Two days later the mini van surprisingly loses all interior heat.  Did I also mention it happened to be the coldest day of the year?  Dad has no choice but to take the van in to the dealer telling the service advisor that it has no heat, conveniently forgetting  to confess that his son may have deposited a Batman pencil in a place it really shouldn’t be.  The dealer does their best to diagnose the problem, quoting him a dash removal and replacement of a suspected faulty Heater Mode Control Motor estimated at $1400.  He declines the work, pays the $139 diagnostic fee and heads over to his dad’s longtime mechanic, only to get the same answer and pay another diagnostic fee.

This is where we enter the picture, albeit cautiously as I always have a certain amount of hesitation when taking over projects like these.

We approached the repair with the intent of confirming the dealer’s initial diagnosis and to try to provide the customer with options only to realize that we too would have to remove the dash to complete any kind of repair.   Begrudgingly he gives us the approval and only at this point do I find out that there “might be a pencil down there”.

Two hours into the dash removal we locate the pencil lodged in the heater mode control system and begin our Batman pencil rescue mission.  In short order it’s back together ready for a test drive fully anticipating heaps of praise from the customer for being the hero that repaired the problem at a fraction of the cost.

Ironically, Lady Luck turns its blind eye taking us for a roller coaster ride.   We are about to park the now perfectly functioning van when the heater suddenly stops working and the interior cabin temperature plummets back to frigid levels leaving us all shaking our heads in frustration.  Back tracking to where we just visited a few hours ago we realize that pencil managed to loosen off a gear mechanism that we couldn’t see within the heater and that gear was now sitting at the bottom of the heater box.   Our rescue mission has now turned into a fishing expedition leaving us no choice but to complete the repair as originally quoted now putting us several hours behind schedule as punishment for trying to be the nice guy.

At some point every child will bring into existence a great story that will be retold for many years.  However, it’s the Dad that really amuses me this time, as I will never figure out why some customers think that holding back important details may somehow benefit them in the end.

Till Next Time
Lou

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 but not all the magic comes from the drive. The behind the scenes build has just as much value to me and I take great pride in the fact that I have hand built a car from “scratch” and that car has travelled at least 20,000 kilometres.   Not only am I completing an engine and  transmission upgrade but I have also embarked on a mission to make the car more comfortable for its two occupants thus I have completely gutted the interior.    The dead of winter really brings down the build pace but I have a team of supporters egging me on and maybe just maybe it will be on all four wheels again the  summer 2013.  (fingers crossed)  Part of the problem is that I keep adding little “extra” projects.. something like this..

New Carbon Fibre dash and Aluminum Gauge Cluster

The car was originally built during a time when my skills were young and impatience high leading to many short cuts.  But  maturity has been a mixed bag, bringing me patience but taking my hair.  Oh well thats what baseball caps and sunblock are for I guess.

Read on for build details.

It all starts with a 1/4″ piece of aluminum sheet with green painters tape stuck to it.  After I located all the structural pieces under neath the dash I grabbed my trusty compass and started drawing circles until I had the layout and feel that I was looking for.

Trying to get a feel for which gauge is going to go where.

I’m sorry but I missed a couple of progress photos. This swiss cheese shot shows all the holes that have been cut. Gauge holes were cut using my mill and a boring head, the perimeter holes are there to aid with the bandsaw cut. A metal cutting bandsaw has a large blade and cutting in a concave fashion traps the blade. These wholes are only there for blade relief.

First cut with the bandsaw. You can see how the relief holes really help.

All rough cuts done, now the real work starts detailing the piece.

Flush mounted LED warning indicator lights.

LED turn signal lights.

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Most people would agree that reliability, safety and good fuel economy are the things we value most in our vehicles. It makes very little financial sense to replace a vehicle that is giving you all of the above. Still, one of the most common questions I am asked by customers…

Read the full post here:

http://mississaugalife.ca/2012/10/to-buy-or-not-to-buy/

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Most modern vehicles are considered to be superior to their predecessors in just about every way, which has allowed manufacturers to adopt extended maintenance intervals. Unfortunately, this creates a situation where owners think their vehicles are invincible and do their very best to avoid the major services.

Let me tell you about a fellow I met 15 years ago when I first started repairing his car. Let’s call him Bob. The control he exercised over his car maintenance really struck me as special. Bob never misses an oil change; in fact he comes in early for every one of them.

Read the full post here:
http://mississaugalife.ca/2012/08/bob-and-phil-two-tales-of-car-maintenance/

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When this light comes on it means that your vehicles on board computer has detected a problem.   The most common fault codes deal with your gas cap.  You see, all cars newer than 1996 have an EVAP system. The Evaporative Emission Control (EVAP) is a re-circulatory system.  The gasoline in the fuel tank splashes around and creates vapour that on cars made before 1996 was just vented to the atmosphere.  Fortunately, we no longer vent this vapour and it is now stored and recirculated within the vehicles EVAP system.

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Friday afternoon I received a phone call from the event organizers of  the Push it To the Limit Autocross series and producers from Rogers TV asking me to be the “colour” commentator for our Autocross event on Sat June 16th, 2012.  As it turned out Rogers TV was gracious enough to film our event in full HD and will air the program on Channel 10 in a couple of months.
I must say I was a little nervous about being on camera, I know some people are perfectly OK with it and probably seek out the camera but I am definitely not one of those people.  The first few minutes are probably going to be embarrassingly awkward as I was clearly nervous, but hopefully I pulled it together fairly quickly.  Time will tell as we wait for the final edit to be shown.

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