Post by Volktales on Dec 5, 2021 21:32:03 GMT -8
So here is a little story that happened to my sister and brother-in-law last week... I received a frantic phone call from my sister last week that I needed to go over to their house at once! It seems my brother-in-law had a little "incident" while borrowing my sister's SUV. Somehow he ended up pulling up in his driveway, and then proceeded to drive straight through the closed garage door, smashing into the full size booze fridge in the garage, which then pushed its way a little into the laundry room. He managed to miss his car (which was also parked in the tight two-car garage), but still managed to damage the rear bumper and tailight due to the disintegrating door components. He was not pleased...
I showed up armed with an angle-grinder and tools, to remove the remains of the door, and survey the damage on the vehicles. His Hyundai had some scuffs, but will survive. My sister's Ford Escape, might not. But anyway, what exactly happened here??? It seems that the previous day, the Escape starting acting up, and my brother-in-law and sister both assumed it was the transmission. Why? A few years ago the transmission failed in this thing (its a 2010), so that is where they pointed the finger of blame. Keep in mind these two know absolutely NOTHING about cars and how they work. When she described the actual symptom, it sounded more like throttle sticking to me...
Well guess what, upon inspection that is exactly what it was...
Yep. Mickey Mouse had built a nice little condo inside the air-filter housing. And then decided to make more room for the family, and chewed a new passageway through the air filter element itself. And guess what? While running the V6 nicely sucked up that nesting material into the engine, and a piece of Styrofoam ended up wedged in the throttle body which held it at a nice 3000 rpm at all times. Gave my brother-in-law quite the ride down the backside of Rutherford hill which comprehensively smoked the brakes. For reasons unexplained, he continued driving it home like this and figured he would throw it in neutral once in his driveway and stop. The smoking brakes felt otherwise and said "Nope". He panicked during this whole ordeal and failed to understand the concept of, say, shutting off the ignition... Well what's done is done, and that is that. It is not often that you can say "Mickey Mouse crashed my car..."
I showed up armed with an angle-grinder and tools, to remove the remains of the door, and survey the damage on the vehicles. His Hyundai had some scuffs, but will survive. My sister's Ford Escape, might not. But anyway, what exactly happened here??? It seems that the previous day, the Escape starting acting up, and my brother-in-law and sister both assumed it was the transmission. Why? A few years ago the transmission failed in this thing (its a 2010), so that is where they pointed the finger of blame. Keep in mind these two know absolutely NOTHING about cars and how they work. When she described the actual symptom, it sounded more like throttle sticking to me...
Well guess what, upon inspection that is exactly what it was...
Yep. Mickey Mouse had built a nice little condo inside the air-filter housing. And then decided to make more room for the family, and chewed a new passageway through the air filter element itself. And guess what? While running the V6 nicely sucked up that nesting material into the engine, and a piece of Styrofoam ended up wedged in the throttle body which held it at a nice 3000 rpm at all times. Gave my brother-in-law quite the ride down the backside of Rutherford hill which comprehensively smoked the brakes. For reasons unexplained, he continued driving it home like this and figured he would throw it in neutral once in his driveway and stop. The smoking brakes felt otherwise and said "Nope". He panicked during this whole ordeal and failed to understand the concept of, say, shutting off the ignition... Well what's done is done, and that is that. It is not often that you can say "Mickey Mouse crashed my car..."
