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Old 08-23-2006, 02:54 PM  
baddog
So Fucking Banned
 
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: the beach, SoCal
Posts: 107,089
Idiotic "idiot lamps"

Back in the day, cars had gauges to give you status on your battery voltage, oil pressure, engine temperature, fuel. It was determined that people were not smart enough to recognize that high or low on one of these readings was not a good thing, so they replaced them with red indicator lamps so it might get the message across.

These days cars have so much technology that your dashboard would look like a 747's cockpit if they were to put gauges for everything, so they have had to transition back to using idiot lamps.

Now, don't get me wrong. I appreciated the fact that they had a lamp to tell me that I had a flat tire because I had knocked the air pressure valve off when I hit that giant 10' wide sinkhole at Jenni Dahling's place. It was dark so I probably would have been stuck on a narrow, winding road before I noticed it instead of having the luxury of changing the tire in her driveway. But the one I got the other day . . .

So, I am driving up the 605 so these 3 naked girls could wash my car, when all of a sudden I hear a bell and notice a weird lamp light up on my dashboard. I had no idea what it meant so I reached over to my glovebox, got the manual and discovered it was a MIL icon. MIL? I looked it up, and it says; Malfunction Indicator Lamp. Thanks, that helps.

I decide to pull off the freeway and read up on it a little more, and they proceeded to tell me it could be anything from bad gas, loose gas cap, just about anything. I used my navigation system to find the closest Dodge dealership. Luckily, just 3 miles away.

I get there and they tell me they have no way of knowing what it means without testing, and they can't do it until the next day, but since it isn't blinking, I should be okay to drive it for the rest of the day.

I head off to let the naked girls do their thing.

Later that night I was going to dinner with my son and decided on a whim just to check the gas cap, it was in place, but I gave it an additional twist and proceeded, lamp still on. When I got done with dinner and started the car, the lamp was off. Amazing.

Oh, one more thing, while watching 3 naked girls wash your car may be fun, they aren't very good at it. Hire a Mexican or do it yourself, the results will be much better.
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