Dear Tom and Ray:

Here’s my challenge, for which I’d welcome help and/or suggestions. Our theater company soon will open its latest production. Almost all of the play takes place in one of two cars, which the actors are sitting in, standing by, etc. The only way into the theater is down steps and through a not-much-larger-than-regular doorway. I thus have to disassemble, then reassemble the front ends of these cars, along with the front doors, on the stage. I also have to remove them and rebuild them every week for five weeks, as there is another show running at the same time. I’d like to do so in less than two hours each time. So, how would you go about this task? Feel like coming out to Colorado to tackle the task firsthand? — Darren (more…)

Dear Tom and Ray:

Last week my fiancee’s father was driving his 1987 Buick from the farm into town. A couple of hundred yards away from the house (and about .1 mile from the highway) on the gravel road, the car caught fire. Her dad, instead of using his cell phone to call the fire department, left the car on the road and walked home to tell his wife. He told her it’d burn itself out. A short while later, they were in the kitchen and were — seriously — surprised to see the fire department outside putting out the blazing car. So, (1) what the heck kind of family am I marrying into? And (2) we know that it’s toxic, in poor taste and dangerous, but would the car actually have pulled a “movie moment” and exploded? Or, like her father says, would it have burned itself out? — Seth (more…)

Dear Tom and Ray:

My neighbor, who does not impress me as having an IQ above that of a Neanderthal, told me the other day that while he didn’t want to be minding my business for me, I am “ruining my car parking it the way I am.” I don’t know whether he has a point or not. It rains a lot where I live. I do not have a garage. A sidewalk leads from the parking lot in front of my apartment right up to my front door. When it rains, the grass also becomes soggy. So, what I sometimes do is drive my car along the sidewalk, with the left-side wheels on the sidewalk and the right wheels on the grass. This allows me to get very close to my front door and get out on the sidewalk. Since the grass is about 2, maybe 3 inches max, below the sidewalk and it squashes when I drive on it, this puts the left-side wheels of my car higher than the right-side wheels when I’m parked this way. Is this “ruining my car”? Or is my neighbor a Neanderthal? — Beverly (more…)

Dear Tom and Ray:

OK. I have two sons of opposite disposition, but who are great friends anyway. We do as much work on cars as we can to save money and maintain some sense that we haven’t been made entirely useless by today’s technology. Alexis (No. 1 son) reads manuals carefully. Tad (No. 2 son) uses them as flat surfaces for tools. Recently, we replaced a water pump on Alexis’ 1998 Saturn SW. We successfully replaced the water pump after only several hours of struggling with bolts at high torque in small places. But while Alexis was reading the manual, Tad and I punctured his right front CV boot with a screwdriver. A little grease oozed out. The car has 240,000 miles on it. Do we need to replace the entire joint, as some repair shops suggest? How about a little glue, as some websites recommend? By the way, who is correct when it comes to reading manuals? Tad and Alexis would like to know.
— Larry (more…)

Dear Tom and Ray:

I recently drove about a thousand miles without my oil cap. It’s a 2005 Toyota Sequoia, and I was off-road for about 10 days at the same time. When I got home, no oil cap! (Human error all the way.) I checked the oil, and it was good all the way to the “full” mark, and there’s no oil on top of the engine, or even on the underside of the hood. As I drove, I didn’t see any drop in oil pressure or hear any weird mechanical sounds, so I’m wondering what damage (if any) I might have done to the engine, driving all that way without a cap. I am changing the oil and filter today. Thanks for your answer, and yes, it is the first time I’ve ever done that, and the last! — Steve (more…)