Auto Repair Information Blog

I don’t want this to become water for gas blog, but my post from last week has brought a lot of e-mail questions and a few comments that I would like to answer. You can read last week’s post for more information about the problems with water4gas.

Is water for gas a scam?

The answer to this question depends on how you use your vehicle, and also what kind of vehicle you have. Without writing my own book about the subject, what it boils down to is if you have a four-cylinder car and have long highway commutes, this system is ideal for your application.

If you have a V-8 muscle car and do a lot of city driving than this system is not for you at all. Let me explain the above statement a little further. The water for gas system has an on/off switch and does not regulate the hydrogen fuel as related to throttle position or speed. The system operates best when the vehicle is operating at UN interrupted highway speeds. When the vehicle is at a stoplight or an idle condition you’re supposed to reach over and turn off the hydrogen generator.

So if you were in city traffic are getting stopped at multiple traffic lights. You would constantly be reaching over to turn on and off the water for gas system.

Water for gas problem

Next I will address why the water4gas system works better on a four-cylinder engine. The container recommended for (more…)

Is water for gas a scam? The hottest debate in my automotive niche that I have ever seen is about the new water for gas product. With gas prices reaching record highs and digging deeply into everybody’s pocket, Naturally people are looking for answers. When the necessary task of driving up and back to work costs 15-30% of what you will make that day, People are willing to take a chance on things that may seem far-fetched.

Enter the water for gas scam

This product seems to take advantage of the current skyrocketing fuel prices and offers people the solutions to what they need most, which is better fuel economy. Me being a certified mechanic, and also suffering from high fuel prices, I couldn’t help but be curious about the water for gas system. So I purchased it!

Not only am I a certified mechanic, but I am also certified in alternative fuels. The water for gas product includes two e-books that explain how the system works and hooks you up with places to buy the parts to build your own on-demand hydrogen gas system. Yes I do believe that the books were well written and a lot of effort was put into creating them.

The system has a few problems, which I will discuss. I have collected the necessary parts and started to build my own system. The first thing I discovered is that (more…)

Toyota parts now made in the United States? Many of us already know that Toyota Corporation builds many popular car models inside the United States. This is not a new development, as in many import car companies are manufacturing vehicles in the United States for many reasons.

The bottom line is that the car manufacturer will have increased profits on vehicles sold and manufactured inside the United States as opposed to vehicles that are built and imported from foreign countries. This is mainly due to high shipping costs and heavy import taxes.

But what I didn’t understand was where the parts came from. I was under the impression that the parts were manufactured in Japan, and then shipped to the United States for assembly. This is only a half-truth.

My investigation of Toyota parts!

My girlfriend has a 2002 Toyota Corolla. It was time to replace the original serpentine drive belt on her vehicle, due to heavy cracking of the now six-year-old belt. After being very disappointed with the quality of the after market dayco belt I decided to buy a factory original Toyota part. I expected this part, to have come from Japan. When the parts counter man handed me the belt, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall thickness and quality of this factory original part.

The belt was packaged in a sleeve that indicated it was a genuine Toyota part. And even included Japanese writing on it. But on the belt itself, it said made in the USA. I was blown away and asked (more…)

One of the hardest do it yourself auto repair tasks is solving automotive electrical problems on your own. To be successful you will need a wiring diagram in most cases. But even when you have this electrical diagram in your hand it can still be hard to understand and diagnose circuit malfunctions.

When you are tracing electrical circuits using a standard automotive wiring diagram you always want to work from the load or component back to the battery. Find the load device first, for example: light, horn, solenoid or actuator, then find its ground, and then find the battery on the diagram.

Trying to read a schematic from positive battery voltage to negative or ground does not work well. Always work from your load back toward the battery. This rule is important because it gives you a standard and correct direction of diagnosis. If you have proper power and grounds to your load component then you have just solved your problem on the first diagnostic test indicating that the failure is in the (more…)