Carini on DIY: Start with Common Sense
This story first appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more.
Whenever I talk to young people about how they can get into this business, I tell them the main factor in life is common sense. If you don’t have common sense, you’re in trouble. If you do have logic and common sense, which go together, I think you can fix most anything. People say to me, “How do you fix a Ferrari? It must be so difficult!” Well, it’s a car; it’s got gas and spark and compression. If it has all three, then it’s gonna run. Here’s an example of what I mean that I told somebody recently:
I was on the Colorado Grand, and there was a gentleman from Europe driving a Mercedes-Benz 220. He’d pulled over on the side of the road, and there was a group of guys all scratching their heads trying to diagnose what was wrong. I pulled over to help. They were checking the points and ignition, then suddenly, they got it running. I got back in my car and we headed out on the road. I let the Mercedes go in front of me, just in case. Sure enough, about 20 miles later, he pulled over on the side of the road.
I went over, and this time, I was the only person there. He said, “I don’t know what happened, Wayne. We checked everything.” I said, “Well, let’s look.” We opened the hood and we started talking. I wasn’t looking at the car. He said, “I hate to say this, Wayne, but we’re losing time. Aren’t you gonna look at the car?” I said, “No, I don’t have to. We’re just gonna wait.” After a few minutes, I put my hand on the engine, on the intake manifold, and on the carburetor. I told him, “Give it a try,” and vroom, it started right up. The owner couldn’t believe it. “How did you know that?” I told him, “Just common sense. It’s called vapor lock.” We were in a hot environment, we were going higher in elevation, and the car was getting hot. Vapor lock occurs when excessive heat causes the gas to boil and vaporize in the fuel line. The fuel pump can’t pump vapor, and the carburetor starves for fuel.
The first time the Benz had stopped, the owner had pulled over, opened the hood of the car, and in trying to diagnose it, enough time passed that the car then cooled down. After a few minutes, he was able to start it. I told the owner that since we would be driving to lower altitudes, the car should run cooler and it wouldn’t vapor lock again. Sure enough, the car went fine the rest of the day, and we didn’t have any issues for the rest of the tour.
One of my own DIY adventures happened when I was 22 years old. I had just bought a new Triumph Tiger motorcycle. It was the first thing in my life that I had ever bought brand new—everything else had been used up and worn out. We were riding up in Nova Scotia and stopped for gas. When we resumed our journey, the bike started but wouldn’t engage in first gear.
Rather than panicking, I approached the situation logically. I started by taking the side cover off and assessed the situation. I found that the Tiger used a keyway that runs the flywheel off the crankshaft. The keyway had snapped off, so the engine was spinning freely and not engaging.
We asked the guy at the gas station where we could find the nearest Triumph dealer and he simply laughed. “There’s only a Honda dealership and that’s all the way on the other side of Nova Scotia.” So now I’m wondering how I’m going to fix this bike.
I noticed there was a pile of junk lawn mowers next to the station. It occurred to me that a lawn mower uses a keyway that shears off if the blades hit something. I asked the gas station attendant if I could take one of the lawn mowers apart. “Oh, no,” he replied. “You gotta buy it.”
When I asked how much, he answered, “I don’t know, five dollars?” I gave him the money; he had no idea what I was going to do. I took the lawn mower apart, removed the keyway, filed it down, and installed it on my bike. It fired up, the flywheel was able to engage with the crankshaft, and the bike ran fine. We headed back on our tour and made it all the way to Maine before the DIY keyway broke again. This time, we found a Triumph dealer and got the right part. We were on the road again in no time.
When I returned home, the first thing I did was sell the Triumph and buy myself a BMW motorcycle with a driveshaft—no chain, no keyway. Lesson learned!
When it comes to working on cars Common Sense applies to all things. But you also need some good knowledge that comes with training and some just from experience. Today you also can use Yourtube as there is almost a video of how to do anything. I watched recently a guy changing oil on a new Bugatti.
Further more you need in many cases the right tools anymore.
The common sense comes in when you need to know when you hit the limits of experience, skills and tools. That is when you seek help before you screw it up. Or you react correctly when you begin to see things go wrong.
It’s amazing what you can fix if you just try. I sometimes wonder about what my friends without tools (and a welder) are throwing away… or paying for
My neighbor has a Suburban with a Vortec that had a bad hunting idle, a host of codes, and other symptoms. He was on his second mass airflow sensor courtesy of the local garage, and he was about to take it back for round three. I told him if they replaced the same part twice, they don’t know what was going on. I put my smoke machine on it (usually reserved for carbureted cars) and discovered that his intake manifold was leaking badly… apparently pretty common on older Vortecs
In my undeservedly long life I’ve worked on bicycles, motorcycles, cars, 4X4s, oil delivery trucks, conveyor systems, dock levelers, even USPS sorting machines, usually with no instruction. I explain it with “They’re all just nuts and bolts, arranged in different configurations.”
There is reference above to knowing one’s limits, and I’m seconding that comment. I recently ran into a “wiring issue” (I won’t bore you with details) that I just could solve – actually, I couldn’t even diagnose it. I can rebuild an engine, tranny, differential, brakes, carbs, suspension, do moderate body work, weld and even sew upholstery. But electric and electronic gremlins nearly always best me. I took the car to the 81-year-old auto electric wizard in a nearby town and he figured out the issue and fixed in in mere hours. He was explaining what he’d found and why the problem existed and it hit me: I can SEE nuts and bolts and gears and tubes and such. But I can’t see a volt, an amp, or even an ohm (and I don’t know for squat what any of those things really are). My brain is wired (no pun intended) to visualize how mechanical things interact, but how electricity works just doesn’t get past the basics of “complete the circuit”! For those of you who get electric theory and operation, I salute you. For those (like me) who can just manage to change a burned-out bulb, thank goodness there are people like the guy I just paid to chase the gremmies outta my starting circuit!