I used to work for Lucas (Aerospace)…
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Lucas electricals blow goats, I used to have to maintain my sister’s MG.
And I have to share this…
The first volkswagen Beetle I ever rode in was my father’s 1959 bug with the sliding cloth-covered roof hatch. This car came from the factory with no gas gauge. It literally never had one.
You drove the car until it started to cough and stall, then you pulled the emergency gas lever, and that gave you just enough extra gasoline to get to a gas station.
This completely worked. We never ran out of gas.
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Are they any better now?
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No comment.
But since we’re talking about engines…if you fly on almost any RR engined airplane you’re trusting your life to Lucas engine controls 
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Yeah, that’s what I thought until I had to hand-carry those couple of gallons back from the gas station.
I used to do that on my '68 F250 Camper Special. It had three tanks, totaling some 60 gallons in capacity (and it needed 'em, too, since with the camper on it got 6 miles to the gallon). The gas gauge was wired to the cab tank and the big tank between the framerails under the bed by a switch, but the third auxiliary tank had naught but a slim wooden dipstick to determine its fuel level. But no matter, just toodle on down the highway, and at the first hiccup, just switch the valve next to the seat to whichever tank you wanted to drain next. It was a bummer if you ran out of gas while idling, since you had to crank that fuel pump for awhile to suck gas all the way from the third tank, but if the truck was moving it would switch with barely a hiccup.
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In my case, getting my own code reader and telling the shop what it said wasn’t good enough. “Oh, we have to see it for ourselves” (and charge the $80). Maybe they’d add a wrench fee because they used a wrench.
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I remember riding around with a friend whose oil light was on.
“Don’t you think you oughta check the oil?”
“Pfft, it’s always on.”
Next time I heard from him, he’d had to buy a new engine. I didn’t even have a car yet, and I knew better…
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Wish the writers for The Big Bang Theory would read this. It would be useful in a long running joke.
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Check engine light aside, I downloaded this guy’s book, Plays With Cars, which is like three bucks at B & N, and it is screamingly funny! This guy writes like Dave Barry. Or Mr. Protocol.
Buying one for my car was a great investment but it kind of ticks me off that modern cars should even need one. How hard would it be to build a basic LCD readout into the dashboard? My 2001 Volvo already has a small readout to alert me if the tailgate is open or tell me how many miles per gallon I’m getting, but I still need a code reader to find out what’s up with the check engine light.
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I still believe that if car manufacturers had their way, nothing between the 2 bumpers would be user serviceable, it would all be encased in a big block of Lucite with ports to add various fluids. When something craps out, you have to bring it back to the dealership, they pull the Lucite and install a new one. I think that was the MO on the original Volkswagons as well, but those actually worked.
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If they would REALLY have their way, the fluids would be inserted in vendor-specific proprietary cartridges, in authorized services. For an appropriate fee.
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Rather like ink cartridges for ink-jet printers?
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Exactly like that. And with bought road-safety laws criminalizing third-party replacements.
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So bring an extra fuel filter.
Anyone who’s worked in tech support can attest to how frequently users lie just to get a tech to their desk in person (or in this case to save $80.)
“My computer won’t turn on.”
“Okay, can you check if it’s plugged in? Sometimes the cleaning people knock the plugs out of the outlets…”
“Yes it’s plugged in! Of course I already checked! I’m not an idiot!”
[…tech travels to user’s desk, looks underneath, sees plug lying on the floor.]
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SSSHHHHH! Don’t give them any ideas.
Hey, have you been watching the security feed where I work?
It actually isn’t that bad. My department got moved from the corporate office building to a smaller sattelite office where our guest services phone bank is located. I haven’t once had to make a desk call since the move. Back at corporate HQ I was having to run up and down a six story building all the time. Mostly to “troubleshoot” things like people’s personal iPads that wouldn’t charge, and mysterious power outages that couldn’t possibly be related to the fact that three power strips were daisy chained together in order to power about 80 amps worth of space heaters, fans, and minifridges.
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