Automotive Maintenance for Dummies

Cooling system overflow tank

We often wish the good Lord would deliver us from certain of those self-appointed "freelance experts." You know the ones: they subscribe to services (free or pay) that tell them what search topics are "hot," and then immediately write something on that topic for their favorite pay-per-view site. It used to be assholiated... err, associatedcontent.com, but now that that one is gone, they write for other sites like WritEdge, InfoBarrel, HubPages or any of a dozen other sites that give them the occasional penny.

There are two hallmarks of the self-appointed freelance expert:

• lousy spelling, grammar and proofreading
• lousy information

Today's freelancer was writing for  the late, unlamented WritEdge¹, under the pen name Isabelle Esteves. Here's an example of her competence, written under the title "What Every Woman Needs to Know About Car Maintenance." Izzy clearly doesn't know jack about maintaining a car, as proven by this statement:

"If you thing [sic] that you are low on water, you can add some but not directly into the radiator, instead open the overflow cap and add the water into the overflow..." First, people, the overflow reservoir has a fill line in it: you don't "thing" you're low, you know when your cooling system is low by looking. Second, you don't add water to a cooling system; you add coolant. Especially if the weather is cold, you run the risk of raising the freezing temperature of your coolant by adding plain water. If the freezing temperature gets too high, your coolant can freeze on a cold  night and cause thousands of dollars of damage to the engine.  Thanks, Izzy, for that great advice. Your reward? you're the Dumbass of the Day.

¹ This website is now defunct, and archive.org's Wayback machine never made a copy of the post. Oh, well, no loss...

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DD - AUTOMOTIVE