Car trouble?

I have to admit to having a bit of a dilema about where to post this thread, living in Taiwan, or learning Chinese. After thinking about it for a while I decided to …

toss a coin. So, here we are in this forum.

Car troubles. If you have a car you will understand that they don’t always work the way you want them to, and sometimes you need a professional to take a look at what is happening to the thingy under the thingame bob. This poses a whole new problem in Taiwan, language. How do you explain what is wrong with your car? Point at things and make funny sounds, try English, or make an attempt at Chinese.

My Chinese is not bad but I have to admit that I don’t know enough about this in Chinese.

What is this in English

If you can’t tell if an engine is misfiring or not, you’re probably not mentally equipped to be behind the wheel of a car. Did you really need someone to tell you in chinese that you had a flat tire and that you were out of gas? The mind boggles.

My suggestions would be (in this order):

  1. Buy a basic toolkit and a Haynes manual for your car and learn to do fundamental maintenance yourself
  2. Post the actual symptoms here and let people guess what’s wrong with your car. (actually this sounds far more entertaining)

I seem to recall that you drive a Matiz. Now I don’t want to get in to a battle of semantics as to whether such a vehicle actually qualifies as a “car,” but that notwithstanding, the depths of your ignorance are clearly laid out in the 6th line of your post.
Matizes don’t come equipped with “thingys,” dumbshit. I’m no expert, but even I know the Matiz design heavily favours “whatsits.”

[quote=“monkey”]If you can’t tell if an engine is misfiring or not, you’re probably not mentally equipped to be behind the wheel of a car. Did you really need someone to tell you in Chinese that you had a flat tire and that you were out of gas? The mind boggles.

My suggestions would be (in this order):

  1. Buy a basic toolkit and a Haynes manual for your car and learn to do fundamental maintanance yourself
  2. Post the actual symptoms here and let people guess what’s wrong with your car. (actually this sounds far more entertaining)[/quote]

Hello, knock, knock, is there anyone in there. Don’t be such a plonker and get behind the keyboard when you’re obviously not mentally balanced enough to do so. What ya been drinking?

Sandman, you’re excused, we all know you’ve been drinking.

Hey, I said I know how to say in Chinese “I’m out of gas” blah blah blah, anyone knows that in English, but some plonker like monkey may not be able to get his head around that in Chinese.

I do know how to do simple maintainance myself, but not everyone does and may need someone to help out in Chinese, even if it is just for buying parts, dipstick.

So, if you can’t be constructive then get lost.

misfiring and other simple mech. problems are not always what they seem and if you weren’t so dag namd arrogant you’d know that.

Now, with that out of the way.

Let’s have some intelligent people, perhaps sober people, post.

The closhesht I can get to “miehuo” ish “conk out”. Doesh that help ?

Thanks for that Sandman. So do tell us what’s wrong with your “car.”

my “car” is just fine. And with 2 years free service why would I want to waste my time under the hood because if I do, and the manual is in Chinese anyway.

It just made me think that if I don’t know how to communicate some of these things in Chinese then perhaps others don’t either.

It seems that if someone posts anything remotely useful here all the “village idiots” gather round to contribute.

ummm… I’m on some pretty strong anti-fever medicine today…whoooo it feels good. Feck, feck. feck. I think I got tourettes.

“Whatsit,” by the way, translates fairly accurately as “ne ge … ne ge … dongshi.”

The term if used after che means the car died suddenly.

You’re going to have huge troubles getting the correct parts or items unless your Chinese is 100% spot on. Just ask Jeremy, who runs Bikefarm(shop that rents scooters to foreigners). If you ever see a motorcycle shop laoban get parts, he’ll inspect everything and triple check it and for good reason. With a chabuduo attitude they’ll sell them the part they think he needs irregardless of what he says.

I would email(bikefarm@hotmail.com) or call(be specific and quick he’s a busy man) Jeremy for the correct Chinese phrase. He’s the only person I know who would know it in English and Chinese.

I hope this helps,
Okami

What I am trying to do is get a resource together for myself and others. It is obvious that not many of us have the ability to handle this situation in Chinese. Now, silly me, I thought that it would be kind of useful to understand this in Taiwan.

It turns out that not many people do know, as shown by the replies.

Okami,
What a great reply. Thank you. That is the most useful post so far.
Ta very muchly.
Good to know if I ever need it.

Ok settle down boys and girls,

Bassman, if your car is misfiring, just say the engine is “farting”

I agree that posting car trouble here would make for a very interesting thread…

My Chinese is fair but put me in a car shop and I could work for the UN.

Bring it on!

Self diagnosis is key. Instead of going to the mechanics and saying, well my car is doing this, I just go in and say “hey, this is broken, put a new one in for me…be back later” When you come back, break right into their tool box and make sure it’s installed correctly. Do this once, and your mechanic will make sure your bolts are tight!

Barring that, you need to describe your vehicles symtoms accurately! We are lucky in a way though, as most mechanics like to use their Taiwanese/Japanese from English terminology. So, you get something like ‘peeston’ for piston, valvu for valve, that sort of thing…

I’m sure I’m not the only one posting that was a gearhead/racer from days past…Post it here (Fifth of Tequila, case of beer, oil up to the elbows, scratching your head and saying “Damn, it came out ok, why won’t the sucker go back in?”)

Ah, the good old days :smiley:

For quite a few car parts etc you can try ‘chineseifying’ the English name. Do you get what I mean by that? Like, carburetor, try saying ka-bu-lei-te (pinyin). The reason is (so I was informed) a lot of the words for car and engine parts came into use in Taiwan during the period of Japanese occupation, so Taiwanese copied the Japanese words that were copied from the English. Like the Taiwanese for motorbike is ‘autobai’ from the Japanese.

Brian

ok,

Spark plugs. I always need them for my crapped out scooter but I can never remember what they are called in Chinese.

Spark plugs are called “huo3 xing1 sai1”. “Huo3” means “fire”, “xing1” means “star”, and “sai1” means “to plug up”.

About the problem with your car: If you could describe the symptoms more precisely, I could try to guess what’s wrong. There are lots of different things that could cause a car engine to stall out. Does it stall out when you are at a stop? Or does it stall out when you are coasting? Or does it stall out when you go up a steep hill or when you turn on the air conditioner? And after it stalls out, is it easy to start the engine back up again or do you have to crank the starter motor for a long time to get the engine started up again?

Mark

I hate auto cars too.

I used to have a Toyota Celica back in the day. Manual - 5 speed. I loved that car. Off-roading. DIY Pannel beating. Tinkering under the bonnet. But this Matiz - geez, is it even a car?!

When I get back home I want to buy a Supra or a BMW.

Anyway, I started this thread in the hope that I could save some people from looking like monkeys at the repair shop, dancing around making funny sounds.

If the car only stalls out right after you start it up, then the problem might be a bad fuel pump or fuel pump relay.

so, the terminology to use, going by one of the explanations above, would be “fuelo pumpo” or “fu yu lo pu um po re lay oh” la! :wink:

That is what I originally thought too, but after a few minutes of pointing at the “nei ge dong xi” all they came up with was “no, no, no, xi huo, xi huo la”, and a we can fix it all up tomorrow. On a busy schedule tomorrow never comes, so, I did it myself. It must have been there coffee break.

The word for fuel pump is “qi4 you2 bang1 pu3”.

“qi4 you2” means “fuel” (petrol) and “bang1 pu3” means “pump”.

I think the word for “relay” is “zi4 dong4 kai1 guan1” (which literally means “automatic switch”), but I might be wrong. Anyway, if you say “zi4 dong4 kai1 guan1”, then I’m sure that they will understand that you mean “relay” because a relay is basically an “automatic switch”.

If anyone knows a better Chinese word for “relay”, then please post it here.

Chrysler Voyager 3.3 Sport, 26.000km.

One day the steering wheel started wobbling back and forth, a few cm each way, and the car tended to pull to the right.
As my wife knows about car terminology as little as I know Chinese (zip, zero nada), it was a challenge to explain to the garage.

Anyway, they checked the car, called us and informed us that we had to change all four tires (NT$ 25.000 !!!). I thought bullsh…, asked my wife to tell them not to do anything - we want to pick up the car and get a second opinion from another garage.

So, here we are with a car with wobbling steering, pulling to the right.
Anyone have the correct terms to describe this in Chinese, or even better, can give a diagnosis of what might be the problem?
-And, do you know a good, reliable garage in the Hsintien area, that will not take you to the cleaners?

I appreciate your kind assistance.