General vehicle thread

[ruthabagah]

nice job Hatidua!

[hatidua]

nice job hatidua!

thanks, I'm glad to be done inhaling sawdust for a while

[Irving]

Excellent.

[brutal]

Very cool.

[BladesNBarrels]

When I went back to CU Engineering school in the early 70's, one of the students was living in the parking lot in a VW Bug.
He used the showers at the school, had a gas stove, and was doing fine.
He had removed the passenger seat and built a bed long-wise.
One of the cooler prof's took pity on him after the first semester and gave him a room in his house.
He would have loved that mobile motel room.

[DenverGP]

Typical "easy" vehicle repair for me today.

Wife let me know this morning that the drivers side front window in her 2017 equinox wouldn't roll up. Hear a click when the switch is pushed up or down, but thats it.

I figure the window regulator is bad, not too bad a job. Wanted to get it fixed before the weather hits, so I grab a dorman replacement regulator/motor from Oriellys. $30 more than it would be off amazon, but I can get it immediately.

Job isn't tough, but lots of annoying. Clips that hold the door panel to the door, then getting connectors unplugged, etc. Broke one of the clips, lucky I'm prepared with spare replacement door panel clips.

Get the old regulator out, cable seemed like it was loose, one of the pulleys was partially broken.

new one in, get things buttoned back up, but before I get too far, decide to plug the door harness back into the car to verify everything is working right. Hit the window up button, nothing. Down, nothing. Other windows work fine.

I grab a power supply and some wires and rig up power to the window motor connector, sure enough it goes up and down just fine.

F me.... I guess it was the switch. Call around to a couple chevy dealers to see if anyone has the part in. $60 and a 45 minute drive later, I've got the replacement switch. Fight with the door panel to get the switch swapped out. Once done, I plug the door harness back into the car again to make sure it's all happy. Nothing. Remember that I didn't re-connect the plug on the window motor. Plug it in, everything is good. Put the damn thing back together to finish a 30 minute job that ended up taking almost 4 hours.

Now I'm wondering if I had reconnected the plug on the window motor at all before the switch replacement, and it was just a bad regulator. Or was the regulator fine the entire time (until I broke it removing it) and the switch was the problem?

Oh well, shits all working now, no point worrying about it I guess.

[FoxtArt]

On the bright side, at least you won't have to open it back up 2 months from now to replace a regulator. Anytime I have to open a door I'm half tempted to proactively fix the stuff that breaks often. Or for that matter... pull a truck bed.

[brutal]

My home PC/server had been locking up or powering off quite frequently, often multiple times a day in the middle of use, for long enough that I started putting together a parts list to replace.

Figure hardware since it would have trouble doing POST and starting up at all even with various drives unplugged, etc.

Damn thing now hasn't hiccupped once in 3 weeks (now watch it will die tonight).

It's out in a "maintenance" position so I'm hesitant to move it at this point. LOL

[earplug]

if you have rear AC that leaks refrigerant you can buy a set of plugs for less the $20.00 to isolate the system. Talk to your dog before shutting down his AC.