What are /r/TalesFromTheSquadCar's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Not that you'd have the time to fix it yourself(or even be allowed to) but if you're curious you can get an ELM 327 ODB Bluetooth code reader for like $20.

This is the one I got. It's a true ELM 327 reader and not some Chinese reverse engineered hacked together crap. I keep it plugged into my ODB reader all the time.

The reason these are so cheap compared to a professional shop reader is because the reader is just an interface and knows how to talk to the computer. It just "translates" and passes stuff along to your phone/tablet which does the real heavy lifting. Torque Pro or Forscan(for Ford/Mazda) apps on your phone. You'd at least be able to see "oh shit, low oil pressure" or "shit water temps are through the roof, that's why it wont go above 95" so I'm about to be sitting on the side of the road for an hour. Or if it's just like some random dead O2 sensor or an occasional misfire on a cylinder or some vacuum leak that's making it run weird. You'd at least have some peace of mind.

You're absolutely right! Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Blink, and one of the chapters talks about the subconcious mind picking up on something like this. Here is a summary of one of the chapters:

>Gladwell explains a story of a group of firefighters in Cleveland. The firefighters were trying to put out a fire in a burning apartment building. They went into a room that was full of flames and started spraying the room with the water hose. The flames were not going out, and the lieutenant realized that there was something wrong. Without even hesitating, he ordered his crew out of the building. Shortly after they exited the building, the part that they where in completely collapsed. (From here)

What did the firefighter notice? It turns out the fire was actually in the floor below, and because of his experience, he was able to pick up on that even though he couldn't articulate what was wrong at the time.

Another story in the book talks about a guy (can't remember the name) who was an expert at predicting when professional tennis players would fumble a serve. His subconcious brain was picking up on subtle things in the server's behaviour immediately prior to fumbling the serve. When asked to explain why he could predict them, he was at a loss; because of his background (I believe as a tennis coach), he just knew what was coming.

Edit: The same thing applies to professionals like doctors and nurses. They don't necessarily need to think, "What steps do I take to get this person's heart beating again?" They can often rely on their intuition because they've done it so often and are so well-trained that they no exactly what to do. That doesn't mean they don't think, but if they stopped and considered every single move, the patient would die before they could be resuscitated because it took so long.

They make harnesses for dogs that you run a seat belt through - it both protects them better than your arms ever could and keeps them in one place.

In case you didn't know, after you buckle your seat belt you can pull it all the way out and then release - it will then lock and not extend. This is meant to lock car seats in place, but it works really well for this.

They have them on Amazon for $10-30, and they probably have them in your local pet store.

Here is an example from Amazon that has an add-on strap that clips into your seat belt buckle instead of using the regular seat belt. This is not an affiliate link, I have not used that exact item, and I have no connection to it.