Fucking fuck mechanics
Mar. 6th, 2005 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trixtahI knew this was going to happen!!! Well, my car passed the inspection, although it apparently needed new pedal rubbers to pass. Who knew, eh? I thought it was traditional to drive an old Holden with bare metal under the feet.
However. I also asked them to do a full service and a tune-up. Ok, they changed the oil and put on new filters. Nice. Did they do a lube? No. Did they tune the car? Maybe. You know how I said it was running sweetly? When I got it back, I drove it for about 10 minutes, and thought, hm, it's idling a bit fast. On Saturday, I went for a longer drive, about half an hour, and it definitely was idling too fast, it chewed through $10 of gas. This wasn't good.
I couldn't wait to go to another mechanic, so I bought a car multimeter for about $250. Would you believe the largest car parts shop (Repco) in Canberra didn't have a timing light? Or, actually, one that is only suitable for electronic ignitions, which cost $600. Uh, no thanks. Hopefully another shop somewhere will have a plain jobbie.
So, the three base things for a tune are to have your idle speed and mixture (carburettor), dwell angle (distributor points' spark gap) and timing (distributor, when the spark fires to ignite the petrol), set correctly. These figures are kept in nice old fashioned car manuals. So I rigged up the multimeter and tested the idle speed. 900rpm! These cars are supposed to idle at 600. I tweaked it as best I could and have got it down to about 650, but I suspect the float level in the carb is too high (too much petrol coming in, so it's running a bit "rich"). But it's better. Then I checked the dwell angle. 50-something-random degrees! It should 30 degrees, +/- 2. Someone had installed the points and then tightened the cam screw so hard that the screw is somewhat stripped, and I can't undo it to fix it. I checked the invoice again, and sure enough, I got charged for a new set of breaker points, so they cocked that up too. And since the dwell angle is all wrong, they obviously got the figure for that out of the same place as the idle speed (their arse, by the looks of it). Even a small 4 cylinder car like a Morrie Minor or Mini idles at 800rpm. That is NOT how a 6 cyl engine runs. I can't check the timing without the timing light, alas.
So, don't go to the damn Braddon Service Centre if you have an old Holden. They may be fine if you have a nice late-model Japanese thingie, where they can just plug in the computer and tweak things that way. Not not for this kind of car. And you know, tuning these kinds of cars is about the only thing I can do mechanically (as well as oil filters and suchlike), because it's easy. And it just confirms my old theory: never go to a mechanic attached to a service station. They're always crap, in my experience. Unfortunately, I didn't know where they were before I booked the car. I should have followed my instinct on the day and gone elsewhere. Oh well, I have the roadworthiness thingie, I can now transfer the ownership...
However. I also asked them to do a full service and a tune-up. Ok, they changed the oil and put on new filters. Nice. Did they do a lube? No. Did they tune the car? Maybe. You know how I said it was running sweetly? When I got it back, I drove it for about 10 minutes, and thought, hm, it's idling a bit fast. On Saturday, I went for a longer drive, about half an hour, and it definitely was idling too fast, it chewed through $10 of gas. This wasn't good.
I couldn't wait to go to another mechanic, so I bought a car multimeter for about $250. Would you believe the largest car parts shop (Repco) in Canberra didn't have a timing light? Or, actually, one that is only suitable for electronic ignitions, which cost $600. Uh, no thanks. Hopefully another shop somewhere will have a plain jobbie.
So, the three base things for a tune are to have your idle speed and mixture (carburettor), dwell angle (distributor points' spark gap) and timing (distributor, when the spark fires to ignite the petrol), set correctly. These figures are kept in nice old fashioned car manuals. So I rigged up the multimeter and tested the idle speed. 900rpm! These cars are supposed to idle at 600. I tweaked it as best I could and have got it down to about 650, but I suspect the float level in the carb is too high (too much petrol coming in, so it's running a bit "rich"). But it's better. Then I checked the dwell angle. 50-something-random degrees! It should 30 degrees, +/- 2. Someone had installed the points and then tightened the cam screw so hard that the screw is somewhat stripped, and I can't undo it to fix it. I checked the invoice again, and sure enough, I got charged for a new set of breaker points, so they cocked that up too. And since the dwell angle is all wrong, they obviously got the figure for that out of the same place as the idle speed (their arse, by the looks of it). Even a small 4 cylinder car like a Morrie Minor or Mini idles at 800rpm. That is NOT how a 6 cyl engine runs. I can't check the timing without the timing light, alas.
So, don't go to the damn Braddon Service Centre if you have an old Holden. They may be fine if you have a nice late-model Japanese thingie, where they can just plug in the computer and tweak things that way. Not not for this kind of car. And you know, tuning these kinds of cars is about the only thing I can do mechanically (as well as oil filters and suchlike), because it's easy. And it just confirms my old theory: never go to a mechanic attached to a service station. They're always crap, in my experience. Unfortunately, I didn't know where they were before I booked the car. I should have followed my instinct on the day and gone elsewhere. Oh well, I have the roadworthiness thingie, I can now transfer the ownership...