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"  Playin&amp;#039; In The Mud I had the fluid changed in my transmission, and the mechanic showed me the oil pan when he had it off. He said that there was a lot of debris from the transmission gears in the pan, and the best thing to do was to rebuild the transmission before it failed completely. I didn&amp;#039;t have the money, so I just had him put it back together. There was a lot of stuff that looked like mud in the pan, and I&amp;#039;m afraid that he&amp;#039;s right. But I&amp;#039;m also afraid that I&amp;#039;m being taken for a ride around the block, because otherwise my car works fine. THERESA GINGOWSKI TERRE HAUTE, IN  First off, congratulations for following my advice and changing your automatic transmission fluid. Most people don&amp;#039;t, most car manufacturers say it&amp;#039;s not necessary, and I disagree. Three years or 50,000 miles is long enough, and less if you tow or carry heavy loads. As far as your transmission&amp;#039;s health, this is a tough call. I wasn&amp;#039;t looking inside your trans, and I can&amp;#039;t for certain say that your mechanic is flimflamming you.  A certain amount of sediment is normal inside your transmission pan. It&amp;#039;s organic friction material from the clutches and bands. Transmission filters are basically nothing more than window screens meant to keep out the big chunks, so particles will settle out and turn into mud in the low points. So if that&amp;#039;s what the mechanic saw, your trans is probably fine.  But other stuff winds up in the pan as well. A certain amount of shiny flakes from metal-to-metal wear is normal. But flakes of metal from spalling bearings and chips from gear teeth are not. An experienced mechanic can tell a lot from gleaning through the sediment and observing the color and smell of the ATF he&amp;#039;s draining. A brown color and a bottom-of-the-barbecue-grill smell spell bad news.  A second opinion is in order. Wait a thousand miles or so and get oil analysis done of your ATF. Wear particles in the fluid will tell the tale without disassembly. But I&amp;#039;d start putting some money aside just in case it&amp;#039;s bad news. Smoke On The Water I had a new a/c line installed on my &amp;#039;89 Sable because the old one leaked. Now, as I drive the temp gauge rises to normal and beyond, almost all the way up. When I turn on the defroster, white vapor or smoke comes out of the interior vents and the temp gauge goes down to almost cold. Then when I turn on the a/c, smoke comes out of the vents. I know I need a new compressor, but I don&amp;#039;t understand the smoking. A friend tells me the heater core is bad.DANCEMAN VIA INTERNET  Who told you you need a compressor? If it&amp;#039;s not noisy or leaking, it&amp;#039;s probably fine. If the heater core isn&amp;#039;t leaking, it&amp;#039;s probably fine, too. The vapor coming out of the a/c dash vents is water vapor condensing out of the air under conditions of high humidity. It&amp;#039;s not smoke, it&amp;#039;s more like a cloud. The coolant temperature fluctuations sound like your electric radiator fan isn&amp;#039;t running properly. It&amp;#039;s supposed to come on when the temp gets high enough. It normally won&amp;#039;t come on if the car is moving, because the air flowing naturally through the radiator from the car&amp;#039;s motion is adequate. It will come on in heavy traffic or at a stop light. It&amp;#039;s also supposed to come on with the a/c and defroster-and it sounds like it is doing that. When it does come on the coolant temp comes down.  Find a mechanic to troubleshoot the fan. Ignore the vapor. Strapped For Safety Please tell me what to do about putting a child safety seat in my Ford F-150 SuperCab pickup truck. My daughter is over 20 pounds and the rear-facing infant seat is too small. It&amp;#039;s fastened in the middle of the front bench seat. I&amp;#039;ve tried two different child safety seats in the rear seat, and neither fit properly. The Ford dealer says he doesn&amp;#039;t sell or recommend one, and they couldn&amp;#039;t get the other seats to strap in properly either. I do have the front passenger airbag disconnected.PAM PETERSON SIOUX FALLS, SD  There&amp;#039;s only one effective place a child safety seat can go in a pickup, Pam, and that&amp;#039;s the front passenger seat. I&amp;#039;m assuming you want to reserve this seat for adult passengers. Ford engineered a child-safety-seat-friendly seatbelt tensioner for this seating position that accommodates child safety seats because that&amp;#039;s where they belong. The small seats and the center of the front bench won&amp;#039;t cut it. So if you want to take the infant anywhere legally and safely, you&amp;#039;ll have to relegate other passengers to the rear seats. Plastics, My Son  I hope you can settle a dispute. My friends and I are all in our 80s. I told them the 1929-31 Model A Ford had camshaft timing gears made of some sort of composite material for quiet operation, but one fellow says they were all metal.  JOE VESCE FLORIDA Well, Model A Fords are a little outside of my personal knowledge, but it was not and still is not unusual for timing gears to be made out of brass, nylon, or phenolic resin. Resin, you say? Yes, an early composite made of linen fabric saturated and pressed with a vegetable-based hard plastic. These plastic gears were more than strong enough, quiet, long-wearing and cheap. Car Care Tip Iced Out It was the kind of weather I&amp;#039;d grown up with in Michigan: Rain had turned to sleet and the sleet had turned to a thin coating of diamond-hard ice. The ice was coating everything, including, my nose. Definitely a night to stay home. But the dawn&amp;#039;s early light meant heading off to the office\u2013\u2013something that became much more difficult when I realized the door locks on my car were frozen shut. Twisting the key produced no results, even though the car was parked indoors. The temp was well below freezing in the garage, though. This precipitated a trip into the house for a source of heat, not an easy task as I don&amp;#039;t smoke. The application of heat to the key brought enough BTUs into the mechanism to free it up, although it took a minute or two. I figured out pretty fast to put the key into the lock and heat it there and to wear gloves instead of trying to hold it in my bare hands like the guy in the picture\u2013\u2013although this might not work with those plastic-headed keys. Service Tips  A glowing ABS light and blown ABS fuse in a &amp;#039;96 or newer Audi A4 or A6 may have been caused by a jumpstart or charging the battery at more than 16 volts. Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) No. 97-01. A new drive belt and tensioner for some 1997-98 automatic Chevy Corvettes should stop an idle-speed rumbling noise with the a/c on and the steering cranked to full lock. TSB No. 87-61-13. No blower fan in your 1995-97 Neon when it&amp;#039;s below freezing out? A moisture drain tube, new blower motor and fresh fuse are probably needed. TSB No. 24-03-97. A simple vacuum hose replacement (PN 25760-20010) on a 1996-97 Toyota Camry eliminates humming noises from the evaporative emissions charcoal canister. TSB No. EG005-97. Nissan recommends Pennzoil No. 4096 Limited Slip Differential Oil (Pennzoil Product Code No. 020796) for all 1987-97 Pathfinders with LSD axles. TSB No. NTB96-097.  DO YOU HAVE A CAR PROBLEM?Just ask Mike about it. Mail your question to Car Clinic, Popular Mechanics, 224 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019. Letters, faxes, e-mail and phone calls cannot be answered individually, nor can their receipt be acknowledged. We&amp;#039;ll choose the most interesting ones to discuss in this column. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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