Auto repair nightmares

[dynomike]

Bleeding brakes is a pain in the ass. I changed a caliper out in the rear, bled it properly (to my understanding at least), and now, there is no brake pressure. Guess I have to bleed all four calipers tomorrow.

You folks have any horror stories about auto repair?

[shrapnel]

Moved to Transportation.

[American_Infidel]

Thought I did a good job replacing the front brakes on my truck. New pads, rotors, repacked the bearings with fresh grease, everything worked as should, till I drove it to work the next morning. Had an inner bearing to sieze up...made a real low pitch hum. Got to work, pulled off the center cap and noticed all of the grease had got so hot it had ran out around the dust cover. The bearing had a plastic cage (WTF?) and it had melted as well.

I absolutely hate changing the plugs on my truck. You have to remove the PS reservoir and three of them are absolute pains in the ass to get to. It takes me several hours to get them out and replaced......not something I look forward to doing.

[hdandb]

I hate bleeding brakes on my bikes let alone a car. I have yet to even start a car, just pay my buddy to do bleed them. Maybe time for one of those fancy air pressured, one person deals to make it doable for me.

My nightmare was after changing all my plugs but the last one I realized that they were the wrong plugs. For some reason I checked the new plug against the old plug and saw that it was longer. That could have been a entiely different nightmare right there if I had started the engine. Needless to say that was the last time I went to Auto Zone, I just can't trust them anymore.

[ausher]

you gotta bleed the one farthest from the master cylinder first then the rest in order. like right rear, left rear, right front, then left front.
so if you changed a rear you gotta do the rest. if you changed the left front then thats the only one you gotta bleed.
have someone pump the brakes and hold it to the floor then open up the bleeder valve and close it before they let off the brake. keep doing it till there is no air.

[dukman]

When you did the brakes did you drain your system completely? If you have some brake line locks, it makes it a lot easier as you don't have to drain the lines.

[eugene]

Get one of those one man bleeding kits. Or make one, its just a hose that fits on the end of the bleeder screw and goes into a can/cup with fluid so it sucks the fluid back in instead of air.

[Norwegian]

My repair nightmare got to be when i had to change the clutch in my old syncro. At first i was going to leave the engine in and drop just the box, but as it turned out on of the stud between them was stuck. Lots of swearing, pulling, hitting and prying later i gave up and had to drop the engine and tranny in one piece. once they were out i tried everything i could think of with no luck so i ended up tying the tranny to the hitch and the engine to a friends car. No luck with that either, we just broke a two ton tow rope So i ended up cutting the bolt, and managed to hammer the stuck piece out of the box, then broke two easy outs, three drill bits and a drill trying to get rid of the rest of the stud. After giving up that i decided to just leave it there and hope the other bots would hold things together well enough. I then proceeded to start on the clutch, until i discovered the flywheel was all blue and had hundreds of 2-5cm long cracks in the surface, so i had to replace that too. got a new flywheel, replaced the clutch and put everything back together with no more problems. What was supposed to be a one week repair turned in to two months! Oh, and it was all in the winter, in a parking lot,anything from 5-15 degrees below freezing and i had to dig the car out of the snow almost once a week. I hope i won't have to do that again...

[kcor_77]

My nightmare involves digging a D-9 cat bulldozer out of the mud that was over the tracks. That took about two full days with 6 people. Couldn't get any other equipment in there to help dig due to the nasty conditions. Did I mention it was raining those two days. Had to get a mud pump going just to keep the water out of the hole we were digging. Well we get it almost dug out just to find out it had thrown a track Now we know why it was stuck lots of cussing occurred at that exact moment in time.

We start fresh on the third day just to find out that the idler arm seal was blown. At least it had quit raining on us. We attempt to put the track on just to try to get it out of the hole. About two hours later its on and we drag a winch cable from another bulldozer and hook it up. We start to pull and we get it to move the the track comes off. Around two on the third day we get it out of the slush pit of doom. We start to fix the idler arm and guess what it starts to rain again. So we quit for the day.

Day number four of pure hell we start to replace the idler arm seal. Guess what more rain and mud oh and more rain and mud. Well we get the seal replaced now to put the track back on. Well looky there one of the track pads is destroyed. Okay now we have to take the track apart to replace the pad. Lets see air tools nope, any hope of hydraulic press for the pins strike two. Okay now we are down to 3 people vs a dozer track. Well we beat the pins out of the track with a 10 lb sledgehammer and a piece of round stock. Note it took about 6 or so hours to do this.

Now we are on day five down to 2 people vs dozer track. After about two hours we get the track on and bolt it together and fill the idler arm up with grease. Good to go right? Not so much the stupid operator left the fucking key on a day or two prior and now we have a dead battery and no way to jump it off. At least there is no rain. Well we wait about two hours for the service truck to come and jump us off so we can load it. Well we get it loaded and get it back to the shop still dripping mud. Only good thing is I didn't have to clean it.

[ZombieSoldier01]

You should replace all the brake fluid, but you probably developed a soft spot in the rubber portion of the brake line when you replaced the caliper, that would give you a soft feeling like air in the fluid.

[AwPhuch]

Changing the water pump on a 4 cylinder Plymouth Voyager! Took me 4 F'n DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jeep45238]

Volvo S70 2.5 turbo cylinder head job.

[eugene]

Mine was when the little 4 cylinder in my s10 stripped a timing gear around 175,000 miles. That wasn't the bad part, after I got it all back together and carefully found TDC and lined up the distributor and cranked and cranked and moved the distributor a little and cranked and cranked until the battery went dead. I then hooked the jumper cables to the wife's car and decided I was going to crank until it started or blew up. Then BANG! as dust flew out from underneath. Must have pumped gas through into the exhaust and blew up the muffler, it was split open and flat against the bottom of the cab.

[DarkAxel]

To change a water pump on a Chevette, you have to remove the clutch fan and the timing belt. And you need a pipe wrench. i discovered that the hard way when I changed out the water pump on my '87 model. And god forbid you have to change a warped or grooved rotor. That operation involves repacking bearings because the rotor and hub are a one piece unit.

To change the sparkplugs on my '94 Corsica, I had to take the fucking engine mounts loose and tip the engine and transaxle forward to get the back plugs out. Changing the belt was a bitch as well, the space between the pulleys and the wheel well was less than the width of the damn fan belt, and the belt tension pulley was in the most inconvenient place imaginable.

A friend of mine brought me along to do a pre-buy inspection of an '89 S-10. It was a good running truck, and it looked nice. Until I checked the spark plugs. Some asshole had WELDED the damn things in because they cross-threaded the plugs.

[ace of shades]

mid 90's S10 blazer heater core. It books out around 17 hours. You start by pulling the front seats, steering column, then you pull the dash out and you can get to all the heater ducts. After that is all done you can go to the outside of the blazer, (don't have to but makes it easier) take the hood off. You have to take out the AC lines, pull the condenser, THEN take the passenger side motor mount out, loosen the drivers side and tip the motor over to one side. That allows you to get to the bolts that hold heater box in, take box out.. Change heater core.. reverse install.

In take fuel pumps in the suburbans.

[Chase The hero]

Changing the motherfucking alternator in my '03 XTerra. that fucker took 2 people and about 8 hours to pull and replace. To get at some of the bolts and plugs you literally need to have 2 or 3 extra joints in your arm to get to it. also, it was 103 in a parking garage while we did this. keeping a car with 230k miles alive is always an interesting proposition.

[LBB]

Sunday I will replace the thermostat on my trailblazer.
I would have to pay $400 for them to do it, or invest a couple of hours to go through the wheel well, and remove one bold of the alternator.
Less work than going from the top and removing the whole alternator and the belt and such things.

I hope it will work well.

[JRJ]

You should be able to get a mityvac hand pump to bleed your brakes solo for under $20 I think. I have had the plastic version for a few years now, probably used it and loaned it out a half dozen times. Works good, just take care of it.

[eugene]

In take fuel pumps in the suburbans.

Any fuel injected vehicle will have the pump in the tank

[KJ4VOV]

In take fuel pumps in the suburbans.

Any fuel injected vehicle will have the pump in the tank

Not true. Diesels don't usually have one in the tank. Instead there's a lift pump, usually on the frame rail.

Oh, and when replacing calipers, or any part of the braking system for that matter, I strongly suggest doing the same to both sides of the same axle. (ie: you change one rear caliper then you should change both)

That will help ensure you still get even braking and no pulling.

[LowKey]

My nightmare involves digging a D-9 cat bulldozer out of the mud that was over the tracks.<snip> .

LOL.
I'm an ex-army tanker. Your tale of woe sounds like every freaking field problem we went on.
Trust me on this, you have my sympathy

[williaty]

Disclaimer: I'm an auto mechanic, so I deal with your nightmares basically every day.

Tonight, I had one of my own.

My wife's car is a station wagon that came without roof rails for a rack. The "other" version of the same car has roof rails that allow a rack to be installed. To be able to place a rack on top of the car to carry spare wheels, fuel, tools, etc in the event of an evac, we converted her car from non-roof-rails to roof-rails tonight.

Basically, we went from this:


To this:


Neither my pics nor our car, btw.

Doing this involved dropping the headliner. Which requires removing all the interior from the "waistline" up. Huge PITA as I hate car interiors, but whatever. The kicker? 9 months ago, we lined the roof with a contained layer damper covered with a mass loaded foam. The two were bonded with a super-whizz-bang adhesive.

That adhesive?

Failed.

About 90 seconds after I pull the headliner out of the car, the mass-loaded foam falls onto the seats as a big, sticky, gooey mess, totally ruining the seats and carpet in the car.

GAH!

[Murgatroy]

The worst story I have involves a Mustang.

I am an experienced shadetree mechanic. I have owned over 200 cars and have built several from the ground up. I had the chance to do this professionally when I was younger, as my stepfather is a heavy mechanic by trade, but I chose to keep it as a hobby.

I have owned around two dozen Fox Chassis Mustangs, so to say I am fairly well versed on them is a bit of an understatement.

My last one was the one that gave me the biggest headache.

I bought an `88 Mustang off of the proverbial old lady. Single owner, less than 80,000 on the odometer. Automatic, 2300 Lima four cylinder. All records, dealer serviced. I just wanted something to drive back and forth to work as I had a few other projects. I changed the timing belt, did a tune-up and bought a new alternator not long after I bought it. The car had a brand new exhaust system as well from the old one rusting out, however other than a few clearcoat finish issues, the car was flawless.

I drove the dog piss out of that car for a couple of years and then for no reason at all the front pump on the transmission locked up.

I wasn't worried. I had a parts car that was missing the engine. The parts car as an `89LX 5.0. I went to work and pulled the T-5 and the crossmember. I crawled inside and pulled the entire pedal assembly and clutch cable. I had an old five speed Ranger, so I took the flywheel, bellhousing, clutch and pressure plate.

The only thing I had to buy was the pilot bearing for the crank. Took me about an three hours to complete the swap.

I had a nice little five speed Mustang after that.

I took her off on her maiden voyage.

Only to hear a horrible whining.

So it was off to the parts store. I got a new Mustang specific flywheel (since the part number was different from the Ranger one) as well as an entire clutch set, that is what I get for cheaping out, right?

So I tear it all down, replace all the parts with the Mustang specific parts.

Off we go, down the road, with that horrible whining sound.

As I pulled back into the driveway there was a horrible grind, then a pop and suddenly the car wouldn't come out of second gear.

Out comes the tranny, off come the shifter, a nice solid thwack with a mallet and everything seems fine.

Put it all back together, and guess what? No second gear. None. Nothing. Can't even feel a detent for it.

Out comes the tranny, by this time it was a thirty minute job, drop the exhaust manifold, pop the drive shaft from the rear end, snap loose four bolts from the bell housing and pop four bolts from the crossmember, drop the whole assembly, knees on the nose, lower the crossmember and tailshaft onto your chest, roll out.

By this point I decided to tear the tranny apart. It was the only thing I hadn't replaced with brand new parts and thus it must be the culprit.

And boy oh boy was it.

Second gear was shredded, looked like one of those rubber dog toys, moved about three inches of the shaft. The fact that any gear would engage at all was a mystery.

What the hell could have happened? The tranny worked great five years ago when I parked the old car, pulled the engine and just left it sitting there held up with bailing wires. Without the rear driveshaft. Without anything keeping all the gear oil in it. Without thinking a single thought about doping the transmission when I reinstalled it after five years in the weather. With no gear oil in it.

Yeah.

Here I sat, an experienced mechanic, and I forgot one simple step that cost me nearly forty hours of my time, and a whole lot of money.

All over a $5 bottle of 90w gear oil.















I did a five speed swap in Chaos when I put her lower mileage engine in.




I didn't forget to dope the transmission.

[Mighty Hd]

The motive pressure brake bleeder makes it 100% easier! It's cheap and does a fantastic job.