Kind of strange. This whole business with the unfixable vehicle has got me feeling absurdly vulnerable.
Rationally, this makes no sense. Even with the car business coming on top of the broken ankle (and on top of $500 worth of car repairs in April), it doesn’t put me at any real risk. I’ve got neighbors who’ll pick up my mail or give me a lift to the post office. I’ve got friends who’ll get me to the grocery store. It’s not like I’m going to be stranded in a blizzard by the roadside and get eaten by passing Bengal tigers.
Yet I have to remind myself, “Calm down, Claire. You’re not doooooomed.” What’s really worrisome is the sensation of being lost in a strange world and helpless to do much about it. Of being out of control.
There was a time — not really that long ago — when an ordinary woman or man knew pretty much everything they needed to deal with an average day. Their lives might have been nasty, brutish, short, but they could fix a broken whatever or build a vital thig-a-ma-jig. If they couldn’t do it, their neighbors or tribespeople could, perhaps as a joint effort.
Oh yes, they lived in a world full of unsolved mysteries and random attacks by angry gods. But most could dismiss all that via a few rote rituals and accompanying mythology. No worries. An earthquake knocks the village down? God did it because … oh, you tolerated witches or something. Kill the witches, problem solved.
Okay, it wasn’t quite that easy. But ordinary people knew all the ins and outs of the technology (if you could call it that) that they lived with. Then they filled in the gaps in their knowledge of the wider world with beliefs and myths. Their answers may have been wrong, but they had confortable certainties in places where we have only questions. We know more but (except for the devoutly religious among us) we have no easy defenses against what we don’t know.
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Commentariat old-timers bemoan the loss of the good old carbureted Chevy. But even in those days, we were already on our way to complexity beyond the capabilities of Ordinary Joe or Josephine.
It’s far, far, far from original to note that as life got better, individuals became more specialized and now we are to the point of being improved to where we often know nothing. Nothing about the technologies our lives depend on. That’s just a given.
What’s said less often is how alarming that lack of knowledge can be even without the proverbial S hitting the proverbial F.
Yet the alarm is still often nonsense. So my Plan A (vehicle) and my Plan B (walking if vehicle dies) both got knocked out at once. Big deal. I’ve got a Plan C and Plan D. C and D get me closer to my neighbors and friends, inconvenience me and them only slightly, and aren’t bad at all. You, the Commentariat, have already done your bit in Plan C, thank you.
And that’s usually the way life works. A lot of bad things are really no more than inconveniences, and a lot of “bad” things actually turn out to have great, creative aspects. (Also a given.)
I think the scariest thing is realizing how little even the supposed “specialists” know now. The times are beginning to remind me of C.M. Kornbluth’s classic story “The Little Black Bag.”
Sorry, I got nothing on the XTerra. No ideas at all. Have you considered killing the witches?
Personally I do not pine for carbureted Chevys, though. Easier to tinker with, yes. Constantly requiring tinkering, absolutely. I’m old enough to remember ignition points and the 5,000-mile tune-up, without the least bit of nostalgia. There are things about underhood packaging I have luridly cursed many times, and like everybody else I deplore the ‘mechanic’ whose first and last resort is to his scan tool. But it really wasn’t ‘better in the old days.’
Not up to date on your vehicle problems but I am a mechanic and would be willing to help figure this problem out. I have access to info on most any vehicle. Email me if you still need some help.
Jeremy — Email sent, thank you very much! I’ve been offered some excellent help, but I have to say I’m not sure how much can be done long distance. It appears that dozens of different things could cause similar problems.
Well Joel, You are certainly entitled to your opinion. And you have earned the right to that opinion. The new iron seems to need less maintenance, and certainly gets better mileage.
But when I get stuck on the road in the wee small hours of the morning with a car that doesn’t run, with my old Chevy I have a prayer of being able to limp it home armed with a swiss army knife, a roll of duct tape, a pair of pliers and some farmer wire.
I can diagnose the old chevy in minutes, don’t need a scan tool, don’t have to look up error codes, don’t have to have a handful of sensors. I can look down the throat of the carb and SEE if its getting gas.
I know all too well the PIA of replacing points.
I hate expensive black boxes worse, though.
The answer is, a scooter. One cylinder.
At lease in the summer when it’s dry. 🙂
Your post reminds me of that old Monty Python bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3jt5ibfRzw
I just finished reading The Little Black Bag, and doing so reminded me of my physician father’s little black bag.
Of course it was just a normal little black bag, and not like the one in the story.
Scooter. Yeah. When it’s dry. Uh huh. You’re on the right track, though. I’ve been keeping my eye out for several years for some type of alt transport: neighborhood electric vehicle, quadracycle, golf cart, something. But none of them fit the bill — and it’s often because they aren’t or can’t easily be enclosed for our 9 months of winter.
The Elio is most interesting to me because it promises to do it all: be economical, be safe, be fully enclosed, be efficient, and even be speedy enough to be legal to drive to the next town over. Of course, so far the Elio is vaporware.
I’m with Joel on this. I go back to the days of points and condensers myself. It was no fun with plugs going 10,000 miles tops, adjusting points constantly because as they wore, the gap changed. If you were into the high performance stuff it was a steady diet of wrenching.
Today’s engines are modern marvels in comparison. Plugs go 100k miles and the engine always seems to run fine with the least amount of work.
I don’t make my living turning wrenches, just a hobbyist with my own stuff but it seems like I always have somebody’s car coming over because it’s haywire. I’ve got a shop with a car lift, and since I work from home, they all think I’ve got time for them. I don’t mind because most of the time it is a real challenge finding the culprit and a major sense of satisfaction putting a fix in.
Besides a book I bought, Troubleshooting and Tuning Engine Management Systems, the most helpful thing I have is the code reader. It won’t always find the culprit, like when my truck was acting up a couple years ago, but it will generally get you pointed in the right direction along with the troubleshooting protocols in the EMS book.
Perhaps you could lay hands on a borrowed code reader to keep in your vehicle and the next time it acts up, maybe you could plug the reader in and catch a code that pinpoints the trouble. Might work.
No matter what you encounter in life, there’s probably a Python scene appropriate to it. Don’t know how many times I’ve watched the Holy Grail, but I don’t think I noticed that one guy with shaving cream on his face at 42s in the clip. Don’t think I noticed, before, either, the coconut tied to the dove being released at 46s. Clearly, I need to re-watch it a few times.
Nice, story, that Black Back tale. Surprised at the ending though – well not all of it. Seemed to be going somewhere else entirely at the start.
you can buy the super duper plugs for anything. including ’69 Big Block Chevys and drive them for 5 years.
Points…meh. Electronic distributors are easy, and easy enough to diagnose.
I keep an entire distributor with brand new, properly gapped dual points in the trunk along with my tool box. Replace it in about 15 minutes.
‘Course that’s me. Not everybody wants to have my level of familiarity with the iron I drive.
And in the interest of full disclosure, my main car is a 2003 Diesel truck. With a computer. With Turbocharged Fuel Injection. No spark plugs at all. So I run the new iron, and I like it. Mostly. I’d rather have my old 61 Chevy truck with 3 on the tree, but that’s a sad story for another day.
But I CAN play with these old cars. Just by bolting on parts I can get fantastic power out of these old things. Can’t do that with the new stuff. Oh you can ‘chip’ them, but its not the same at all. I learned a LOT about how things work by rebuilding and maintaining my old cars, back in the day.
Hell, you used to be able to take a stock car, and with some $ and sweat, you could turn it into a nitro fueled monster that would do the 1/4 mile in well under 12 seconds. And learn a LOT about physics along the way.
Nowadays, you can’t really do anything except change the oil and air filter. And if you are really brave, replace brake pads.
I love my old Chevys. I have two. Both ’69. One has a 327, one a 396. EMP won’t phase them. Mr. policeman cannot muck with the computer remotely. They can’t be interrogated to see how fast I was going. Made of REAL steel.
And when you tromp on the gas, they make THE SOUND. The hearty bellow of a well tuned V8 as it kicks down a gear.
But I only drive them when the weather is nice. Mostly because they are a limited quantity, and parts are getting hard to find. And I had to do hardened valve seats on both of them so I can run the crappy low octane unleaded gas I have to buy. And of course, the 13 mpg gets old in the day of $3 and $4 gal gas.
But I really hate the damned black boxes. Chase the P-codes all over the place and you end up replacing the Computer only to find out its a wire that has the insulation rubbed off. Or that one of the sensors that you replaced was faulty.
Do YOU like the wee little pregnant roller skates that you see people driving? Those Chevy Volts and whatnot? Thats where this is going. There is only so much you can do to the internal combustion engine. F=MA. After a point (and we are just about there now), the only way you can up the mileage is to lower the M (mass). Or accept lower A (acceleration). Those federal idiots have mandated 50mpg if I recall correctly. I don’t want to drive one of those, thank you very much. Too much like wearing a car. Me, I like to DRIVE them, preferably by stiff arming the steering wheel leaning back with the window rolled down.
Oh well.
Don’t mind me. Just another saurian bellowing in the La Brea Tarpits.
UnReconstructed —
“Don’t mind me. Just another saurian bellowing in the La Brea Tarpits.”
You are at least an intelligent and passionate bellower, not to mention a guy who knows what he’s doing with a wrench. And take comfort: If you’re bellowing from the La Brea Tar Pits, you’ve at least reached mammalian stage. No saurian you!
From what I’ve read, given the intermittent nature of the failures, and the integrated coil (and cam position sensor?) within the distributor assembly, I would suggest your mechanic cast a very jaundiced eye at the connectors and wiring harness directly adjacent to the distributor.
If every circuit and connector is solid, then perhaps look at the unit itself. I know the first fellows did a swap and to no avail, that is why I say look closely at the wiring, first. It is FAR from unheard of for re-manufactured, and even “new” OEM part to crop up as defective, especially electronics.
I do not recall what year your Xterra is, but if the above goes nowhere, and it is so equipped, definitely de-carbonize or, if actually needed, replace, the EGR valve.
These, along with worn Throttle Position Sensors, Dirty Mass Air Flow Units and even lowly temperature senders (air and coolant) all tend to do the things you describe. Many are remarkably cheap and easy to address, and barring an utter disaster, all will make an older vehicle run much better, longer.
[Those federal idiots have mandated 50mpg if I recall correctly. I don’t want to drive one of those, thank you very much.]
Look at the VW Passat TDI. I get 50mpg with mostly highway driving, but the thing accelerates very nicely when I need it. It’s very comfortable, not a pregnant roller skate. I got 962 miles on my last tank of fuel…
I have a Nissan with almost a quarter million miles. It’s on its third set of plugs. The first set, with 130,000 or so miles on them, were fine when I got them out. Other than routine replacement items, it’s done nothing bun run great, from 14 below to 100 above. The only repair I’ve done is replace the struts. All original, other than that ( I hope I haven’t called down a curse by saying that..).
I, too am old enough to remember setting points, replacing plugs every 20,000 miles (maybe), automatic chokes that stick, rotted vacuum lines and the like. With that said, I agree with UnReconstructed-old cars are fun! Of the old cars I’ve had, my ’64 VW bug and ’58 Willys were the most fun. Not fast, just fun. They required a lot of maintenance compared to modern cars, but anyone could do it.