Doing Your Own Tune-ups for Dummies

It's a pretty safe bet those aren't Lori's hands...

It's finally Saturday. We were already tired of looking at stupid car advice by Wednesday; but the show must go on. So far, we've found a wealth of automotive dumbassery over at eHow and yesterday managed to find something stupid HubPages hadn't hidden (yet), so today we went further afield. Although stupid and sometimes dangerous content has been the main focus of Cars Week, today we focus on a freelancer who apparently wanted to make money just by throwing random terms at the page. He's Lori Palermo (yes, Lori's profile refers to Lori as "he") from WritEdge.com, who gifted the universe of automotive DIYers with "Basic Car Tune Up -- Doing It Yourself."¹

 We guess the kindest thing we can say about Lori's post is that, unlike the other six awardees this week, he didn't lie about having done the task. Of course, that's because Palermro's definition of a "basic tune up [sic]" sets a pretty low bar. Says Lori,

"Owning a car is not limited to driving and refueling the vehicle. It entails certain responsibilities such as periodic maintenance check and basic tune up. These can help to make sure that your priced vehicle is running at optimum performance, and if problems do arise, it will be minor and it would be easy for car specialists such as a one call auto mechanic to repair."

Yeah... "periodic maintenance check and basic tune up": that's what it's all about. So here's what Palermo says a tune-up entails: Check the Crankcase Oil Check the Tires Check the Levels of Other Fluids Check the Battery Check Your Brakes on a Regular Basis Check the Lights Yup: those six "checks" are, in Lori's world, considered a "tune up." We realize that with most modern cars there's little left a home mechanic can do in terms of what your Dad (or Grandpa) considered a tune-up – points, plugs, timing, etc. – but there's hella more than just "checking" things! If you really wanted to perform at least a little DIY maintenance, the one thing that almost any bozo, including (we imagine) Palermo, can do is replace the air filter. Nope, not on the list... He doesn't even mention changing the engine oil (and filter), just "checking" it!

There are several clues in the text that suggest Lori's simply rewording someone else's checklist, strangled prose such as

"If you notice that your engine starter is not as crisp as you expect it to be, check these [battery] contact points and clean them by loosening the battery clips and removing particles with baking soda and a used toothbrush. After cleaning, wipe the contact points dry tighten the clips. "

"Crisp"? interesting choice of adjectives... "Battery contact points"? WTF? and then there's

"The crankcase oil keeps your car engine working efficiently. You should check it regularly to ensure that it is within the level recommended by the manufacturer. If you find that the oil level has gone below the minimum, you should add more oil until the recommended level is obtained."

...which surprised us, since we thought the crankcase oil provides critical lubrication to the engine's moving parts instead of merely keeping it "working efficiently." But what do we know?

We did wonder, though,... why someone from Manila in the Philippines would be flogging a repair shop in northern Colorado is beyond us, but apparently Lori's reach as a "corporate consultant" is exceedingly broad -- that, or he figured he couldn't make any more money at that emperor of marketing crap, Seekyt. Neither means he knows enough about cars to write a tune-up guide -- they do mean, though, that he's well-qualified to be the Antisocial Network's Dumbass of the Day to close out Cars Week!

¹ This website is now defunct, but you can see the post using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   writedge.com/basic-car-tune-up-doing-it-yourself/

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