gautam

I would imagine if as @treks explained, the vehicle has to be moved a considerable distance to get it out of a hole, then a compressor would be best to inflate the jacks. I agree that if the vehicle just has to be lifted in place, then using the exhaust would be fine.

I don't think there is an easy solution to this, but I have thought of installing a dash cam to record such idiots, and then to hand the footage to the cops. Don't know if it'll work though, in the sense that the cops will follow up on it, but it may be worth a try.

@Rahimdad, I hear what you are saying, but there is no denying that technology has saved many lives, and especially the lives of people to who driving is not fun, but merely a way to get to work and back. One of the biggest issues that produce dangerous drivers is the fact that very few countries in the world demand that drivers be properly trained. For instance, when people go for their practical driving test, they are not tested at night, or when the roads are wet, or at highway speeds during rush hour traffic. As a result, few people are equipped to drive a Mustang safely, and if you add to that the fact that the new Mustang does not conform to accepted safety standards with regard to how it deforms in a crash, I am sure most people will agree that it is no fun to be anywhere a Mustang being driven by an unsafe, and untrained driver.

Spray water into the engine to remove carbon? Are you serious? Would you do this if a customer paid you to clean the insides of his engine, and what would you do if you were suddenly faced with DTC P0300? Would you now charge this customer to clear the multiple misfire code? More to the point though, how do you know that this actually works? Have you ever opened up an engine to check that carbon deposits have actually been removed? Do you really know and understand why some parts of an engine seems "cleaner" than the rest of the engine after a gasket failure? Based on your post, I guess not, but while you are free to practice this sort of nonsense on your own engine, I would suggest you post some "before and after" pictures of this treatment just so that we who know something about this subject know you are [not] joking about a very serious topic. Get real man, and research a topic before you post "advice" that could destroy perfectly healthy engines.

If you want big speakers remember to upgrade the battery and alternator as well. Better still, fit a second battery to only power the amp if you are installing an amplifier. However, don't mess about with the wiring when you fit a second battery- Jeeps are very sensitive to tampering, so have the installation done professionally if you don't want to suffer with endless electrical issues after the installation.

Understood, if it just normal resetting, but I would keep @treks advice in mind.

More than likely the viscous fan no longer works as it should. When it starts to fail it slows down the fan's rotation speed, so check if you can spin the fan by hand when the engine is switched OFF. There should be no free rotation when you try to spin the fan, or, you can take the vehicle to Barry to check out the condition of the radiator fan. Interpreting the condition of a viscous fan requires some experience of these fans, so don't think it "looks OK". Have it checked out by a professional mechanic.

And they really thought they were going to get away with it? Ha! Trust the technician to bust them....

Car makers the world over have been lying about fuel consumption figures since the car was invented. Even when they do make even halfway accurate claims, their figures are based on tests at sea level where the air is thicker. The best way to get accurate figures is to visit car forums, and ask the people who actually own the car you are interested in how much fuel the vehicle uses based on town and highway driving conditions in the real world.

I believe @Barry has a license to breed Pajeros.

Crankshafts never come into contact with the oil in standard sumps anyway, not because it affects horsepower, but because a rotating crankshaft whips the oil into a foam, much like a whisk beats air into cream to make it stiff. When this happens the oil pick up can't "lift" the oil out of the sump, which means that the engine is starved of lubrication.

The Subaru is one thing, but it seems you really are a sucker for self-inflicted punishment!

Very nice job, indeed!

I don't think Porsche is too concerned about battery life, or that 15-minute quick charges will kill the batteries. I am convinced that Porsche thinks that since people have the money to buy their electric cars, the owners won't be put off by having to replace the batteries once a year- until the bill for the first battery replacement is presented...

I wonder what @Danny is so afraid of. Is he perhaps a rich man with a heavy right foot, or is he afraid his annual income won't be enough to cover his fines? Just asking...

We should be glad we don't have the system Sweden uses to calculate traffic fines. There they calculate traffic fines as a percentage of your annual income, which really hurts. Rich drivers feel the pain as much as a poor driver does, so if your income is say, 2 million KR, you could end up paying a fine of 100 000 KR, which would be the same as driver that would pay say, 500 KR for the same offense because is annual income is smaller. Maybe we should petition the RTA to implement a similar system? What do you guys think?

Who was in the car when the driver got the fine? Yoy may want to look into the possibilty of your driver using your car to make some money on the side by charging people to drive them around.

@teapot, I don't think you need to worry about changing floor mats, but the problem wih mods is that they are always subjective. You, as the owner might think your car looks great after the mod, but others, especially the bank and any dealers you may try to sell the car to or through might think it looks terrible. I would play it safe and just ask the bank what they think about mods that changes or adds colour, or involves the use of fibreglass to stick stuff onto the body work. Drilling holes in the body to rivet stuff onto the body work might invalidate a corrosion warranty, which all banks will definitely have a problem with if they financed the car. Just play it safe- there is no harm in asking and anyway, asking might save you lot of trouble and tears later on.

Doing anything that reduces the resale value of the car would be a material breach of your financing agreement with the bank. No modification ever adds to the resale value of a car, so I would definitely not risk modifying anything on a financed vehicle, especially if any of the proposed modifications could void the warranty.

Hi salmanahmed, Thanks for the info, but I don't have any more questions or concerns. Your post just confirmed everything I have been saying, so thanks again!

HI Jimmys, I hope this is not going to confuse you, but I must take serious issue with the answers given by @salmanahmed, and here is why. 1.) First off, "Techron" does what @salmanahmed says it does, but that has nothing to do with how long oil lasts, or how well it lubricates an engine. Secondly, there are no chemicals or additives in oil that makes the oil "stick" to the internal engine parts. Over the past decade or so, car makers have developed new metals and metal coatings that have a natural affinity for especially synthetic oil molecules. What this means is that the metal "attracts" oil molecules, which is entirely a reaction between the metal and the oil, which prevents dry start ups because all metal surfaces are permenently coated with a layer of oil. 2.) While heat does play a role in how long oil lasts, it is in fact the combination of heat and contact with moisture and oxygen that causes the additives in the oil to break down. The oil itself does not break down, but oil without additives has very limited lubricating properties, and therefore even synthetic oil needs additives to work. When the combustion products in oil come into contact with moisture from the atmosphere, sulphuric acid forms, and while some additives prevent this from happening when oil is new, at some point the acid build-up exceeds the additives' ability to prevent it. Sulphuric acid breaks down the additives that makes the oil flow, which is why oil that has a lot of acid in it gets thick, and sometimes so thick that it can no longer be pumped to all parts of the engine, which results in extreme mechanical wear. By the way, oil only turns black because it mixes with the carbon and other products of the combustion process. Age by itself does nothing to change oil's colour. Contact with atmosheric oxygen on the other hand, breaks down the friction modifying additives (mostly zinc), which means that after a while, the additive can no longer form a protective barrier between matal surfaces. Note that the oil itself does NOT provide this barrrier- all the oil does is carry the zinc to where it is needed. The zinc is in the form of little "plates" that slide over each other between contact surfaces, so if the zinc breaks down, there is nothing to prevent direct metal to metal contact. The reason why syntetic oil last longer than regular oil is the fcat that all the molecules are the same size on the one hand, and that the molecules are "tougher" and more difficult to break down than those in regular oil, on the other. Synthetic oil also does not contain all the different waxes, gums, and varnishes in regular oil that takes up volume, but contributes nothing to the lubrication of the engine. Even so, while synthetic oil lubricates better than regular oil, it needs exactly the same additives that are in regular oil (but not quite in the same amounts), since it is better at withstanding the combined effects of heat, and contact with moisture and oxygen. I hope this clears up some of your questions and doubts, but as @salmanahmed says, feel free to ask anything else if something is not clear.

Hi Jimmy Other posters in this thread make some good points, but here is some more information- 1.) Synthetic oil is not synthetic- it is made by distilling various gasses like methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and others into a liquid, to which much the same additives are added as to mineral oil. 2.) The problem with mineral oil is that the molecules are not the same size, meaning that some oil molecules are too small to provide proper lubrication; thus, the entire lubrication load is placed on the large molecules. On the other hand, the molecules in synthetic oil are all exactly the same size, meaning the lubrication load is shared equally between all the molecules in the oil. Look at the picture below to see how this works- 3.) The viscosity of mineral oil is influenced by some types of molecules that change their shapes as the oil temperature changes. As the oil gets hotter, these molecules spread themselves out into what looks like small plates, which makes the oil flow easier but with some oil formulations, these "plates" spread themselves out so thin, and so far apart that lubrication starts to suffer. To prevent this, manufacturers add special additives to control this "spreading out" when the oil is hot to improve lubrication at high oil temperatures, but the downside is that at low temperatures, these additives cause oil molecules to clump together, making the oil very difficult to pump around the engine, thereby reducing effective lubrication. Synthetic oil does not need this special additive because the oil has a natural tendency to flow at a constant rate over a wide range of temperatures, which means that the oil provides superior lubrication right from start up to shut down. 4.) Not all oil sold as synthetic is in fact synthetic. Mineral oil that is extracted through "hydro cracking", also known as "fracking", is still mineral oil. The only difference is that it was brought to the surface by a different method, but in some markets, especially the USA, this mineral oil is sold as synthetic, so be careful of what you buy. You may be getting mineral oil instead of synthetic when you buy imported oil. 5.) You can safely use synthetic oil in any car engine. It mixes freely with the little bit of mineral that stays behind in the engine when you change oil. 6) It is NOT correct to say that car makers fill new engines with mineral oil, and only change over to synthetic oil at the first service. All engines that require synthetic oil receive synthetic oil at the first fill in the factory, because engines that require synthetic oil won't survive with mineral until their first service. Mineral oil just cannot provide the lubrication required to keep a high performance engine alive, and besides, mineral oil will kill the emission control system in the first couple of thousand kms. I hope this answers some of your questions. If you want to know more, feel free to post your questions to this thread.

Hi Harooon, @salmanahmed is right about the main differences between spark plugs (except for the bit about diesels), but to answer your question about heat grades- The heat grade of a spark plug has nothing to do with how well the plug delivers a spark,and it only refers to how well a spark plug performs thermally in any given engine. To put it simply, a "hot" plug will heat up easily, while a "cold" plug resists heating up. There are many ways in which manufacturers control the heat grade of a plug, but generally, the heat grade of a plug is determined by; The surface area and/or length of the insulator nose How well the various spark plug components conduct (or resist) temperature changes The material used for the center electrode- copper, for instance The position of the insulator tip relative to the end of the ceramic shell In practical terms, the heat grade of a plug determines how well it cleans itself, meaning that the plug needs to be able to burn off the carbon deposits that form on the tip of the plug. This happens at temperatures of between 500-, and 800 degrees Celcius. So, if plug takes too long to heat up (a cold plug), the the carbon deposits can build up to the point where the spark might jump across the deposit, and not across the gap between the electrodes. If the plug heats up too soon (a hot plug), the plug can overheat, and burn away the electrodes too fast. This is true even for titanium and irridium plugs, but the bottom line is that if a plug is either too hot or too cold for any given application, fuel economy, spark plug life, and engine performance suffer. The optimum temperature at which carbon deposists burn off spark plugs is around 450 degrees Celcius. Note that this temperature refers to that of the spark plug, and not the combustion process. A spark plug of the correct heat grade will stay at this temperature by transferring heat to the cylinder head by direct contact through its screw threads, as well as through contact with the air fuel mixture when it enters the cylinder. Spark plugs of the incorrect heat grade cannot maintain the optimimum self cleaning temperature, so they fail either through over heating, or carbon fouling. Generally speaking, the difference from one heat grade to the next is 70-100 degrees Celcius- enough to reduce spark plug life and engine performance in some engines, which is why it is very important to only use the recommended spark plugs.

I doubt very much if there is a way to measure the extra fuel used by daytime running lights. These lights are Light Emiting Diodes, and their power consumption is typically measured in milli-amps, so depending on the model, the total power consumption on a set of daytime lights might be significantly less than one amp. Any decent audio system uses way more power than that, so you might actually be saving fuel if you don't use your radio, but I would not worry about daytime running lights. They use so little power that I don't think the electrical system even notices them, in a manner of speaking.

Trailblazers are known for their speedometer problems. In most cases, the stepper motors that drive the instrument fail, and the most reliable remedy is to replace the cluster. However, the problem with this approach is that most used units will have the same problem. One (temporary) cure is to disconnect the positive battery cable for a few minutes, but this is not something I would recommend on any vehicle, no matter what the problem is, since you can seriously damage the entire electrical system by doing this. There are companies in the US that repair this problem, but this is clearly impractical for you, so the only advice I have is to search for a used unit in your market, and hope it does not have the same problem.