Why is it so hard to help!
 

I have a story to tell for others that DIY:

A couple weeks ago I had someone stop by my house to inquire about an issue they were having with an 03 Accord 4cyl auto 230k. What I got from him was that there was a buzzing sound when trying to start the car. To me that's an easy fix (ignition switch or relay). Luckily I had both on hand so I sold them to him and texted him a couple of videos on how to do it. Later in the day he says he's not getting anything now; no sound at all. I decided I would help him out. I go over to his house and after looking it over I was like what the hell. He had a burned up fuse box rigged up to work, a used starter that didn't work and oil covering everything on the passenger side. I told him before I touched the car he would have to clean all the oil up so I continue testing, go to the junk yard to get a fuse box and buy a starter that wasn't used.

After that he tells me the whole story and now I see why nothing worked. No maintenance had been done. After changing it all with belt and new VC gasket everything is working as normal.

My point to all of this is. If you are going to ask for assistance please give all the information needed the first time instead of having the person who's there to help pry it out of you. Things can be solved a lot quicker.

I am in the IT industry and I see this all the time in my line of work where you have an administrator that f@&$$ something up and never gives you the whole story. Now something that could of took me 30 mins to do is taking me a half a day because I have to take the correct troubleshooting steps to figure out what you did.

Rant over. Don't beat me up too bad. Lol

HAHAHAHA...

Yes, no matter how often we gripe about it, the same things keep happening on this forum and others.
1. Why is it so hard to get someone to say what car, what year, what engine they have?
2. Why is it so hard to get someone to tell us the full history of what was done to the car just before the problem?
3. Why is it so hard to get someone to come back and tell the forum how the issue finally got fixed?

If you let it bother you, then you won't ever enjoy the times when you ARE SUCCESSFUL at helping someone.

Agreed. Sometimes it feels like it's easier to pull teeth than get an answer out of some people. Or you get the "it was working a week ago, but now it does nothing". "What do you think is wrong"? Only after going thru a bunch of stuff do you find out that they did this or that "trying to fix something else" totally unrelated, that they knocked this or that off in their attempt.
I'm kind of dealing with that same scenario with my son's 98 Civic...a cranks but no start issue. Went back and fixed the G101 connection, but now it has a weak spark (didn't even have that before). It did run about 2 months prior, but the snow fell, and he stopped coming over to work on it (was doing some rust repair on it, before COVID-19 raised it's ugly head). Now he wanted to get it to run, since he had some free time before the state lock down got worse, only to find it wouldn't run.I asked him, does it have spark? Did you give it a shot of starting fluid? You know, the things it requires to run. I asked him if he checked the FSM yet for trouble shooting. The FSM has a great trouble shooting section in it. Instead he started swapping parts thinking maybe one of them might fix it. D'oh.
I told him to dig out his FSM, and go thru the systems trouble shooting sections on it. Needless to say, it looks like I'll probably have to do that, since he left the FSM here, and his facebook buddies have him thinking it's something else altogether. I'd like to get my garage bay back, as I have my own work to do out there, but I can't swing a dead cat because I don't have any room (it's a 2 car garage). UGH, I'll be glad when we finally warm up around here, as this warm for a day, cold then next 2 or 3 really sucks. I still have yet to figure out WHY I have to fix his stuff. Rant over.
So no Sean, we're not going to rake you over the coals. Mainly because we run into the same stupid stuff ourselves. ;)
Oh, and Jim, the engine got a full and complete rebuild last summer from the main bearings up. Even got the cylinder bores opened up .5mm, while the head got a complete go over. Looks brand new because it's a fresh rebuild. And no, I haven't pulled the plugs yet, to look them over (one of my next checks).

Well, he has his fb buddies on the case. Who needs fuel & spark when you have that kind of expertise. That's so much better than the factory shop manual...

I guess I do have to remind myself that I used to be the dum kid that knew more than my dad (that was about 100 years ago).

I'm pretty sure if I looked hard enough I could come up with a post I made years ago on a car forum which covered several brands; someone said something like, "Help! How do I change my starter?"

My response was, "Are you talking about the starter for your 1986 Trabant 601?"

The OP was not terribly please with my response and gave me a pretty good flaming; the moderators on that side disposed of him before he ever got a chance to identify which car he was talking about. :p

Lol now that's funny.

This forum is not nearly as bad as the BMW one. With you having to change parts, code and programming it get real frustrating. The one thing I can say is I get to know a lot of people in different countries. Even get visits when they come to the west

Totally agree with seanjordan20. Maybe the OP needs to provide some basic info before asking questions. Similar to when we visit a doctor.
Ted

Now that's a really good one. I like it, and got a little laugh out of it. :D

I think the worst part is that I'm just stumbling along with these cars myself. I mean I know how to do testing, and that's how I was able to figure out we needed to do a repair to the G101 wire end (it feeds ground to 3 terminals in the Civic ECU). I can hear the main relay click, and the fuel pump prime up the fuel filter, but haven't pulled the plugs yet to see if they're fuel soaked. I know they were new NGK's when the engine was rebuilt, but since he didn't have any spark, I'm worried they might have been soaked in fuel, preventing them from firing. I've ran into that before. I think the worst part is that the sister site Civic forums, hardly has any traffic on it for help.

When my kids got Civics I joined over there, & saw the same thing. I mostly hung around here because it felt like I was providing more help to people (even though we don't have any Accords any more). My kids' Civics didn't screw up often enough to send me over there to get help.