Check out these pictures of a Jeep Wrangler steering box. The shaft is clean broken off. This would make the car undriveable, and probably leave you out in the middle of nowhere.

Starting in about 2003, Chrylser changed suppliers from Saginaw to Mercedes. Saginaw had been the primary steering supplier to Chrylser going back to the 1960’s. When Daimler bought out Chrylser it tried to cut some costs and put a 140 chassis mercedes box on the jeep.

You can see that the box is not the same as the old design, so you cannot swap them over. That is unfortunate. The Saginaw box is a bit longer and bigger, so you would need to do some modification to the steering gear or the steering layout.

I’m not entirely sure what the moral of the story is. Jeep Wranglers are still fun, so just something to be careful of. Someone will probably build a better system soon.

Seen me your comments or suggestions.

Chrysler showed off 3 new prototype electric vehicles today. A Dodge sports car, a Jeep and a Chrysler minivan.

All of the vehicles are due out in 2010, but did not say which will be first. All are expected to compete with GM’s newly released Volt. GM has said it may offer a sedan and sport car version of the Volt. Both designs have already been shown off. We have over 2 years to learn more.

The Dodge is completely electric, but the Jeep Wrangler and Chrysler minivan versions will have a recharging system, which GM has said will go on sale in November 2010. The Volt and the Dodge plug into a standard wall outlet and can go 40 miles on battery power alone, but then has a small gas to recharge it, giving it a few hundred mile range.

Below is a video from Cnet showing the new cars. Hit play, then give it a minute or two to load up before you start playing it.





I have to say I’m pretty excited. As much about the new cars and tech as I am about getting off of foreign oil. Your thoughts? Comments? Complaints.?

One of the most frustrating things about buying auto parts is getting the wrong part. If you buy furniture or electronics and its a little too big or too small, you can still use it. In car parts, you have to be exact, especially with an auto air conditioning compressor where there is no room for mistakes. Here are some tips.

First thing to do is to look at the picture of the ac compressor and print it off. Compare that to the one in your car. If it looks exactly the same, you should be good to go. If it is close, you may want to do a little work. Get a picture of your air conditioning compressor label. Like this one below.

You should also take a picture of the compressor in the car. This will help the part supplier double check with you. By itself the picture is useless, but combined with the label and the vehicle it can be helpful. If you have any doubt about getting the correct part, you want to call the supplier and email in pictures like these two. Just not worth getting the wrong parts.

Finally you can remove it from the car and take some pictures of it. The picture below uses a digital caliper, which is a great tool for being very exact. If you do a lot of things that require measuring exact numbers, this tool is very important. Here we get the length of the ac compressor clutch from the beginning to the center of the pulley groove. This measurement is important to ensure the belt lines up with the crank.

I’ve been talking about diesel engines and will get into more on them. I wanted your option first, please answer the poll.

I’ll get into bio-diesel vehicles later on. We’ll also look at working on bio-diesels.

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I’d like to welcome in the newest sponsor to the site, Diesel Parts Pro. They are a full service line of Diesel parts and can be found at www.DieselPartsPros.com

Having a discussion with them on a Diesel fuel injector, it became clear to me that I don’t know a whole lot about diesel engines. There is alot more things to consider when dealing with a diesel engine. They gave me a little help on this and some things to think about.

My main question was about the fuel system and the diesel turbocharger. Can these be upgraded? How do you improve performance. The answer is yes they can. There are high performance turbochargers available and they can get them for you. You should probably match these with a high output diesel fuel pump for optimum performance.

I promise to harass them some more into giving us some more info on diesels, so stay stuned. If you have any questions about this, please let me know those as well. I look into them.

So you need to replace you 02 sensors and you’re a bit lost. How often should I replace them? Where are they? Do I replace them all? What brand do I go with?

Oxygen sensors should be replaced every 60-90K miles. DO NOT wait until the engine light comes on. The Oxygen sensor ensures the correct air to fuel ratio. Having this ratio off, will cost you horsepower and gas mileage.

There is typically 2 sensors on vehicles before 1996. This is known as OBDC 1. There are 4 sensors on vehicles after 1996 and this is known as OBDC II. Usually half are located before the catalyst (catalytic converter) and half are located after. All of these are in the exhaust stystem just up from the muffler.

When you are the O2 Sensor, you should replace all 4 of them. Its just not worth getting in that far and not replacing all of them.

I usually recommend buying OEM brands, which is usually Denso or Bosch. There are a couple of good manufacturers of aftermarket ones, but there are some bad ones so be careful.

When replacing an AC Condenser there are lots of things to consider. First, you will need to pick out what kind of condenser you need. Second, what to know during install.

You may need to change your a/c condenser if your car is not blowing cold enough, is contaminated or is damaged. The first question is what to buy. The most popular condenser types are serpentine and parallel flow condensers. See the picture for more info. Really though any type will do, and unless you are picky, all will work about the same. Keep in mind, the better performing condensers are also the hardest to clean.

For install, you will need to service the ac system including replacing the ac drier and evacuating and flushing the system. Most people don’t know that the auto air conditioning system should be serviced every 60,000 miles anyway, so this is good maintenance and will prolong the life of your ac compressor. Most often the condensor is replaced because of contamination, so cleaning out the system is important.

Working on a question today involving a slow leaking Mercedes steering rack. The leak was coming from one of the hard lines. The questions are; What are the hard lines and how do you fix it?

See the attached image of the steering rack. The hard lines come from the pinion housing to the body of the rack. To make power steering work, these lines move fluid to different parts of the rack to help with the assist. In a power steering system, the fluid both ‘pushes’ the rack to that direction and ‘pulls’ the rack back in. In order to move the rack back to center, you need to press from the outside, and thus the hard lines. The hard lines will bring fluid to the outside of the rack and enable that ‘pulling’ action.

Hard lines are different that steering hoses. Steering hoses come from the pump and are usually rubber with metal fittings. That hard lines are all metal and thus the ‘hard’ lines name.

The question now is how to fix the leak. You can try removing the hard line, replacing the O-ring that is under there and tightening down. Sometimes this will stop the leak, but if something is warped or damaged there, you will have to replace the whole steering rack. You cannot purchase the hard lines separately. They are considered part of the rack. Hoses can be purchased separately

We have talked alot about GM the company and their cars. We discussed their Olympics Advertising and how that worked. Now we are looking at their current Employee Pricing that we talked about yesterday.

How likely are you to buy a GM during Employee Pricing?

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I have rambled on lots about how bad GM is operating as a company. While most people agree, they do not seem to think it is as bad as I do. I just hate to stand here and watch this Icon fall into nothing.

The latest chapter in all of this is that GM is back to Employee pricing for everyone. This cuts a few thousand off any car and skips the haggling process. It worked very well a few years ago. I’m not sure on this, but I think they also coupled it with 0% financing which was the big kicker. With GM selling its financing arm and bleeding money, I don’t think they can afford to offer than again.

For GM’s part, they claim they program has been very successful. They say it “will continue offering employee discounts through Sept. 30 to all customers on all 2008 GM vehicles in stock except medium-duty trucks, and it is extending the number of 2009 models included in the sale. The incentive program was previously set to end Tuesday.”

Do you agree? Will you be buying a GM? Perhaps a new malibu or Aveo? I’m curious if I’m the only one that thinks this is a band aid on a major problem for this company.