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" Q: My 1997 Honda Prelude with 155,000 miles was just coming up to it&amp;#039;s 3,000 mile oil change time and the red oil light came on. The oil was below the dip stick so I added 4 quarts. What could cause this if there is no leak? A: Let&amp;#039;s hope you haven&amp;#039;t damaged your engine by starving it of oil. Cars, even Hondas, consume oil. They consume more oil as they get older and the engine wears. Yours is old enough that it consumed four quarts of oil in 3,000 miles, letting the oil level get low enough to turn on the light. Your engine only holds five quarts. Check your oil more often. A lot more often. Q: With the cost of gas skyrocketing, I was wondering whether you did a comparison on the new types of spark plugs on the market that claim to give you better gas mileage. Is there any truth in their advertisements, and, if so, which ones are the best ones? Also, how much better gas mileage do they get? A: The only real improvement you&amp;#039;re going to see in fuel economy from a replacement sparkplug of any sort is if the old plug is worn out and not firing. Q: I have tried many times to get an answer from Popular Mechanics. I have a 1995 Buick Lesabre 3.8 with 65,000 miles. the car will suddenly die. It&amp;#039;s happened while driving and while standing. I have replaced the crank sensor, the electronic module and fuel filter but nothing has worked. Any suggestions? A: Is the Check Engine light on? Have you checked for trouble codes? Is the fuel pump running when it won&amp;#039;t start? Is there spark? You&amp;#039;ve replaced the crank sensor. Why? Just blind parts-tossing, or did you have some reason to think it was bad? If so, what was the reason? You&amp;#039;ve replaced the &amp;quot;electronic module&amp;quot;. Which electronic module? There are a dozen &amp;quot;electronic modules&amp;quot; on your car. Which one did you replace? Why? Ditto for the fuel filter... I&amp;#039;d start by hooking up a scan tool and running it in flight recorder mode until the car dies. Then you&amp;#039;ll have some idea if it&amp;#039;s fuel or spark. This is all systems analysis. You just need to start at the top and diagnose with some sort of reasoning. I can&amp;#039;t give you good advice if you don&amp;#039;t do your homework. Just telling me your car stalls doesn&amp;#039;t give me anyplace to start. And I realize that it&amp;#039;s frustrating to write to me and not get an answer--but remember there are literally nearly 20 million people out there reading this column here, in PM and in my syndicated newspaper column. I can only answer a few letters every week. I answer the ones that I think are the most interesting and will help the most people. Q: The battery in my 2006 4cyl Honda Accord went dead after not using it for about two months. Can I charge it up using my 12v 10amp battery charger by attaching its two cables direct to the present two cables on the dead battery without affecting the car&amp;#039;s electronics or computer? A: Yes. Two months of not being run will pretty much discharge any car battery. Be aware that being deeply discharged like this is hard on the battery. If you must leave it for long periods, disconnect the battery ground cable and/or use a maintenance charger. Q: In a previous column you stated that the second law of thermodynamics invalidates HHO energy production. First, understand how a car works. The gasoline engine is already running, consuming gasoline and at the same time spins the alternator to supply electrical energy and recharge the battery. This is already a static load built into the system. Simply tapping into this electrical production has no additional load on the engine, thus consuming no additional energy. Therefore the production of HHO &amp;quot;Browns gas&amp;quot; is without a direct &amp;quot;energy cost&amp;quot; to the overall system. If you are going to site scientific fact, understand the formula first. A: Wrong, wrong, wrong. It takes power to spin the alternator, power which comes from the engine. Draw more current from the alternator, and it takes more power replace it. The alternator load is not fixed. The alternator output varies with the electrical load. It has a fixed drain from the engine and fuel pump, but stuff like turning on the headlights or the a/c\u2014or the HHO generator\u2014will draw more current. Which requires more fuel. More fuel than you can get from the gas generator. Entropy\u2014not just a good idea, it&amp;#039;s the law. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/a2830/4264014/>