|
Howdy popdaddy,
Step 0: Get educated.
Your suggestion that someone check to make sure there is gas in the car reminds me that I assume too much. I forget that not everyone grew up with a love of all things that roll.
Some people are driving these relics because they must. They really don't want to work on the car but have no choice in the matter. Because they don't really like working on the car they are looking for short-cuts to the "fix".
I must be the bearer of bad news: there are no short-cuts. You must have a basic understanding of how the system works before you can fix it when it doesn't work.
Step-by-step procedure:
Before you need it, buy a service manual. There are many choices. Bentley is good but it is not the end all and be all of tech manuals. I subscribe to AlldataDIY. There you will find a pretty good explanation of how to take things apart, how to put them back together, exploded views, commonly needed part numbers, technical service bulletins, and wiring diagrams. Haynes or Clymer manuals are usually available at the auto parts house or on line. If you can afford it and can find them, the Green Books are the best. Spending some money here and now, this day, will save you grief and, in the long run, money too.
Read. Read the tech books like a novel. Then start again, this time identifying the various parts and where they are on the car. Go outside, lift the hood, put your hand on the components. Find them all. Make sure you know where it is and what it does. Read the FAQ. READ THE FAQ. READ THE FAQ. If you cannot find a component or figure out how it works, come here and ask how or where; someone on this board knows.
Buy some basic tools and test equipment. Any technical manual worth the paper it is printed on will tell you what tools you need. You don't have to break the bank here. $20/week for a few weeks will do it. Get the best tools you can afford. If you must buy tools made in the Far East, then do so. It is better for the DIY guy to have poorly made tools than to have no tools at all.
Helpful TIP: Get measurements of various components while the car is running properly. Do you know how much voltage is across the battery at various engine RPM's? (CLUE: It is not 12V). Measure it. Now when the BATT* light comes on, you at least know whether the voltage is what it was before the light came on. You can do the same thing for the resistance measurements of the sensors. Write them down and you begin to build a database that describes your car as a system. Depending on how deeply you want to get into this, you can measure pressures, vacuum, current draw, temperatures, RPM -vs- throttle angle, exhaust O2 levels, and on-and-on.
Homework: On your car, what is the voltage drop measured from the battery negative post to the grounding screw at the other end of the ground cable? What should it be? Why is this information valuable?
*On a Volvo, some failures in the charging circuit will light the "idiot" lights like a Christmas tree. I still haven't figured out why the engineers did this. On a VW, using the same Bosch technology, a single bulb with a resistor in parallel provides pre-excitation for the alternator. Weird. You should also know that some alternator failures will not light the BATT light at all.
--
Mr. Shannon DeWolfe -- I've taken to using mister because my name misleads folks on the WWW. I am a 53 year old fat man. ;-)
|
