"Bad Habits" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

Okay, Now Try The Engine

You should do your own car repairs. It’s an easy way to save money and possibly maim yourself for life.

You’re probably afraid to repair your car because you think cars are complicated. This is nonsense. Many teenage boys understand cars, and on any scale of intellectual achievement teenage boys rank right down there with newts. At least they did when I was one of them.

When I was in high school, we boys would stand out on the corner at lunchtime and smoke unfiltered cigarettes and spit frequently and guys would pull up in genuinely hideous-looking cars with the front ends jacked way up. They’d open the hoods and we’d stare inside and have conversations like this:

LOOKERS: Three eighty-nine?

DRIVER: Four twenty-seven.

LOOKERS: Fuel injected?

DRIVER: Headers.

LOOKERS: Dual?

DRIVER: Quad.

LOOKERS: Boss.

Then we’d all spit approvingly. Sometimes the conversation would turn ugly, particularly if some participants favored Fords and some favored Chevrolets. The Ford-Chevrolet conflict was a major issue, considerably more important to us than, say, the fate of the Free World. Those who favored Fords would yell “Fo Mo Co,” which is short for “Ford Motor Company.” Those who favored Chevrolets would yell “Fo No Go,” which is short for “Ford No Go.” This was considered a very witty insult. Sometimes fights would break out.

What I’m getting at is that we had the intellectual depth of lima beans, and we still managed to understand cars. So you can, too.

The trouble with most do-it-yourself car articles is they tell you how to do things you don’t really need to do, like change the oil. Most Such articles rave on for pages about changing the oil, as if it were some kind of sacred ritual, never once telling you how degrading and pointless it is. I have been driving for eighteen years, and I have never once had a car problem I could have solved by changing the oil. If the Good Lord had wanted us to change the oil, He would have put different oil in the car in the first place.

But if you believe the do-it-yourself articles, you traipse along, changing your oil regularly, and one day your car ceases to run, and you try changing the oil a couple more times, and it still doesn’t run, and you end up taking it to an auto mechanic, and you have this conversation:

You: What’s wrong?

MECHANIC: It seems to be either the transmission or the engine. (Translation: I’m not sure, so I plan to replace every part in the car.)

YOU: How long will it take to fix?

MECHANIC: We should have a pretty good idea by Friday. (“One hundred and sixty-two years.”)

YOU: How much will it cost?

MECHANIC: Well, I have to Check on some of the parts and labor, but figure about $130. (“Eight billion skillion dollars.”)

So what you need to know is how to do major car repairs, the kind most do-it-yourself articles don’t talk about. There are two major kinds of car problems, which we in the automotive community refer to as The Two Major Kinds of Car Problems: