Yesterday, I had to review my car’s manual just to open the hood of my BMW just to charge my battery. When I tried to charge the battery, I knew for a fact that the charger has a positive and negative side that needs to be attached to the battery. Whether red or black is positive or negative I still have no idea about. Pathetic is my middle name I guess.
Why do cars have a carburetor? As a matter of fact, what is a carburetor? I did look it up on the internet and I still do not get what it does. I know the device blends air and fuel to make the car run, but that is about all I know about the “carb”, as we here in the United States like to call it. Well, do not add me into that we.
When I was in High School my car caught on fire because of the carburetor. I know this because after the car had pretty much burned itself out a friendly fireman told me it was the carburetor cable was a bit faulty. All I cared about was I got a new car from my parents out of the deal.
I once hit a curve and put a huge gash in my tire when I was a teenager. I literally drove the car four miles home on a flat tire because it was late and I did not want to call home and ask what to do. The next morning, my dad asked me if I knew I had a flat tire and why the heck I did not change the tire if I knew it was flat. As coolly as I could, I told my dad I didn’t know the tire was flat, but I would call AAA and have them come change the tire. Mind you, one of the reasons I do not know anything about cars is the fact that my dad has no car knowledge either. I literally took out the car manual and read the directions on how to change a tire. Both my parents watched in horror as it took me over two hours to figure it out. It took me another two hours to figure out why I had a smaller tire than the other three now on the car. I thought donuts were only available at Dunkin Donuts.
Another time, I was taking my friends to the beach and my car started to leak oil all over the place. Growing up I was always the one with a car. We were close to the beach so we just left the car on the side of the road. In the mid-eighties car phones were not the norm so I had to use the pay phone when I got to the beach. When my dad answered, I explained what happened and he told me he was going to call my grandfather and ask him for his advice.
My grandfather could turn a lawnmower into a Cadillac, however he never taught my dad how to fix a car and being the third generation male of the group, grandfather’s knowledge never filtered down.
Anyway, when I called dad back he told me that grandfather said that it was probably a rod that went through the oil pan. I was so perplexed for a moment because I could not know how my grandfather knew that we were going fishing at the beach. I told my dad that there was no way that one of our fishing rods became stuck in the engine. My dad did get a kick out of that one.
Now a day’s, when you buy a new car you automatically get either Onstar or BMW Assist like I have in my car. If something goes wrong you just hit the button, generally near the steering wheel, and a sexy woman’s voice comes on the line and asks you what is wrong, which makes no sense to me. If I knew what was wrong, I would not be pushing the damn button in the first place now would I?
This past Christmas during a snow storm I got stuck on the middle of the highway in my brand new 750 BMW because of all the snow on the highway. I pushed the little BMW Assist button and I connected with the operator and explained my situation. After a few minutes, the operator told me that the positraction automatically shuts off when there is heavy snow on the ground and since I have rear wheel drive this is for my safety. All that money for a car that shuts down in the snow, great!
A car to me is just pre-paid auto expense as my accounting professor once said in class. I have no interest in learning about engines any time soon. I will make my sons take a class to learn about cars and how they work so a fourth generation doesn’t end up like my dad or I.
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