Episode: 3382
Title: HPR3382: How I fixed a fault on my car for free thanks to YouTube
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3382/hpr3382.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:26:52

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3382 for Tuesday, the 20th of July 2021.
Today's show is entitled, How I Fixed to Falled on My Car for Free Thanks to YouTube.
It is hosted by Mr. X and is about 13 minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, How I Fixed to Falled on My Car for Free and as an edit bonus without injuring myself.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
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Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio audience. My name is Mr. X and welcome to this podcast.
As usual, I'd like to start by thanking the people at HPR for making this service available
to us all on these here in their tubes. HPR is a community-led podcast provided by the community
for the community. That means you can contribute to why don't you send in a show.
All you need is a recording device and we've all got something like that these days,
a mobile phone, an MP3 player, a computer if you've got one, laptop, tablet, anything.
Send in a show, hit record button and send in a show, it's very easy. You might enjoy it.
If you're all contributed, we'd have more shows and we'd know what to do with.
Anyway, for reference, I've done it before and I think I don't know how to always do it,
but I think for reference, I'll start by saying this is Saturday the 20th of February,
2000 and 21. The thing is still going on. The thing I won't talk about.
So, yes, I don't know if I've been mentioned before,
but while this thing was going on, my faithful car packed in and I had to buy myself
something in a bit of a hurry and I had to go to garage and I garage and buy a car from there,
so it's not necessarily how I go a bit of buying cars. I tend to buy old second-hand cars,
so this car box was a bit newer than I'm used to. I think really what did the car in was that
my previous car had an automatic gearbox and I think with it sitting so long, I think that's what
what the seal was basically went in the gearbox and oil getting to places it shouldn't have
been and I think I think actually what caused it to feel. And then a huge mileage, it was quite,
I think it was about 75,000 miles, something like that, 76. In fact, this new car, I say new,
it's actually about the same mileage, it's approaching 80,000 now, so anyway, I digress.
The point is I was driving at the other day, I don't drive it very often because of the thing going on,
I think I tank a petrol last many weeks these days and sometimes it sits for almost a week,
I mean that's not ideal for a car, but anyway I was driving the car and I heard it's looking
at this noise and I thought it was that noise and I was beginning to wonder, I don't,
you know the back in my mind I was thinking well it's a new car, what's not new now, it's
it's about six months old, but you always think, I think I'm high into it, I probably paid too much
for it, I almost definitely did because I bought it for my garage, but it takes me real well,
I know I think it takes me well to get a bit of confidence in my car and see, is it going to be
okay and I'm always looking at it for things to go wrong, so I mean generally I've been quite
lucky with my cars and I haven't had a lot of problems with my car with my cars over the years,
so it's just I guess it's always a concern sort of thing, but anyway, digressing again,
I was driving along and I kind of heard this kind of noise and I thought is it to do with,
you know, with an accelerate, is it an engine thing, the car feels smooth, so I didn't
sound like that, and then I kind of eased off, and then of course when I was in Utah just
coasting I couldn't hear it, so that's kind of what we think it was something to do, maybe
something to do, an engine or something like that, oh no, you know, it's not good, but I got
near my destination and there was some rumble strips that sort of uneven bumpy bits that you go
over on the housing estate, and these are just slow cars down, and of course as a car rumbled over
it, I heard this kind of, lots of twanging noises, in fact, I thought initially that it was maybe
the, maybe the bonnet release had not been clipped in properly, that's what I first of all thought,
but once I went over these rumble, rumble strip things, these bumps, I could do the kind of twanging
all that sounds like something like, you know, an exhaustee thing or something, maybe the heat
shield or something like that, so anyway I, I, I parked up and revved the engine a little bit,
nothing happened, I know my previous car that mull 4 focus, it was a little bit rattling the
heat shields and whatnot, and I ducked my head under and had a look, I mean I had my, I had
good, not good clothes on, but I didn't want to go lying on the, on the, on the driveway to have a
look, so I ducked my head under and I, at first I couldn't see anything, and then everything looked
all as soldering in place, and then I spotted it flapping, it was indeed a heat shield, oh god,
so it was, it, I sort of just left it at that, and when I got back home, I, I had a closer look
and sure nothing, there's two, two bolts that hold the heat shield on, kind of in the middle of the
car, the, the, the heat shield itself, it's thin aluminium, thin aluminium tray, and the, with
all the vibration, vibrating and all that, it, it, it, it broke away from the, the bolt and was,
just completely loose, and probably that, that final rumble strip, just made the completely break
away, so I did what most of us geeks do, and I had a look online, they're a YouTube search,
you know, I heard you fix a, hard rattling, heat shield, I think was a, was a search terms I
used, I didn't even say on the exhaust, or, or muffler, as, as you maybe see in America, and then
there was a whole slew of suggestions, somebody suggested using, you know, you, you jell out the
hole and you fit a pot rivets, and that was one suggestion, I can't, there was, there was three
suggestions, anyway, I'm, I'm, I'm really not particularly handy, handy kind of person, and
And I thought, well, I don't really want to be going into garages if I can help, but
again, with all those going on, you know, you want to have, you made it to be a bit cautious,
you know, if you can avoid going to places than I try to do that, you know.
So I thought, so anyway, this, I don't have a pot of it gun, the idea of drilling out
holes in my car, didn't fancy doing that anyway.
Oh, and that was the, the second option was to keep, you can create brackets from a strip
and drill holes and all that and I don't have anything like that handy, so I'm not good.
But the third option which somebody came up with, which I will include a link to the
video, if it's still available and all that, some of the you, and it's something I definitely
have plenty of, was using a tin lid and so in fact, having a, my four-legged companion
it goes to quite a few tin lids, so we had plenty of these, those about, so you basically
just flatten the tin lid, drill a hole in it with a, a trusty drill and I've got it,
I've got a battery drill, a home-based drill, which I bought many, many years ago, it's
a DIY, do-it-yourself shop in America, in Britain, and at least it was, I don't know if
it's still around, but it's my good drill app.
Anyway, did that drill through it?
And of course, I also thought, well, these, these, not just going to come off, but they
did, they did, you know, I put a wee bit WD40 on them last night and I managed to loosen
one that night and I had to go at the second where it wouldn't, wouldn't release, but the
next day, today I should say, I'll give it another squirt, and should I, the nuts came
off, so that was fine.
So I just took the nuts off, drilled a hole in the tin lid, pushed it through, through
there's a kind of bolt sticking out there, protruding out from underneath the car, screw
the nut back on again, and that's a heat shield, lovely and secure, now I don't know how
long it's going to last, how long it takes for a dog can lid to rush through, I don't
know, is there something wrong with doing that?
I don't know, I'm not a professional garage mechanic, it was a botch hack job to get
me through the situation in just now, but I was delighted, I didn't, I didn't scuff
my fingers, I didn't drill my fingers, I didn't cut my fingers on the can lid, it's what
I had a kind of ring pull arrangement, and in fact the edge is quite, it's not that sharp,
in fact, when you pull a ring pull can, and I sort of flexed the ring pull up and down
until it snapped off, and it left I kind of dimple in the middle which is quite a bit
thicker than the rest, the kind that's actually the bit that I drilled through, so that makes
it that bit stronger, and while I didn't tighten the nuts as tight as originally where,
I tightened them to a reasonable amount, and it also seemed very secure, so I'll need
to keep an eye on it, but it's a very small heat shield, it's not a big thing, so I was
delighted with the outcome, I don't know, I'm sure there'd be horrified mechanics in
why would you do that, you know that, and that will work because blah blah blah blah blah,
well feel free to comment on it if you've got a better solution, as I say it was things
I had to hand, and as I say the final outcome was very good, so I was very pleased, and
of course the weather at the moment is a bit rubbishy, and I managed to do it in the morning
before the rain released, kicked off badly, it was raining a little bit, but here in
Bonnie Scotland we get plenty of rain, so in fact to be perfect honest I would be, I'm
very much looking forward to winter coming to an end because it seems to be going off
forever, I'm sure it feels the same for a lot of people around the world, having a hard
time just now, but I think that's all I've got on this one, and I hope it wasn't too
rambly, but it's a good hack that if you ever have a loose rattling heat shield on your exhaust
or muffler then a dog can lid, well just do the job, your mileage may vary of course, okay
so that's it, that's all I have for today, if you want to contact me, or if you've got
a better solution for your card zone show, came with love that, if you want to contact
me I can be contacted at contacted at mrx at hpr at googlemail.com, that's mrx80hpr the
at symbol googlemail.com, so until next time, thank you and goodbye.
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