Tim J

I replaced a grounded wall outlet in a bathroom with a gfci outlet. Old outlet worked fine, tester says everything correct. New gfci outlet trips almost immediately when power turns on. I can put my tester in and before it trips i get correct lights. Power continues out recipticle to 1 light fixture which appears to be working fine. Any ideas how to figure out whats wrong? Put old outlet back in and thats working.

I have a 2003 Cavalier which will run perfect for a few weeks and then start stalling repeatedly for a few days, then start working again. Occasionally the RPM's will race as well up to 4,000 RPM's. It's been brought to the shop several times and nothing is ever found wrong.

I hooked it up to an OBD2 and I received a P0560, no check engine light is on. Again, it'll run just fine for weeks and then start dieing out when braking, idling, etc.

I found a vacuum hose from the fuel pressure regulator to the air intake that the end shredded (happens every year or two) so I replaced that. I had been having a roughter ride but now the car runs perfect...till it dies randomly.

I wiggled the air intake sensor on the air manifold and the car did it's race to 4000 RPM's almost immediately. I replaced that sensor when this issue was happening 2 years ago and that didn't fix it then, but I had noticed some oil and gas in there. (Replaced the fuel pressure regulator at the same time).

Without replacing a bunch of the same components which I don't think are bad, does anyone have ideas of what could be wrong? It generally only happens when it's cold outside (last night was 5F)

Alternator was replaced 1 year ago. This issue has been off and on for 3 years now. It's getting worse with age.

As a side issue, occasinally the car won't start and the theft system comes on. I need to sit in the car with the key out for 10 minutes and then it'll start. Not sure if these could somehow be related?

My mom's 2003 Chevy Cavalier threw a battery light and I'm trying to track down if I can fix it or not. I'm very confused by the code though:

Car starts and runs fine

I have a cig lighter tester for starter, alternator, battery. All checked out

Battery Light comes on after about 10 minutes

I got a p0621 code from my OBD

The alternator circuit on my cig lighter tester was destroyed.

The car battery started discharging.

I shut the car off, turned it back on after 3 minutes and the battery light was still on.

I drove it home roughly 30 miles on a highway without issue. When I got to a stoplight things went pear shaped.

I kept going after waiting at the stoplight, car was driving ok.

At the stoplight my OBD computer lost connection with the car and I couldn't re-establish.

The Transmission lost it's ability to change gears, I believe it stuck in 1st.

Does anyone know where I can start to diagnose this? The alternator is under an engine component, but the wire harness was connected and didn't look to be in bad shape.

I found an ACDelco link saying to check the horn fuse.

Any other ideas? I have no idea what would allow the car to run fine until I reach the stoplight, and then apparantly have the computer go offline but allow the car to run.

These are the same symptoms my mom had yesterday, and the go away with the car being left long enough.

I have a 1991 Dodge Dakota 3.9L V6 TBI. I was driving home on the interstate a few days ago and the truck started running oddly, it'd loose power just for a half second and then go back to normal, over and over.

The next day I drove it 3 miles and it constantly stumbled and felt like it was going to die, though it didn't. The RPM's randomly shifted 500 RPM over and over. I replaced the air filter and PCV valve and the truck started running a little better, but not fixed.

Now when I drive it, it feels like it has very low power, I can get it going up to about 15 mph but then it seems to have no power and has to be forced to go higher, the gears change when I force it higher, but things just don't sound right. When in park and I give gas it'll hesitate at about 1000 RPM then jump directly to 3000 RPM. I hear sucking sounds when trying to rev just before it'll jump up, and again when I release and it jumps down in rpm.

All vac hoses are on except 2 which are plugged and have been since I go the truck. They're by the EGR valve but don't actually go into it. (shrug) It ran ok before so I'm assuming these 2 hoses aren't the problem.

The truck doesn't have a cat. converter, which I noticed 2 weeks ago. I also just changed the u joints 2 weeks ago, but no issues from that. I put in new plug wires recently, but havn't done the plugs. I'm also planning on changing the fuel filter but havn't done so yet.

Any ideas on cause? I'm really hoping it's not the fuel pump.

I'm looking into building a solar heater for my garage and I'd like to place it on the roof, but I'm worried about snow covering it. I'm wondering if anyone knows of a glass which has an alpha radiation isotope in it that would heat the glass to lightly melt the snow as it comes down. I expect it's made somewhere, just not sure on cost effectiveness.

I understand that the isotope would halflife and degrade over time, but it'd work for several years with some isotopes.

I recently bought a 91 Dakota 2wd and it has two issues that I think are transmission related. The first is that when accelerating the gear won't shift and I max out at about 2200 RPM's for a few seconds then it'll shift and act fine for a while. The second is sometimes when coming to a stop at stoplights, after I've let off the pedal for a few seconds, I hear a clunk.

Now, A) Does anyone know what could be causing the above?

B) I thought maybe it could be a u-joint bad on the driveshaft, so I went down to do a shake test. The joints have no play on them, but the whole transmission has several inches of play, the whole unit moves quite easily right to left. Is that normal for this truck? My old S10 had no play at all. I can't believe it has that much play and still has fluid in it.

I'm helping my bro with his Nissan Maxima, both front wheel bearings were shot. We got the knuckles out and got the hubs off, but the bearings broke when taking them out so the ouside casing is stuck in the knuckle and the inside is stuck on the hub. The 1992 Maxima has pressed bearings and so we bought a 12 ton press, bearing plates, and a bearing puller that works with the press. The inside bearing ring on the first hub came off easily when pressed. The remaining hub and the two knuckles won't budge. We bent the bearing puller trying to get the inner bearing ring off the second hub, and that plate was supposed to withstand a 50 ton press. The rings in the hubs won't budge.

Are we missing a step? I found a site where a guy did a different import vehicle but has the same knuckle, and he has the same equipment, used the same procedures, and had no problems.

Our last idea to try is to get a propane torch and heat the knuckle while on the press then try to press the bearing out, but we're not terribly hopeful. We checked the specs and the bearings are supposed to be put in with 10 tons of pressure, so 12 to get them out should be plenty.

Again, any ideas are much appreciated.

Hey,

I'm helping someone with their 1992 Nissan Maxima, their front wheel drive bearings need replacing. We got the right wheel disassembled but couldn't get the wheel bearing hub out so we got a hub puller and finally got it off. The bearing inside is snapped clean in half, one half came out with the hub and the other half is stuck in the knuckle. We also were given a bearing puller and we've tried using that many times but we can't get the bearing from the knuckle. The bearing puller has two arms that screw out and grab the center bearing ring, but we use the awesome hammer thing that came with the pullers and we can only pull twice before the arms snap out.

Does anyone have any idea how to get the bearing ring out?

One thing we think may help is to get the axle spindle out of the way (the thing in the middle of the knuckle that turns with the bearings). But we have no idea how to force the axle spindle out, it only pushes back about 2 inches.

Any help is much appreciated oh gods of auto!

I'm a little confused.

My friend has a Chevy Lumina and it's running a bit erratically and is sucking down coolant by the gallon. She brought it to an auto shop and the guy started doing an oil change and said a lot of coolant is in the oil and that the lower engine gasket is show and if she wants her car fixed then she needs a new engine. She had the head gasket replaced last year, and it started acting up a few months later and she parked it until spring.

I've never run into a lower engine gasket, but I see them available for purchase. I can't find any instructions or anyone online talking about them which seems odd. Do they exist, are they called something else? Also, is it possible this is the head gasket leaking again? When the car is running about 1 gallon of coolant leaks per 20 minutes of driving. The mechanic didn't do any disassembly but said he only seeks coolant in the lower engine oil and not the upper and I have no idea how he's making that statement. Seems a bit off to me, but I'm somewhat new to this game.

I have a 91 Dodge Dakota 3.9L TBI which has a small leak that I noticed yesterday. It leaked twice yesterday and then I drove it home today and no leak. It won't leak when I'm driving, only once shutdown it'll put out a small stream of foaming coolant. My problems comes in with identifying the name of the part where the leak is occuring.

My water pump bolts to a place which is roughly 1.3 inches thick which then bolts to the engine block. This plate covers the front of the engine block and many things are bolted to it, I can see a black seal mounting it to the block, this seal is what is leaking. Does anyone know what this plate is called so I can get the proper seal to fix it? I have a Haynes manual and they show it in one of the pictures but they don't identify it, I can't find it online either.

I've always been leery of eating mushrooms incase I eat a poisonous one. Does anyone know the regulations that restaurant mushrooms have to go through to be safe? Are they grown outdoors where other species could mix? Are they just picked off of a random mountain and brought in? I'm very curious of their safety.

I've been helping my niece study her social studies and what I saw as a kid as cut and dried facts are now showing to be complete propaganda in regard to World War II. The more I research the more I realise all the books I've read on the war only give the allies and Jewish perspective on the war, and most of the allies information is factually incorrect but worked well to rally the masses.

I'm looking to find a book, preferably written by a non-Jewish German (historian?), who gave give the German perspective to WWII and hopefully some details into their beliefs and opinions of the times.

Does anyone know of a good book? I'd prefer it to be translated into English but I may be able to muddle through a German copy.

I'm at my mom's house and I just noticed her electric baseboard heater is in rough shape. About 80% of the fins are seriously bent, and some of the fins are touching the copper wire running across the back of the unit.

Is this safe? I'm not sure if that copper wire is the heating unit or if it's a grounding wire. Should the unit be replaced?

I'm working on a single speed direct drive squirrel cage blower that has a bad motor. I took the unit down and I'm trying to get the fan off of the drive so I can get to the motor screws underneath. The unit doesn't have a nut holding the fan onto the drive. I've tried pulling and gently prying to get the wheel off but I can't get it. I even oiled it and that didn't help. Any tips on getting the wheel off without destroying it? I hear they charge way too much for replacement of the wheels. I read somewhere about a fan puller for these which looks promising, but the only ones I could fine online are 50 bucks which is ridiculous. I'm looking for cheap/free ways. The way this project is going I may just buy a new unit.

I used to work with MS Access and that'd be perfect for my project, but it costs money and I don't have any. I need to be able to reach the DB from outside of the application (server connect string hits IP.) This will be on Windows 7 and I will only be using it once every few weeks so I really don't want to install SQL Server Express which will run and bog down the machine a lot. Any ideas?

I'm (yet again) working on my mom's 03 Chevy Cavalier and her gas mileage is terrible. It's only getting 17mpg and 2 years ago it was around 34mpg. I fixed a few issues for her and one of them was a split vacuum line connecting from the air intake manifold to some sort of gas pump/line. The split hose was spraying gas both inside the air intake and into the engine compartment. I re-ended the vacuum line and no more gas is being sprayed, and I hoped this would re-set the pressure solving the mileage problem but the mileage hasn't changed. I replaced the gas cap just in case.

Aside from the mileage sucking the car runs perfectly, absolutely no issues.

Does anyone know why the mileage could have been cut in (exactly) half? Does anyone know what the vacuum line does that was spewing gas? I'd like to know if it's now just dumping into the intake instead of spraying, but that's not easy for me to test especially without knowing how it works.

I'm trying to troubleshoot my mom's car and I'm getting a bit stuck. She has a 2003 Chevy Cavalier and it'll run fine most of time but keeps having major occasional problems. These problems only happen in winter (when it gets below freezing).

1. Sometimes dies at stop signs. Have to leave car off for about 1 minute and then try starting, otherwise it dies again right away.

2. Throttle occasionally sticks. If I pull over and wait 20ish seconds the throttle will unstick, but won't unstick if I keep driving.

3. Engine throttles up by itself up to 2000RPM. This can happen when driving or when stopped.

Since this happens during winter, number 2 and 3 are dangerous and I'm confused with what it could be. I was thinking Idle Air Control but it just doesn't seem to fully fit the picture. One other thing that wrong with the car is that the cooling fan isn't working, I haven't put the new one in yet but I don't see why that would make the car not work in winter, it was still working ok in summer/fall.

Ideas?

My niece is in a school in Minnesota and the majority of her grade is failing History. The school lost funding for being below state standards for 3 consecutive years even. When I started tutoring her I found out the class doesn't have any books. The teacher has a binder of chapter summary pages for each topic (IE: WWI) from 10 different history books dates 1989-2000 which she photocopies and hands out to the class. They supplement these random pages with past copies of Newsweek magazine. The information is so disjointed and inconsistent I had to sit down and teach her 5 hours of information to tie it all together.

My question is: Does anyone know if schools in America are required to provide books to the class for learning? None of her other classes have books either, just photocopies often referring the students back to the original textbooks for information.

I have a webcam and I need to take snapshots of an engineering project I'm working on. I need a free program to take the snapshot, and I'm on windows 7 64bit. Any recommendations? I would think that this would be a basic feature of any webcam application, but all I'm finding are apps to take shots every X seconds and save them or upload them somewhere. I don't need that, I just need a button to hit and take a snapshot. No software came with my cam, but the cam does work in windows.

I have a Targus laptop cooling mat that's worked fine for about 8 months. All of a sudden it stops working on my Windows 7 laptop. I tried all of the USB ports, fiddled with the switch, etc and I can't get it to work on the laptop. Interestingly I have an ipod outlet converter that connects to USB. I plugged my mat into the outlet converter and it works fine. All of my USB ports work fine, I tested them with an external hard drive. I even changed from Windows 7 to Linux and I can't get the thing to work. Anyone have ideas? I havn't fiddled with the BIOS yet, maybe Plug & Play got turned off?