Cars, FIX YOUR OWN, and hall effect switches DO EXIST.
 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...ht_500wt_ 747
http://info.rockauto.com/getimage/ge...LX370_FULL.jpg
http://info.rockauto.com/getimage/ge...S/10467473.jpg

Don't go to mechanics, parts stores, for advice.. forget it
My car threw a code, started running like hell, using too much gas

The guys at three parts stores argue with me, you don't have a cam position sensor / hall effect switch if you have a distributor... Okay.. but it's right here.. One guy even argued his Haynes manual over the FACTORY SERVICE MANUAL I had with me. He said mine covered too many models. Mine is for that year car ONLY. That model ONLY. His had 14 explanations for E041.. Because it covered every god damned GM made 85-95!!! Mine had one. The right one.

Then everyone is telling me the distributor has to come out to access this thing. I bent a five cent 1/4 inch box end wrench at a 90 angle and got it out with no problem.

Then I went and pulled one from a parts car and it broke.
And those clowns FINALLY FOUND IT AND FIGURED OUT THAT IT EXISTS but want $110 for it.. Cadillac wants $164. The one I pulled cost me $10, I didn't even pay the guy yet, and he says if it's broken come pull another one free. No problem.

IF YOU WANT IT DONE RIGHT.. DO IT YOURSELF
I am NO mechanic but this is NOT the first time I've been the only one who managed to get a car right when all of the "professionals" were at a loss.. maybe I need to go into the business.... but I won't.. because I HATE MECHANIC WORK

At least this car tells me exactly what is wrong with it.
If it ever quits running, I press two buttons, it tells me a code, I look it up and blam.. back on the road driving over toyotas and kansans :thumbsup

GM Rocks, and I do all my own work because mechanics "fix" shit so you have to come back 5x after the "job" was done.

Go 00 Monte Carlo SS.

I do a bunch of work on my cars also. Way cheaper that way.

I get a lot of parts from www.rockauto.com, they have great prices and if you search you can find 5% off codes which ends up paying for the shipping most of the time.

EDIT: You got a Cadillac, right? I have a 95 STS and I pull my own codes while driving down the highway :thumbsup

I miss my STS
Badly
Mine was just like yours.. Z-Rated, no governor

Oh too true! Everyone should take some time to learn a little about their car, it would save them so much $$ in the long run.

CYF, rockauto.com is good. They usually have cheaper brands along with the factory, so it's up to you on how much you want to spend. Plenty of times you can get away with buying the cheaper kind, unless it's something like head gaskets. :D

You pull your own codes eh? :) I log injector open time, air fuel ratio, spark duration, egt, and like 20 other things. Stand alone is the only way to go if you want total control.

car shops and dealerships are the biggest thieves in the market.

years back i used to have a Honda Accord that I bought from a dealership in my area. With that, they promised life time free inspections... but every time I would take the car, they would find something it would need, like $60 in windshield wiper blades.

one time I stopped on the way there and put brand new blades on and marked them with a whiteout pen. sure enough I got charged and when I confronted them on it, it took minutes for the service manager to pull cash out of the drawer and deeply apologize.

i threatened to take it to the local news but they insisted it was the fault of an employee and not the dealership who did that

The mechanic, I gave him $40 to change the starter and it's a whore of a job but he has the right tools...
That's all I paid anyone
And I will be giving the $10 to the boneyard guy .. gladly
Now if I could find a god damned alternator
Got this one for $20 and it looked brand new but it's upset now

Rock is fucking beautiful for parts.. look at the img source in the op ... :D

Cadillacs are pretty picky with the alternators, you might have to buy an ACDelco.

I get delco anything I can.. Especially oil filters and shit that's tough to get to
Hell
One time years and years ago this woman I had drove a MAZDA MX-3 ... And no one could ever get an alternator to last in it.. I even tried rewiring everything a better way .. Bought one from Autozone, another from Oreilley, and ANOTHER one from western auto... Returned them to all three places at least TWICE.. Literally almost TEN alternators we went through. And they were ALWAYS good on the bench even for the load test. Western auto finally said fuck you because they blamed my wiring. Idiots.

So I had some Russian guy build a Delco to fit in there.. it ended up with a 200AMP delco.. the thing looked bigger than the 1.6L motor on that little car, and when you put a big load against the charging system you literally would lose acceleration .. It was fucking comical

But the car all its life had eaten belts and alternators
I got it right with my own wiring and a custom bracket
Several ASE mechanics had "fixed" it, her mechanic father "fixed" it
I fixed the thing right

200 amps of pure ridiculousness
It was wonderful

Imagine muting the system in order to take off from a light
I had to make the engine idle 200rpm higher to not stall at lights with the system playing
LoMFL over here
That was hillarious
My cadillacs come standard with 140 amp alternators

I do absolutely no work on my car myself.
- Whenever I so much as open the hood i cut & bang up my hands
- I hate getting dirty
- Newer cars have no room under there and it's a fucking nightmare nowadays to even change sparkplugs.
- I live in a country which very cheap labour, and mechanics work faster then me. If I try to do something, it takes me 5 hours and would have taken an mechanic 1 hour. During that 5 hours I would have lost 20x the money not working then I would have payed the mechanic to do it for me.

Come on, man, put down your purse and get your hands dirty now and then
It's good for you
When I had all kinds of money I still worked on my automobiles

I love working on my monte, even when I have to climb on top of the engine to get to the spark plugs when I have to tune it up.

This thing has like 135k mi on it but looks excellent! Runs pimpin, too. I want to get it painted jet black, and get the black headlight and tailight covers, you know, the smoke ones or whatever are on the dodge chargers?

Love a blacked out car..
Love that shit.

hold down two buttons on the heater controls and the car displays it on the dash computer. I've pulled my codes doing 75 on the highway :thumbsup

The Cadillac onboard stuff is really good actually, it can tell you all sorts of stuff. You can turn off injectors one by one, do diagnostics, read engine data, override computer inputs, etc etc.

Yeah
And it's none of this watch the lights flash, count the flashes, jump up and down, plug a light in
It sits there and reads the actual codes to you and tells you if they're current or history

Hell yeah.. you can even read the individual oxygen sensors and shit like that

i absolutely hate working on cars, but just like you say when you want it done right you gotta do it yourself.

I do most of my own work on my cars. Our daily driver is a 99 sonata gls. A little piece went out in the gas line, kind of a valve that when broken doesn't allow the car to keep running if your filling it will gas. Then after you fill the car with gas you can't restart it for 15 minutes.. :( I can't think of the exact name for the piece off the top of my head but the dealer wanted 600 bucks to fix it. The cars BOOK VALUE is 2k! So I did some research on it, bought the part for 5 bucks and it literally took less than 5 minutes to pull the old part and put the new part on... simply a matter of disconnecting the fuel lines from the old one ( right on top and on the rear of the engine, simple to reach) by pinching the connectors and then putting the new part in it's place.

Um... so what was the 600 dollar quote for? I called them out on it also and filed a complaint with Hyundai over it.

same with other things... had the air con compressor go out... again 600 bucks for the part alone. Got it after market for 100 bucks new, and local shop I used charged me 50 bucks to install it and recharge my system. (Course I live in butt fuck no where and that local shops a junk yard but treats people great!.) I let them take care of the bigger stuff I don't feel like dealing with and they have saved me a ton of money over the years.

My daily drivers a 97 Landrover Discovery that I just bought last week. I've already started the redo of it. It only has 88k original miles on it and I'm having custom build headers made for it that should be done this week. a chip to tell the ECU that the OS sensors are there.. even though they will be removed and no Cats. Putting a 2 inch suspension lift and bigger tires. Then it's on to the winch bumper, underbody protection etc.

The climate and trip computers in my car use lamps that are SOLDERED IN, so when one fails (or enough fail that you can't see at night) you have to replace the entire unit ($100-$150+) rather than a 20 cent globe.

I am a thread killer

The post above was meant to demonstrate that spare parts are a big $$$ maker, and they'll find ways to make you pay more than you should. I wonder what the average AFTER SALE profit for a car is for the manufacturer...

definitely, my car says shit like P071, 'CHANGE OIL SOON', etc. It's great, no more going to the auto store and having them pull codes :thumbsup

Got an Iphone or an Ipod touch... like to work on your own car... want more information about codes etc... you have to check this out...

http://www.devtoaster.com/products/rev/index.html

I found it a couple days ago.. of course I just sold my iphone :disgust So I'm getting an ipod touch and this app to run in my rover.