Category: Greg’s Stuff (Page 6 of 12)

The best tool in the toolbox…

February 10, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

tool

The one thing about being a mechanic is you need and accumulate tools throughout your career. Every year they introduce a new method to drive the humble screw, and of course you need a whole new set of tools to deal with it. And every year they build new cars with unaccessable items ( like oil filters) that need special tools to get to them. It never ends…

But there is one great tool that I have that can’t be replaced and hasn’t been updated. You’ve seen it in PDF’s and Photoshop. You guessed it, it’s the hand tool.

The hand tool is so good it can pick up stuff you can’t even see. And the hand tool has the sensation of touch, so that you can see what you’re doing without seeing it. The hand tool is covered in a skin like substance that is waterproof and impervious to a lot of chemicals. Sometimes the hand tool’s skin like substance gets a little rough from the wear and tear, but there are gloves available to cover them, but they are never as good as the original skin like substance. If you use latex gloves, any oily bolt will defeat their grip. If you use leather gloves, any small nut or spring will defeat their grip. None of this stuff defeats the hand tool’s original skin like substance.

The hand tool can adjust to grab any size tool handle, and they have great mobility, so good in fact that you can always get the hand tool into places you can’t always get it out of. In sum, the hand tool is the best tool in the toolbox…

greg

Car guys in the Nam…

February 4, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

I got dropped into Vietnam at the tender age of 21 or 22. Of course all the young guys were car guys, but mostly the talk was of hot american iron…. I was the weird guy who liked foreign stuff.

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But all the foreign stuff in Vietnam was old left overs from the French occupation. But it was still neat stuff.. Citroen Traction Avants from the 50’s were everywhere but was hard to find one in good shape. Those cars are still there. In fact, you can still hire restored examples of these cars from the Hotel Sofitel to tour Hanoi.

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All the trucks and buses were old French things too. All the big commercial trucks were worn out, sometimes you see them shaking violently when getting over 35 mph or so. It’s only natural I guess, when a 1st world country leaves all it’s stuff in a 3rd world country, it gets used till it quits. The buses were everywhere too.

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Neat little Renault Goelettes and Saviems puttering up and down Highway One.

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The Vietnamese could make a bus out of anything!

But the coolest Veitnamese drove (or were driven around in) American cars. The commander of the 1St ARVN, General Phu, had a black ’59 Chevy staff car. And it looked new. Another guy I used to hang around with had a ’57 Plymouth, and it had absolutely no glass left in it. But he didn’t care, cause he was the coolest guy in Hue city! Even a few of the white mice (civilian police) rode Harleys.

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Since then I rarely owned any American cars. I got my first MG when on leave in 1972 and never looked back. Now if only the French could work on adding a little reliability…

greg

Xenon headlights… A bridge too far?

February 4, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

xenonlamps

Sometimes car companies outdo themselves to sell cars. Xenon bulbs comes to mind. I think it is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. We all do need to see better at night, but the small contribution xenon bulbs give are not worth the cost or the safety concerns.

The old square sealed beam that got us into the seventies was replaced by the radical new halogen bulbs. They were brighter but at double the cost. Of course that cost was about 15 dollars as opposed to 6 dollars, but you did see better at night.

Since progress never stands still, we have a new solution. Xenon headlamps.. or high intensity discharge lamps (HID). They are brighter, and do allow you to see better (somewhat). They also put out more light per watt. But the complexity required is amazing, and there is the problem of oncoming drivers.

To get those HID lights to light up you need several things. You need a transformer that can generate about 30,000 volts to get it started… Then you need a ballast that can generate about 85 volts to keep it lit. All this stuff is pretty high energy and can hurt you if you get yourself crossed up in it. Finally, to keep from blinding oncoming drivers, you need a system for beam leveling, that usually includes suspension sensors and a control unit to keep it all together.

When your halogen headlight blinks out, the usual reason is the bulb. No problem, you go down to Autozone and get one for fifteen bucks and away you go. At your worst case scenario, the wiring has failed at the bulb or the relay quit. If you have to get someone to fix it the most it could cost you is a hundred bucks.

When your xenon headlight blinks out, it’s usually the bulb. That alone is a couple of hundred bucks for the part. If anything else goes wrong your in for an expensive fight. And to add to the headlight problem, is something goes wrong with the leveling system, and it does a lot, your headlights can be as bright to other drivers as airplane landing lights!

So, in conclusion, I like to live by the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid!). I’m just getting around to accepting power windows and power seats, mainly because you can hardly find a car without them anymore. Plus I like to save a buck when I can and I like cars that are easy to service. That kind of thing is getting increasingly hard to find.

greg

The Saab 9-7 and the pregnant woman…

January 30, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

saab9-7

A few years ago Saab and GM (mostly GM) decided we needed an SUV in our lineup. GM had this big hulking trailblazer that was selling well at the time and hung a Saab bumper skin on it and away we went.

We had teething problems for awhile getting up to speed on repairing those things, as they are almost an alien beast to an old Saab guy. But we caught up and things are kinda going smooth.

But repairing them is not living with them. A guy in a shop rarely puts a spare tire on a car (or truck) because we usually repair whats wrong with the tire, or replace it. I haven’t had my spare out in ten years or better.

So in comes this pregnant woman in her new 9-7. She wants to know how to change the tire in an emergency. I didn’t know, but offered to read the repair manual to catch up. She came unglued. We’re supposed to be experts, and on and on, and she can read the repair manual as good as anybody. (But she didn’t).

Well besides all that, the 9-7 is a big heavy truck. It has huge 18 inch truck tires on it, and the lug nuts are torqued at over 100 lbs per square inch. This woman was 7 months pregnant and couldn’t have weighed more than 120 pounds. I have since changed a tire and you have to lay on the ground to get the spare out the bottom, and drag it out from under the truck, plus jacking it up and on and on… and the lug wrench is far from adequate.

However, I am now well versed on changing the spare on these 9-7’s, but since road assistance is free during the warranty period, I’ll just call them.

greg

Winter Olympics… in a Saab…

January 27, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

saabwinter

Yeah, the snow finally got here.. On the way to work I was remembering my earlier years in old cars during the 60’s. Everything was rear wheel drive and had a V-8. Also usually had bad tires too so that you ended up with one wheel drive, and that was the bad wheel. To get to work in the snow it was usually balls out and out of control..

My Saab, on the other hand, couldn’t be a better snow car. Cars with front wheel drive (which most are now, none then) are good anyway because all the weight of the engine is over the drive wheels. But you add snow tires and an electronic winter driving program and you’re pretty unstoppable. And if ice really becomes a problem some studs will solve that.

Most people think abs is unhelpful in the snow, and it doesn’t really help you stop when it’s real slippery but it does allow you to steer somewhat (although more like a boat than a car). And with front wheel drive you can also use the throttle to steer… push on it and you go wide, let off and it tucks in. Kinda fun in the slippery white stuff.

Another thing us old Saab guys used to do is spin around in parking lots. Just put your car in reverse, crank the wheels hard over and hold them there and blast the throttle for as long as you can stand it. Kind of like the air force’s centrifugal tester, the car’s rear end stays planted and the front swings around in fast circles. That will make you dizzy, but make sure you have lots of room…

And it’s off to the Olympics!

Saab control units, then and now…

January 27, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

I’ve got the control unit blues lately… Trying to replace them is getting to be a pain. There always seems to be some kind of problem and it always ends up being faulty or wrong software.

My latest problem is with this new Saab. But while working on it I did notice a few things. These modules have gotten really small. This generation, called ME9, does a lot more processing than the old Trionic, and a lot faster too.

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Trionic on left, ME9 on right

The other thing is they don’t need to be protected from the weather any longer. This module is bolted onto the engine. The old T7 was either inside the car in the kickpanel or in a protected area under the hood. I even found a control unit under the car on the rear end on our new Xdrive cars (4WD).

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control unit installed on engine..

These modules seem more durable and robust than ever before… however they still need software…

greg

More space… please..

January 25, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

In an earlier post on the new Saab V-6 engine, I mentioned how GM and Saab were becoming packaging companies. One thing about modern cars, everything is jammed in there. I remember when they replaced the old Saab 900 in 1994… mainly because the engineers couldn’t stuff anything else in it. It was full up. They were shoving control units under everyseat and kick panel till there was no where else to go.

My co-worker John put a Serpentine belt on one of the new V-6’s today. Good Lord! I was talking to some GM engineers the other day and they were bragging that they had at least 6mm between the engine and everything else. I just measured my fingers and they are at least 18mm thick. Hopeless. They design them to build, not to repair.

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Note: the space between the lines is 6 millimeters, the belt is down that space.

Things you notice is that small things like hose clamps are faced to the frame. You can’t get a tool on them because the engines were put together completely before being dropped into the car. The clamp was installed by some auto worker standing next to the motor, without a car in the way.

Well, I guess if this stuff was easy, they wouldn’t need me to do it…

greg

No speedo… no sweat.. GPS to the rescue…

January 25, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

gps

My speedometer in my Saab 9-5 quit last month. I traced the cause to a faulty brake control unit. It is the brain that controls the brakes when traction control and electronic stability control is in action. These are cool things cars have nowdays that really do help a mediocre driver keep control of his car. I don’t think it helps people that know how to drive, but is handy nonetheless.

The brake control unit (also known as the TCS) couldn’t read the wheel speed sensors anymore. This is how the car knows how fast it is going. This data is sent over the bus (the cars network) to all the other control units that need to know the wheel speed, such as the engine control unit (ECM) and the dash gauges (MIU). So now the speedometer doesn’t know how fast the car is going.

It took a week to get the parts, but in the meantime, I remembered my old handheld Magellan Sport Trak map GPS unit I had laying around. It had a screen that shows how fast your going, and since it was time based and corrected gps, it was a hell of a lot more accurate than the cars speedo. The cars speedo was calibrated at the time of manufacture and is based on lots of variables, including tire size. The tires on the car now are close to the rolling radius of the original tires, but not exactly. An error of 6% is widely accepted in the industry, and it’s always factored upward so that the car is always going slower than the speed shown. Car manufacturers don’t want their customers getting tickets all the time.

The gps was cool, because I always also knew my altitude. I was surprised to find my daily commute was also about 300 feet uphill. These gps units are digital, which means the price comes down dramatically every year, so cars should be getting these things to run their speedometers other than some built in algorithm. And it would be a lot more accurate.

greg

The economy and the invisible barbed wire fence…

January 15, 2009 / Greg / 0 Comments

When I was a kid, I was lucky to have woods to run in. One day, in a fit of youthful exuberance, I was running down a creekbed at full speed when WHAM! I found myself laying on my back in the creek, dazed, confused and bloody. The day before a neighbor put up a new barbed wire fence around his property, and it ran across this creek directly in my path. Laying there, I still couldn’t see it as I had lost my glasses in the encounter. What happened?

I think the same thing happened to the world’s economy. It was running pell mell straight into an invisible wall and BLAMO! We still don’t know what we hit. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now.

One thing I do know, the barbed wire fence didn’t keep me out of the woods, but I did have to change how I did things.

greg

Saab V6.. 4 quart engine, 3 quart hole…

January 9, 2009 / Greg / 2 Comments

saabv6001

Since 2006, some select Saab 9-3s come with GM’s new (for the time) global V6 engine. For you techie types, the 2.8 liter engine comes to the U.S. with 250 hp (less in the ROW- rest of the world) and 258 ft. lbs of torque. For once the U.S. gets the hot engine. Made from a clean sheet of paper, its a 60 degree v motor (reduces vibration), 9.5 to 1 compression ratio (more power), and almost everything possible is made from aluminum (light weight).

This motor (B238L) was designed from go to be turbocharged, unlike it’s predecessor, B308 which was not. The B308 was an Opel engine that Saab designed some heads for, with belt driven cams and later ones had an asymetrical turbo run from the front bank of cylinders. This motor liked to shed belts and it’s belt drive mechanism was redesigned a couple of times. It was not well liked by technicians. You really didn’t get much power difference from the simpler 4 cyl cars either. The B308 came in some 1995-98 900 models, and some 1999-2004 9-5’s.

The B238L has some good features. The cams are chain drive, which all 4 cyl Saab turbos have been all the way back. The cams have variable drive, which is a way of changing the cam profile (something inherently unchangeable because the cams are cast in steel) for better drivability and power at different load conditions. The piston rings are stainless steel, the connecting rods are fractured (for more secure connection) and the pistons are graphite coated and oil cooled. This was all race car stuff just a few years ago. It’s a cool motor.

And the turbo is cool too. It runs 9 pounds of boost, and has a twin scroll design. Unlike it’s 308 predecessor, the turbo is symetrical (uses both banks of exhaust) and the twin scroll takes advantage of the exhaust pulses to spin up faster. The waste gate is electronically controlled by a pwm signal (pulse width modulated) from the engine’s ecu to keep the turbo spinning on lift off, for better response when your put your foot in it again.

However this engine completely fills up the space alloted to it. Technically this isn’t a problem, as the motor is not bigger than the space it resides in. But it does make for creative repair techniques when you can’t get your hands around it.

I guess you could say that Saab and General Motors aren’t so much car manufacturers as packaging companies.

greg

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