Can you work on any modern cars these days?

[mindless1]

When I turned 16 in the 60's a guy wasn't a guy if he had not rebuilt his car's engine. Mine a 65 Chevy Impala ss with a 283.

What is the equivalent act of manhood today?

Sadly the modern equivalent is wanting to meet new people IRL, enough that it motivates a snowflake to get a driver's license. No, really.

Kids these days often don't even want to have a car or journey out of their own little world, and convince themselves that this handicap is (an excuse about) taking a higher moral ground.

Really strange how a generation raised on more extreme access to information than ever before in mankind's history, is in many ways, more handicapped than ever in mankind's history.

 

[Leymenaide]

Sadly the modern equivalent is wanting to meet new people IRL, enough that it motivates a snowflake to get a driver's license. No, really.

Kids these days often don't even want to have a car or journey out of their own little world, and convince themselves that this handicap is (an excuse about) taking a higher moral ground.

Really strange how a generation raised on more extreme access to information than ever before in mankind's history, is in many ways, more handicapped than ever in mankind's history.

I see logic to your answer. My daughter did two years of middle school at International School of Basil. She is in contact with many of those friends from over a decade ago via text but having lived abroad is open to everyone.

The meeting new people thing is a little narrow in that the new people are probably like themselves. Same social economic. Do they volunteer with the homeless or work as tutors with needy? Kids around me today know what volunteer works they need for college applications.
The boys I taught in High School are all finished with college. I called them the cupcake generation. Girls were focused boys confused and lost and this was in a good neighborhood.

At another school in a formerly solid middle class town I listened to white boys tell me education was worthless because there were no jobs out there. Thats what happens when dads in their 40s get the boot and cannot find another job paying what they were getting . Hope is gone.

 

[Dranoche]

Nope. It's specific to the inch size of the wheel and the type of tire (summer, all season, winter, etc). Seems easy enough to have been a menu item in the vehicle's settings accessible through infotainment, the same way that TPMS reprogramming/relearning, maintenance updates, etc. are. But it's not. Gotta pay the dealership $100 just to tell your car you got better tires or different wheels. A lot of people ignore it, but the people who have made changes to their configuration and driven the car before and after the TCM update have indicated there's a considerable improvement in traction control/etc. once the update has been done.

Other car manufacturers require their proprietary tool to tell your car you've changed the battery so it changes its charging profile. I've heard of batteries dying early because this procedure wasn't done when replacing old batteries and the charging system not treating the new batteries correctly. It's basic maintenance/wear item work like this that anyone can do that really, really frustrates when auto manufacturers lock it behind thousands of dollars in proprietary tools.

I can see a much different tire size needing reprogramming because traction control is going to use wheel speed sensors to determine when it needs to activate, and maybe that could potentially affect the way an automatic transmission shifts. But the tire type shouldn't matter. Traction control just detects whether or not a wheel is slipping and doesn't care why the wheel might be slipping, whether that's tread pattern, tire compound, or road surface.

The battery thing is for AGM or EFB batteries on vehicles with start-stop function. There are some relatively cheap modules for performing the reset, but unless you're swapping batteries regularly or have multiple cars that need it, it might be just as cost effective to have the dealer or another mechanic do it.