Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Interested in doing my own car maintenance.. Advice?

<< < (18/18)

mouser:
A post-action report:

I had my car up on 4 jack stands this weekend and:

1. Replaced front rotors and brake pads; bedded in brakes.
2. Replaced brake fluid and bled all brakes.
3. Cycled out the power steering fluid.
4. Drained and refilled the Rear Differential gear oil and front transfer case gear oil.
5. Already changed oil previously.
6. Did first pass of draining and refilling transmission fluid (needs a few more times since only half comes out each time).
7. Replaced lug nuts.
8. Installed hitch.
9. Flushed and replaced coolant.

Tip: I was never in any danger but I did literally almost destroy my car, by draining the engine oil when i thought i had drained the transmission.  I was getting complacent and over-confident and just wasn't double checking things the way I should have been.  I sure was proud of myself for everything i had done until that put the fear of god into me.

IainB:
I learned to avoid draining more than one thing at a time, so as to minimise the potential for making any really careless mistakes - for example, such as (say) in refilling the drained engine oil with transmission oil or brake fluid.
With family/children around there can sometimes be many distractions, on top of which I can become very absent-minded sometimes when performing longer mundane tasks. My body sort of goes into automatic mode and my thoughts can become far removed from whatever I am doing and time ceases to exist for me. When that happens, it can give me quite a shock when I come back to reality a few hours later.

MilesAhead:
I learned to avoid draining more than one thing at a time, so as to minimise the potential for making any really careless mistakes - for example, such as (say) in refilling the drained engine oil with transmission oil or brake fluid.
-IainB (May 11, 2015, 10:31 AM)
--- End quote ---

The funniest one I saw when it came to putting the fluids in the wrong place was at a gas station.  We had a novice kid pumping gas.  Some lady came in with a foreign car with a rear engine.  The kid couldn't find the gas fill.  She told him to open the back and he would see the pipe sticking out.  That's it.  He proceeded to open the engine compartment and stuck the gas nozzle in the air cleaner horn.  He managed to somehow get the nozzle clip to stay in place while he went about wiping the windshield.  After a bit the gas started to stream across the lot.

The guy who owned the station was a real stickler for detail.  You had to do everything exactly as taught.  But it was so ridiculous he just broke out laughing.  He blew out the lady's air cleaner with compressed air and filled her tank for free.  No harm done.  :)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page