Last month’s “Scoping Out The Problem” described a misidentification of an ignition system that temporarily prevented an accurate diagnosis. The technician Jorge Menchu was trying to help thought he was working on an ignition system that employed magnetic sensors to provide the ignition control unit with crankshaft and camshaft position information. This turned out to […]
In five years, you’ll look back at the ’99 models and think, “They were pretty simple.” But you won’t think so now. Technology is coming with a rush, and although items related to OBD II still are emerging, a lot more is coming on stream. In addition, a lot of the so-called “routine” underhood service […]
Who’s the biggest computer manufacturer in the world? IBM? Nope. Compaq? Sorry, guess again. Dell? Wrong. Believe it or not, the world’s largest computer manufacturer is General Motors.
A sawtooth signal dying into a digital signal? That sounded strange. “Are you sure? What signal is it?” I asked. “Well, it has to be the rpm signal. I’ve scoped every wire at the distributor and this is the only one with a pattern like a magnetic pickup.” After a few more questions, I suspected […]
One of the pleasures of running a small business is taking the time to get to know people. One of the more interesting people I’ve had the good fortune to know for many years is my friend Steve the llama farmer. When it’s not the growing season (which is very short in the Puget Sound), […]
I’d like to talk about AC ripple and dispel some misconceptions about what is it and what causes it. To do this, I will have to teeter along some of the borderlines of electronic theory, and things may seem a bit abstract at first. Please understand my purpose is not to prepare electrical engineers for […]
On Germany’s unlimited-speed Autobahns and the similar limited-access highways in Austria, Switzerland and Northern Italy, you’ll see (and hear) cars decelerating rapidly from over 150 mph. As those cars bind it down to zero from three-figure Autobahn cruise, there’s sometimes a long, loud brake squeal, a noise the drivers usually ignore.
Voltage and current in series and parallel circuits are relatively easy to understand because we can use descriptions that are clear and logical. For example, in a series circuit, all components in series pass the same total current (I) and the sum of the voltage drops around a series circuit equal the total applied voltage […]
