This is the king of all my blunders. The year was 1986, and I had purchased an orange 1971 Plymouth Roadrunner with a blown engine for $500. The Plymouth had a 383 4bbl, Mopar strobe stripe and slap stick automatic. I thought it was a really cool car worthy of rescue, so I rebuilt the engine to stock specs in my garage. In addition, I replaced the carb, water pump, fuel pump, power steering pump, hoses and sending units.

After several months of intensive labor and hard earned money, the day came to finally fire it up. I invited several friends over for a “Fire up the new engine party.” The night started out with some pizza and beverages for all. Then, as everyone stood around the car waiting patiently, the time had arrived to hear the fresh 383 run for the first time. As we stood over the engine compartment, ignition on, I pumped the gas a few times, crossed the terminals on the starter solenoid and boom, the engine was up and running. I held the revs at around 1,500 to break in the camshaft. The engine ran great for about 30 seconds then ... BANG!, it seized up. Perplexed, we all stood around scratching our heads. What had possibly gone wrong?

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I could see five unopened quarts of 20w-40 engine oil. The engine ran for that short time lubricated by assembly lube alone until the parts started to heat up and expand resulting in seizure. Devastation, embarrassment, stupidity would be kind words to describe the feelings I experienced that night. Without good friends present to console me, I would have never turned another wrench the rest of my life. Needless to say, the party was over.

I could not even look at that engine for several days thereafter. Finally on the fourth day, I went out and began the engine rebuild process all over again. Many new parts and countless hours of labor later, I had the engine running again. I went on to drive that car daily until I sold it in 1995. The lesson learned; ridiculous mistakes will be made in our lives, but it’s how we deal with the mistakes, and the pathway to redemption, that makes us who we are. And more importantly…never start a new engine without checking the oil level first!

Rick in California

Maybe Driver's Ed should be changed to Driver's and Operator's Ed. My youngest daughter was recently on a university field trip in the deep dark woods of Oregon. Student volunteers took turns driving a couple of trusty Ford E-Series 15-passenger vans on forest roads.

A fresh volunteer climbed behind a van's wheel, turned the ignition key and shifted the transmission out of Park. The student then pressed the accelerator pedal. The van slowly crept down the road's slight grade and rolled to a stop. Unfortunately, the student had failed to turn the ignition key far enough to actually start the van's engine.

The student's past driving experience was limited to a hybrid vehicle. It is reasonable to expect a hybrid vehicle to silently start off running on electricity with the gasoline engine occasionally firing up later as needed. Hybrids have been around longer than the student has been alive. For this young student, hybrids are normal and just about every vehicle built before 2001 is strange.

I admit I do not know the rituals involved in starting and driving an antique Ford Model T. I once forced a friend's Tesla to panic and put itself in Park by throwing open the driver's door because I did not know the Park button was on the tip of a steering column stalk. For fun, my son and I recently drove a Ford Mach-E and Porsche Taycan at a car show. Even the driving experience for those two new electric cars was completely different (regenerative braking, rolling away from a stop, acceleration, etc.).

Now is good time for most of us to admit we do not know how to operate some vehicles or new/old features (adaptive cruise control, non-ABS brakes...) currently on the road and be willing to ask questions and/or read the owners manuals. A heavy van rolling down a steeper hill in the Oregon woods with the engine off and neither power steering nor power brakes working might have crashed. (Big Foot would have been unfairly blamed for another group of people disappearing!)

It is safer and more fun to be the knowledgeable driver/operator than it is to be a passenger. During the Oregon incident, my daughter was safely behind the wheel of the other Ford van. She is lucky to have experience driving everything from our family's old Dodge B-250 van to a fleet of Toyota Prii (plural of Prius) at her Driver's Ed school.

Perhaps most importantly, my daughter (hopefully) never saw me be too proud to read the manual (owners and repair) or seek help. I once had to read a rental car's (Ford EcoSport) owners manual just to learn how to open the back door (button hidden in taillight).

This fall, my daughter told me one of her 2010 Hyundai Santa Fe's headlights had burned out at school. She has her own computer but knew I would actually enjoy picking out a cool headlight bulb for her at RockAuto.com. I never heard anything more until she came home at Thanksgiving. She said she found a Youtube video where a DIYer with a shaky camera hand demonstrated how to unscrew the plastic headlight bulb socket on a Sante Fe. She admitted she did not know exactly how to replace the bulb on this particular vehicle. She took the time to do a little learning and successfully completed the repair. That is the way to do it.

Tom Taylor,
RockAuto.com

To read more of Tom's articles, click this link and choose from story titles on the Newsletter Archives page.