TIFU by not poking around under the hood

Submitted by Nice-Violinist-6395 t3_z7etxz in tifu

(This is a very lighthearted tifu, but I think it’s pretty funny:)

I used to have a 20+ year old Corolla. Great car, a hundred thousand miles with zero problems - until I got rear-ended, and insurance replaced it with technically the same make and model of car, but shittier in every way, literally falling apart. This car broke down quite often, and every single time, I would do what every ‘relatable’ sitcom character does: get out a flashlight, and aimlessly poke around under the hood.

Over the course of the next decade, dozens and dozens of times opening the hood and poking around, I never, ever fixed my car, because of course you can’t. It’s never anything obvious that can be easily and satisfyingly fixed by poking around. It always, without fail, requires at least $300 and 3 days in the shop, right?

So, when I got a new car, I picked a Corolla, but bought it from a dealership, with the big warranty and all that. And shit, I have to say, I might as well be driving a Rolls-Royce.

The car has worked brilliantly, without a single issue, and I’ve maintained it meticulously. Then, this past weekend, I left it parked on the street outside for four days because of Thanksgiving, and when my gf tried to start it yesterday, the engine wouldn’t turn over. The lights and a/c worked, but everything else sputtered out. Shit.

I popped the hood after this first-malfunction-in-the-new-car, and after unsuccessfully trying to jumpstart it, I glanced around the engine for about five seconds. Then I thought “fuck this, I’m calling the service.” Why? Because I had evolved. No longer was I going to be the putz who spends an hour poking on shit under the hood to no avail.

So I call, and we have to wait around all day for the tow guy. It’s tough on Thanksgiving Sunday, I totally get it, I feel bad. When he gets here, before he loads it on the tow truck, my gf asks him to poke around for a second. Yeah, sure, knock yourself out, buddy! I have absolutely no doubt how this is going to play out: with an “I got no idea,” and a towed vehicle, and a service call from the dealership in a few days with some bizarre problem.

Still, I get out of his way as he pokes around under the hood with a flashlight. Within 60 seconds, he pulls something out and I hear my gf say: “is that a fucking paper towel?”

I walk back over. He had pulled out a wad of used paper towels from deep under the hood, between the engine and battery.

Well, shit, might as well try to start the car one more time, right? I mean, there’s no way it’s actually a fucking paper towel, although that would be so great…

So I turn the key. The car revs to life. It’s now running perfectly.

It was, in fact, the fucking paper towel.

How did it get in there? A burrowing squirrel over the weekend, a technician months ago, who knows… But all today I’ve been intermittently laughing my ass off because oh my god, car trouble is never ever something as simple as a random paper towel being lodged somewhere under the hood, right? You always hope it will be, which is why you always pointlessly check and fail miserably. Still, that naive hope is what drives you: that you, a manly master of machine and universe, can poke around with a flashlight and pull out something weird, or re-attach a screw, and your car will magically come back to life, making you look like a genius.

But it never happens. Never.

Except for today — which is, of course, because I (a mortal man) thought I had finally outsmarted fate, and therefore didn’t bother to pay my respects to the karmic steward of 21st century performative car manliness by poking around the hood for absolutely no fucking reason whatsoever.

Let this be a lesson to us all.

TLDR: (TL;DR?) car wouldn’t start. Decided not to poke around under the hood. Spent all day waiting for the tow guy on a holiday weekend, who poked around the hood for 60 seconds and fixed it by pulling out a paper towel

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ThePresidentsNipples t1_iy690xd wrote

Rats will build nests in your engine.....be aware they will chew wires due to their soy based wire coatings, so if odd problems start happening use that warranty fancy pants. Also congrats on evolving.

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BurningHuman t1_iy6b08c wrote

Rodent damage isn’t covered under warranty. Use that insurance instead, fancy pants.

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illessen t1_iy7in0j wrote

Insurance will say it’s not enough damage to go past the deductible…

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TCFirebird t1_iy8iuih wrote

I don't know what your comprehensive deductible is, but replacing a wiring harness from rat damage can easily go over $1,000.

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Lowyota88 t1_iy6cmyu wrote

As an auto technician I see more Toyotas with tasty wiring than any other

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Nice-Violinist-6395 OP t1_iy6l5ln wrote

Yeah, I’m bringing it to the service place before we go away this weekend (just in case), but since it’s only a couple years old and I took it in just a month or two ago for standard maintenance, hopefully rats didn’t fully set up shop in in one weekend lol

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Lowyota88 t1_iy6lcw4 wrote

I've fixed wiring on the same 16 rav 4 three different times this fall, twice at the transmission connector and once at the throttle body.

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sudo999 t1_iy6nq1a wrote

Stupid question, why doesn't the manufacturer put Bitrex in the wires?

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dustyrags t1_iy6dk34 wrote

Last week I drove to the hardware store late on a long day, did my business, came back out to my truck… and it wouldn’t drive. Started, could shift into gear, clutch felt fine, but absolutely no go.

So I called AAA. Annnnnnd my policy was expired. 40 minutes of dicking around on hold later, i called a tow truck. It’d be an hour, but at that point I was so exhausted I didn’t even care.

Now, this isn’t a new truck- it’s a 2003 Tacoma with 270+ miles on it thst I picked up a couple of months ago, but my mechanic proclaimed it in excellent health not four weeks ago, so having it fail so utterly and so suddenly the day before thanksgiving mid-move (oh, yeah- I was supposed to move on Sunday, and use this truck to two a trailer 485 miles) was just a kick in the nuts.

So I sat there and waited. At least I got to relax a little… and then I got to thinking: clutch feels fine… absolutely no motion… so it’s not a bad clutch. Or clutch cylinder. Transmissions usually go slowly or spectacularly, not usually while you’re parked at Home Depot… so I got out and pushed the truck a couple feet to see if it was some miss aligned cogs or some shit in the transmission… nope.

Shit, the drive shaft? Maybe it was rusted out and finally gave up the ghost? Or someone stole it or god knows what…?

Fuck it, I drop it in 4 wheel drive, maybe I’ve got front wheels? Nothing…

But while where here, maybe it’s the transfer case? Maybe low range works…?

IT WORKED! Quick, try high range! WORKING! 2 wheel drive?? WORKING TOO!!

I drove home, utterly pleased with myself, but still no clue how I’d fixed it. The next day at thanksgiving I was regaling my dad with the saga of last night, and it hit me: I’d bumped the transfer case stick. It had been in neutral. I could put the main shifter in gear as much as I wanted, as long as the transfer case was in neutral, I wasn’t moving. Lesson learned…

…except I did THIS EXACT THING 16 years before, in another truck.

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insufferableninja t1_iy6jiov wrote

Did you remember to cancel the tow truck?

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Sketchy_Stew t1_iy6lgif wrote

Glad I'm not the only one who was worried about that haha

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dustyrags t1_iy6l4a5 wrote

Oh, of course I did! It was going to take an hour, but 6 minutes after I called them I figured it out, and 7 minutes after I called them they called me to say the truck was almost there.

The ONE TIME the damn tow truck shows up quick…

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sudo999 t1_iy6nkjk wrote

AAA only pays them if they actually send someone out. They probably got the call, said "Oh, but we already sent someone!" to get their payout, and immediately notified you that they were sending someone.

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misterjive t1_iy6hyvj wrote

My first car was a POS Ford Taurus hand-me-down; a few months after I got it I noticed it was getting harder and harder to steer. I took it into a mechanic who a friend had recommended; I was mentally preparing myself for being told the repair would be way more than I could justify spending on that old car.

I got the call. "Uh, yeah, there was a screw loose in the power steering system."

"What? Uh, how much is that going to run me?"

"Like nine bucks, I guess?"

When I got divorced and moved back to my hometown, I was actually more broken up about losing that mechanic.

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brianmkl t1_iy6bvd8 wrote

> requires at least $300 and 3 days in the shop, right?

to be fair if it costs only 300$ it was very likely something simple, 300$ may cover as little as 1 hour of tech time plus parts in most states.

Try watching a few videos of Rainman Ray's Repairs in youtube and you may learn how to fix a lot of simple stuff in most cars.

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sudo999 t1_iy6n4dd wrote

Protip, always ask the tow truck driver to poke around. They've seen more mechanical issues than you have guaranteed. Last week the shifter in my boyfriend's car went totally slack - the stick would move but it wouldn't leave park. He freaked out, thinking it was his transmission, worried he would have to pay a fortune. When he called the tow truck driver, he looked underneath the car, saw that the bolt on the linkage had sheared off, jury-rigged it back together just well enough to throw it in neutral and get it on the tow truck, and my boyfriend was able to walk into the mechanic already knowing exactly what was wrong with it. Ended up only paying an hour of labor and a $20 part.

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Lee2026 t1_iy6d2r7 wrote

I don’t understand how a paper towel could prevent your motor from turning over.

Something doesn’t add up here…

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HotSalsaAssFire t1_iy6g179 wrote

Intake, maybe? I don’t know

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Lee2026 t1_iy83wek wrote

It would have to completely choke off the intake for it to starve the motor for air. I don’t see that being possible considering most factory, unmodified cars have an air box with a filter panel that would be too large for a stuffed up paper towel to affect. It could definitely obstruct airflow but I highly doubt it would choke it off completely.

There is still air inside the motor when it’s shut off so it should at least fire a few times before getting choked out/starved for air.

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RandomAverages t1_iy6jhf5 wrote

Similar thing, but after I called the tow truck, I poked around. I had recently replaced the catalytic converter in my Metro, wiggled the O2 sensor wires around a bit, because maybe something shorted out. Sure enough. It started and drove up on the tow truck. Didn’t ever have that problem again.

Then… 2 years ago in my last car, the window wouldn’t roll up without applying pressure to the actual window regulator motor. And I Had to have the door panel off to do that. One hot day after work it wouldn’t roll down, I was getting pissed so I smacked it pretty hard with my utility knife… damn thing worked. No pressure needed. Then I thought, well what about my A/C? It hasn’t worked for 3 years or so, maybe I’ll mess with that, and turned out the connector was bad and it worked sporadically, until I swapped connectors. Well damn.

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kendonmcb t1_iy7t2j9 wrote

>my gf asks him to poke around for a second

That took an unexpected turn, not gonna lie.

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TeachOfTheYear t1_iy6in81 wrote

My 81 Toyota Corolla had 198,000 on her when a woman rear ended me and killed my car.

RIP little brown car.

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cerulean292 t1_iy70gyv wrote

While in college (in the ‘80s), my mom had a Honda Civic. Whenever the car acted up, my granddad always advised her to first check under the hood. Mom would roll her eyes – “How could I tell what's the problem? I don't know anything about cars."

One day, her car wouldn’t start. She was about to call the tow truck, but she could hear her father’s voice in her head (“Did you look under the hood…”) Mom thought fine, I’ll take a quick look. She opened the hood and saw frayed wires sticking up every which way. Her first thought was that someone had intentionally sabotaged her car… but then she noticed a single walnut, carefully nestled amidst the mess of wires.

So yeah, don’t underestimate what squirrels can do to cars. Lol.

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Flash635 t1_iy8oyvp wrote

Then there was the time a piece of air filter broke off and blocked the air mass sensor.

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