'We eventually found out what Grandpa Kevin had done': Grandfather tries to bond with grandchild, accidentally ruins car's entire brake system

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    Wheel - potow
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    Font - How my Kevin of a grandpa ruined my car's brake system XL Around three years ago, I received my very first car: a 2005 Chevy Malibu. Rather decent condition considering it had over 300,000 miles on it, and the only real issue with it was a crack on the windshield. That didn't last long.
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    Font - Enter Grandpa Kevin. Wanting to bestow some of his "earthly wisdom" on me, he decided he wanted to teach me all about maintaining this car and making routines of checking the fluids of everything. This made sense. There was always more to learn.
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    Font - One night, we went to Walmart and bought a bottle of power steering fluid so he could show me how to properly administer it. We drove out to an empty area of the parking lot and opened the hood. Grandpa Kevin looked for the power steering fluid reservoir for a while and then declared he'd found it, pouring in as much as he could. Then we went home. Until this point, I had considered my grandfather to be an expert in the field of automotives.
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    Font - Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that his experience with cars was limited to driving them and identifying ones on the road from his youth.
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    Font - Some time later, I began noticing problems with my car. It started vibrating when it was going down the road, the brakes became less and less responsive, and the engine's RPMs started going up, dramatically altering the car's gas mileage. Sometimes, all three of these things would happen at once, creating an unnerving ride experience. I'm not sure if Grandpa Kevin was the cause of all of these, but it's plausible. When no one in my family could find out what the problem was, and having no
  • 07
    Font - About a year after I got the car, my mom remarried. My new stepfather was the one who wound up deducing what had happened to the car. I don't think I'll ever forget those long hours spent pumping the brakes while he lay beside the car working on the wheels. First we replaced all the brake pads, but that did nothing. When we looked deeper, we eventually found out what Grandpa Kevin had done.
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    Font - My car didn't have a power steering fluid reservoir. That was all electronic. He'd poured power steering fluid directly into the master cylinder. The power steering fluid and the brake fluid already in the system muddled together into a thick, oily gunk, clogging up the brake lines and necessitating the replacement of the entire system. It cost several hundred dollars.
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    Font - The car runs almost perfectly now, but on some days, it still rattles at speeds above 60 MPH. It could be a wheel is just out of balance, or it could be a remnant of Grandpa Kevin's cluelessness.
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    Font - other_usernames_gone. Also power steering fluid is in a closed loop. You only need to replace the fluid if you needed to drain the system for maintenance/there was a leak. Same with brake fluid Unless something is very wrong with your car you never need to dump an entire bottle in.
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    Font - Intelligent Lake I'd like to suggest reading the manual that came with the car, it'll explain what fluids need to be changed when and many other things that many people never know cause they never read anything. Pretty sure you can download a manual if yours is missing. Or get one from a junk-car, so many cars in a junkyard have their manual in a sealed plastic bag in the glove compartment, never seen by anyone.
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    Font - Food-at-Last I wonder how getting a licence works in the US, because it is required to learn these things when you do your theory exam for it here in the Netherlands. Although I bet a lot of people eventually forget about this anyway
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    Font - -King_Slacker. You don't learn maintenance unless you actively seek it out. Source: has valid license from one of the 50 states.
  • 14
    Font - emax4 This needs to be executed for computer users as well. I'm a tech so the issues are our job security, but we don't have time to teach every user about every computer thing (but if time was not an issue I would do that).
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    Font - mahones403. you learn the rules/laws of driving and actually how to drive but maintenance is left to be learned from family or taken to a mechanic.
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    Font - MyFavoriteInsomnia. Also, YouTube. You can watch someone explain exactly how to do something while actually doing it.

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