Thought I would share,..... My buddy just got done rebuilding the motor in his daughters 95 Geo (Suzuki) Tracker, all went about as well as could be expected when working on one of these uncooperative tin-cans. When job was done, the daughter calls Dad and says," this thing is slow and does not have the power it used to, could you look at it?"....... He inspects the vehicle and finds nothing wrong, the daughter suddenly says, "oh, I know whats wrong!...I forgot to put it in the "power gear"!....She jams the 4x4 shifter into the low range and says," It will be fine now!".......She had been driving around in 2wd LOW for over 6 months!, since she had never locked the front manual hubs, nothing ever seemed to be out of place to her!...Her Dad had a heart to heart with her about how vehicles work, now she knows why that "tach thingy" was always reading 4500 around town and 5500 on her short freeway trips!

 

wow.... speechless

 

Should have had that talk a little earlier

My daughter works on her own rigs. I had her and her brother out with me in the shop as soon as they could walk....................

 

I'm surprised that thing didn't die sooner.

 

Holy crapola. You'd think she would suspect something was wrong with the engine screaming all the time.


...then again, considering most of the females I know, maybe not.

 

I had a lady show up at my shop one day complaining about a "noise" in her suburban. It had 3 rods HAMMERING! She said her kids (4) were driving her crazy so she turned up the stereo to drown them out..........She had driven from Portland to my shop (137 miles) IN LOW GEAR at 70+ miles per hour! Her husband was NOT impressed.............

 

Several years ago my grandma came back from a road trip to visit my aunt and was due up for an oil change, so my dad was gonna change it for her. When he pulled the car into the garage he noticed the low oil light was on, and he asked her how long it had been on. She said "Oh, it was on almost the whole trip, I didn't know what it meant so I just ignored it"

 

This same girl was always talking about the "power" her Tracker had and how she left the other traffic behind at stop lights, and how much better her Japanese vehicle was than her 99 Ford escort (Mazda)........................I suggested revoking her drivers license........ Hey, anybody got a price on a Suzuki transfer case?

 

I know a guy that had an old land cruiser, his mom took it out on the interstate one day and it was in 4lo, that was the end of that engine when she got done with it.

 

Amen to that. Nothing against women drivers but Junk's story reminds me of dealing with my 3 sisters vehicles and the idiotic things they use to do to them. I love them all to death but sometimes I just have to wonder maybe I was adopted

My youngest sister brought my moms old Buick Park Avenue over to my place once, she was complaining about the "engine making noise". Gee golly wouldn't you figure the lifters and the entire top end was clattering like crazy. I check the dipstick and there is nothing on it, I repeat NO OIL ON THE DIPSTICK. She had no idea the last time the oil was changed so I changed the oil for her later that day. I swear on my life less then a quart of oil came out of that oil pan.

After she killed the old Buick she ended up getting a 92 Dodge Caravan. When she bought it ran like crap, had 150,000 miles and was never tuned up before I worked on it. The one and only time I road with her in that van it stalled when she was taking off from a stop light, she was going 20 or 25 mph when it died so she proceeded to put the van into park as it was rolling, before I could say a word she looked over and asked "why does it always do that?" as the van grinded to a stop.

My second youngest sister bought a 96 Mercury sable. The only real trouble shes given me with that is the brakes. Twice now she's ground the pads and rotors down to nothing. She can't seem to grasp the concept that when the brakes start squealing that's when its time to have them checked out, don't just keep driving the thing until they grind. I have one of her old front rotors hanging on my shop wall as a joke. If you were to measure the outer edge thickness of the rotor I'm sure it would be a half of an inch thicker then the middle area where the pads make contact. She literally carved a quarter inch of material out of each side of that particular rotor, how she was able to stop the car is beyond me.

The last story that comes to mind was from my dear grandma years ago before she passed away. She had a older Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, the car had the 2.5 four banger and a auto 3 speed. It was your typical little old lady car, it was about 15 years old, still looked brand new and had like 50,000 miles on it. She absolutly would not drive on the intersate, she was terrified of it, so the car was only driven around town, proablly never going over 35 mph. She had to go out of town for a funeral one time so I agreed to drive her out there in her car for the day. So as we're leaving town I get on the ramp to merg onto the intersate, I'm cruising down the on ramp at maybe 1/3 throttle and the car would not shift outta first, around 50 mph it finally slams into second hard enough to shake the entire car. As I merge onto the interstate I looked over and told grandma I'm pretty sure somethings wrong with her transmission, this is am I doing 65mph in second gear turning close to 4700RPMS. I hit the exit and headed back to my house and I took grandma where she needed to go in my truck. I pulled the tranny pan off her car a couple days later and there was a huge crack in the valve body, right where the little lever went that worked the detent cable. Basically grandma has been driving her car around in first gear for god knows how long because the mechanical brain in the tranny was assuming that she was flooring it all the time. Basically it was holding the tranny in the "passing gear" position the entire time the car was being driven. The poor thing was turning 4000 rpms going 35 mph, I wonder how many adrenaline fueled redline trips it took to the grocery store or church before I patched it up?

 

"Well", I guess you could say she gets the most out of her 4x4 ha ha!!!!

 

An old lady who had lived next to my grandparents and was a friend of our family for years and years used to drive a 1989 GMC S-15 truck that her husband had bought new. They were fairly active and fiercely independent, and the truck was the only vehicle they had, so it racked up quite a few miles, visiting friends, going out to church and so on. They did'nt have any relatives close by, and all of their friends were mostly deceased or elderly. While he was alive, her husband always had maintained it, changed oil and filters every 2000 miles, but when he died (in 1993, as I recall), she apparently thought that it did'nt need maintenance other than washing it (she did keep it spotless, and always garaged). After driving the thing for another 7 years or so, although not as much as when her husband was alive, she had a flat on the truck while it was sitting in her garage, and decided it probably needed new tires, and asked me if I could help her find the correct ones for it. So I went and looked it over, and yes, it did. All four tires were completely bald and weather-cracked. I asked her when the last time it had had tires put on it, and she gave me a notebook that her husband had kept with the records on the truck. The recordkeeping had ended when the husband died, and no where was any mention of replacing the tires, so on a hunch I crawled underneath and looked at the spare, and... you guessed it... it was a perfect match for the four tires on the truck. The original tires, now a dozen years old, with 130,000+ miles on them.

I told her that the best thing to do was to take all four wheels off the truck and I would take them to town in my pickup and have new tires mounted, since I really did'nt wanna drive the thing down the road in that shape. She agreed, but was a bit upset that something had gone wrong with her little Jimmy... it was a great truck, very reliable, she told me. In fact, since her husband had died, she had'nt even had to open the hood on it, it was so reliable!


After all was said and done, she ended up having to buy 4 new tires (I argued that she really should replace the spare, but since it had never been on the ground, she did'nt go for that), a new air filter, radiator flush and coolant replaced, transmission flush and new filter, new battery to replace the 10 year old unit it had, and the first oil and filter change in approximately 30,000 miles. She drove the truck for another couple of years, until she could'nt pass her driver's test because her vision had gotten too poor. She still lives in the same house, and there's a woman who checks up on her now and brings her groceries, etc. The truck is still in her garage, and as far as I know it still runs, but has'nt been licensed for at least 4 years now.

 

All great stories :-)

 

Actually, thats a Ford car that was borrowed to mazda. LOL.

Just to add a couple of my own;

Years ago I worked at a "precision tune" in Sioux falls SD. I was a "general mechanic" there and did the lighter maintenance as I had no ASE cert and was still in high school. A guy brought in a late '80s Volvo wagon complaining that it leaked alot from everywhere after he did an oil change at home. My boss handed me the keys and told me to figure it out. I pulled it in the bay I used to change brakes.and lifted it up. I found him to be correct, it was like a river under that thing. I couldn't figure out why all of the seals let out though and the thing couldn't rev over 1500rpm.

I lowered it, pulled the oil filler cap off and I was instantly shocked. He FILLED the engine with oil. I asked him how much he put in it and he said it was over 15 gallons. He figures that if he filled it to the bottom of the fill cap, it was full.

He then complained that oil changes costed him so much because the "damn" engine needed that much oil. I couldn't even speak. I was engulfed in laughter back in the garage. I drained SO much oil out of it. He then drove it away.

Another time, I did a tune up on a little blue 3cyl geo metro. The car looked a little abused as all the cars did up there but this one was notoriously dirty under the hood. It looked similar to a greasy mud ball. I put plugs and wires on it started and test drove it, no problems. Headed back to the shop and parked it in the oil change bay to spray the hell out of it to at least clean it up a little. After I finished, I went back into the office to bring the ticket up so the lady could pay and be on her way. I then got back in, turned the key and it wouldn't fire. I checked all the plug wires, firing order even how much voltage the coil was putting out and even went under the dash to look at the fuses. Nothing. It sounded funny too. It was turning over erratically when the starter was engaged. I was like "wtf?" So, I decided to check the worst..... I pulled the plastic timing cover back a little to uncover....nothing..... The camhaft pulley had come off and wedged itself between the engine mount and water pump.

I went back into the office to tell the lady that her car was seriously f-ed and that it would be over $700 to fix it when she said "where's my car". I told her that this happened and instantly she blamed me for the damage. She said she "saw" me break her car. I just about flew off the handle. She eventually admitted that she falsley accused me and that she never kept up with the scheduled maintenance. She left all pissed off and we pushed the car out into the parking lot where her husband came and towed it away.

 

...And this is why every dad needs a daughter.......and why you should marry a gear-head that insists on doing her own maintenance and loves it, so she can teach the daughter.....


Pete