What We Gained — and What We Lost
As an Uber driver, every day I pick up someone who’s having a bad day… or month… or even year.
And most of the time, it’s the same thing.
Their car won’t start.
I try to give advice. Maybe help them decide whether they should give up on their ride altogether or just start throwing parts at the problem.
Because today, cars are complicated.
They’re hard to diagnose. Even great mechanics often find themselves throwing parts at a problem rather than truly figuring out what’s wrong.
As someone who’s worked on cars his entire life, I’m a pretty talented backyard mechanic.
I learned by trial and fire.
Literally.
I still remember my first truck — a 1975 step-side Chevy. It went up in smoke.
And that was after I had installed the second motor and the second transmission myself.
I physically tore the entire motor apart and rebuilt it — myself.
It was the early 1990s. I was barely in my twenties. I had a lead foot and very little common sense.
Unfortunately, a tiny electrical wire got pinched between the motor and transmission housing.
I didn’t know.
Weeks went by before it finally went up in flames.
So yeah — sometimes it is easier to throw parts at a problem than it is to grab a voltmeter and test every sensor on these newer cars.
A code reader can help, but it doesn’t give you the solution. It only points you in a direction.
And sometimes it doesn’t even do that.
The modern-day automobile is complicated.
And honestly? We allowed this to happen.
After all, manufacturers wouldn’t have added all these bells and whistles if we didn’t demand them, want them, and pay for them.
The combustion engine is complicated — yet simple at the same time. There really isn’t that much to go wrong.
It’s all the features we demand that inflate the sticker price… and the service headaches that come with them.
Why can’t we just shift the gears manually?
If we didn’t need air conditioning, cruise control, heated seats, phones connected to the radio, and a computer screen telling us our tire pressure, it would be pretty easy to figure out what’s wrong when something goes awry.
It’s simple.
A combustion engine needs only three things to happen inside the combustion chamber:
Air.
Fuel.
A spark.
And it all has to be timed perfectly.
That’s it.
It’s the sensors and emissions systems that are so hard to diagnose.
The very things we think we need are the real reason we’re so frustrated and confused.
Isn’t it funny how we make our own lives difficult?
We are the problem.
And we’re getting exactly what we deserve.
We want all these things.
And of course, they give us what we want.
Are you happy?
I’m not.
Well… not with my car, anyway.
It was simpler times when I was shifting gears and rolling down windows.
Here’s an idea —
Maybe I should demand what I need instead of what I want.
Yeah… right.
Wishful thinking, I know.
I live in South Carolina.
God knows I’m not giving up my AC.
Funny how the same thing happens with bodies, too.
