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Do an Engine Replacement in Your Own Garage

Big Red SUV My car died. The timing chain failed at 100,000 miles. I had just paid it off. I couldn’t afford to have it repaired at the shop, so I decided to replace the engine myself. First, I had to track down the official service manual, then a rebuilt...

Engine Replacement as Part of Maintaining Crossover SUV

new engine So it turns out that engine replacement is part of maintaining a Crossover SUV. But what other options do you have if you’ve got more than two children? A minivan is too small. Everything else is too ugly. And the Crossovers are very expensive and...

Which is Better: No Bumper, or Wooden Bumper?

Rear end of dirty car without rear bumper. When my wife was 20 years old, she bought her first car, an old Gran Torino station wagon. It had chrome all the way around the front and back bumper, but the back bumper was kind of hanging off and would scrape the ground...

Wasted Money on Another Part from Amazon

My lawnmower needed a new carburetor. The ones on Amazon are between fifteen and twenty dollars each. The ones made by Briggs and Stratton, the people who made the lawnmower engine are about 10 times as much. So I bought the Amazon one, put it on, and adjusted the...

The First and Last Time I saw a Mercury Matador

Red Mercury Matador The first and last time I’ve ever seen a Mercury Matador was in the 1980s. My best friend and I were about 14 years old. We’d go behind his dad’s garage–he was a mechanic– and find a car that we could take out for the day to...