BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

Jim

wrote:
On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:58:35 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

"Frogwatch" wrote in message
...
For years I have been trying to find something my son and I can do
together that interests him. My two daughters, no problem, they are
both science geeks and I understand them. My son is an alien. We
aren't just on diff planets but diff universes. He's sociable and
always has girls around, while I am anti-social and geeky etc. I
tried sailing with him, nah, camping, no, caving, nope, fishing, nah
boring...............
Now, at 19, he saves $2500 and buys and old junk Mustang, a 1994
5.0L. Luckily, somebody scraped the side of it a week after he got it
and their insurance paid to repaint it. WHOA, now he might as well
have a license that reads "TCKETME" but it ran like hell.
We got a manual and read enough to see that this engine actually needs
to be timed like old ones. Guess what, I happen to know how to do
that, explained it to him and we got a timing light and vacuum gage
and he did it. Dang it runs much better. Mass air flow sensor was
wrong one for the injector, so $248 later today he installed it at my
work and WOW, it is a hot car now.
So, tonight him and all his friend are outside leaning on the car as
he talks authoritatively on how it runs. I hear them as I take out
the trash and come in smiling. Wife asks what I seem happy
about....................

That's cool. My dad was always trying to show me stuff with the family car,
you know.. changing plugs, etc., but I really was totally bored standing
around. When I got to highschool and got my first car, that changed because
I had no money and it was an old veedub. Then, I always would push him out
of the way, with a let-me-try-it statement. I actually was able to start it
by reading the instructions in the Bug Bible and jumping the starter with a
big screwdriver when I got stuck in the middle of nowhere. It was a bad
solenoid as I recall... wouldn't kick in. I also got pretty good at tuning
it up and stuff like that. It wasn't very pretty though on a date when the
guy thought he knew everything, so I said, ok you can drive and handed him
the key.

Those are pretty much obsolete skills now. The new cars don't have
points, condensers and those kinds of parts. Plugs pretty much last
forever. There is really not much to "tune up" these days. That is why
they say it is a "free" service for 50,000 or 100,000 miles on a lot
of new cars. They don't really have to do anything.
The same has been true of my 2002 Mercury 4 stroke. I put a set of
plugs in it but there was nothing wrong with the ones I took out.
I have about 2800 hours on it now.

My wife's new Honda came with a 5 year free routine maintenance deal.
Retail value $89.