The Historian

Today I am reminded of the power of people coming together to share what they know. This is something that has really come together with the advent of the internet and people with common interest coming together for social interactions and to share their knowledge for the better of everyone.

Last weekend my car started acting up, seeming to not want to shift from gear to gear as I accelerated and on Monday it just wouldn’t get past 20 mph. Now I might be tech savvy, but when it comes to cars I can do two things, change tires and light bulbs. Add to this that I’m still job hunting, and I am on a very tight budget so extensive and expensive auto repair is not an option.

So what am I to do?

Well first I did a search to find out how to get the error codes for my car, which was as simple as cycling the ignition 3 times. Two codes popped up, one for the knock sensor and another for the camshaft position sensor. I searched for those codes and found a forum with user comments stating that in this case it was most likely not the knock sensor, but the camshaft sensor. A third search pointed me to a diagram of where that sensor was located. From there I popped on to an auto parts site, checked if they had the part I needed in stock then went and purchased it.

Turns out it was a matter of disconnecting the electrical cords and removing 4 bolts, those were a royal pain to remove with all the metal pipes in the way, but I managed to do it all in about 2 hours and the car is working perfectly. Admittedly there could have been more wrong with my car. It could have been the cables that were bad or even something wrong with the computer, but I was fortunate.

10 years ago this wouldn’t have been as easy. I might have found a few forums back then with some information, but the chances of putting all this together to actually fix my car myself, was just not as likely. All in all I fixed my car myself with the help of the vast knowledge of the internet, 2 hours of my time and $29.