Recent content by pasadena_commut

I live in the San Gabriel valley near Los Angeles. It tends to be very hot in the summer and this solvent is already quite volatile. Some people claim that it is mostly acetone, and that has a boiling point of 56.08°C. Ambient temperature here isn't that high (thankfully), but if the car is...

Not AI and not copy/pasted from elsewhere. Many of the ideas are around in other threads of course, and I cannot rule out the possibility that some of the phrases I wrote down were floating around in my memory from something I read in the past. That probably has a name, "subconscious...

There are so many piston soak threads, all with slightly different method details. This makes me wonder how many of these method details are "real" (actually affect the outcome of the soak), how many are "confirmation bias" (outcome of the soak is ascribed to this detail but it does not...

I had a converter fail in the mid 90's in a 1988 Mazda 323 which was not burning oil or running poorly - very possibly from the phosphorus in the (relatively) high ZDDP oil of that era. I don't recall the mileage exactly, but it was I think somewhere between 125k and 150k at the time. Think of...

That is the answer when not destroying the catalytic converter is the goal. Although restricting it to API SM or higher oils would be prudent. (That last bit is directed at the "I found half an old jug of oil in the garage" folks.)...

It is pretty well established that mixing any two automotive oils will just result in an oil with properties somewhere between the two and no harm no foul - for the motor. However, there is an oil additive ZDDP which does a great job of lubricating metal surfaces but has the unfortunate side...

Temperature: The T that matters is inside the case. It cannot be measured directly and is something like "the average of outside T over the last 4 hours". Ideally battery testing is done in a temperature controlled chamber or bath. Few, if any, of us have a space like that, so the best we...

I'm going to be that guy. There are significant method issues you are not taking into account. 1. temperature 2. tester technology 3. parasitic load from vehicle Considering these one at a time. Lead acid batteries are temperature dependent devices, and so are their measured electrical...

Berryman related instructions on this forum and elsewhere make no distinction between the regular and VOC compliant variants of their products. I have not been able to find the MSDS for the low VOC versions. They have a big table of what is and isn't VOC and the variants here...

Car is at 145k. It first started using oil about 20k ago. Before that it barely burned any oil over 5k miles, at the oil change it would be down 0.2 qt or less. Thanks for the link. I have seen lots of videos on that. One complication, I live in California and the AQMD has put in place...

Note the date in the bolded text. 0.8 qt of oil was added midway through because it was already down to halfway between Min and Max. Then at the oil change another 1 qt. usage was noted (oil was 1/3 up from Min). So 1.8 qt total oil usage in this interval, or nearly twice that of the two...

This is a regular Prius, not a Prime. The ICE is usually on whenever the car is going at least 19 MPH forward (or at any speed in reverse.) The ICE may turn off going down hills or decelerating. The car cannot be driven in a particular gear. It doesn't have "speeds". The two electric...

Um, maybe? In other situations, maybe not. Here are the last 4 oil changes on our 2007 Prius (all at very close to 5000 mile intervals). The dipstick range from Min to Max is 1.6 qt and the total oil capacity is 3.9 qt. Format is: oil change date, dipstick reading before oil change (as...

1998 Honda Accord EX 4 cyl. Front passenger side door lock actuator failed at ~14 years, and they dropped one by one over the years until now none of the four work reliably. These are a PITA to replace and I have not worked up the desire to tackle that. We grew up with cars that didn't have...

Used vehicles, which have depreciated. You are implicitly assuming that cars being sold now will be as reliable as they age as previous generations have been, and that may not be true. For instance, every generation of new vehicles picks up more and more computers. Aging electronics can be a...