<p>I am sitting here, trying not to go outside and shake my head…so I came here to…I don’t know…vent maybe at the man cave disaster down stairs.</p>
<p>Son, in his quest to pinch every penny so that his beer supply never runs out (lol) needed to have his oil changed in his work truck (we own the company) I gave him $60.00 dollars and he made the decision to change said oil with his buddy instead of going to the oil change house so he could make a little money out the deal. Background: he has successfully change this oil before. So he changes the oil. Leaves the house (he came here to change it because he lives in an apartment) heads home via auto place to recycle the oil. Half way to Auto house place, he calls my husband. Complains that the truck is acting funny. Then mentions that the oil “drained funny” and that it smells as if oil is burning off. Husband tells him to pull over and he will be right there. To shorten this story, the bottom line is the dipstick (pun completely intended) drained the transmission fluid. Then added 5 more quarts of oil to a full oil chamber and the truck is a hot mess (girl speak…I won’t repeat here what my H called it) Truck is safely at Transmission repair guy. Will know the financial damage on Monday. Note to self: Never let son change oil again. </p>
<p>Anyone else with some Man Cave Disasters. I need company in misery.</p>
<p>While he screwed up this time, he was thinking smart to be trying to save a few dollars. Had it gone right, and if you multiplied 60 dollars time 10 oil changes a year times 30 years, you’re looking at a cool $18,000 in savings! After supplies, maybe only $12,000 in savings. But that is enough to buy a nice truck.</p>
<p>He’s learning about various options to save money now, and he’ll likely continue them in the future. People like this generally don’t go bankrupt because they understand the value of money.</p>
<p>But, he should be more careful. Doing your own work is good, but needs to be done correctly.</p>
<p>(One of the huge savings that a guy can do is brake work. It’s easy to change your own brakes and saves between $200 and $900 each time. It’s huge money.)</p>
<p>There’s only one thing I know for sure and that is dad’s thermostat is probably running as hot as the one on the truck. I can not come up with anything that can top that story. The only thing that comes to mind is once I tried to save money by re-painting the grout on the kitchen counter tile with a product that Home Depot recommended. It ended up ruining the grout and we ended up remodeling the entire kitchen over a botched grout job. </p>
<p>Hope transmission guy brings you a belated Christmas present with a (relatively) clean bill of health on the truck!</p>
<p>Kinda sorta. My personal philosophy is that people who mess with expensive equipment that they don’t really understand are equally likely to burn through more money (whatever they spent on the messing around part plus whatever they spent on an actual professional who knows what he or she is doing). It was a good instinct though, don’t get me wrong! I’m just saying that sometimes cutting corners and doing things the (seemingly) cheapest way possible can backfire in certain cases.</p>
<p>My friend’s H has been a “mad scientist” in the best sense since grade school. One day, he put some spare hydrochoric acid in a plastic windshield washer fluid jug. He “forgot” to relabel or mention it to anyone. His dad diligently decided to add fluid to his car & didn’t understand why his wiper blades & other things were acting “strangely” & melting. He sold that car & begged S to LABEL things appropriately thereafter.</p>
<p>My MD brother changes his own oil. Once, the plug fell out & all the oil drained out & they fortunately found out before it caused serious damage to the vehicle. Hubby no longer does his own auto work for his car or any of ours.</p>
<p>My ex fancied himself to be adept at electrical wiring in the house …until he electrocuted himself doing something in the ceiling. Literally flew off the dining room table, hit his head on the floor and knocked himself out, ended up in hospital with a bad concussion. Pffftt…men</p>
<p>Oh yea, I bought a swing set for my sister when she had purchased a house in HI. I got the men in the family to agree to help in installing it. My sister’s fiance insisted that there was no need to read the instructions & H & all my brothers dug holes in their backyard, poured the concrete & proceeded to start constructing the swing set. When it was done, the compared the picture on the box with what they had created & realized it had been installed…UPSIDE DOWN! Oh well, it was very durable with the concrete & still standing when the house was sold many years later. We have not asked the now BIL to help with any of our home improvement projects after that sample. :)</p>
<p>collegeshopping, your son sounds like my little cousin… I think they might possibly be related! He used to live with us and back when he was about 16 he was putting a new stereo in his car. He decided to save a few bucks and not buy the wire harness (maybe 8 bucks at the store) and attach the wires together himself. Long story short, he snipped the wires too short and my dad was out there fixing it for hours upon hours he had to manually solder every individual wire. Then, he decided to add new speakers and a sub. Every time you turned on the radio, his headlights would turn off! My dad fixed it and told him that was the last time he was going to help him with a stereo related issue on his vehicle, lol!</p>
<p>Same cousin, a year later, at 17, needed oil. We always change our own oil (I can’t even begin to imagine how your son did that… that sounds next to impossible to do wrong… oil changing is very very easy and hard to screw up… how did he skip the whole removing the oil filter to drain the oil out part… ). Anyway, my cousin came home from school with his car smoking and said he was out of oil in his car and needed some otherwise he wouldn’t be able to make it to work. We didn’t have any new oil laying around, just about 5 quarts of old oil that my dad didn’t recycle yet. So he asked my mom if it would be okay to use that oil in his car. She was like he took it out of his car for a reason, it’s old and disgusting… and my cousins there like well old oil is better then no oil, lol! He assured my mom that he would stop at the store on his way home from work and change his oil. Fast forward like 3 months later and it’s christmas time and he’s still running around with that old oil. We’re all around the tree and he gets this giant box from my parents for christmas. He, naturally, was so excited to see such a large box under the tree. He opened it up and it was full of like 15 quarts of oil, 3 oil filters, an air filter, and a container of windshield wiper fluid with a note saying “1 year of car maintenance”. He was just like “Ok, I get the hint.” It was christmas day and he was outside doing an oil change under my dads supervision to make sure he actually did it, lol!</p>
<p>Your son is on the right track though… For me to buy an oil filter for my car it’s 4.88 and oil usually comes to like 8 bucks or something along those lines. 60 dollars would take care of 4 oil changes on my vehicle.</p>
<p>^^^^haha ‘rich’… Right you are. But I do praise my husbands and boys when they do stuff right :)</p>
<p>On a better note…poor son has become the laughing stock of his brothers. One son who has a friend with a T-shirt shop had a shirt made today for the loil change king that says “Don’t Drink and Change”. On the back it says “dipstick”</p>
<p>The internet is a very handy thing when it comes to many of these do-it-yourself projects. I have been able to repair our clothes dryer, dishwasher, garbage disposal, and garage door opener just by looking it up on the internet and following the directions. Of course, it helps to have some aptitude with mechanical things.</p>
<p>Sequoia, I work with electricity for a living and I rarely work on anything in my home without first flipping the breaker. And maybe your choice of words was wishful thinking, but your ex received an electrical shock. Electrocution by definition involves death.</p>
<p>I feel vindicated!!! Years ago, wanting to be the ultimate self sufficient young woman, did exactly the same thing. Drained the fluid from what I though was the oil pan screw, and was surprised when the V8 engine in that Ford Fairlane only took 3 quarts. Yes, I changed the oil filter. Then it started sounding funny going up hills. A mechanic had a great time laughing when he realized what I’d done. Luckily it was a tough transmission, and survived the insult. </p>
<p>Haven’t attempted that in years. I took a mechanic class a few months later, learned a few things. Getting a job with decent pay cured me of trying to work on cars, and in my educated town, I haven’t met a man (or woman) in years who did anything with cars. Car engines are too hard to get into these days. Tried to change the air filter on my current minivan, and the thing was impossibly placed. </p>
<p>Oh, so many Man Cave Disasters. Which to choose?? How about the adventure that we fondly refer to as “The Three Stooges Change a Tire.”</p>
<p>S2 called after a HS basketball game last January 2010- he had a flat tire on the Bionic Pickup truck. “Call AAA. That’s why we pay for the membership,” we told him.<br>
No, AAA would take too long - at least an hour - so he & his friends decided to change the tire themselves. </p>
<p>
First, they sent X home to google “How to Change a Tire” on the internet instead of simply looking in the glove compartment for the owner’s manual. If they HAD checked the owner’s manual, they would have discovered the jack in the truck cab. Instead, S2 told his friends that he had no jack, so they used the jack from Y’s VW Passat. Unfortunately the car jack did not lift the Bionic Pickup high enough to slide on the spare tire, so they proceeded to let some air out of the tire. Then they sent Z home for a bicycle pump to reinflate the now-deflated spare tire. Y followed S2 home to make sure that the spare tire did not fall off on the Beltway. S2 walked in the door around midnight. It took them ~3 hours to change the tire.</p>
<p>As a postscript, I should add that X, Y, and Z are all first year engineering students at top universities. And the Bionic Pickup earned its name after S2 had 2 rear-end accidents in 5 weeks (“We can rebuild it! We have the technology!”).</p>
<p>collegeshopping: if it makes you feel any better, years ago when I was studying abroad in Germany, I caught a ride with a German taxi driver. He had just changed the oil in his Mercedes taxi. Somewhere on the Autobahn just outside Bremen, the car began slowing, black smoke billowing out of the engine, and then it just glided to a stop. </p>
<p>The German word for this thing is Kolbenfresser, which literally means “piston eater.” The taxi driver ruined his transmission by forgetting to tighten the screw & having all the oil leak out. Needless to say, since the car was his livelihood, the taxi driver was not a happy camper.</p>
<p>When you have three astronautics in a space pod that just suffered a severe explosion, and you need to bring them home but half of the spacecraft systems don’t work, do you call AAA?</p>
<p>When 30 miners get trapped miles underground, and they need to be rescued, do you call AAA?</p>
<p>What the kids did when changing the tire was stupid because there was a simplier, easier, and better method. But the same thought process is what brought the Apollo 13 astronauts back home, saved all 31 miners, and countless times has led to great success. That thought process, once it has matured and added knowledge, will cause them to be excellent engineers!</p>
<p>Just a postscript. Son “dipstick” had to borrow my car because, you know, his is in the shop. Son wreaked my car today :(. Did a pretty good job. Single car accident in driving rain. Some nimrod tried to pass him on a country road acroos double yellow lines and pushed him off the road when faced with a car head on. Car meets tree and fence. Probably not totaled because of it’s cost, but I would guess we are looking at 5-7k in damage. All over a $60 oil change. And yes, he is fine. Today’s nickname…“crash”</p>
<p>12rmh18…I was reading your post and got to the part about them being engineering students…I am sitting in my office and laughing. It reminds me of the time when my very capable son in his second year top engineering school could not figure out the new remote system we had on the T.Vs. I was scratching my head that day.</p>