Do You Know Your Car?

[Bonny]

There are two manuals in the glove box full of fine print. The battery is under the rear right seat, you would have to take the seat out to get to the battery with jumper gables. Not very handy . Have to take half the trunk apart to get the spare tire out along with the jack. My old Chevy II Nova was less complex. I do live out in rural America so the cell phone is my best bet for an SOS.

[Lady's Human]

There are two manuals in the glove box full of fine print. The battery is under the rear right seat, you would have to take the seat out to get to the battery with jumper gables. Not very handy . Have to take half the trunk apart to get the spare tire out along with the jack. My old Chevy II Nova was less complex. I do live out in rural America so the cell phone is my best bet for an SOS.

If the battery is buried there are probably jumper terminals in the engine compartment. (frankly it's better that way, with modern electronics, jumping a car the way you used to for years can very easily fry the ECU)

[Bonny]

I carry jumper cables in my trunk. Where I work, there have been times when our guests could not get their vehicles to start so have used them to give them a jump.

I had a battery die one time while shopping at a local nursery. They guy there had cables & jumped the battery. I drove the car to a local dealer & the needle kept moving around it is like don't die we can make it. I drove into the dealership & parked the car. The battery was deader then dead. Lady Luck was with me that day, thanks to the guy at the nursery, & my car angel.

[Miss Z]

I'm with Alyssa and Bri. I know what everything under my bonnet is, but other than the washer fluid, I don't touch any of them. If there's a problem, I'd far rather wait and have someone with more experience take a look. I am a little obsessive with topping up my tyre pressure, mostly because my cheap tyres go down a lot with day-to-day use, particularly where I'm living now, which is like the capital city of speed-bumps. I do check my lights are working each month too. I've never learned how to change a tyre, although the garage down the road from me runs short courses in general car maintenance. This thread has reminded me that I must book that some time!

Any of you car gurus know much about gearboxes? My car has had an intermittent gear box fault (it's a manual) for about 6 months now. I've had it looked at twice, although as the damn thing always behaves perfectly as soon as a mechanic is in the vicinity I've haven't been able to get it fixed. Occasionally it will refuse to go into first/second gear. It tends to do this when I've been stuck at lights for a while or have been in crawling traffic. At first I had to restart the car and usually that would do the trick, although now I've grown impatient with it I usually just force the gearstick. Sometimes it'll go weeks without playing up at all, other times it'll do it near on constantly. Mechanic thought it might be sticky gear-pins, but although he had a play around with the gearbox he couldn't find anything particularly wrong. I've searched online for explanations, but as I haven't yet managed to get a mechanic to see it misbehaving, it's difficult to tell exactly what's up with it.

[Karen]

Make/Model, Miss Z?

[Miss Z]

Chevrolet Aveo LS, 2009 model (link is the latest model but is otherwise very similar)

https://www.chevrolet.co.uk/cars/aveo/

[Lady's Human]

Chevrolet Aveo LS, 2009 model (link is the latest model but is otherwise very similar)

https://www.chevrolet.co.uk/cars/aveo/

Manual transmission?

Could be a few things, but from cheap to expensive:


1)Nothing is really wrong, just a PITA manual (put up with one for years on an old car, 2-3 did the same thing yours is doing).

2) needs new tranny fluid (miles/km?) The Ford Contours (your Mondeo) were infamous for this, they had no fluid change for the tranny listed in the manual, but you get to be a PITA to shift until you changed the fluid.

3) shift forks or synchros, in which case my recommendation would be to live with it.

[lizbud]

Could be a clutch problem. Do you do a lot of city driving? Stop & go traffic?

[Miss Z]

Manual transmission?

Could be a few things, but from cheap to expensive:


1)Nothing is really wrong, just a PITA manual (put up with one for years on an old car, 2-3 did the same thing yours is doing).

2) needs new tranny fluid (miles/km?) The Ford Contours (your Mondeo) were infamous for this, they had no fluid change for the tranny listed in the manual, but you get to be a PITA to shift until you changed the fluid.

3) shift forks or synchros, in which case my recommendation would be to live with it.

Cheers. My guess is that it's probably the latter! Transmission fluid ought to be OK - no problems noted at its last service, but I will give it another check. It's only done 13,700 miles despite its age and is a good little car in all other respects. I know that little hatchbacks haven't got the best gearboxes in the world - the mechanic told me the Aveo's is effectively salvaged from an old Daewoo model. 2.5 more years and (hopefully) finally having a salary will mean that it can find a nice new home with a learner driver and freak them out at traffic lights instead.

Could be a clutch problem. Do you do a lot of city driving? Stop & go traffic?

Clutch is good I hope - it was replaced in 2011 shortly before I got it. I'm the only one who drives it and I don't think that I give the clutch a lot of whack. At the moment it has been doing a lot of nip-outs into town, and as I live in a commuter town for London it does have to deal with a lot of sluggish traffic. I would hope that it can cope with that, though - it's not exactly a car designed for long journeys either so it has to be good for something. It is a funny little machine, but I do like it, warts and all!