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DIAGNOSING PERFORMANCE COMPLAINTS: The Process Can Be a Challenging Event
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By NAPA
5 Must-Have Tools You Can Use Outside the Garage
It’s true: NAPA boasts nearly 6,000 Auto Parts stores and more than 17,000 Auto Care centers. With America’s largest network of aftermarket automotive parts and auto service, it might come as a surprise that NAPA also specializes in equipment and expertise outside the garage. That’s right, NAPAonline.com carries a huge range of tools from the smaller
link hidden, please login to view like measuring tape, screwdrivers and extension cords to large power tools for serious home repair like pressure washers and cordless or corded power drills. Shop for all the best tools from top brand names like DeWalt,
link hidden, please login to view, link hidden, please login to view, Craftsman and more. These compact tools work great inside and outside the garage, around the home or even on the road. From full home renovation projects like siding replacement, hardwood floor installation and plumbing upgrades to small jobs like fixture installation or adding window treatments, a great home improvement journey starts at NAPA. Shop for Hand Tools at NAPAonline link hidden, please login to view
Even the most complicated at-home projects require those small toolbox staples like a reliable measuring tape. This
link hidden, please login to view features magnetic hooks that cling to steel, as well as a reduced blade arc for a straighter standout. For outdoor projects and surveying, larger units can span up to 300 feet, such as this link hidden, please login to view. A link hidden, please login to view is a great addition in any link hidden, please login to view to use for scale reference in accident photos. Nothing kills the excitement of a home-improvement odyssey like a lack of electrical outlets or worse, a too-short extension cord. Keep a UL Listed basic
link hidden, please login to view on hand for electrical access or upgrade to a link hidden, please login to view for maximized length. These cords are durable, insulated for use with power tools and remain flexible in temperatures down to -40 degrees F. This link hidden, please login to view features four grounded outlets and a safety circuit breaker, plus the built-in cable management eliminates twisting. Best of all, the spool design has a rewind handle for fast and tidy pack-up and storage. The humble screw is an ancient design. It’s the fastener that holds our world together, so never underestimate the tool that drives it. In all shapes and sizes, both Phillips head screwdrivers and flat-head screwdrivers are critical tools for any basic tool kit and are used everywhere. This durable
link hidden, please login to view is a great way to make sure you always have the right size screwdriver. For a space-saving option, go with a multi-head device like this link hidden, please login to view. Different types of specialized screws require specific kinds of screwdrivers, such as these link hidden, please login to view for torx security screws. Also, consider this link hidden, please login to view, which includes a #00 size for small tech repairs. Powerful Tools for Every Project link hidden, please login to view
One of the simplest ways to improve your home is a good, old-fashioned scrub down! As time passes, ultraviolet rays, dust, insects and even algae and smoke can build up on and stain siding, outdoor furniture and concrete driveways. The garden hose is rarely sufficient for a quality clean and the cost of hiring a service racks up quickly. Shop NAPAonline.com for a personal pressure washing system, so you can keep the outside of your home looking great and free of damage.
These versatile tools are powered either by electricity or gas and come in a variety of psi ratings that you can use to clean more than just siding and driveways. If you only need a
link hidden, please login to view, this link hidden, please login to view offers 1300 psi and a quick connect multi-directional nozzle. For a more robust, gas-powered cleaning, try this link hidden, please login to view with a 208cc gas engine and brass head axial pump with a preset unloader valve for low-maintenance use. No home improvement kit is complete without a reliable power drill. Choosing the best option may take some research, but these days, many power tool systems are designed to utilize one common type of battery. Both
link hidden, please login to view and link hidden, please login to view offer combo kits that feature multiple tools, as well as charging bases so you never get stuck with a dead battery. Additionally, consider a uniquely designed link hidden, please login to view for drilling in tight corners and hard-to-reach spaces. Shop at your
link hidden, please login to view and check off your home improvement to-do list! When you sign up for link hidden, please login to view, you get access to our members-only offers and special promotions. Get 1 Point for every $1 you spend. When you collect 100 points, you’ll automatically receive $5 off your next purchase. Photo courtesy of
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By NAPA
Three Auto Repairs You Can Do at Home
Many drivers avoid working on their own vehicles out of fear that they don’t have the expertise or the time. Some vehicle owners imagine a sizable garage full of tools is required for a standard repair. But investing yourself in an at-home vehicle repair is rewarding and can ultimately save you time and money in the long run. You don’t need a bunch of fancy tools or a big garage to complete routine maintenance. All you need is NAPA.
The experts at NAPA Auto Parts can help you perform three straightforward vehicle repairs at home as part of your regular vehicle upkeep: replacing worn or
link hidden, please login to view, rotating tires and changing your wiper blades. With the right tools and tips, adhering to a routine maintenance schedule prevents critical failures and expensive repairs plus keeps your ride on the road longer. Find Your Spark: How to Change Spark Plugs link hidden, please login to view
Replacing aging
link hidden, please login to view is a critical part of vehicle maintenance as they are responsible for igniting the fuel that powers your engine. Most vehicle manufacturers recommend changing your spark plugs every 30,000 miles or so, depending on your year, make and model. If you notice your fuel efficiency decreasing or your vehicle is starting or idling rough, then it possibly time to link hidden, please login to view. First, do your research. Refer to your vehicle’s manual for the information you need about the kind of spark plugs required and where they are located. Make sure you’re wearing gloves and eye protection to avoid injury. Clear any debris from around the plug with a brush and
link hidden, please login to view to ensure no particulates get into the engine through the plug hole. Then, remove the old plugs (always pull from the wire boot, never pull the wire itself). Once you remove the plug, inspect it carefully for blistering or an abundance of soot. This could indicate your fuel mixture is incorrect or there are deeper issues in the engine. Before you install the new plugs, refer to your owner’s manual for the proper spark plug gap measurement. Using a
link hidden, please login to view or a link hidden, please login to view, set the gap by gently lifting or lowering the electrode to the proper width. When installing the new plugs, make sure not to use anti-seize on the threads. Check the manufacturer’s recommended torque specs and tighten the plugs with a socket and ratchet accordingly. Simply reinstall your plugs in the proper order and that’s it! You’re officially a home mechanic.
A Good Rotation: How to Rotate Tires
Rotating your vehicle’s tires is another important part of vehicle maintenance, but an easy one you can do at home. As you drive, the rubber composite of your tires naturally wears down. When you steer your car, the front and back wheels move differently, so the tires wear down at different rates. To extend the life of your tires and maintain proper alignment, you should rotate your tires at least once a year. If you live in a colder climate, consider rotating them twice a year.
Before getting started, familiarize yourself with your vehicle’s drivetrain (Front Wheel Drive, Rear Wheel Drive, 4 Wheel Drive) and the kind of tires your vehicle uses (directional or non-directional). These factors affect the
link hidden, please login to view. Once you’ve established the rotation pattern that works for your vehicle, put on your gloves and goggles and get to wrenching. To perform a successful tire rotation, you’ll need
link hidden, please login to view, link hidden, please login to view and a lug nut wrench. Make sure your vehicle’s parking brake is engaged, then: Loosen the lug nuts on each wheel before lifting your vehicle Use the jack and jack stands to lift your vehicle Remove the tires and reinstall them according to your vehicle’s ideal rotational pattern Hand-tighten lug nuts, and you’re done No More Losing Streaks: How to Change Wiper Blades
You may not consider your windshield wiper blades a very important part of your routine vehicle maintenance. It’s easy to forget that these essential components can wear down, and no one wants to get caught in a rainstorm with windshield wipers that can’t do the job. If your wipers are leaving behind streaks or jumping and squealing over the glass, it’s time to
link hidden, please login to view. Do your research and figure out the correct length of wiper blades for your vehicle. Using the incorrect blade size can put undue strain on the wiper arms and wiper motor, which could mean they wear out faster. Consider the climate you in which you live and the time of year you use your wipers the most. In the winter, make sure your windshield is always deiced before engaging your wipers. Avoid engaging your wipers in the summer without moisture present on the windshield. NAPA Auto Parts carries a vast range of
link hidden, please login to view for hundreds of vehicles and any weather condition. Shop all the best brands: NAPA Exact Fit, Proformer, Rain-X, Bosch and many more. Once you have the correct blades for your vehicle, turn off the engine, then lift and secure the wiper arms. If your wiper arms are spring-loaded, lay a towel over your windshield while replacing the blades to avoid cracking your windshield if the arm springs back into place. Once replaced, test the wipers to make sure they work using a hose or your windshield washer function. While you’re replacing your wiper blades, check that the arms aren’t warped or cracked and clear out any leaves and debris that can collect in the air intake at the base of your windshield.
While acting as your own mechanic is a great way to give a little love back to your ride, it’s not always easy to get under the hood yourself. Whether your baby is a premium SUV, a reliable sedan or a beloved old jalopy, you can always trust the ASE-certified technicians at your local
link hidden, please login to view to get the job done right. Now, you can use our handy link hidden, please login to view so you can budget for a repair job and know what to expect before you bring in your vehicle. Featured image courtesy of
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By Counterman
Engine misfires are among the most common issues that a technician must diagnose. However, the biggest problem – from a diagnostic standpoint – is that it’s almost an automatic reaction to blame misfires on the ignition system. Understanding why this is a problem, and the reason it happens, can help you differentiate between ignition-related and non-ignition-related misfires.
There are a couple deep-seated reasons for the blame. To begin with, years ago, before fuel injection and distributorless ignition, the majority of all noticeable misfires were caused by an ignition problem – either a bad spark plug or plug wire. Note that I said noticeable misfires. On today’s vehicles, ignition problems indeed are a common cause of engine misfires … but also a common misdiagnosis. This is where it starts to get interesting.
Carburetors, distributors and plug wires got us through the first 80-plus years of the automobile, and did a great job at it. But the bottom line is that they were simply inefficient fuel and ignition systems. Compared to today’s vehicles, they ran terrible! Once you had a few miles on them, they idled rough, maybe had to warm up a little longer to avoid a stumble, and most cars had their own little idiosyncrasies for starting.
This was the type of performance we were used to, so nothing registered to us as a misfire until it was a “dead” miss. This is a term we as technicians use to refer to a misfire that renders a cylinder completely ineffective, or completely “dead.” These types of misfires shake the entire vehicle to the point where even the most absent-minded of vehicle owners knows something is wrong.
It Was Easy Once
Back in the day, spark plugs had relatively short service intervals – around 10,000 miles – and plug wires were wide-open to abuse and wear. So, not only were they the frequent cause of misfires, but it wasn’t uncommon to open the hood and see a spark jumping from a plug wire to ground, or between wires. This made it easy to diagnose, and if there was no visual cue such as this, a common trick was to use insulated spark plug wire pliers and pull off one wire at a time to see if it made a difference. If you got no change, you found the suspect cylinder. If you got the daylights knocked out of you, you needed a new set of insulated pliers!
This was a sloppy yet effective diagnosis, but by no means an insult; I’ve done it a “million” times. Now, let me get back to the diagnostic problems of a misfire. For complete and correct combustion to occur, you must have the proper amount of air, fuel and spark; you must have the correct amount of compression; and the ignition timing must be correct. So, the possible causes of incomplete combustion could be too much or too little air; too much or too little fuel; lack of or not a strong enough spark; spark at the wrong time; or a mechanical problem that causes insufficient compression.
On old cars, incomplete combustion was common (one reason emissions were so bad), but there was no computer, no electronics to tell us, and as I mentioned, we were used to engines that ran a little rough and didn’t have the best drivability. On today’s vehicles, complete combustion is critical for emissions and fuel economy. This is why the engine control module (ECM) continuously monitors for complete combustion, and while there’s a lot to that, we’ll just focus on the misfire monitor.
The operation of the misfire monitor is primarily based on crankshaft pulses. The ECM continuously monitors crankshaft speed via the crankshaft sensor, and if it sees even the slightest deviation, its logic deduces that some form of incomplete combustion (i.e., a misfire) has occurred. Since any type of incomplete combustion will cause an increase in emissions, a diagnostic trouble code (DTC) is stored, and the “Check Engine” light is illuminated.
While the driver of the vehicle might not have noticed anything wrong, the ECM did, and now there’s an annoying light glaring at the driver, enticing them to seek service. As a technician, when we pull the DTCs on a vehicle that seems to run fine, it’s not even a slight surprise to see misfire codes, which are always P0300 for random misfire, or P0301 and up (the last number indicating the cylinder from which the misfire occurred).
When You Assume …
With all of that said, now let’s focus on the diagnostic problem of assuming that a misfire is caused by ignition. Problems such as the slightest pinhole vacuum leak or the slightest loss of fuel delivery from an injector will be detected by the PCM, storing a misfire trouble code. If we allow ourselves to automatically blame it on ignition, a percentage of the time we will be wrong. However, since we know that ignition problems still are common, there are certain signs we look for and certain things we can do to determine if the problem is ignition-related.
To begin with, one telltale sign of an ignition misfire is the flashing “Check Engine” light. As part of emission control, all ECMs will store trouble codes when a misfire is detected. But, when the ECM determines there’s imminent danger of damage to the catalyst, it flashes the “Check Engine” light to get the immediate attention of the driver. This occurs when it picks up a “dead” misfire, with the logic that quite possibly there is excessive unburned fuel coming out of the dead cylinder, which will damage the catalyst.
These “dead” misfires again can be felt by the driver, so a shaking vehicle and a flashing “Check Engine” light go hand-in-hand. While not always, this is usually an ignition problem, and quite often the engine will idle smooth, but under acceleration begin to misfire and flash the light. Most misfire monitors are accurate with the reported cylinder, and a common practice for diagnosis is to swap the coil and plug from the suspect cylinder with those from another. More often than not, the misfire will move, and while it feels the same, the ECM will instantly report the misfire from the other cylinder.
Rolling back the clock again, even in the age of the carburetor, technicians knew that misfires could be caused by multiple factors aside from ignition, and if a car had a misfire that wasn’t blatantly obvious, we relied on an oscilloscope to be able to “look” at the operation of the ignition system on a screen, which allowed us to compare the efficiency of all cylinders and deduce whether the problem was ignition-related, or caused by another factor.
These tools and techniques still are relevant today, but there are more special-tool requirements for more vehicles, as opposed to one set of test leads that you could hook up to any make or model. As technicians, we always take into account all of the factors that can cause a misfire, so as not to misdiagnose it. However, we may not always have the required equipment to view ignition waveforms, so we continue our inspection with more signs that can indicate an ignition-related misfire.
Spark Plugs and Critters
Naturally, worn spark plugs can cause a misfire. If you know the mileage on them, it can help you decide whether it’s time for replacement. Once they’re removed, excessively worn electrodes are a good clue.
It’s always important to look for wiring damage. Coil wiring can be inviting for rodents, so a close inspection always is a good idea. Carbon tracking is another tell-tale sign of an ignition misfire. The high-voltage spark produced in the coil finds its path to ground by jumping across the gap of the spark plug. Electricity always takes the easiest path to ground, and if it finds an easier way than the spark plug gap, it’ll go there.
Spark plug wire or coil boots are designed to insulate the high voltage, but problems can cause the spark to travel under the boot and ground to the base of the spark plug. Carbon is a byproduct of an electrical spark, and a high-voltage spark traveling between the wire boot and plug will leave its “footprint” via a carbon track.
Carbon tracking also can be visible inside a distributor cap, and where you find it, you can be sure of an ignition misfire. A final visual indicator of an ignition misfire can be oil in the spark plug wells. Many of today’s cars are designed with spark plugs in the center of the combustion chamber. It’s common in these designs for the well seals to leak, and oil can work its way up underneath the coil boot and cause a misfire.
During any type of diagnosis, we always use sight, sound and smell as our most important tools. Even if you can’t see it, you get used to the sound of a jumping spark, and this can be an indicator of an ignition misfire. You also might smell excessive fuel at the tailpipe. There are other indicators with scan-tool data that can give you a clue as to whether you have an ignition misfire, but you have to be careful.
If you have an ignition misfire and excessive fuel is being introduced into the exhaust, the engine-management system will recognize this as well and make adjustments to fuel delivery, which can alter engine data and the smell from the exhaust.
As you can see, this is a really deep hole, and the bottom line is engine misfires can be difficult to diagnose at times due to the sensitivity of modern engine-management systems. However, a thorough inspection and careful mindset will allow you to head off an ignition misfire before getting too deep into additional diagnostics.
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By Mighty Auto Parts
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link hidden, please login to view appeared first on link hidden, please login to view. Neglecting maintenance intervals can result in performance issues and internal engine damage due to sludge deposits restricting the flow of lubricant to vital engine components. Evidence of lack of maintenance will normally show up in the oil filter and related housing. The filter media will be impacted with sludge deposits. Where applicable, the filter cap […]
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By Mighty Auto Parts
The post
link hidden, please login to view appeared first on link hidden, please login to view. Low voltage conditions or the integrity of an electrical connection can pose some challenging events for the technician attempting to make an accurate diagnosis. In the world of automotive diagnostics, electrical problems have proven to be the most challenging, especially intermittent problems. Intermittent performance problems can be affected by connection-relate conditions and the presence of […]
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