Just Empty Every Pocket Effortposts

Just Empty Every Pocket was my Jeep blog that mostly reblogged shitty-car-mods-daily but periodically talked about working on cars or why you should work on cars or general car stuff. Here are the effort-posts that I actually wrote that were posted on Just-Empty-Every-Pocket.

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America does have it's problems but I am proud of my country's department of transportation laws

ms-demeanor answered:

If this is about that Russian dashcam video where the excavator destroys the green car I do recognize the problems with the apparent lawlessness you see in dascham videos however sometimes I wish you could shred an asshole’s car with impunity.
But now it’s Driving with Alli Time. (serious, useful, helpful information for people who either drive like jerks or just are not used to driving)
Here is a handy rule to keep in mind: The vehicle with the most lug nuts wins. There is only one exception to this rule, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
If you are considering challenging another vehicle on the road (cutting it off, tailgating, break-checking, trying to beat it in a turn) take a second to consider how many lug nuts your vehicle has in comparison to the other vehicle.
Lug nuts are the bits that you have to unscrew if you want to take a wheel off. If you look at the wheel from the outside you’ll see them around the hubcap, usually four or five on a wheel for a standard car. The purpose of a lug nut is to secure your wheel to your axle. And there’s an interesting correlation here: the more lug nuts a vehicle has the heavier it is and (often) the more torque it has.
I used to have a car that had a total of 16 lug nuts - four per wheel. It was a three door Saturn that weighed so little that if my partner sat in the back seat the car would start to fishtail. I currently drive a truck that has 24 lug nuts - six per wheel. The truck is quite large and very heavy, it weighs so much that stopping takes much longer than it did in my coupe and sudden stopping in rain is MUCH more likely to lead to a skid because of the weight. My neighbor has a dualie, a pickup truck that is bigger and heavier than mine and that has 6 wheels (36 lugnuts). Semi trucks tend to have at least TEN lug nuts per wheel and eighteen wheels!
So what am I saying here, what does all of this mean?
If you cut off a semi in your Prius you are pitting 16 lug nuts against 180 and you are going to die. 180 lug nuts means “give me room,” 180 lug nuts means “I weigh multiple tons and have more axles than you have tires,” 180 lug nuts means “if I run into you your car is going to be made into dust even if I want nothing to do with that.”
And the same is true on a smaller scale - those weird trike things have 8-12 lug nuts and they’re more agile and lighter than a lot of other vehicles - which is exactly why they should be careful, because even a Smart Car has a higher gross weight and a harder time stopping than a trike.
The one exception to this rule is vehicles that don’t have lug nuts because they don’t have wheels. They have treads. And the treads always win. If you’re thinking about cutting off a semi, it’s a bad idea. If you think you can intimidate a driver whose mode of locomotion belongs on a tank you are bad and wrong and should feel bad and reconsider your life choices. (also these things are usually MUUUUUUCH heavier than they look because they have to have all the weight to counterbalance the GIANT CRANE ARMS they’re going to use to fuck your shit up)
So, what’s the takeaway?

• You can usually figure out which vehicle is the heaviest out of a pair of vehicles by counting the lug nuts.
• Don’t challenge or cut off or attempt to intimidate vehicles that are heavier than yours (or in general because it’s an asshole thing to do but especially not with a vehicle that will have difficulty stopping to keep from running you over).
• Do not fuck with vehicles that have treads instead of wheels. Only bad things can come of it.

This has been Driving with Alli, please don’t be assholes out there.

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For what it’s worth the reason I hate muscle cars is because they’re well designed from a visual perspective but are basically just meant to be stylish instead of functional. (This is my beef with most cars, tbh, and my beef with the modern Jeep line as well)
You want a car with a lotta horsepower? Get a truck. You want a car with a lotta torque? A Chevy Spark beats out a Mustang. You want a car that’ll go super fucking fast? Look at a lightweight European or Japanese car instead of the heavy body of an American muscle car.
I have a friend who likes weird cars. Subaru Brats with jump seats, AMC Eagles (the reason I think they suck is because my friend’s eagle was purchased for $200 up to its rockers in mud and lovingly restored into something that was still an utter piece of shit) and I know my friend would love this weird frog. I have friends who are hardcore offroaders and we’re constantly bickering about truck vs jeep vs bronco (though for real I respect the hell out of my friend who goes crawling in a near-stock Toyota, that’s fucking nuts bro). I have friends who like fast cars. They have spare sets of wheels they swap in on the weekends to go to the track - one of them is thinking about buying my 3-door Saturn chassis because he’s got a line on one of the mid-range engines that turn a daily driver into a decent little racer. But it seems like the only people I know who like American Muscle Cars are the old dudes who couldn’t afford a nice car as teenagers and are chasing after lost youth. Dude. Dude. The world is better than that. Your youth is not lost. Buy a fifteen hundred dollar XJ and come to the mountains with me, adventure is still to be had. Please don’t drop fifteen grand on a fucking mustang that you’re going to polish with a diaper and take out on Sundays while playing the oldies station on the satellite stereo system you added to your sad Frankenstein car.
(The dude who lives across the street from me owns a corvette as his daily driver; he has been babying the *fuck* out of a Mustang chassis in his garage that is now uniformly sanded and primed. This dude is in his 50s at least, he has a tribal tattoo in his shoulder, and owns a gym. He seems perfectly fine and I respect having project cars but dude I’ve seen you working on that fucking thing for ten hours a week for two fucking years, look the reason my jeep is still in the driveway is because I’ve worked on it 2 hours a year for two fucking years, please man, hug your wife and pet your cat, or just finish the fucking car what is happening I’m so confused)

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i think it sounds really dangerous to encourage people to change their own CAR breaks i mean, like people can be sure of themselves to do good but like... there might be other people's lives at stake here so... please get a professional to check it or do it for you please.... also if you got a car insurance definitely do NOT do that... i myself would never be able to afford a car but to me it sounds really dangerous

ms-demeanor answered:

I got a tuneup at the dealership once and they put my spark plug wires in the wrong order and my car broke down two miles away. I had to get the tuneup at the dealership because that car was under warranty and of the four times I’ve replaced spark plugs on two cars since I’ve never gotten the same problem. I got an oil-change at a dealership once and they left the funnel in my engine. My hood flew up as soon as I merged into traffic and hit 10 miles an hour - just like the scene in Tommy Boy.
I went to a mechanic who was offering sales for college students for standard services. Turns out the mechanic was doing cheap, simple fixes at a steep discount, tightening bolts only finger-tight, and waiting for the students to come back for a more expensive repair. He didn’t bother reconnecting all of the hoses in my engine and I was overheating by the time I got to work. Thankfully connecting hoses is easy. Thankfully I was able to talk to a couple of the other people who went into his shop for repairs. Thankfully all of us were happy to call the BBB. Unfortunately I was the only one who had gone to his shop who had any automotive know-how so I was the only one who hadn’t paid him to fix a problem he caused.
Owning and maintaining a car is a huge responsibility. Literally just this weekend I went to Jiffy Lube for an oil change (again, oil changes aren’t worth it to DIY because of time involved) and the person before me had literally zero coolant in his car. The person after me had to have her engine flushed because she hadn’t had an oil change in almost a year. IN LA either of these people could have suddenly stalled on a freeway and caused an accident. I know plenty of people who wait until their brakes are screaming before they consider replacing them because they can’t afford new ones (makes it harder to stop in time). I know plenty of people who drive on bald tires (which is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS DO NOT DO) because they don’t know any better.
When you hear that someone’s brakes are out or see it happen in a movie that a runaway car or truck has no brakes you’re generally seeing a break in the brake line. The brake line is a hydraulic system that sends a signal from your foot to the brakes to stop the car. There’s a huge difference between replacing your brake line (something that I’ve been putting off doing on my jeep for over a year because it’s a pain in the ass) and replacing your brake pads, which is what I was talking about in the how to spend money post.
A break in the brake line is a catastrophic failure that means you’re incapable of getting the car to stop by applying the brake pedal. If you have a broken brake line and your car isn’t stopping with the use of your foot you have a couple of options: try the emergency brake (which is part of a totally different system) or use engine braking (shift gears). A broken brake line is bad news.
Replacement brake pads are *not* a big deal. They are very nearly impossible to fuck up. There are books specifically written to give you step-by-step instructions on how to do this sort of thing and not fuck it up. There are dozens of websites and youtube channels dedicated to teaching you how to do this sort of thing and not fuck it up. There are at least two national chains dedicated to selling you parts so you can do this on your own and not fuck it up (your mechanic does not shop at autozone and they sell more than windshield wipers). There have been at least five radio shows about how to fix your car without fucking it up.
Look I’m sure you didn’t mean to start a rant here but unfortunately that’s what you’re getting because I am *real damn tired* of being told not to work on my car. I’ve been told not to work on my car by ex-boyfriends, by my uncle, by mechanics who were *fucking lying to me*, by my mom, by dudes in offroad clubs. Most of the people who have told me not to work on my own car (my uncle, my exes, my offroad friends) are dudes who feel totally confident in their ability to work on their own cars.
Part of the reason my husband and I lasted for the first six months of our relationship is because neither of us thought it was acceptable that I owned and drove a car and hadn’t ever done an oil change so he taught me how. Since then we’ve replaced two radiators together, a transmission, a water pump, a thermostat, probably five belts, something like four sets of rotors and twenty sets of pads, leaf springs, motor mounts, done twenty oil changes, replaced an entire brake system and a half (his jeep all the way, my jeep halfway, and with the end result of a better, safer brake system because the ABS systems on late 80s jeeps fails pretty regularly), and dropped two gas tanks. On my own I’ve replaced air filters, serpentine belts, fan belts, O2 sensors, a valve cover gasket, pads and rotors, a seatbelt (that was awful), and a radiator fan.
Here’s my thing: If you are this scared of cars it’s probably a good thing that you don’t own one. I am sympathetic, cars ARE scary. But they are not magic. They are machines that occasionally need repairs, that run on combustible chemicals, and that reach high speeds that are capable of causing devastating damage. Cars ARE dangerous, which means you need to know how they work, what signals they’re giving you that there’s a problem, and how to act to make sure that problem is solved.
Thirty years ago in the US you could take an automotive repair class in high school in almost any state in the US. This wasn’t an option available to me 15 years ago and I know that 10 years ago a lot of community colleges started cutting their vocational classes like auto repair and machine tooling. As I’ve watched the fall of auto repair classes I’ve seen a rise in things like plastic carapaces that hide the engine, interlocking covers that make it harder to get at the engine, parts hidden in weird places (battery in the trunk actually does make sense but it’s weird).
Car manufacturers *really* don’t want you to work on your car. They don’t want your mechanic to work on your car. They want you to bring your car into the dealership so the dealership repair shop can charge you a lot more money to fix your car right up until a salesperson starts to upsell you on a new one with a trade-in deal on the car that’s in the shop.
Mechanics don’t seem to give much of a shit if you work on your car (they know there will always be people who don’t have the time or know-how to get it done on their own AND they’ve got a high mandated pay rate, at least in California) but they’ve got their own upsells going (seriously, also never pay anyone to replace your air filter, it’s literally opening a box, swapping out a piece of cardboard, and closing the box).
I know, I know, I know I sound all paranoid and weird when I talk about it but it honestly freaks me out how much money I see people (especially young people, especially women) pay for car repairs. The six hundred dollars I mentioned for brakes in the original post? That wasn’t an exaggeration or a made up person, that was my sister’s Saturn Aura. I begged her to let me do the breaks because she’s got college loans to pay and had a 70 mile commute, she couldn’t afford six fucking hundred dollars and I’ve replaced pads and rotors on *THREE DIFFERENT SATURNS MULTIPLE TIMES.* That was almost a third of her pay for a month. That was more than two loan payments. That was more than the cost of food for a month. And it was ten times more than she needed to pay. Also she got that car used and it was almost a freaking tenth the cost of the car. Like. FFS. If you’re driving 150 miles a day that means you’ve got to pay about 1200 dollars a year on having your brake pads replaced. For $120 in parts.
My jeep literally cost $1300.
“But,” I can hear you saying “if you can’t afford professional repairs to your car you can’t really afford a car - it’s like the same rules as owning a pet.”
Nope. I live in LA county. My commute isn’t as brutal as my sister’s but I’m driving about 70 miles a day. If I was to do that on public transit here are my two routes (each of these, transit and driving, includes round trip estimates):

• Bus to train station, train station to bus stop, transfer to other bus, walk half a mile. Time: 4 hours a day. Cost: $14 a day.
• Bus to train station, train to train station, train to bus stop, bus to bus transfer, walk a quarter mile to work. Time: 5.5 hours a day. Cost: $24 a day.

Here’s the driving option:

• Home to Freeway to Freeway to Office: Time: 1.75 hours a day. Cost: $12 a day.

Car ownership is very nearly mandatory in Los Angeles. If your job is further away than you can walk/ride a bike in an an hour or if you live or work in an area under-served by public transit you have to have a car. If you’re the kind of person who’s barely scraping by and is looking up advice on how to save money you probably aren’t the kind of person who can afford to spend an extra hundred bucks a month on car repairs. But maybe you can afford to spend an extra ten dollars a month on that.
I consider “let a professional do it for you” very good advice in the medical field and in pet care. There are lots of things that can go wrong in lots of different ways that take lots of specific and inaccessible testing to identify.
When it comes to mechanical shit, though? Nah. Fix your bike. Fix your computer. Fix your car. Mechanical devices are a known quantity. There IS a right way and a wrong way to fix a mechanical device and lucky for you people have spent decades writing down and documenting how to do things the right way.
(It has just occurred to me that people who *don’t* fix their cars aren’t aware that people who *do* fix their cars go on test drives after the fix but in case you weren’t aware, yes, that’s a thing you do, you do your repair then you test it at low speeds in a safe area like an empty parking lot then you increase your speed slightly then you test on a freeway - this is also how you should treat your car when you get it back from a mechanic).
I just get so fucking grumpy about this. Anon you sound like a kind and worried person but you’re starting from bad assumptions. Cars are made and repaired by humans, humans are fallible. I live in California, a state where you have to have a years-long certification in order to give a friggin hair cut, and you are NOT required to be tested or certified in any way to work as an auto mechanic. The only requirement most places have to hire you as a mechanic is experience and a GED.
Working on your car is no more dangerous than *driving* your car. Yes, you have to be careful, yes you have to be sure of what you’re doing, yes you have to check and make sure you’re doing everything right. If you don’t believe you can replace your brakes and do so safely then DO NOT DO IT. But you shouldn’t believe that you have to rely on a mechanic who is going to charge you a minimum of $78 dollars to just look under the hood whose only qualification is that they’ve been doing this for longer than you have. Find a friend who has done brakes before. Have them watch you do it. Do it yourself as often as you can and after a while you’ll be better at doing this one thing on your one car than most mechanics would be.
Also, knowing how your car works is another thing that will save you money. Buy a comprehensive manual specific to your car. READ IT. When a mechanic recommends a service look it up in your manual and see what the manufacturer recommendations are. When a mechanic recommends a part replacement ask them to show you the part. Know what the parts of YOUR car look like (once at a Jiffy Lube they tried to get me to buy an air filter because mine was dirty; they showed me a filter from a much larger car than mine, I asked to see the engine, I opened up the airbox and my filter was still in there and clean from when I replaced it two weeks before, and I then made sure to watch for the rest of the service to make sure they weren’t fucking with my car or lying to me more). This is something that I feel should be a part of car ownership. You don’t have to be able to do everything, you should have a mechanic you trust, but you should know the parts of your car, the maintenance schedule, and how to identify a problem. I know a lot of drivers aren’t physically able to fix their cars and that’s 100% fine, but if you have a level of executive function that means you’re able to drive you *have* to consider a basic understanding of cars as part of the responsibility of driving because driving a badly-maintained car isn’t safe for you or the other people on the road.
Also I totally don’t get what you’re saying about insurance, anon. A lot of car insurance places will give you lower rates if you handle repairs on your own and basic maintenance stuff like brakes and oil changes isn’t covered by insurance. If your car is still under warranty or if you are still paying it off doing your own repairs may violate the terms of your warranty or loan, in which case, no, you shouldn’t do your own repairs and you are sometimes required to see a specific mechanic for service (though you should still have purchased and read a comprehensive manual for your vehicle).
Again, if you don’t feel 100% capable of replacing any part of your car in a manner that makes it safe and roadworthy, don’t do it. But I’m here and I’m telling you that it’s totally possible to learn how to replace your brakes in a manner that makes your car safe and roadworthy, and that it is one of the easiest ways to save the largest amount of money on car maintenance.

oodlenoodleroodle

There’s a pretty cool book called Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And it’s kind of about all this, like the different attitudes people have towards mechanical machines and repairing them (well, like, one third of the book is about that; another third is about Zen and the last third is the plot). 

lazarus-rat Deactivated

This is really long but it’s worth reading. You are absolutely capable of learning to do many many repairs on your car. Go to your library, find the Chilton manual for your car, and read it. You’ll be shocked how easy it is to work on your car. Did you know you can rent tools from Autozone? Did you know you can pull into Advance Auto Parts and tell them you want them to read any codes your car is throwing and they’ll do it for you for free? Don’t get hosed, you’re competent and capable, YOU CAN WORK ON YOUR OWN CAR.

kellyclowers

ZatAoMM is an awful book IMO, dude does not know how to write.

Anyway…

“When it comes to mechanical shit, though? Nah. Fix your bike. Fix your computer. Fix your car. Mechanical devices are a known quantity. There IS a right way and a wrong way to fix a mechanical device and lucky for you people have spent decades writing down and documenting how to do things the right way.“

See, computers are one thing. I mean on the purely physical/mechanical side its like putting together a really simple Lego set. Software can be a lot harder depending on how deep into you get. But for me, that’s my jam, that’s what I *do*. But cars? and even bikes? So much harder than computers. Working on physical things always makes me more nervous in the first place. When I see a friend who knows their stuff working on a car, I can see it mostly isn’t that complicated.

But I have enormous reluctance to try it myself, and on top of that, it is dirty. There is oil, grease, dirt, various other fluids from different systems. I can’t stand that, I don’t want it on me, or on my clothes (even old junk clothes just for that). Part of my aspie touch issues, just like finger paint, wet clay (pottery), and paper mâché. I *can* do if I really have to, but it is deeply unpleasant.

ms-demeanor

Yeah, this post is also *in no way* meant to shame people who can’t work on cars for one reason or another. Anxiety about not doing it right is a good reason for one person not to work on their car, tactile issues is a good reason for another person not to work on their car. When I described not replacing my brake lines as a pain in the ass I meant that literally - my lower back has been too fucked up to do any vehicle work that requires a high degree of flexibility for a while now. Some people have arthritic hands and can’t grip a wrench, some people have strong aversions to dirt and grease. I get not being able to work on your car. However if you own a car it’s my personal belief that you should understand how it works at least well enough to keep on top of basic maintenance and if you want to work on your car but don’t know how to I’m telling you there are *lots* of resources to learn.
Also this just occurred to me.

There’s a rhythmic knocking sound that starts at twelve second into this video. That sound is bad news and your car is probably out of oil and about to have a bad time (though something else is causing the sound in this video).
If you can hear that noise while you’re driving you should stop at a gas station as soon as possible, check the oil level, and if necessary buy a quart (or four) of oil, and put it in your oil tank. Your car should come with a basic manual (even if you don’t have a fancy one) that will tell you how to check the oil, where your oil cap is, and what weight of oil you need in your engine. The little manual should explain how to put the oil in the engine (and how to open the hood if that’s not something you’re familiar with) but I promise you that if you stand at a gas station with your hood open and look confused for a couple of minutes some dude in his 50s, probably with a moustache and a shirt with a fish on it, will appear and ask you if you want a hand. In fact sometimes he’ll appear even if you *aren’t* confused and will stand there outraged that you’ve refused his help and will watch you like a hawk with a pout on his face until you close the hood and drive away (but I suppose that’s beside the point). As soon as possible after you’ve topped up the oil get an oil change; most lube-and-tire shops do a basic inspection when you come in and will let you know if they see anything catastrophic going on in your engine.
I bring this up because rocker-knock (one of the nicknames for this noise) can be a symptom of VERY BAD, EXPENSIVE, CAR-KILLING problems but most people don’t know about that unless they take an auto-shop class or hang out with car people. It sounds super subtle, is easy to miss if you’ve got music playing in the car, and can totally fuck up your shit.
Also funtimes good stuff that you should probably have in your car:

• A quart of whatever oil is appropriate
• A funnel
• A bucket-o-coolant, depending on how you drive/the age of the car
• Shop towels (thick blue towels sold for a dollar a roll at auto stores, great for checking oil levels without having to scrounge for a napkin to clean off the dipstick, also good for cleaning mirrors and windshields/applying rainguard/emergency toilet paper)
• Nitrile/latex gloves (if you’ve got a dirt/grease aversion - will keep you from having to touch stuff and will make checking oil easier for you)
• A one-gallon gas can. (My dad’s friend’s car ran out of gas while he was driving his in-labor wife to the hospital so he walked to a gas station, got five gallons of gas, and got halfway back to the car before he realized he only needed one gallon to get back to the station and carrying less weight would have made it faster overall but instead had to walk back to his furious pregnant wife in labor in a hot car in Southern California in July carrying 40 lbs of gas, bbys let me tell you, if you can walk to the station one gallon of gas should get your car there)
• A jack
• A spare tire

Whether you do or do not have any of these things one thing you SHOULD HAVE IT’S SO WORTH IT is a AAA card. It costs $5.50 a month ($66 a year) and you can make up that price in discounts (10% off hotels! $3 off at the aquarium! $5 off Disneyland! Seriously ask everywhere) and it’s scary as fuck to change a tire on a freeway, have a pro do it, they will have cones and the right tools and a reflective vest, it’ll be much safer for them. Run out of gas on the road? AAA. Lock your keys in your car? AAA. Stalled and need a tow to a shop? AAA. Flat tire? AAA. Dead battery? AAA. They even have an app so you can see the response vehicle and they’ll give you the driver’s name and it’s so much safer waiting for someone to come along and help.
Anyway, yeah, if you can’t work on *your* car for whatever reason I feel you and I’m not judging, but don’t judge other people for working on/not working on their cars. Also please know your car well enough to know if your engine is about to eat shit. Also have emergency car supplies on hand on your car. Also AAA is a Very Very Very good investment (seriously, the number of people I’ve seen walking back into a wal-mart to buy hangars because they just realized they locked their keys in the car is over ten and it’ll just be so much better if you can call someone instead of messing about in the inside of a door, a tow truck driver with a slim jim can fix this in 30 seconds, you cannot).
………
This is how I turn into a car blogger, isn’t it?
None of us want that, please be safe.