I turned car mechanic, but it became too complicated

By John Toth

The Bulletin

It was one of those very warm winter days when I decided to turn on the van’s air conditioner, just for a little while.

 I feel guilty using the car A/C in the winter, but this is the Texas Gulf Coast. At times, it is necessary.

I turned it on the lowest level and nothing. I turned it up higher, still nothing. I finally turned it all the way up, and the fan roared and blasted out cold air.

How could it be that the A/C worked on the highest setting and not the others? All you shade-tree and regular mechanics, don’t get ahead of me here. I know that you know the answer, as I do now.

It made for an interesting day in the van as I distributed a route. I still do that. It makes me feel good; it’s good exercise, and I get to meet a lot of nice people.

I was either hot or got blown away by the A/C. There was no in-between. I have tackled bigger problems before (like the brakes giving out, the radiator leaking and some more interesting mechanical developments), so this was more of a nuisance than a route schedule-altering problem.

I hate to change the schedule because I know where I am supposed to be at which time, and several people also know and complain when the paper is late.

We got a call one time from a man who wanted to make sure we were alright, since the paper wasn’t out yet where he usually gets it. We were running late,  and I assured him that we were physically fine, but we just got delayed by readers at another stop.

For this reason, I only change the route schedule if it is absolutely unavoidable. Being hot or cold was not a good reason.

After I got back to the office, I decided to Google (used as a verb) what happened to my A/C fan. It didn’t take very long. A bunch of videos popped up on the subject. In a few minutes, I knew exactly what the problem was, how to fix it and why I could easily do this myself.

There was a group of resistors that controlled the first three levels of the fan, which stopped working. The highest level bypassed the resistors, so that kept working.

I paid a visit to the auto-parts store and bought the new resistor bundle for $23. It looked different than the old, original one, which was really rusted. I wondered how it lasted this long.

In 15 minutes, the fan was working like new at all speeds. Mission accomplished. It felt good to be a successful amateur car mechanic. I gave up doing that after I sold my 1969 Buick Skylark and bought a new car that, even back then, was more than I could handle.

I used to enjoy tinkering with the Skylark and the 1968 VW that I had earlier. Today’s cars (and I don’t even mean the brand-new ones) make doing that a lot harder.

Maybe because I have other interests now, like publishing a paper weekly, or cars just got too complicated. Either way, I visit my trusted mechanic for most car problems - except for replacing the resistor bundle that controls the fan speed in my distribution van (which is definitely not a new model).

Now that I became emboldened, I started watching videos on how to fix some other problems that my delivery vehicles have encountered. There is that ABS light that won’t go out.

There was a flash of hope as I watched the mechanic diagnose the problem and then fix a speed sensor. It was one of four. Which one was bad on my van? It may not be the speed sensor, he said. There could be some other reasons. That’s where I got off. I really don’t want to do all that. So, off to the pros who can handle it better than I can. That’s what they do for a living.

I got caught up watching YouTube car-repair videos. These guys know what they’re doing. It’s entertaining for me, at least. I’m sure that some people would fall asleep watching it.

Look at that. The guy is removing half the engine to replace a gasket - way too complicated for me - but it’s fun to watch.