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[AllThatIsMan]

Already tried the rubbing compound, didn't seem to help too much. Guess I'll try sanding, got some other minor bodywork to do anyways. Thanks.

[Tragik]

If the motor for my window will still work when I try to roll the window down, but not up, what do I need to replace?

This depends on the make/model/and year of car. If its a ford with the ovular shaped window switches, it would likely be a switch issue, as they are prone to failure. If its a chevy that uses a cable/pulley system to raise and lower the windows, it could be a regulator issue.

It could be the motor too. A good way to test this is to open your door panel and disconnect the two pin harness going into your motor. Using a 12 volt battery (think car battery, or in some cases cordless drill battery) touch the positive side of the battery to one post, and the negative to the other. the window should go up or down. then reverse the terminals and the window should go the oppostie direction. If it works fine both ways, its the switch. If not, its the motor.

[rbroyles]

Brand loyalty? Some people are irrational to extremes about brand and image. Tell someone that the Pontiac Firebird and the Chevrolet Camaro are the same car (they were, before being discontinued, mechanically identical and simply had different bodies) and they may very well get upset. Or better yet, point out that your neighbor's $70k Lexus is just an upmarket Toyota and you might get punched out (the same holds for Nissan/Infiniti and Volkswagen/Audi and Honda/Acura and Chevrolet/Buick). Americans are very image conscious; perhaps that's spilling over into other countries?

When the Acura first came out, my accountant bought a Legend, and the first time she drove it to our office my secretary asked what it was. After the CPA answered, I said it's basically a more expensive Accord. You would have thought I'd called her a dumb bitch the way she acted like,....... well a dumb bitch. She went into great detail how it was built in another factory, and was a totally different brand. She didn't want to hear the facts about how America was the only country in the world where the Acura is marketed as a separate brand. I decided not to point to the top of the door sill where it said built by Honda Motor Co. Actually a good car, I subsequently owned two Legends, and was very happy with them, both were driven close to 200k miles.

[Susan]

Lately I can't unlock the car door on the driver's side. The key is all stiff in the lock and won't turn. I have to unlock the door from the passenger's side. But sometimes the driver's side door does unlock, and sometimes it doesn't. It's quite random. What could possibly be causing this?

[Kicsi Viz]

It's probably neighborhood satanists.  Either that or gunk and/or rust building up on the lock mechanism.  You may be able to get temporary relief by spraying WD-40 or some sort of spray penetrating oil in the key slot but the best way to deal with it is probably to get some car-geek friend to pop open the door's inner panels and do a proper clean and lube of the lock.

But it's probably satanists.

[Susan]

Thanks for that. I'll know what to do if it turns out it is gunk, but you didn't really make it clear what I should do if it's satanists. Just use WD-40 the same way?

[Kicsi Viz]

Yes, but apply it using a cross pattern.

[daniannel]

Can anyone give me a rough estimate on a front-end alignment?
Does the price vary with the severity of the problem?

[Snipped]

My 73 Dodge needs a new radiator because it keeps getting clogged with sediment and causing the car to overheat. As it is now, it requires a flush every few hundred miles. Also, when the car runs for 10 minutes or more, when turned off the engine does this "clunk clunk clunk clunk" thing...it feels like the motor is going to jump right out of thing. Is that caused by the overheating?

I was told by one mechanic that the whole motor had to be taken apart and the heads needed to be cleaned because they probably had "carbon buildup" on them. Another told me I should run rocket fuel through the engine to clean it out and all would be dandy. Do I trust either of them? Will the new radiator solve everything?

Anyone want to buy a 73 Dart?

[Krogoth]

A new radiator may not solve your problem because the sediment that is clogging it is coming from somewhere. Most likely it is coming from your engine.

That "clunk clunk clunk clunk" thing you are referring to is known as dieseling(your engine is running after you shut it off). It can be caused by carbon build up but my guess is that your radiator is not sufficiently cooling your engine making it hot enough to facilitate ignition after you have shut it off. Here is a link.

If you solve the problem of your engine's coolant lines and channels being built up with years of nasty anti-freeze sediment you may very well solve your problem. A good shop should be able to run a cleaning agent through your entire cooling system and pretty thoroughly flush it. A new radiator alone may help in the short term but it will not get to the root cause of the problem. If you do have the system flush done I would suggest a new radiator and hoses, especially if they are all original equipment. Basically, what kind of shape is the car and engine in and how much can you comfortably afford to put into a 1973 that may very well blow up on you the next day anyway?

Rocket fuel is a fucking stupid ass idea by the way.

[Snipped]

Indeed, rocket fuel sounds like a pretty dumbass thing to add to a car. I would never have considered it. As for the rest of what you said, it sounds like the most informed opinion I've had out of maybe 20 or so mechanics. Thank you much. The car gets fixed on Friday (unless I have to wait on a radiator to be ordered).

Aside from said issues, the car is in perfect order, all original, with very low milage. I plan on it lasting another 14 years so I can pass it on to my son. Of course, I'll have it painted black and add armor and guns to it by then...to prepare him for his journey beyond Thunderdome.

[Flamer Shaftglutton]

This isn't so much a car question as it is an engineering question, but how would I go about making a homemade odometer/tripometer? The whole panel went out on my 95' Buick LeSabre (oil temp/pressure, odometer, speedometer, fuel gage, tripometer, and charge indicator). I was told it could be fixed by replacing the motor behind the dash, but I certainly don't have the money for that and don't want to do it myself.

I used to work with my Dad and Grandpa on cars all the time before I left for college, and I've seen how miserable it is to pull out the dashboard and work on these things, as the dashboard never really goes back on right. I'm doing alright driving because all of the gauges are useless to me except for the speedometer and fuel gauge. The 'low fuel' light comes on so I know when to stop for gas and I can usually keep a rough estimate in my head. As for the speedometer, I've been using the mile-markers on the interstate and timing how long it takes to do the mile. I'm good with math, so figuring 49 seconds is between 74-73 MPH is easy, but on the backroads and in town I have no idea how fast I'm going.


If you don't feel like reading all that (or you already did), I want to make a homemade odometer and set it on my dashboard somewhere. I'm wondering how I could do this cheaply without endangering my car. I don't even know where to start with making something like that. If it's a stupid request, how would I go about replacing the motor myself (without ruining my still-decent-looking interior)?

[skipper]

If you don't feel like reading all that (or you already did), I want to make a homemade odometer and set it on my dashboard somewhere. I'm wondering how I could do this cheaply without endangering my car. I don't even know where to start with making something like that. If it's a stupid request, how would I go about replacing the motor myself (without ruining my still-decent-looking interior)?

As far as I know there is no motor behind the dash.  If it's a digital dash (a mix of LCD and mechanical gauges), then there's a good chance your problem is a pretty common one; a short in the power circuit for the LCD displays.  Even though this is a common problem, it's very expensive to fix.  The wire itself is buried in a harness, deep inside the dash.  If this is the case, find a technician to fix your car.  The way to tell a technician from a mechanic is easy.  Mechanics are greasy everywhere all the time.  They have a big tool chest filled with solid metallic tools.  They don't own anything computer operated.  Their shop is a mess.  A technician, on the other hand, has a clean shop, lots of expensive looking scanners and monitors, has clean hands and looks like an engineer.  Both of these people are useful at times, but in this case, you need a technician.

If you have mechanical gauges only, and all of your gauges went out at once, it is almost certainly a blown fuse.  Check all of your fuses, as they are awkwardly labeled, with a continuity tester ($12-$30 at radio-crack) replace any dead fuses.  If the fuse blows again, you're still probably dealing with a short or a bad connection.  Call your technician.

P.S. in the 50s 60s and 70s dashboards were all one piece and were hard to mount up properly.  Now-a-days dash's are modular.  the gauge pod should be able to be removed without removing the entire dash.  If I remember correctly from my days as a mechanic (read not technician) the GM H-Body gauges were a snap to remove, but the whole dash was a catastrophe.  Be aware that if your heater core ever fails, you may as well buy a new car.

[Flamer Shaftglutton]

It's a completely mechanical dash. I tried the fuse by putting a replacement (there were lots of spares in the empty slots) in the slot labeled "panel" and a few others that sounded like they could be remotely related to the instrument panel, but it didn't help. If it helps any, my horn hasn't worked since I bought the car either. I have a continuity tester somewhere, I'll have to dig it out.

The heater core went out in my last car. We rerouted everything away from it and the car worked great for a while. That car (95' Baretta) had so many problems it was ridiculous. By the time I drove it to the scrap yard I had replaced almost everything, one of the front struts had blown through the hood (never fixed that), it burned through oil, the heating/air conditioning didn't work, the locks had gone out, the windshield wipers ripped themselves off, and because the strut was sticking out of the hood, the car vibrated so bad I couldn't read any of the gauges, much less drive it.

[Nate]

I want to make a homemade odometer

I've actually had to do this before. It's not exactly from scratch, but the easiest quick-and-dirty way is a bicycle speedometer.  The Sigma brand ones can be programmed precisely for your wheel circumference, so you'll have the most precise speedometer in town, and they're good into the triple-digit MPH, unlike a lot of the other brands.  I imagine attaching everything where it's not going to get destroyed might be harder on a car than on a motorbike, but I'll bet it's doable.  Price varies with bells and whistles, but here's an example of what I'm talking about:
http://www.llbean.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=1&catalogId=1&langId=-1&categoryId=46141&productId=800892&qs=5686472-Google_Product_Submit

[Eponeen]

So this afternoon my car broke down, and I had to have it towed to a mechanic. The problem here is, I know absolutely nothing about cars, and it shows. I'm going to the mechanic tomorrow, and I want to at least have a vague idea of what might be wrong and what kind of price I should expect to pay so I know I'm not being taken advantage of.

For the past week or so when I put the car in gear and push the gas, it's made a brief whirring sound and has been slow to accelerate, but nothing beyond that. This morning it was extremely slow to accelerate, taking several seconds to start moving at all. Every time I pushed the gas it would do this. After stopping at a red light, the car would not accelerate at all. It wouldn't move in reverse or forward in any gear. It just made the whirring sound when I pressed the gas.

To finish off the story, some people helped me push it out of the intersection and called the tow truck for me, because I don't even know how to do that. The repair place close by isn't a chain, and the man who took my car called me sugar, so I have a bad feeling they're deciding they can tell me whatever they want and I'll believe it. (Which is probably true)

I drive a 2002 Honda Accord with over 250,000 miles on it.
I don't need an exact diagnosis or anything, I just want a general idea of what it might be.

[The Evil Sloth]

Sounds like a problem with the clutch/gearbox. Most likely gearbox. Tragically without being about to look at the thing that's as specific as I can be. Maybe google local prices for clutch/gearbox assemblies to give you an idea of the damage.

[Krogoth]

Eponeen,

If your car is a stick, it sounds like your clutch is completely worn out.

If your car is an automatic, it may be that you are simply really, really low on transmission fluid. Other than that it would be hard to diagnose without looking at it, but I'm guessing the torque converter took a crap.

[Eponeen]

Just to update: the transmission was completely blown. My dad didn't think it was worth pouring all the money it would take to fix it into a car with that many miles on it, so we just bought a new one.  We were planning on doing it soon anyway so it wasn't that devastating.

[bboykarma]

I'm thinking of getting a new car soon and am strongly considering a 5th generation (1997-2001) Honda Prelude...  anyone have any specific experiences or heard any stories that might further persuade or dissuade me from buying one?