Curing the Camry’s intermittent ailment was hard enough, but psychoanalyzing the anxious owner had to come first. Autopsychology: The Art It looked very sharp for a nine-year-old car. The still shiny ’91 Camry came in running fine, on its own with no obvious problems – no misses, no smoke, nothing scraping, banging, flapping, clanking or […]

The recent SAE Future Transportation Technology Conference in Costa Mesa, California, provided information on hybrid electric vehicles, 42-volt electrical systems, alternate fuel and fuel cell technology, Intelligent Data Bus (IDB) and OBD-II+ systems. All of these technologies will (perhaps) find their way into new vehicles in the not-too distant future. However, I believe the Intelligent […]

When you are the world’s greatest automotive detective, you meet all kinds of guys. Well, guys like Dave. That’s Dave as in “Dave’s Transmission City,” formerly “Dave’s Lifetime Brake & Muffler,” still earlier “Dave’s International Auto Repair,” “Dave’s Dependable Towing,” “Dave’s Quality Detailing” and so on back through a long chain of sequentially failed automotive […]

No-starts? Piece of cake. Except when they’re not. Here are some that weren’t, and how they were fixed by a very special hot-wire: the iATN. To a ‘civilian,’ a no-start seems like the most frustrating and difficult of all car problems. It’s always unexpected and inconvenient. And entirely inexplicable! After all, ‘didn’t the engine start […]