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-   -   Our oops moments! When our car knowledge wasn't quite good enough... (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/201917-our-oops-moments-when-our-car-knowledge-wasnt-quite-good-enough.html)

Hi everyone,

Thought of starting a new thread to document our oops moments in automotive knowledge.

All of us have some degree of knowledge & expertise with regard to automotives. Some of us are regularly sought after by friends and family to suggest & evaluate new cars/ bikes and also for advice on existing car care.

However, all this knowledge comes with time and all of us would have experienced moments where our knowledge was way off the mark or our overconfidence in our knowledge made us look stupid. I think documenting the same here would make for a hilarious exercise.

Here is mine.

When I was buying my first car in 2009, I shortlisted an Esteem at Mahindra First Choice in Gurgaon. I liked the car and paid them an advance. I asked the sales person to change the front two tyres since they were old (knowledge) and had low tread (knowledge). The next day, I took the delivery of the car and carefully looked at the manufacturing date of the tyres and smugly took delivery of the car.

After a while I rotated the tyres and noticed the car has become wobbly after the change. I tried alignment & balancing but to no avail. It was then that I figured that the car was running a staggered setup :Shockked: The Mahindra salesperson had replaced the front tyres with 155/80 size instead of the 175/70 tyres running at the rear. My knowledge (date of manufacture) was trumped by commonsense (size of tyre). I ran a staggered setup for some more time before I finally changed all tyres to the same size.stupid:

Look forward to your such moments!

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Indian Car Scene. Thanks for sharing!

A related thread on driving typos :).

I am a person who generally does a 'deep dive' into my car's mechanical and electrical parts primarily due my inherent curiosity in figuring out what makes it tick and to prevent the ASC from pulling a fast one on me. The sole exception was my BMW 535i in Europe that I was rather wary of and left it to the service centre for maintenance. That said, if I were to buy a Big 3 or other EU car now I'd certainly do what comes naturally to me i.e. a lot of research into the bits and pieces that make up the vehicle. :D This is done over a period of time so I can assimilate the knowledge and store it in medium to long term memory.

My oops, SMH, facepalm moments with my car:

a) Assumed my car has a 100 A alternator, it is 80 A. The 100 A is only for the North American market.
b) Thought the alternator's rectifier and regulator were a single unit. Nope, they are separate units.
c) Assumed the car's rear brakes were standard pistons as they were on the 9G Corolla. Nopes! You had to use a special tool to screw-in and get them to retract whilst replacing brake pads. This is because the Altis has disc brake parking brakes. It applies to the current 11G model too.

The 9G on the other hand has a drum-in-disc rear parking brake setup. The small parking brake shoes are present in the rotor 'hat'.

Moral of the story - There are almost always market specific component and assembly level differences in the very same model. Best to cross verify and not go by assumptions. What goes for NA does not necessarily apply to Asian or EU models although they may have the same chassis and engine.

Fell for the "Clutch is hard saar" scam despite very well knowing it. I wouldn't consider myself an auto expert, but at-least I used to think I wouldn't fall for such scams.

The problem was something else. For Honda City ZX, it was very hard to shift to gear 2 from either 1 or 3. Slightly less harder to 3, and lesser for 4. I read through a lot of info about synchronizers, gearboxes, et al. Had dropped the car at Mahindra First Choice where the SA exclaimed the clutch is very hard. Also vehicle was at 1.1 lac kms. I told him that the problem was something else and he needed to check the gearbox. But he assured it will be fixed with the clutch change. Well, it felt fine a week after the work was done, but the problem returned. I frankly do not know till date how the problem went away for a week.

The only option was Honda A.S.S. who I assumed were going to rip me off as well. Rip me off, they did. But they did resolve the issue permanently by replacing the clutch master and slave cylinders. Maybe only one needed replacement. The problem was not even the gearbox. But those are the joys of maintaining a 11 year old vehicle (now 12) with odo on 6 digit figures. Hopefully, I keep learning but without burning a hole in the pocket if possible.

Edit: I also fell for the puncture scam when I was not a member of this forum and in my early car driving days. 11 punctures and Rs.1100 lost in 2012. Cost of replacing the damned tyre extra.

The first time I drove a LHD this is how it went:


- Cranked the car with confidence
- Adjusted all the mirrors, the seating position, bla bla bla
- Pressed the clutch
- And then my left hand hits the driver door in search for the gear lever on the left. Oops!

I learnt driving back in 1999 and bought my "own" car (Santro Zip drive) in 2004. I used to adust IRVM regularly as per my requirements but wasn't aware of the tab/button to reduce glare. I used to cover IRVM by my hands when the glare of headlights become unbearable. One fine day back in 2009, I accidentally touched that tab to avoid backlight glare and Eureka. After 10 years of driving, I came to know that there is a small button /tab on IRVM which can reduce the glare from the headlight of vehicles behind my car.stupid:

I used to think that 4 wheel drive was overrated. I thought as long as I maintained enough momentum, had good tyres and avoided getting close to the lake, we could get through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYAkLUHXPxk

A few moments later, we got stuck and it took us an hour to extricate the car.

Location:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambhar_Salt_Lake

Early eighties I moved from my home country the Netherlands, to Brighton the UK, to start living with my then girlfriend, now wife.

We bought her a Talbot Samba. It was my very first time driving in the UK and thus also driving on the left.

I remember one day I had to ran an errand or so, got out and walked to the car and got in. Immediately I noticed something was amiss! NO STEERING WHEEL or Dashboard.

Took me actually some time to realise I had got into the left seat and was sitting on the passenger seat. I just had not adjusted to the right driver seat. Very weird experience!

Jeroen

That reminds me of a joke where the guy exclaims to his wife on phone that his steering wheel, and all pedals along with dashboard have been stolen from the car. Then calls back after 5 minutes to say that he's on his way back. On asking how come; he replies that he sat on the rear seat :D

My oops moment was while cleaning the rear brakes of my car. It had rear discs with a twist-in type of brake piston which I was trying to push in with the help of a C-clamp. Some YouTube videos came to the rescue a day later :D

Regards,
Saket

way back (15 yrs), we had hired a Holden commodore for a trip to a snowy mountain in AUS. As happens with group of bachelors we were delayed to return from playing on snow and it started snowing and dark. The car park security will allow only if we put our snow chains on set of tyre. All 3 cars in the group gave up and few other cars as well (it's like 7 cars left in a open ground parking for 500 cars). Now all waiting for some mechanic to show up (ETA 1 hr). It was already 8 p.m. and considering 5 hrs drive back, Couple of us had somehow put the chain on after freezing ourselves in snow for 45 mins. Had to take hand gloves off, kneel down etc in cold.

when we were about to start, the mechanic also showed up fixed the snow chains to other cars. Came to our car and said, you have put it in wrong set of wheels. (Holden commodore was a RWD, and it seems you have to put the snow chain in the pair of wheels which gets the drive). we were like :Frustrati
But made a very good memory of the trip :D

Not just one, many in fact, but learnt through each of them. Few of them were:
- Clutch is hard
- Engine oil needs changing (too soon)
- Decarbonising
- AC Filter cleaning
- Filter replacement (again, too soon)
- AC gas top up
etc. etc.

But the good thing, thankfully, is that none of these were repeated twice! :D

Two oops moments with my Zen 10 years back. Was mostly a newbie with respect to cars.

One day I realized that the power windows were not rolling down. Had been working fine until then and I thought something major had wrong. Straight away took it to the Service Center and explained the problem. The technician looked at the window, the controls, then looked at me, reached in- turned off the window lock button and rolled down the window.

Few days later, I felt I had enough of the reverse beeps and wanted to turn it off. Again rushed off to the service center. Did not know there was a switch next to the steering which I just needed to turn off. All this while I was thinking it was some dummy switch that did nothing.

Of course, I am sure there were many more. These are the ones at the top of my mind.

Feb 20017: I do basic maintenance on my bikes. The evening prior to my Delhi-Pune road trip, I had the chain and sprocket replaced on my Impulse. Now the mechanic had angled the gear lever differently. And it was good -- as long as you weren't wearing motorcycle shoes/boots. I managed to reach home that evening and decided to fix it while the oil drained. (I put fresh oil too the night before the long ride.)

I positioned it appropriately as per my boot's thickness. Since I don't have a torque wrench, I just tighten everything by "feel." I kept tightening the screw until it broke and left the thread inside. Thankfully, the thread was holding the lever but I couldn't figure out how anyone could remove it.

Who cares? I had replaced the sprockets and I had no plans to replace them for another 30-40,000 km.

I've since covered 12,000km on the bike and it's still stuck.

While bleeding the drum brakes, I tightened the bleeder valve instead of loosening it. It was on the back of the drum, used a lot of force thinking it's rusted, now it's nice and smooth.

Year 2000; my first 4 wheeler - a second hand Maruti 800. Car goes to the authorized service center in Worli for my first service experience. In the evening before picking up the car, I smugly go through my check-list. Service adviser confirms tyre rotation and has put the best set in the front.

I ask him why he has not put the best set in the rear, being the driven wheels they need more grip. Service adviser politely assures me that Maruti 800 is a front wheel drive vehicle.

Thanks to Hollywood and infancy of internet in those days, I had safely assumed all cars are rear wheel driven.