[Kapura]

I've been watching mechanic channels on YouTube recently when I need some background noise, and It's very interesting to see them do their once overs on the car, and hear their initial theories get confirmed or disconfirmed as they move through the vehicle. You can feel their experience for the sorts of issues that are likely or unlikely, and the focus on root cause (whether a botched repair job or something broken from the factory) is very... motivational? Difficult to describe, but it's uplifting.

One channel is mostly teardowns of different busted car engines, and as those are essentially all postmortem operations, they play out like murder mysteries as different parts of the engine face varying degrees of damage from whatever went wrong (oil starvation/clogging typically, sometimes hydrolock or more exotic combustion failures). Apart from absorbing some small amount of understanding of how internal combustion engines work, the need for regular oil changes and inspections has been impressed on me about 20x.

[dclowd9901]

If you enjoy these, I highly recommend the show Wheeler Dealers, especially the seasons where Ant Anstead and Mark Priestly are acting as shop mechanics. Their systematic approach to diagnosis and clever problem solving are incredibly cathartic. And they’re also very good at what they do.

[StayTrue]

Agree the shop parts of WD are very cathartic. That contrasts with the buying/selling aspect of the show. I use the ffwd function liberally to edit episodes to half their length.

[dclowd9901]

Same, though I have to say Mike Brewer has impeccable taste in cars and despite how cynical it is to flip cars, he does seem to genuinely love cars and car culture.

[bluedino]

I think I enjoy both hobbies because diagnosing a failure in a car is a lot like figuring out why something is broken in some program/system etc. You just get a lot dirtier working on a car.

[WirelessGigabit]

If we're talking about the same channel it also shows the fallacy of having a small engine.

A 1L 3cyl Ecoboost w/ 120hp has the same highway MPG as my 3L 6cyl w/ 340hp.

Smaller engines push in extra fuel to cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aO2vC_iMTI

[Retric]

Yea no, you misunderstood what was being described driving at normal highway speeds is a low load in his examples.

It’s more accurate to say these engines are more efficient under normal driving conditions, but have the option to be driven at high acceleration or extreme speed. Anyone can get poor gas mileage in a Prius if they drive like a race car driver, nobody has the option to drive a big V6 efficiently.

Aka Nobody publishes cannonball run fuel efficiency because that’s abnormal conditions.

[cand0r]

The Just Rolled In channel is good for a laugh. Although it is a little terrifying knowing that these people are on the road with you.