with leads disconnected: 12.5 volts, right within specs.
Performed a vacuum leak test with Carb cleaner. Sprayed around vacuum line to valve cover, PCV, Intake, Lines to injectors. Nothing. Not so much as a chirp in RPMS. Two sets of ears and no discernible leaking or hissing sound anywhere in the compartment.
Performed a Power Balance test by unplugging injectors one at a time, equally significant drops in rpms (didn’t have a tach, or DOVM that can read exact change, but no noticeable difference in drop between cylinders).
Coolant test: Bad. Most definitely needs to be changed and flushed though it does not appear to have oil in it (didn’t test for comb. gases, and not really sure how to go about that)New notes.
Engine starts up and idles at 2000 rpms stabile and then soon starts loping, or surging erratically. However after this starts and stalls out, or if I turn off the car and I immediately restart the car… it will almost immediately start surging again. The longer I wait… (cooler the car gets) the longer it takes for the car to start to surge (which sounds like a coolant issue).When running car in short intervals (such as for this test) of less than 5 minutes… no white smoke, in fact no smoke at all appears.
Continuity check on the ground… no continuity anywhere in the engine compartment. Checked Continuity from neg terminal to fuse box ground for shits and giggles… nothing… interesting indeed. Once again, heavy corrosion.
Installed 30amp fuse for AC. Installed neg. lead onto battery terminal and started to install positive lead. Lead made contact with terminal and lots of visible electricity arced to the terminal (we could here something trying to turn over, starter maybe?) and BAM!… blown 30amp fuse. So now we know why that fuse was blown, something is definitely not happy. Possible cause of my parasitic draw? Bad relay?
Next on list:
Flush Coolant system (Priority)
Replace fuel filter (no worries not throwing parts at it, it’s way overdue) and check Fuel Pressure (regulator doesn’t seem to have any external damage)
Check 02 sensors.
Check and Clean EGR, FIAV, IAC
Disconnect exhaust system to see if any improvement in engine running (thinking blockage somewhere, and not necessarily in the cats).Besides my mazda project I have done some dumb things (recently and in the past) and seen family and mechanics do some dumb things.
Subaru Forester 07: My mom mentions that her oil is low and that she poured a quart in but nothing was reading on the dipstick. Can the dipstick be broken?
I tell her no, not unless you’re using the wrong dipstick or part of it’s broken off, it goes straight down into the oil pan and measures how much oil is currently there and that’s as simple as it is. She’s about 3 quarts low I realize and we immediately pick up oil and put it in. Funny thing is it had been down recently (against my wishes) to those local putz mechanics for a full 100,000 mile major tune-up less than a month ago. We put in the oil in and we monitor the underside of the car… no leaks, no oil puddles nothing. A few days go by and I check the oil and again… BONE DRY. At this point I’m like where is it going? So she insists on taking back to them to have it changed (she apparently thinks working on more than my car at a time is a bad idea, lol). We go back and they come back with a crushed oil filter, and begin blamingmy mother for trying to replace her oil filter…until the head notices it’s their proprietary oil filter and says it must of been one of the FNG’s they fired a while back. They had crushed it with a tool and then we’re too lazy to replace it. Now it starts making sense, the leak is in the filter and as we are driving down the highway we are spewing oil out but only when under heavy pressure, when we go to our house down our 15mph road… and stop, oil returns to the pan, and very little drops on the ground. Meanwhile her engine’s check light comes on and the cruise control starts flashing (on these foresters, that’s the Idiot light for ENGINE MISFIRE STOP DOING WHAT YOURE DOING. Back to the mechs.They tell her, her engine is misfiring and that the problem is the catalyst is below threshold and they’ll have to replace the cats for 1500, and that her rear diff is bad (there’s that slight ball bearing drone in the back wheel) and that’ll cost another 1500. she declines.
Here’s the interesting part… even though she forbids me to touch the car, I open it up yesterday to run some diagnostic practice on it, since it’s a known quantity. I go to pull the spark plugs and they are really stuck in there, like there’s serious suction. Refer to the manual and yes… it’s just like normal, pull on the boot top. So tug hard as I can and go what the heck I’ll replace the plug wires if need be and BAAM… oil everywhere starts pouring out. Same condition in other 3. Her Valve cover gaskets and rings around the spark plug hole are gushing, coating the spark plugs and causing a bad connection between them and the plug wires. A Simple check that they didn’t do. 2 seconds and they could of said… WELL there’s well your oil is going and probably why you’re having misfires.
Also, anyone have some tips on reading wiring diagrams… feel like I’m looking at a space shuttle ignition system…written in Russian.
drthrift035, thats quite the collection of tools you have found. Did you say that people threw them in the junk? Man times most be tough when people are dumping semi-used tools to make a few bucks.
I’m right there with you, straight out of earning a BA, needing work and so money’s tight. What i’ve done is buy alot of tools over the years and also combine my tools with everyone else’s in the nearby family, in a lend program. So together with a electrician, carpenter, mason and a bunch of in between supplies we pretty much have every tool for the job. Just have to go over and ask “nicely” to borrow some of the big stuff like the compressor. lol.
To be honest… I never would of done any of this without Eric. So I’m right there with you drthrift035, *raises glass* here’s to Eric, a very inspiring guy.
*update*
It was really tough to tell if there was leaks on the vacuum hoses so I started cleaning and boy did I discover some stuff all over. We do have cracked vacuum hoses, a cracked distributor cap (inside on the tower, along with cracked contacts), and more corrosion over all the sensors and copper contacts. Popped the fuse box out of curiosity and almost ever single one of the fuses was heavily corroded with a few blown (AC and tail lights). A engine mount nut that is not fully touching the mount and is stripped… and we’re still going.
So really we’re back to square one until I can repair and replace this stuff, my next door neighbor who used to be a mechanic mentioned that it might be symptomatic (as you said DjDevon) of multiple problems/issues and there’s really no use in trying to guess until I replace the known issues (vacuum hoses, distributor cap and possibly the distributor as it has lots of wear and areas of white damage on the housing)
*edit*
Just saw your post Eric, thanks for the help, we do have a known vacuum leak (possibly many more since many of these hoses are losing their pliability and starting to crack and they are probably going around the same time) and to be honest I really needed to flush coolant a while ago. It’s not pretty. I’ll admit… I bugged out because I hate dealing with coolant and it’s harder to dispose of, but thanks to your comment/pressure I’ll hop on that.Thanks for the help and pointing me to the other forum, I’ll head over there and leaf through the posts to try and gleam some information. That’s interesting that you mention that, my bro told me the same thing ( he said flat out it wasn’t an interference engine)… but as I said I’m not surprised the tech/mechs lied to me about that… as I mentioned this garage is rather shady… at least they’re smiling while stabbing you in the back.
I have not tried cleaning the MAF, though I was under the impression that if there was an issue with the MAF I’d see issues acerbated as I was accelerating not the other way around, either way I’ll put that on the list tomorrow to do… after all, cannot hurt.
Yep it’s OBD II, and We had O’reillys pull the codes a while back but beyond the catalyst being below threshold I don’t remember the other 2 codes, I’ll pull them up again tomorrow and post.
Thanks again for the suggestions, much appreciated!