Mastodawn

The VHS Wizard 🦝📼🧙

I love that on the regular internet, you can be like "I need to find out what part this is on my 2025 car" and all the results you get back are for car rentals, people trying to sell you a car, trying to buy your car, or AI slop videos explaining to you what a car is in the least intelligible way possible.

But... in the #Fediverse you can be like "anybody know the correct wiring layout and voltages for a 1974 "Passion-o-Meter" novelty Love Tester from Hanlon Amusements in Fairbanks, Alabama? I found one while doing recreational free diving in a cave system in Peru and I'm trying to put it back together again" and not only does NOBODY question any part of the insane statement made, but three people who happen to specialize in that exact sort of thing immediately emerge from the woodwork like the reverse of Homer Simpson going into the hedge.

🤖Robot Enby Xero🤖2d ago

@thevhswizard hell yeah HELL YEAH.

Fritz Adalis 2d ago

@thevhswizard @seanwbruno
Early '74 or late '74?

GeePawHill 1d ago

@FritzAdalis @thevhswizard @seanwbruno Right. You're gonna need the serial number, cuz they totally reworked the connector in mid-August.

Rupert 🇪🇺🏴‍☠️😾🔭📷🍺🍪🌍🔥1d ago

@GeePawHill @FritzAdalis @thevhswizard @seanwbruno just gotta boost that so it pops up for someone with no context 😹

DerGinko 1d ago

@rupertcutler @GeePawHill @FritzAdalis @thevhswizard @seanwbruno 🤣 +1

Claudius 18h ago

@DerGinko @rupertcutler @GeePawHill @FritzAdalis @thevhswizard @seanwbruno "hold on, I know the engineer who made the drawings…"

@thevhswizard /grins
You are not wrong!

AnnieBuddy 1d ago

Better than google ever was, that’s for sure.

Mastodon Migration 1d ago

Perfect

@thevhswizard Somer Himpson, the thing expert who lives in the hedge for unrelated reasons

@thevhswizard the commercial internet is traaaaash

gordoooo_z 1d ago

@thevhswizard It really is a beautiful thing.

Dandelion 1d ago

@thevhswizard I was scrolling and started reading the second paragraph first. I had to actually pause to think about whether this was a real request. I think that proves your point.

We are the future. K(no)w doubt about it.
Grow weirdlings.

Grow...

Darwin Woodka 1d ago

@lobster @thevhswizard

Be weird. Raise weird kids. Do weird stuff.

Watch the world invade your nerd playgrounds, take them over and destroy them.

Sigh.

Andrew Douglass 1d ago

@thevhswizard I think the average mastodon user is easy to nerd snipe and good at doing research.

@thevhswizard lol ok it has been at LEAST four days since I did that

MineEyesDazzle 1d ago

@thevhswizard I can't even get my financed car serviced without the dealership's sales team hassling me about buying another one when I haven't paid off this one. Everytime I get service or repair. 'I just want maintenance. Leave me alone, corpo cogs!' /despair

CohenTheBlue 1d ago

@evedazzle @thevhswizard Can't have business when goods are too good, innit? That's why the planned obsolescence.

Good news: the less you drive, the less the car breaks. I didn't even realise that relationship is basically reverse exponential. I've driven 3 years with the same oil, <10 000 km and all the expense is fuel, a light bulb and my time keeping the car free of rodents. They tend to flock to cars that aren't driven.

@cohentheblue @evedazzle @thevhswizard

Uh...friendly suggestion? Still change the oil, you're possibly cutting into those engine life savings by waiting that long between changes. Not just the distance, the time also hurts oil

CohenTheBlue 1d ago

@TeflonTrout @evedazzle @thevhswizard It's a matter of degrees. What hurts most is frequent starts and stops. I drive 40 km minimum, typically more at once, perhaps once a month.

I've seen clean burning tractors that have run on one oil their whole 3000 hour, 10 year lifetime (after 1st change). If they had excessive wear they'd be smoking at that point due to wear.

What wears an engine down most is any metal particles, no matter how small. Those are less likely to appear with a warm engine.

@cohentheblue @evedazzle @thevhswizard

Hell yeah, that's like a textbook engineering example of "ideal operating conditions"

I use Rotella diesel engine oil in my motorcycle (KLR650) and it loooooves the stuff. Commercial equipment is always so freaking tough, eh? Oil bath clutch though, so another complicator that makes me stick to the typical schedule.

Kinda jelly of your service interval tbh

CohenTheBlue 1d ago

@TeflonTrout @evedazzle @thevhswizard The life savings I mostly refer to are everything but the engine. The engine on a modern car is mostly indestructible, given maintenance is reasonable.

Gas engines might be less durable in that respect but still, it's 300 000 km typically before anything but an alternator change is in order.

@thevhswizard @cohentheblue @evedazzle Except for the things that go bad with age or exposure instead of use, like anything made out of polymers (bushings, trim, adhesives, etc). My car is 13 years old but only has 87K miles. Lots of stuff has gone bad anyway. :/ (of course, it’s a Fiat-Chrysler so it wasn’t ever designed to last to begin with)

Also oil does degrade over time. That’s why oil changes list time and mileage recommendations. Modern synthetics are very good, but three years is probably pushing it.

CohenTheBlue 1d ago

@bytex64 @thevhswizard @evedazzle I don't know what Ford did right for once but the suspension has seen minimal parts changes. Previous generation front bushings were completely gone every year, even though the engine was much lighter.

True about the aging plastic parts but that got much better compared to previous gen. Probably worse again now, especially electronics. Parts integrated, expensive, harder to change etc.

poetaster 1d ago

@bytex64 @thevhswizard @cohentheblue @evedazzle I have the good fortune of having a 1993 VW T4. With the exception of RUST anything in it can be rebuilt or replaced. Sometimes you have to make a part :-) But, that's fun.

Darwin Woodka 1d ago

@cohentheblue @evedazzle @thevhswizard

I have a 2012 car and just hit 50K

@darwinwoodka @cohentheblue @evedazzle @thevhswizard

Whoa!
I thought my 2013 Yaris being on 87k was being treated gently.🤯

Ever since I started changing the tyres (on my bicycle 🤪) more regularly, I've dropped to about 600km driving per year.

Darwin Woodka 1d ago

@isol @cohentheblue @evedazzle @thevhswizard

Well we did cheat a bit, lived in a townhouse in a walkable area and access to a trolley line for a couple years. But I still try to drive as little as possible.

CohenTheBlue 22h ago

@isol @darwinwoodka @evedazzle @thevhswizard I bought tubeless ready slightly wider tires for my bike in hopes of improving suspension. Those should have stiffer side walls, allowing for lower tire pressure. From 37 mm to 40 mm. A gravel biker told me bottoming out rarely damages aluminum rims in practice, gotta do crazy stuff to do worse than dent them.

Time to test. It has been bumpy riding hard packed gravel roads (basically asphalt with stones exposed on the surface), gonna compare.

MrGrumpyMonkey 1d ago

@evedazzle @thevhswizard I've had this occur to me quite often after I bought a new car. My favorite thing to do was to let them rant until they were done, ask me if I was interested in the offer they were ranting about, all the while I'm just ignoring every word coming out of their mouths, and telling them no. It pisses them off to no end. Then I just go back to sitting and waiting for the service to get done.

@evedazzle @thevhswizard This might be a good moment to start following @TheWarOnCars :-)

MineEyesDazzle 1d ago

@mmmenno @thevhswizard @TheWarOnCars already do!

Darwin Woodka 1d ago

@mmmenno @evedazzle @thevhswizard @TheWarOnCars

who doesn't?

James C 14h ago

@evedazzle @thevhswizard Financing! That explains it!

Kiddo & I bought similar cars, same dealer, two weeks apart. Mine has a loan, hers does not.

I have this problem, she does not.

They don’t want to actually sell cars. They want to sell loans.

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦1d ago

@thevhswizard LMAO cuz it’s true

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur 1d ago

@thevhswizard
Yaaaaaaasss!

Clutha🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇸🇩🇺🇦1d ago

@thevhswizard I suggest 99.9% want to know how it works & where they can get one😂

One of the many things I love about it here!

Every time I've had a question that I can't find the answer to on t'net I've had very helpful responses very quickly.

Folks here just seem to want to help others and I love it 😊

@thevhswizard 👀 @funk

Athena Pronaia 1d ago

@thevhswizard Reddit back then...

sarcoptus scabium 1d ago

@thevhswizard and half the time it's coin ops dan

Caller ID Spoofed 1d ago

@thevhswizard Regular model or the one with the individual love heart light tower? I only ask because they look very similar but have totally different circuitry designed by a different company after the brand was sold to a Korean conglomerate in 1972. Some of the originals were still for sale as new-old stock up till about 1975 if you knew where to look but the love heart tower is a dead giveaway if yours has it.

Ellen Bakker 1d ago

@thevhswizard Yes! And it even works for people who aren't hindered by any knowledge and call the parts "thingy with sticky-outy things". So I heard. 😇

TV?

Ellen Bakker 1d ago

@doctormo Anything, really. 😉 @thevhswizard

SarcastiCanadian 1d ago

@thevhswizard TBF, though, if your question is something like "how do I make it so my new car (or tv, or fridge) doesn't spy on me?" many of the responses will be "never buy new stuff, I will keep my 1976 Dodge Aspen running for the rest of time to avoid 21st century techbro stuff." Which, I mean, is fair enough, but fails to answer the question.

Cf: questions about non-FOSS computing.

@Plumbert @thevhswizard Never make a FOSS evangelist question their computer's firmware... and the firmware of the various tiny computers inside that big computer.

Moses Izumi 1d ago

@ozzelot @Plumbert @thevhswizard
never ask a Gentoo developer why they haven't made a window manager where you can right-click on a running program to look at it's source code /hj

jn (eepy low energy)1d ago

@ozzelot computers all the way down...

jn (eepy low energy)16h ago

@ozzelot one of my funnier discoveries was that apple's touchscreen microcontroller appears to run ARM32 code in big endian

@jn
because why the hell wouldn't it

although it not being an 8051 is sort of surprising :D

Darwin Woodka 1d ago

@Plumbert @thevhswizard

Or the "LET ME TELL YOU HOW TO JAILBREAK YOUR NEW WASHER" response

@thevhswizard @Plumbert or the answer would be this ;)

https://milliways.social/@mcfly/116577853080990074

mc.fly (@[email protected])

I would like to have a new electric car but the whole data collection part is the main thing keeping me away from it. So I liked this article quite a lot. Forgot where I found it, likely here somewhere on the fediverse... https://arkadiyt.com/2026/05/13/removing-the-modem-and-gps-from-my-rav4/

Milliways.social

SarcastiCanadian 23h ago

@jomo Exactly the conversation I was thinking about :)

Yeh, reminds me of Usenet, except without the ease of archiving.

Vassil Nikolov | Васил Николов 8h ago

... Usenet, where some would ask the original poster why they want to use that at all, or explain how that is The Wrong Thing to do...

@resuna @thevhswizard