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vegassatellite
Pub Member / Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
My wife has a minivan, a 98 Plymouth Grand Voyager (grand caravan, basically) with a 3.0 engine. Radiator is boiling over. The problem is either a hairline crack in a cylinder or a leaking head gasket. The mechanic says the short block needs to be replaced, but he can't do the work, I would have to take it to someone else.

I can't seem to find the paper the mechanic wrote up, or I would put exactly what he said. It was to the effect of the cooling system being over-pressurized by gases getting in to the coolant from the leak. I'm gonna pull the spark plugs next to see if any of them are wet and check the oil to see if any radiator fluid is in there. I'm basically venturing in to an aspect of vehicle repair/diagnosis I've never been to before.

So, the question comes down to, if the short block needs to be replaced, what are some of the deciding factors of whether I should do this or not? The transmission was recently done, less than 15k on it. AC works good, body in good shape, interior in good shape, etc. I do have to slap the dash to get the cluster to come back to life on occasion. There's always been a slight blowby problem, but I assume a new short block would cure that as well?
32 Replies · 5159 views
navychop
And every year, there's less and less we can work on, on our own cars! I laughed when I first heard it, but now I'm wondering if we really will see sealed hoods.
Scott Greczkowski
Bob is the same van she tore the transmission out of a few weeks ago?
Inno
IMO, you can do a LOT of repairs to a vehicle for what you'd pay to purchase a new one or a newer used one. Lets say your payments are $300 a month for maybe 3 years, that's almost $11,000.........Unless you have a complete lemon you'll never spend that much in repairs.
Also, there's nothing saying you'll buy a newer used one and have no trouble with it, you could be taking on someone else's nightmare. Just ask my brother, he can't pick a decent used vehicle to save his life!!! I've had much better luck. I guess my point is, you know your vehicle, you know it's problems and it's service history. I'd think based on that it's a much safer bet.
Van
Van
If the van had 300k+ in miles then yes I can see it starting to quater and dollar a person to death but dodge caravans for the most part are better than the average for reliability except on the A604 transmissions. I've had my caravan for 3 years paying 3 grand for it and had to replace the trans last year with 150k miles on it and it was the first though I believe navychop had to replace his every 30k or 40k on his van. Things that have been replaced have been the sun visor clip radiator ( minor acident) tires brake pads and trans and whats left to replace is the missing a/c pump along with a split seam mufflerboth rear bearings and some suspension parts. The engine doesnt smoke or leak oil but uses a quart every 3k miles wich is better than the average and it does ride down the road good.
jayn_j
And every year, there's less and less we can work on, on our own cars! I laughed when I first heard it, but now I'm wondering if we really will see sealed hoods.

Actually, I see that somewhat differently. Every year there is less and less that WE HAVE TO WORK ON in our cars.

I think back to the late '60s. Points every 6-8k, plugs every 12k, carb rebuild every 30k, repack wheel bearings every 30k, grease suspension every 6-8k, mess with idle adjustments every other weekend. All that stuff is nostalgia now.
navychop
You have a good point there.
Scott Greczkowski
Staff member HERE TO HELP YOU! Cutting Edge
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!

So let the game continue!

The last song was added by Bobby who posted...

One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters

CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!

Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game

Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.

Example:

Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow

Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio

Another example:

Ride the Lightning -- Metallica

Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne


Get it?


An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
68657 Replies · 2680161 views
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sdfntx
I Care About Detroit - Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
dishstaller
I Wanna Talk About Me - Toby Keith
Bobby
98.6 - Keith
harshness
I'm Easy - Keith Carridine
gms49ers
It's Easy - Boston
R
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
Lately my eight year old Dell laptop has been shutting off even when I have a full battery. I have had to keep it plugged up all the time to keep this from happening. Any idea what is causing this? I replaced the battery about three years ago.
2 Replies · 39 views
arlo
A recalibration might be needed. Even if it shows full, the individual cells may have become unbalaced. And the BMS chip in the battery reports false information to the pc.
Try this. Start it up in the bios/uefi and leave it there until the battery dies and it shuts off.
It might just keep running longer than in Windows. Or run for a short while and shut off.
If it's the first case. Probably just needs a balancing. If the latter, the pack might just be dead.
Not throwing stones but perhaps just a cheaply constructed battery with substandard cells. Could be.

Patience. Keep restarting it in bios/uefi until it won't fire up anymore.
Then plug the charger in and let it complete a full charge. And see what happens. If it's better.
Do the same thing one more time. Run it until it dies dead-dead. Then just let it charge, pc shut off.
When charged, it might be better. It might not be.

There are bench jigs that read the actual BMS and override it to let a tech manually monitor and charge the separate packs. They can also reset any "time bombs" in it that cause an otherwise good pack to show bad.
Maybe Santa will be good to me some year.

You might just need a new battery. Maybe the PC power management chip is going. A Dell common thing.
Leaving a laptop plugged in with a full battery is known to reduce the life. Asus for one recommends that you don't leave the charger plugged in all of the time even when shut down. And setting Windows to charge the battery to 85% instead of 100% increases life.
That's all I got.
dishstaller
That's all I got.
That was quite enough....I definitely learned something from your post. Thanks
TRG
TRG
Pub Member / Supporter
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
5 Replies · 278 views
b4pjoe
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
If you can't get into the router to reserve an IP address just don't use DHCP on the device that needs connected and assign it to a specific IP address in the network settings.
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HipKat
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
They are not. Your best bet is to set up a third-party router, attached to the Starlink for your server, that you can get into, like a Linksys, etc
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Foxbat
…it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
The Starlink V5 Install Kit I just got comes with the Mini Router. It is pretty limited in what it can do. For example, it can provide only one IP subnet at a time, no Guest Network, but it does support the pass-thru to a third-party Router. You can also split the Wi-Fi into separate 5 GHz & 2.4 GHz SSIDs to help some IoT devices that don't support 5 GHz bands to work.

The larger Starlink Router that still comes with the V4 Kit does support a Guest Network with separate IPv4 Subnet, but it's $120 from Starlink. And it still won't do DHCP Reservations.
harshness
If you can restrict the DHCP address space to assign addresses to one end of the subnet (i.e. x.x.x.50+), you can manually assign the IP address on pretty much any operating system. This is a default behavior on several popular routers. As the Router Mini only supports 235 devices, I expect that's already done.

Another option is to use a router that supports PoE to power the antenna. This article discusses that option (under PoE Power heading):

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Foxbat
Now that I've had the v5 kit with the Mini Router, it's not as bad as I first thought. Yes, no DHCP reservations, but you can set up multiple SSIDs that have separate IPv4 subnets, and like the big brother, you can select from 192.168.x.0/24 or 10.x.0.0/16 (where "x" is 1-4).

You can also split a subnet and have different SSIDs for the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels to handle some IoT devices. I haven't discovered what subnet the 2nd NIC on the router assigns, I'm guessing it's the first subnet.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
2 Replies · 47 views
dishstaller
Sorry for posting the wrong link. Just corrected it.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

2 Replies · 51 views
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Reactions: Jimbo
Jimbo
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

They will have to look at the switching sections to determine WHY 2 trains were on the same track ... at the same time.
dishstaller
Thought this article might be of interest to some of you who might travel via train.