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" Q: I live in an area where water has a very high mineral content, so I have always tried to use distilled water in the cooling systems. Now I would like to flush the coolant in all of the vehicles but I am unsure how to do this as all the flush instructions show using a garden hose hooked up to the water supply. A: Go ahead and flush with your tap water, although the accepted way to do this today is to fill and circulate 3 times, not a running flush onto the ground. Then just use a gallon of distilled to flush the tap water out. Fill with half the recommended amount of 100% coolant, and top off with distilled.  Q: I recently installed a vacuum gauge, after reading the article a few issues ago about real time MPG monitoring. I know the symptoms of worn pistons rings on a gauge is the vacuum only peaks at 24/25 inches when you snap the throttle/valve closed or deccelerate, which my car does. Could this be normal for a 1997 Nissan Altima with 150Kmi, or do all engines produce a close to or full 30 inch vacuum? Basically, do I have worn rings or could this just be how my car is? A: Sounds low--you should see nearly 30 inches after a snapped throttle. Could be bad rings, or a plugged cat. Or maybe you&amp;#039;ve picked a vacuum tap that doesn&amp;#039;t see full manifold vacuum. Some taps near the throttle body don&amp;#039;t. Look to tee off a tap that goes directly into the intake plenum, like the brake booster. Q:  I have a 2000 GMC Envoy with all the bells and whistles. I can&amp;#039;t get a straight answer on replacing a headlight bulb. Apparently I need two bulbs, #9005 and #9006. One bulb I can get to easily, but the other one is attached to a box that has &amp;quot;High Voltage&amp;quot; written on it, so I&amp;#039;m a little worried about going in there. I have been doing my own repairs and built a car when you could do that, so this is VERY frustrating to me. It is the driver&amp;#039;s side headlamp. I have driving lights but no headlamp when they come on. I leave it on auto all the time. My dealer wants 650.00 just for the bulb. I find this nuts as I have been to sites and all the bulbs top end were 36.00 and those were not the ones I need. A: I&amp;#039;m going to hazard a guess and say your Envoy has the optional HID light option. These use a separate ballast that provides a very high voltage signal to a bulb that has no filament, just a spark gap. Generally, these bulbs don&amp;#039;t burn out. At least not for a very long time. Like a lot longer than your truck is old. Consequently, it&amp;#039;s probably not a burned-out bulb. More likely, it&amp;#039;s a wiring issue or a bad ballast. I&amp;#039;d start by checking the fuse for the driver&amp;#039;s side low beam, which should cost about a quarter. If that&amp;#039;s good, I&amp;#039;d check the ballast by swapping the right one for the left one. If that doesn&amp;#039;t pinpoint the problem, start checking the low-voltage wiring, and don&amp;#039;t forget the grounds. One caveat: the wiring between the ballast and the bulb carries as much as 20,000 volts (!) when the lights are switched on. Don&amp;#039;t hurt yourself. Please. This is copied directly from the service manual:  Q: I have a 1956 Pontiac Star Chief. This car has been sitting up for some years and the motor froze up. How do I unfreeze it? I&amp;#039;ve heard that you can pour oil in the cylinders and let is sit. A: I&amp;#039;d start by pulling the plugs and pouring an ounce or so of Marvel Mystery Oil into the cylinders. Let it set a few days to loosen up the rings. Q: We read your column in The Fayeville Observer, Fayetteville, NC. I have a problem not seen in your column. I have a 2008 Toyota Prius with a cruise control that has a mind of its own. Off and on for a year while driving on the interstate and I turn on the cruise and try to set it, it will not engage no matter how much I try and that&amp;#039;s very frustrating. I can always tell when it isn&amp;#039;t going to engage by the feel of it trying.  I have had it back to the dealership to check every time only to be told that the Computer says there is nothing wrong. But I&amp;#039;m the one driving the car not the computer. The Service Tech thinks that because I&amp;#039;m a woman I don&amp;#039;t know how to work it.  I have even contacted the Customer Service at Toyota about this problem. But they haven&amp;#039;t helped any either. One thing more, after the cruise refuses to engage it will not work again until the car is switched off for a period of time usually overnight. Any help you can give me to solve this problem will be greatly appreciated. A: I don&amp;#039;t find any service bulletins or a rash of inoperative cruise control complaints on Prius. But--just because there&amp;#039;s no code set in the computer doesn&amp;#039;t mean there&amp;#039;s no problem, in spite of what the service manager says. To be fair, many transient problems are impossible to find if the car is working properly by the time you get back to the dealer. Make sure when you go back to the Toyota dealer to complain about the cruise control they open a repair order with your problem written on it to document the fact that the problem exists and that you&amp;#039;ve brought it back many times. The Lemon Law says the dealer gets four attempts to fix it, or they have to buy the car back from you. Check here: http://www.carlemon.com/lemon/NC_LemonGuide.html More advice: Take the car to the dealer when it&amp;#039;s malfunctioning, and don&amp;#039;t turn it off. That way the mechanic can try to find the problem while it&amp;#039;s malfunctioning. Make the service manager take you for a drive and have him try to engage the cruise control. You might need to get the dealer to give you a loaner for a couple of days while the service manager/mechanic drives your car until it fails. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/a2897/4306619/>