The Economy

If it comes down to paying $4K to fix a car or $2K to buy a hoopty, I'm opting for the hoopty all day long.

 

They made one along with Tesla in the early 2010’s. You could only go 100 miles on a charge, which killed it.

 

You ever worked on a modern car's suspension? It ain't a walk in the park. I charge $300 an hour for statistics/analytics consultations. I'd charge twice that to simply replace a Lexus' shocks.

 

I thought I could replace the headlight lamps on my ES350. The manual warned not to try. It ain't my Civic. It's gotta be on a lift and the fender off, plus the special lamps are, like, $225 a piece.

 

Not to start another thread-jack, but the best invention (after indoor plumbing and electricity) was not tire plugs. It was wheels on luggage. I've quite often, actually, thought this.

 

Until Youtube, I didn’t know about the turning the wheel method to change the headlights on the Civic.

The Honda manual says to do it the laborious way with a jack instead of the way that takes five minutes.

 

I won't challenge you on that. But when you commute by car to work and fly maybe 2X a year, that is how you perceive things.

 

I don't know how people changed light bulbs before youtube.

 

I found a nice mobile mechanic that often saves me half-day trips to the repair shop. Last week I pulled into a Sonic, and noticed my passenger-side mirror was scraping against the machine where you place your orders. Was this a "compact-cars only" lane or something? Never seen one so narrow. Anyway, no amount of steering/maneuvering could get me out of this mess, and eventually the front of the mirror popped off, and the main piece is a little loose.

Mobile mechanic found a replacement mirror and is coming by this week to fix it. A few months ago he came by and installed a new starter.

 

The lanes for drive throughs are getting narrower and narrower as vehicles get bigger and bigger.

 

I'm on my third Mazda 3 and I have yet to figure out where the air filter is, let alone how to change it.
My first few cars were various GM makes and it was easy. The air filter was right on top of the engine, you just undid a wing nut or a couple of screws to open the compartment, and swapped it out. These Mazdas, near as I can tell, it's buried in the engine and you have to move several other small pieces to get to it. Ain't nobody got time for that.

 

I'm barely a shadetree mechanic, but I've done some fairly difficult wrenching on cars with help from youtube. OTOH, we drive older cars that don't require computerized equipment to work on them.