How to Repair Your Modern Car

Step1: Finding What’s Wrong

If it weren’t for the entrenched car repair services, you’d be calling tech support’s hotline right about now. Yes, I am serious – if it isn’t a mechanically obvious thing, such as, the front wheel fell off, or a totally obvious electrical problem like a blown fuse, then you might have as much insight into the problem as a classic car mechanic.

Especially if you have an OBD-II reader.

OBD-II is a magic porthole into the mystery-shrouded world of your car’s brain. “ODB-II” stands for “On-Board Diagnostics version two”, a mandated way of asking cars of any make and model what’s wrong with them.

It’s a wonder there isn’t a cell-phone car OBD-II support attachment to plug into your car for roadside assistance.

So, why does that make you a better diagnostician than your mechanic? Did you ever watch your mechanic try to fat-finger in your bill into his computer? Need I say more?

Step2: Finding the Replacement Parts

“Luke! Use the Internet!” Hey, that’s what Obiwan would have told Luke Skywalker, had the movie been made today instead of the 1970’s. Search your local variety of auto parts stores, and then physically go to the store to check to see if they really have the part you found, and the found part number is not actually a rear bumper to a Desoto. The hardest bit here is figuring out what the broken part is actually called. Public library-hosted Web-accessed repair manuals can help here, and are somewhat useful for the next step. The auto parts stores often offer tools for lend as a bonus (even those OBD-II scanners!).

Here’s a tip: if it didn’t kill you when the part broke, those super-cheap Chinese replacement parts will be good enough. Besides, the expensive name-brand part is most likely made in China anyhow.

Step3: Replace the Broken Thingy

First, hardcopy printout the sections of the repair manuals you found on the Web that deal with your particular breakdown. Then, print out the forum messages between folks that have attempted the same or similar repairs.

Unless you run into the key warning phrases, like ‘…should not attempt to repair…’ or, off a forum message ‘…#$#%@@… still can’t get the friggin….’, follow along with the general gist of what the smarter of these sources indicates that you do.

Oh – watch out for the classic ‘Step 1, remove the engine as in section A1-12.224’ trap in those maintenance manuals. You won’t have printed section A1-12.224, it won’t actually be the right section, and you don’t want to remove your engine!’

A little common sense goes a long way here; it you are trying to fix a stalling engine and they have you removing the driver’s side window, there might be a bit of a mix-up in chapter numbering… It’s either that, or a car manufacturer’s engineer was having a very bad day with that particular model’s design work. Really. I mean, to simply remove spark plugs on many cars now requires such steps as ‘Place the car in Neutral and block the wheels to prevent rolling’ and ‘Release the engine mounts to allow the motor to be rocked forward’. I am totally serious, sad to say.

Step4: See if you Really Fixed It

What I mean here is ‘see if it’s fixed without getting stranded by your now thoroughly messed up car’.

There are two distinct checks to be made; 1) did the problem go away and 2) I haven’t made new/future problems by forgetting to replace some of the screws or misconnecting other odd bits removed.

One other step involved here: get back on your OBD-II connection and clean out the fault code messages. That way, you won’t be scratching your head wondering if what you see next time is old news or a brand new set of troubles. You can actually test your fix in many cases by checking the fault codes after running a test drive, if you erase the old error codes first.

SUMMARY: Why’d you cut out the Mechanic?

I bet that your total cost was less than half of what a garage would charge, and less than a third of what a dealer would charge. And no unneeded service items were added! How many times has the mechanic told you that your car ‘also needs the [enter part here] replaced…’ when you had it in for service? Finally, there’s little doubt in your mind that the repair was actually done (unless you skipped some steps above…)

There now – wasn’t that easy?

Why No New Laptop?

The end is nearing for Microsoft. Vista is the most visible outward sign of the rot within.

Allow me to clarify: my issue with Windows Vista – no, everyone’s issue with Windows Vista – is its focus. Not only does it fail to provide significant improvements over prior operating system offerings from Microsoft, but the key drive behind Vista’s design is to restrict what the user can do in an attempt to control the user.

The throbbing heart of the beast lurking within Vista is Digital Rights Management (DRM) – software that uses up your processing power on your computer attempting to check and determine if you are viewing, listening to, or transferring ‘media’ (movies, songs) which don’t belong to you.

The flaw is that even the lawyers go cross-eyed and take plenty of medications when trying to enforce the claims of the music and movie production cronies, who have steadfastly refused to come into the 21^st century (any new technology is merely another attempt to pirate their gold, according to their view). The most jaw-dropping example of this luddite-cum-lawyers approach is the recent RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) legal opinion that keeping your legally purchased CD music in MP3 form, even only for your own use, is a criminal act (see this news story).

Sorry for the digression, but it’s all one big ball of thorns with Vista.

So, what’s the net effect of Digital Rights Management for Vista users? Things that use to work just fine, like that old movie on CD or music files you’ve accumulated don’t work anymore. Even hardware devices that used to work just fine (but don’t enforce Digital Rights Management) suddenly fail to operate under Vista’s rules. Even ‘old’ printers are rejected, for crying out loud!! The default DRM software rule is: if it isn’t SPECIFICALLY allowed, it is forbidden.

And the benefit to the user is… um… the assurance that if you actually get something to play, it is a legal copy.

NOT!! – Even the RIAA lawyers say that DRM compliance is no assurance of legality. So, why did you buy all this DRM stuff again? Oh yeah – so you, the nasty pirate user, have a harder time doing evil (and you paid money for this…).

I’m sure you are sick of DRM and RIAA at this point, and if that was the only flaw with Vista, you might blame it on ‘Events Beyond Microsoft’s Control’ (they were forced to include DRM in Vista… right…). Sadly, it’s only the chorus line for this dirge.

Most of the other real changes in Vista evolve around keeping you from doing things. Hey, they did a good job of it – many common trouble-shooting and installation tasks require fee-paid services from Microsoft tech support now, and the things you can do for yourself have been deeply hidden from you.

But, aren’t their performance improvements in Vista? Not so as you’d notice. The most common compliant with Vista is its speed – or lack there of.

It’s more secure than prior Microsoft products (it could hardly be less secure!), but unfortunately, the gun that the security holds is pointed again at the user! I’m sure you will enjoy all the new ‘Are You Sure You wish to metaflabulate the tarsel durilator? It might be a security issue…’ messages you’ll get, during normal daily operations, like putting files on a CD. And you are just going to love being told by your machine that you ‘Are Not Authorized to Do This Thing’ over and over again.

At the same time, no vast improvement has been made against virus incursions from spoof web sites, etc. Some, to be sure, but the nasty minds that come up with viruses are rapidly finding the loopholes Microsoft missed.

More effort in Vista was spent on sleuthing out pirate Microsoft software and enforcing licensing than intrusion prevention.

Well, you say, if you hate Vista so much, you can stick with ol’ XP on your new computer – nope, not if you want to use the newest hardware. As a cattle-prod to get users moving to Vista, Microsoft has pushed the policy that XP support for new hardware be minimal, if existent at all.

Vista has kept me from buying a new laptop. (What a statement!) Vista has done more for Linux and Apple’s growth than any efforts on either the Linux community or Apple Computer’s part.

Microsoft won’t die tomorrow, or even a few years from now – but they lost their magic touch, and in this arrogance called ‘Vista’ comes the fall.