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The Pep Boys Auto Guide to Car Care and Maintenance: Easy, Do-It-Yourself Upkeep for a Healthy Car, Vital Tips for Service and Repair, and Strategies for Roadside Emergencies - Softcover

Braswell, E.J.

 
9780345476852: The Pep Boys Auto Guide to Car Care and Maintenance: Easy, Do-It-Yourself Upkeep for a Healthy Car, Vital Tips for Service and Repair, and Strategies for Roadside Emergencies
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345476859 ISBN 13: 9780345476852
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Okay, so you’re not a gearhead, but like most folks, you want to keep your car in peak condition. For more than eighty years, the Pep Boys–Manny, Moe, and Jack–have been “the three best friends your car ever had.” And now, with The Pep Boys Auto Guide to Car Care and Maintenance, any Tom, Dick, or Harriet can learn how to keep his or her car running smoothly and looking its best.
The ideal car care guide for do-it-yourselfers, this is your one-stop source for everything from the basics to the hard stuff (so you’ll know what to tackle yourself and when to call in the experts). Inside you’ll discover

• a simple anatomy of your car and a handy glossary of terms
• accident prevention measures and how to handle emergencies on the road, from jump-starting your engine to changing a flat tire
• key seasonal and monthly maintenance tasks–including checking oil levels and battery life, tire rotation, and monitoring tread wear
• tips for improving fuel mileage
• how to diagnose major and minor problems–and how to fix them

Straightforward and easy to use, The Pep Boys Auto Guide to Car Care and Maintenance will give you the knowledge and confidence you need to keep your car in top condition.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

E. J. Braswell, the author of The Pep Boys Auto Guide to Car Care and Maintenance, comes from a long line of car tinkerers. He divides his time between New York and Vermont.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Okay, so you're not a gearhead, but like most folks, you want to keep your car in peak condition. For more than eighty years, the Pep Boys-Manny, Moe, and Jack-have been "the three best friends your car ever had." And now, with "The Pep Boys Auto Guide to Car Care and Maintenance, any Tom, Dick, or Harriet can learn how to keep his or her car running smoothly and looking its best.
The ideal car care guide for do-it-yourselfers, this is your one-stop source for everything from the basics to the hard stuff (so you'll know what to tackle yourself and when to call in the experts). Inside you'll discover
- a simple anatomy of your car and a handy glossary of terms
- accident prevention measures and how to handle emergencies on the road, from jump-starting your engine to changing a flat tire
- key seasonal and monthly maintenance tasks-including checking oil levels and battery life, tire rotation, and monitoring tread wear
- tips for improving fuel mileage
- how to diagnose major and minor problems-and how to fix them
Straightforward and easy to use, "The Pep Boys Auto Guide to Car Care and Maintenance will give you the knowledge and confidence you need to keep your car in top condition.

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A Tutorial of Your Car and How It Works

Learning How to Drive

Sure, you know how to put the key in, shift into drive, and pull away-but do you really know exactly what goes on inside the car when you're out there on the road? You will by the end of this section! When you're done, you'll no longer think of your car as a Big Black Box, but as a logical sum of its fairly simple to understand parts.

Note: If you find this next part confusing or the terminology a little alien at first, don't worry. Continue to read through the next section on all the different systems in your car-and we'll go through all of this again. It will make sense-we promise.

When you put your key into the ignition and turn it, you close a switch that allows electricity to flow from the battery to the starter, an electric motor that starts turning the crankshaft. As the engine spins, the pistons and the fuel start pumping and the valves start opening and closing. Compression is achieved, the spark plugs fire, and the engine itself takes over. The starter then disengages itself from the process.

The fuel pump delivers gas to the cylinders of the engine through intake valves, where it is mixed with air and compressed by the pistons. This highly combustible mixture is lit by the spark plugs and explodes, forcing the pistons down, which then turns the crankshaft.

The crankshaft connects to the transmission, which determines with how much power and at what speed the wheels should turn. To shift gears, the car must first release the transmission from the crankshaft, and this is done by a clutch if it's a car with a manual shift. Power is converted hydraulically through a torque converter in an automatic, transferring engine power by the use of fluid.

In rear-wheel-drive vehicles, the driveshaft continues from the transmission on to the rear of the car, with a hinge on each end called a universal joint (or a CV joint in a front-wheel-drive car) to keep the whole thing flexible and from snapping like a twig when the car hits a bump.

A differential (sometimes called a rear end) at the end of the driveshaft delivers the turning power of the shaft and converts the power through a ring and pinion gears "sideways" to the two rear wheels and determines the difference in speed that each wheel must have in order for you to execute a turn. When turning, the outside wheel must turn faster than the inside wheel or you would break the axles or gears. The differential is what allows this to happen.

In front-wheel-drive cars there is a transaxle instead of a transmission, which handles gear-shifting as well as the individual speed of the left and right front tires for when you want to turn.

Oil keeps everything lubricated and operating quietly and properly.

. . . Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Okay, it was. So now let's break down your car system by system and go through each one simply and clearly. We'll put it all together at the end of this section again-and you'll be amazed by how much you've already learned.

Breakdown: Your Car, System by System

Engine

Okay. This is actually a far simpler thing than you might imagine. Relax, take a deep breath and imagine yourself in a tropical paradise . . . on a bicycle.

In the same way that bicycle pedals go up and down, the crankshaft in a car pumps up and down, transferring rotation and power to the wheels.

But instead of legs (and feet), a car engine has pistons that push down on the crankshaft. The pistons are propelled downward by an explosion above them in the cylinder. So the more cylinders you have, the more pistons you have; the more feet pedaling on the bike, the faster and more powerful the bike-er, the car. This is why a V8 is so much more powerful than a V6 or a four-cylinder engine.

(The V refers to how the cylinders are set up. Either they're in line and called an inline 4, 6, or 8, or sort of alternately positioned like the two tops of a V. They can also be directly opposing each other in a flat design, as in old VWs.)

How the explosion occurs is where our little human-and-bicycle metaphor breaks down. It takes four cycles or up-and-downs to make things happen.

1.As the pistons move down, a mixture of gas and air is sucked into the cylinder through the intake valve.

2.As the piston heads back up, it creates compression, and the gas mixture is lit (or detonated, if you want to be precise) by a spark plug, which-you guessed it-creates a little spark. It's kind of like the electric ignition on a gas stove that causes the burner to light.

3.The resulting explosion (in the cylinder, not your stove) pushes the piston back down against the crankshaft with power, the transmission transmits this power to the wheels, and your car goes zooming off.

4.As the piston comes back up the exhaust valve lets out the burned gases, and the cycle starts all over again.

Back to your bike. Even if it's instinctive by now, your brain figures out which leg pushes down to keep your bike rolling smoothly. If you tried to push down both legs at once, nothing would happen. The same thing is true with a car-the pistons have to push down on the crankshaft in precisely timed movements. Ignition, or spark, is timed exactly when the piston nears the top so the explosion will force the piston back down again.

Electrical

The electrical system in your car does three important things:

1.It cranks your engine to help it start.

2.It makes your car start once it's cranking by causing the spark plugs to fire.

3.It runs all the electric devices in your car; the headlights, the radio, the fan, the computers . . .

Starting Your Car

When you put your key into the ignition and turn it, you're doing two things. First, you're closing a circuit that allows a current to run from the battery to the starter motor. Second, the starter gear physically moves into and engages the flywheel. The starter is a little electric motor that jump-starts your car by turning a flywheel that then turns the crankshaft, causing the pistons to go up and down, beginning their cycle. When your car has started-and you let your key turn back-the motor disengages itself from the engine, which is now merrily chugging along of its own accord.

Running Your Car

At the same time you start your car and electricity flows to the starter motor, some electricity also goes to a coil that amplifies the voltage to about 50,000 volts. (And yes, that's more than enough to kill you, especially if you have heart problems, so be very careful.) From there the current runs to your engine through the distributor cap in an older car or the coil wire on a newer one, sending that 50,000-volt spark of electricity to each of your (yes, you guessed it) spark plugs. The voltage or pressure of the current is so great at this point that it leaps across the open space between the two electrodes of the spark plug in the cylinder. The spark sets off an explosion of gas and air in the cylinder, and the piston fires, the cycle begins, and off you go.

Running Other Things

Everything in your car that draws electrical juice-the fan in the heater, the map light, the computer that controls your engine, your CD player, etc.-is capable of having its expensive inner parts fried if there's a sudden overload of electricity, which happens more often than you might think. That's why the current for each one runs through a fuse. Think of a fuse as a really weak, badly made lightbulb: The slightest power surge causes the filament inside to burn out. In the same way, a fuse blows out if there's a problem in the system to stop the electricity from traveling any farther up the line and damaging anything.

The fuse box...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345476859
ISBN 13 
9780345476852
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
144
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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