Pluggers by Rick McKee for January 29, 2023

At one time, a plugger might have been able to do work on his own car. With cars these days, you also need a degree in computer science….

If something breaks on my 76 F-150. More than likely i can fix it.

Plugger vehicles need a spanner to repair, not an OBD-II scanner?

Well, if you really are a plugger, the vehicle is old enough that you probably CAN fix it.

In me ol motorcycle me use the ol spark plug-ger trick to fixes it.

Me bets kitty would rather like to sleeps on warm engine bonnet.

My late father, who lived to 97, was a plugger who could fix anything on his car, in the days before computer automation.

Ford cars of decades ago were designed for pluggers to fix on their own.

Well with the hood open you can still check the fluids ;-)

i had 12 hammers in my tool box….I could fix anything……..

I open the hood whenever I leave my car for an extended time at an arena or the like, to pull a fuse, in the hope of outfoxing the car thieves.

I remember being able to fix most things on my vehicle even having enough room to sit on the fender with my feet on the inside of the engine compartment to change the spark plugs. No extra room ‘tal in there now; fender to fender with a bunch of pollution control stuff. Can’t even get to the sparlk plugs now with removing a bunch of components to access them. Thankfully, they last a long time now.

In my youth, I’d rebuild engines, swap out transmissions, etc. Now I change the wiper blades, even my local shop can’t work on the van’s diesel engine.

Vehicle wise, I can repair very little these days. Fortunately, our vehicles require little in that way.

I fix less and less on my cars every year. Not because I get newer cars. Because I’m getting older and it hurts to crawl under them.

There is a big stink about farmers being unable to fix their own tractors. I think John Deere lost that case. It will be interesting to see how many will actually be able to fix anything. Modern farm equipment is very complicated, but it allows more efficient farming.

I’m an okay surgeon, but weak on diagnostics. If something looks burnt, I’ll probably need a new one of those. If critters chewed the wires I can gerryrig it so it should get you to someone with better equipment.

Focus on where the fire started. You’ll ‘sound’ more knowledgeable to the mechanic when you call for a tow.

Not really. Sometimes we pop the hood to check our fluid levels like non-pluggers should also do regularly….

Had a really old VW Beetle in college. It was so easy to work on. Even pulled the engine and replaced the clutch one time in a friend’s barn. It had mechanical timing and simple to adjust carburetor, etc… Now days you need a $100/hr. mechanic with a computer.

Jerry Seinfeld hilarously summed this up:

“The worse part about a car breaking down is when you’re out on the road, you’re a guy, ‘cause now you have to get out and pretend like you know what you’re doing. You gotta go, “All right, honey, I’m gonna go check it out.” Walk around the front, open up the hood. That’s good ‘cause it obscures her view. That’s the main reason you wanna do that. You’re lookin’ in there. You know, you’re hoping you’re going to see something in there so simple, so obvious, so incredibly easy to fix, even you can handle it, like a giant on/off switch turned off."

yikes

For me I knew what the problem was by the way it ran. With modern electronics it was a bouncy idle and I knew it was the TPI (Throttle position sensor). Easy as pie to replace that part.

Heck, I don’t even know how to open the dang hood anymore!

When we were in graduate school we were friends with a fellow in husband’s classes and his girlfriend (later wife) and would go out with them. We were in her car with the friend driving. There was a problem with the engine and he pulled over. The two fellows got out and put up the hood and stared into the engine – finally her boyfriend said “Yep, that’s an engine.” Husband agreed. She got out and fixed what it was that was a problem.

Prior to this husband, then my boyfriend, was amazed when my car (Ford Mustang) stopped and I got out with a pencil and fixed the stuck carburetor – he had no idea what to do or what the problem was.

It is not always men who know or do “men things” or women who know or do “women things”. Neither friend’s girlfriend nor I had a brother and we helped our dads.

Our current car is a Chevy Equinox with the smaller engine so it has a problem with oil leaking out – spraying it on the engine.

Several years ago I was driving home from NYC and was stopped in traffic on a major expressway. The engine died when I was able to move again. Thinking quickly I threw it in neutral and restarted the engine and it drove. I had been getting off the expressway to the streets due to traffic and every time I stopped at light and then started moving – the engine would die. I was terrified that car following me would not realize that I was stopping again right after I started and rear end the car. I got the car home and to our mechanic and walked home from there. They could not find anything wrong. Same problem the following the month when I went to this client. I pointed out it only seemed to happen when in stop and go traffic. Finally found out that a solenoid was fouled.

This is apparently due to this oil problem – unknown to us at the time. Have had other more major problems since then, luckily we have not have to replace the timing chain and it has not completely died. In researching online husband found out that we need to replace the oil cap with a vented one – Done. Now our mechanic is going to install a special can that hangs in the engine to catch the oil being shot out of the oil system.

So we have to check our oil weekly. Husband checks it with my help. He has trouble figuring out how much oil to pour in each time is down a line or two or three or four. I have to calculate how many ounces we need to add.