[ale] way OT - used car buying tips - yea or nea - PT 2

[Boris Borisov]

In today cars you have engine attached to bunch of computers not
computer helping the engine to run.

Just joking :)

But sometimes this engine/computer ecosystem looks so fragile. You
pull one hose and nothing works :)

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
<atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I just wanted to give you a quick update about an annoying experience with my wife's car so you can avoid similar trouble.  As I mentioned before, as part of my efforts to save fuel, I was planning to install K&N high performance air filters on both vehicles.  Well, I'm no mechanic, but I figured just snap the latches off the air box, swap the filter cartridge, snap the lid back on.  Even I could handle that.  So, that's what I did.  Well, this morning, my wife reports that the car is skipping and sputtering and the check engine light is on.  Oh drat!  I take a quick look at the air filter, but everything looks fine.  I swap vehicles with her and take the car to the mechanic.  Before I see him, I pull the fault codes from the car using my OBD2 interface and my Android tablet.  It was complaining about the mass air flow system.  So, I met the mechanic and told him what had happened.  It took him about 10 seconds to diagnose the problem.  In the process of changing the filter,!
>   I had inadvertantly dislodged the pipe where the air leaves the filter box and enters the engine.  So, the car was getting completely unfiltered air, and the mass air flow sensor wasn't detecting any air flow, so the computer was unhappy, and it didn't know how to control the engine properly.  It took him another two minutes to fix the problem and he didn't even charge me.  Afterwards, I hooked my tablet back up and cleared the check engine light and the car is happy and things are back to normal.
>
> So, the moral of the story is, if you change your air filter yourself, don't disconnect any pipes.  I'm glad we found the problem and fixed it.  What's a little scary is that, the only reason it caused a problem is that the car is all computerized.  That tells me two things.  One, you ain't running if the computer is unhappy.  And two, if it had been a non computerized car like an older carburetor driven vehicle or my old Mercedes, it would have run just fine without the filter pipe attached, maybe even better.  I could have gone on for years with no air filter and potentially damaged the engine.  Well, live and learn.  Hopefully, you guys can avoid similar issues.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity.
>
> (To whom it may concern.  My email address has changed.  Replying to former
> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
> address.  Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>
>
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