Here's a short story...

I noticed not too long ago that when I started my car in the morning (a "cold start"), I'd hear a little extra rattle. I didn't like that. My car never used to do that. I figured there had to be a cure.

So I went to Checker to see what I could get to help. I also bought this Marvel Mystery Oil stuff but the guy there talked my into running some kind of detergent instead. He actually suggested putting in 2-3 quarts of automatic transmission fluid after draining the oil and then run it for 5 minutes before I put in new oil. So he talked me out of buying that stuff. He said that he never heard of any kind of additive doing any good to a car. Ok, the organic approach. Cool.

Well, I got home and since I thought I might spend a Saturday afternoon doing an oil change on my car... which I haven't done myself in years... which I don't really have the tools for. Ok, scratch that. So I went to Valvoline Instant Oil Change and had them run their "detergent" through the engine as they were changing the oil. That'll do it, right? Nope.

Ok, now what? Well, I remembered that the reason I was going to try that Marvel Mystery Oil was because of when I sold my first car - my 1979 Mercury Capri (a Mustang). Let's be honest, it ran like crap but someone bought it. As he was picking it up, he showed up with this can of oil in a red and black can. He poured it into the crankcase and said something like, "I put this in all my cars and it has done wonders." So ok, let's go get some and try it.

The oil was still pretty full from the recent oil change, so I just put a little bit in. Wow, the next 2 starts were good, but what about a cold start?

The next morning and every morning / every start since - no rattle... at all. Impressive.

I've decided to blog about this and so I did a little research on this stuff. It turns out, the military used to have huge drums of this stuff called "MMO" (Marvel Mystery Oil) and used it all the time. You can use it in your oil and in your gas tank, too (I'll have to try that next to get rid of another noise, which I think is a little weak sounding and annoying).

There's a good article here:

The Piper Cub Forum

And here's more info:

• Marvel Mystery Oil Web Site
• Buy Marvel Mystery Oil Here

-T 

Late last year, the heater stopped working one day. The lights worked and there was no fan and it was winter and it got cool in there. I had to get it fixed quickly and decided to try a local shop for 2 reasons. First, it was closer to my work than the Acura dealer. Second, I thought it would be less expensive than a dealer.

As it turned out, it wasn't just a blower fan (I had chceked the fuse myself before taking it in, of course) but it was a transistor. This transistor was just a small box with a plug on it, found under the glove box in my 2002 RSX. Well, the part was like $80 but the final bill came to $350. Since I didn't go to a dealer, they had to take a lot of time to dianose the problem. I even got one call after they had used 2 hours asking for more time since they could not find the issue yet.

What I learned here is that I should have taken it to the dealer instead of a local shop for this one. Yeah, it seemed just like a blower motor or something, but with all the electronics in cars today, it can easily be more than that - especially when you look at the climate control system in an Acura (which has a thermostat and does auto climate control - like on a lot of new cars today). The dealer wouldn't have taken 2 hours to diagnose the problem. I'd guess a half hour or less. The local shop had to buy the part from the dealer, so the price would have been about the same for the part.

So this has taught me that I need to think very carefully about where to take my car if it's not for simple maintenance like brakes or exhaust. I think I could have saved money going to the dealer in this instance.