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

[Jim Kinney]

Or a hose cracks at a fitting.
I'm replacing all the vacuum lines on the toy car with thick walled silicon
ones.  The Porsche intake system is hyper-sensitive to vacuum leaks.
Stranded the SWMBO once and am STILL in the doghouse for it.
On Dec 1, 2012 8:23 PM, "Boris Borisov" <bugyatl at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 filte!
>  r,!
> >   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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