Dear Tom and Ray--The spring broke inside the clasp on the driver's side seat belt on my 1986 Bronco II. The spring is for the button you push to release the belt. A Ford dealer told me that I would need to purchase an entire seat-belt mechanism and have the whole thing replaced for $145. He said repairing a seat belt is illegal.
Then I went to a junkyard and found somebody who was willing to take a spring out of a wrecked Bronco for me and install it in my seat belt. The total cost, including labor, was $15. Does the law require that an entire seat belt be replaced rather than just the defective part? - BudTOM: Our pals at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tell us that there's no law that prevents a repair shop from fixing a broken seat belt. It IS illegal to render any piece of safety equipment inoperative . . . or take it out and throw it in the nearest dumpster. But fixing it is not against the law.
RAY: My guess is that the dealer may have a policy against fixing seat belts because of the potential legal liability. He's afraid that if you have an accident and get hurt, you'll find some ambulance-chasing lawyer to say that it's because his dealership worked on the seat belt.
TOM: The guy who owns the junkyard, on the other hand, doesn't really care. He figures that even if you sue him for all he's got, all he's got is a pile of junk, so what does he care?
RAY: Needless to say, when you repair something as important to your safety as your seat belt, make sure it's done correctly. And by the way, NHTSA recommends that seat belts that are damaged in accidents SHOULD be replaced rather than repaired due to the severe stresses accidents place on them.
Dear Tom and Ray - I have made a terrible mistake. I keep my dry gas in one spot on my cellar shelf. Somehow, a bottle of transmission fluid was put there by accident. You guessed it. I had a full tank of gas and put in a bottle of transmission fluid by mistake. Since then, I have added a bottle of dry gas every three fill-ups, and kept the tank full with premium gas. So far, I have traveled over 200 miles, and it's still going. What damage am I doing? It's a 1985 Dodge. - Yvonne
TOM: You're not doing any damage, Yvonne. Don't worry about it.
RAY: First of all, it's important to know that automatic transmission fluid (ATF) is basically an oil. And we all know it's not that harmful for engines to burn oil, because every car my brother's ever owned has burned oil.
TOM: And in fact, back in the old days, people used to put stuff like ATF and "mystery oil" (which bore a striking resemblance to ATF) into their gas tanks on purpose, because they believed these oils had cleaning properties. They were said to remove deposits and varnishes from the engine's valve train.
RAY: We don't generally recommend that anymore because thereare now detergents in gasolines that do a better job of keeping the engine clean. But one bottle of ATF in the gas tank certainly won't hurt anything, especially on an '85
Dodge. And who knows? It might even help.
Dear Tom and Ray - Both of my '69 Cadillacs have the same problem. When they are cold, they start great. But if I turn them off when the engines are hot, it's hard to get them started again. The battery seems almost dead at first, then a moment later, the engine starts to move and finally turns over. One of the cars has had three starters in the past year. The other has had two. That's five starters! What's wrong? - James
TOM: You need five more starters, James. You just need to hook them all up in tandem.
RAY: Actually, it sounds like you have a classic gas-guzzling-old-heap-hot-starting problem. What happens is that, over time, carbon builds up on the pistons. And that carbon buildup makes the pistons, in effect, "bigger" than they're supposed to be. That increases the engine's compression, which makes the car harder to start.
TOM: But more important, when that carbon gets hot, it retains heat, and that heat makes the fuel in the cylinder explode early - while the piston is still on its way up. And that's why the engine is hard to start; the piston is trying to come up, and the "pre-ignited" gasoline is trying to push it back down (the same thing happens when your timing is too advanced). That's where those five starters would come in handy.
RAY: Then, when the car has been sitting for a long time, and the carbon on the pistons cools off, the engine starts again with a lot less effort.
TOM: So, what do you do about it? There are additives you can try that are supposed to remove carbon from inside the engine. And you should try one of those first, because it's relatively inexpensive. It probably won't work, but, as I say, it's relatively inexpensive.
RAY: And when that doesn't work, you'll have to have the engine taken apart and de-carbonized (they actually scrape the stuff off the pistons). That'll cost you a few hundred bucks, but think of all the money you'll save on starters, James.