Articles

44 posts match.

• Article

  OBD-II: what the standard actually guarantees, and what it does not

  Almost every disappointment people have with a scan tool comes from the same misunderstanding: OBD-II is an emissions regulation that turned...

  @cargeek 4 weeks ago
• Article Whine that changes when you turn the steering wheel

  Hydraulic power steering: the pump, the rack, and the noise on full lock

  A hydraulic power steering system spends its whole life telling you how it is doing, and the noise it makes is the most specific thing it sa...

  @cargeek 4 weeks ago
• Article Increased fuel consumption

  Why fuel consumption rises, and which causes are worth chasing

  Fuel consumption is the most useful number a car gives you, and almost nobody writes it down. That is the whole argument of this article, an...

  @cargeek 4 weeks ago
• Article Engine Oil

  Engine oil: grades, synthetic versus mineral, and what the numbers mean

  There are two questions you can ask about a bottle of engine oil. The first is whether it is synthetic or mineral. The second is whether it...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article

  Inspecting a used car: what to check, in what order, and what ends the viewing

  Most guides to inspecting a used car are written in the order that sets the price. This one is written in the order that ends the viewing. T...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Vibration felt through the vehicle

  Engine and gearbox mounts: the vibration that appears at idle

  An engine mount has two jobs that pull in opposite directions, and everything about it is a compromise between them. It must be stiff enough...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Glow Plug

  How a diesel differs: compression ignition, and what that changes about diagnosis

  One difference produces all the others, and the source states it twice — once wrongly and once correctly, three paragraphs apart. The wrong...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article

  CNG conversions: how the system works, and the faults specific to it

  Very little is written in English about running a car on compressed natural gas, and a great deal of the world does it. This is a merge of f...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article

  The carburettor: how it meters fuel, and why it needs adjusting when injection does not

  A carburettor is a remarkable piece of engineering that solves a hard problem with no electricity, no sensors and no moving decisions: it me...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Brake lights not working

  Lighting circuits: headlamps, indicators, and finding the one that is out

  Car lighting is the one system where you cannot see your own failure. Every other fault announces itself to the driver; a dead brake light a...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article ECM Power Relay

  Relays: reading the numbers on top, and testing one in the car

  A relay is a switch operated by a magnet instead of a finger, and its whole purpose is to keep heavy current away from places heavy current...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article

  Tyres: sidewall markings, tread patterns, and what pressure actually changes

  Everything a car does — accelerating, braking, steering, staying on the road — happens through four patches of rubber roughly the size of a...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Turbocharger

  Turbocharger failure: what kills one, and what the damage tells you

  The corpus opens its page on the turbocharger by saying they are blamed for far more faults than they cause, and that is the right place to...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Brake pedal feels soft or spongy

  Brake hydraulics: bleeding, and why the pedal goes soft

  The whole braking system rests on one property of liquids: they do not compress. Push on a column of fluid at one end and the far end moves...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article

  Wheel alignment: camber, caster, toe, and reading a tyre that is wearing wrong

  Three angles decide how a car tracks, how it steers and how long its tyres last, and the useful thing about them is that the tyre keeps a re...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Grinding or scraping noise when braking

  Brake pads and discs: material, wear, and the noises that mean something

  A brake does one thing: it turns the car's motion into heat and throws the heat away. The original opens with the arithmetic and it is worth...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article

  Springs and dampers: what each one does, and how a tired damper hides

  A spring and a damper are fitted together, replaced together and usually talked about as one thing. They do opposite jobs, and the differenc...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Transmission slipping

  The CVT: why it feels wrong, and whether that means anything is wrong

  The corpus describes transmission slip as engine speed rising without a matching increase in road speed, and says to treat it as a fault. On...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Transfer Case

  4WD, AWD and the difference that matters when one wheel is on ice

  "Does it have four-wheel drive?" is close to the wrong question. Two vehicles can both answer yes and behave completely differentl...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article

  The differential, and the several ways one can be locked

  Both sources for this article describe the differential as intelligent. One calls it a smart distribution box that works out which wheel can...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Grinding when changing gear

  The manual gearbox: what is happening when you change gear

  Move the lever and a gear engages, silently, in about a fifth of a second. That is a much harder thing than it looks, and understanding why...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Transmission Fluid

  The AL4 automatic: how it works and what goes wrong with it

  The AL4 — sold as the DP0 by Renault — is in a very large number of cars: the automatic 206 and Pars, the 307 and 407, the Xsara and Xantia,...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Unusual engine noise

  Diagnosing engine noises: what each one is telling you

  A noise carries four pieces of information, and people reach for them in almost exactly the wrong order. What it sounds like — tick, knock,...

  @cargeek 1 month ago
• Article Clutch

  The clutch: how it works, how it wears, and what slipping actually feels like

  A clutch exists because an engine cannot start from rest and a gearbox cannot change ratio under load. Everything else about it follows from...

  @cargeek 1 month ago