SA Road Tests

Opinion:

Aliens claiming to speak English

Mayonnaise does not lubricate

Pics supplied
Posted: Sept 4, 2018

There are aliens you don’t really trust but are still okay. Stallholders in Madagascar, Chiang Mai or Marrakesh, they punch numbers into calculators to indicate how much they want for the object you’re haggling over. You’re a tourist and it’s the trader’s “job” to rip you off if possible and it’s yours to be the successful one-in-a-hundred who evens the score slightly.

 Speaking the same language makes for better friendships


Then there are those who appear to speak your home language but don’t; to whom you entrust your ailing car to have its symptoms diagnosed and fixed. It begins well. They listen attentively; promise to return it promptly and then drop you off at work.

It’s at collection time that the weirdness begins. The frightening job cost is crystal clear but the explanation is presented in code. The man (most mechanics are male) says,

“You had mayonnaise under your filler cap,”

What?

or “your big end bearings were shot.”

Kindly leave my big end out of this, Fatass!

or, “Your (mumbo-jumbo) bush was History,”

I beg your pardon?

This just puts the cap on everything.

Official surveys and anecdotal evidence suggest that almost one woman in three (32 percent) has dumped a local garage because the owner has, she believes, taken unfair advantage because of her gender, ripped her off or tried to blind her with science. Almost a quarter of males, especially young ones, feel the same way.

The problem is the jargon. Insurance agents and computer geeks were traditionally full of it. They have, mostly, been retrained. Unfortunately, many motorcar repair people still follow the old ways, so industry control bodies are trying to get them to adopt user-friendlier language. It benefits everyone. Customers become more trusting, less prone to spikes in blood pressure and more relaxed. Workshops retain clientele and their good names in the industry. And motor industry ombudsman, Johan van Vreden, has a better chance of reaching retirement age and surviving for a good, long time beyond that.

In case your motor technician has not yet come around, here is a short dictionary to his most commonly used jargon:

Mayonnaise under your filler cap: That refers to your car’s oil filler cap and a creamy substance that accumulates there if things go badly wrong. Just as you whip eggs and cooking oil together to make mayo, so too does whipped motor oil and water create a similar-looking substance. Oil and water, as we know, should never mix. Unfortunately they sometimes do.

There are three main causes. The first relates to the gasket between your car’s cylinder head and the engine block, the second to little rubber rings that seal oil supply channels between them and the third relates to a physical crack, in the engine block, that allows cooling water into the sump where there’s lots of oil and large mechanical objects churning it up. The end result is the same. “Mayonnaise” does not lubricate. Things will wear out. Expensively. Like shot big ends, worn crankshafts and possibly, “a rod through the block.” You don’t want me to translate that.

A mechanic is someone who fixes a problem you didn't know you had, in a way you don't understand

To explain: Cylinder heads have oil flowing through them to lubricate the valve gear, and water to keep the assembly fairly cool. A split or ruptured gasket could allow these fluids to meet, mix and eventually get whipped into emulsion. Most cars also have rubber “O” rings sealing the oil channels in block and cylinder head. A split or missing ring allows unwanted mixing too.

Worn big, or small, ends: Just as the ankle bone connects to the shin bone and the shin bone connects to the knee bone in the old song, so too does each of your car’s pistons connect via a connecting rod (how original) to the crankshaft that translates up-and-down movement into circular motion.  The anklebone would be the “small end” or upper eyelet of the connecting rod that pivots on a gudgeon pin (wrist pin in the US) across the inside of the piston. The big end (knee bone) is its larger, opposite number that wraps around one of the polished rotating surfaces, or journals, on the crankshaft.

Big ends and small ends are split and bolted together again for easy maintenance and assembly. Each half of each split end is fitted with a curved strip of bearing material that is fairly durable but designed to wear out before either gudgeon pin or crankshaft. It obviously costs less to replace. Mayonnaise, that does not lubricate, will cause those bearings to wear prematurely.

Your (insert type here) bushes are worn: A bush is basically a tube made of rubber, plastic or a soft metal such as copper. If it’s made of rubber it usually joins two metal parts to allow them to operate together without squeaking or vibrating, such as in suspension control arms or on anti-roll bars. If made of a soft metal it separates two parts in which one rotates within, or around, another - like a butterfly shaft in an old car’s carburettor. You also get nylon bushes in the wheels of your lawnmower. Their function is like the connecting rod bearings mentioned earlier.

You have excessive play in (insert description here): This usually means that a bush has worn out, causing looseness, and needs replacing before something more expensive happens.

Your brakes are spongy: Your car’s brake pedal literally feels squishy or spongy. It means that they’re not working properly and will soon fail completely. It’s caused by air trapped in the hydraulic brake lines as a result of cracked tubing or a worn rubber component in either the brake master cylinder or a slave cylinder on one of the wheels. These pressurise the hydraulic fluid to operate the brake discs or drums. When fluid drips out, air gets in and you’d better fix it soon.

I need to access your CANBUS: He wants to connect a computer into the car’s diagnostic interface to work through a menu-full of stuff that could have gone wrong. He makes it sound like a day’s work but it usually takes only a few minutes.
 
There are other buzzwords but these are the most common. Ask for a plain-English translation if he hits you with any others. A clear answer means he’s probably a keeper and that’s good for both of you. If not, move on – anyone in a service job should know that it’s easier and cheaper to retain customers than to find and recruit new ones.




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