Your worst experience repairing a car

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I was younger and poor, I repaired my car myself, and had a couple of bad experiences that have stuck with me.

#1 I inherited a 72 Mercury Capri from my father. This was my first car at ~17. I paid $400 to fix up some suspension issues, and I had a vehicle. Unbenownst to my father and me, the original tires that came with the car were defective, and all five tires experienced tread separation and went flat, one at a time, within four weeks of each other.

So, here I am, driving to my after-school job, and at a stop light, a tire goes flat. !#@$!@. I get a tow, call a friend, whatever, and buy a tire from a junk supplier (because I’m 17 and poor). And, over 4 more weeks, this happens 4 more times for each remaining tire. Every one of 5 tires implodes in a months’ time! Much later, too late to matter, I find out that the vendor has declared a recall on those tires.

#2. My '76 Nova had a radiator leak, bigtime, whilst driving to work. The car wasn’t going to make it to a shop, so I scrounged a lift to a radiator vendor nearby, bought a radiator, and proceeded to change it out. I had to work on it in my employer’s parking lot during my lunch hour. In the rain. In March in Illinois.

A week later, the Car Gods decreed that my alternator would die. I dutifully picked up a rebuilt one, climbed back under the car, and installed it. While tightening the bolts, the alternator’s casting cracked (!@#). While taking it back out so I could drive yet again to Yon Auto Parts Store, I slipped and drove the wiring post for the alternator through the grill of the radiator I’d installed the week before. After much cursing, it was back to the auto parts bins for both a radiator and another alternator.

I no longer repair cars. Screw that.

So:

What’s your worst do-it-yourself car repair experience?

2

I’ve never done much car repair, I’m more the computer type than the fix it type, but one time I was chaning the battery on my car. The changing of the battery of my car. I didn’t have the right size wrench and had to go to 3 different stores to find it. It took me 5 minutes to change the battery, 1 hr to find the right tool.

Off the subject but my brother once spent 6 hours fixing his bike up. He fixed the breaks, the handlebars, painted it and bought a license for it. That night, it was stolen. A year and a half later, the police found it.

3

I replaced the starter in my 72 Javelin 3 times and the battery twice before I figured out it was the alternator…VERY EXPENSIVE CAR.

4

About eight years ago, I had a Subaru that decided to start piddling oil from the front of the engine. On this particular engine, Thing #1 to suspect is the front crank seal. A little feeling under the pulley results in very oily fingers. OK. Off to the parts store for a seal. Pretty easy job, or so it seemed. Two days later, it’s leaking worse. Why was the seal so easy to put in? Why, it was the wrong size! This time, I call a friendly but distant Subaru dealer and confirm the part number. Pry it out of the engine and bicycle back to the parts place to exchange it. Sure enough, this time they come up with the right number. Ride back home and this time it doesn’t just slide in. Being the correct size, it needs persuasion, which is difficult to administer as the radiator’s about four inches away.

Next week…what’s this? It’s still leaking? Pulley’s clean, so the seal’s OK. Thing #2 to check is the oil pressure sensor. Yup. The thing’s cracked where the wire attaches and just sitting there, oil drips out at about a drop every five minutes. Call the parts place and order the sensor. Two days later it arrives. Replacement is mindless and done in ten minutes.

The next day, I check the driveway. MORE OIL! The sensor is clean and dry. Where the @#$^ is it coming from? I spray the area with Gunk and clean off pretty much all the oil that was down there. Give the oil some time to re-appear. Aha! It’s coming from behind the oil pump. Figuring the gasket was shot, I pick up a new gasket. Four fairly easy bolts come out along with the front of the pump. The gasket was fine - it was the pump’s casing that broke. :eek:

Now it gets interesting. With an uneven 1/4" or so of pump casing protruding from the engine block, I had a dilemma. Split the block? Could, but re-assembly would be a problem. This is a “boxer” engine with the crankcase made of two bolt-together halves, and the pump lives in a dead-center hole between them. If I didn’t take it fully apart and clean and re-seal the two halves I’ll probably have just as much if not more leaking.

Saner option seems to be to somehow grab the stub of pump and pull it out. At about 3" across, I have no pliers big enough. Off to the hardware store for the jumbo Vise-Grips. They just barely catch hold of the pump, but with a lot of persuasion, the pump body cracks loose and comes out of the engine.

Cost of all this? About $15 for the seal, $25 for the sensor, $4 for the gasket which went unused as the replacement $95 pump came with a gasket. Add in $25 for the jumbo Vise-Grips and some fretting about how to fix my ratchet (at one point it was used as a hammer in abject frustration trying to nudge the pump loose and the “on-off” lever flew off. Happily, the next time I saw a Snap-On truck, I was able to get a new lever for free - it’s apparently not an uncommon part to lose. At least the labor was free - why not? I was out of work and not doing anything else at the time other than wondering how to afford $170 to stop a small oil leak.

And that was my worst car repair experience.

5

I had a transmission leak in a Dodge pickup. 727 loadflite was leaking at the seal for the shifter lever. Seal was cheap, the problem was it had to be removed and installed from inside. Bought one of those cheap aluminum baking pans to catch the oil, removed the pan and the oil. Removed the valve body and replaced the seal. Put everything back together. At this point I’ve got about a 6 pack down. Started pouring the oil into a coffee cal and putting it into the tranny. after about 2/3 of it is in, I hear something slide in the bottom of the pan. Sure enough, a big coil spring is in there. With eyes about as big as frying pans I’m thinking what the &$&* is that! Anyhow, had to dissassemble all over again. 1 hour job turned into about 3. (I got slower and had to get the book to find where the spring goes.)

6

Had to change an alternator in my '67 Chrysler.

Advance then proceeded to sell me 2 bad alternators, and finally, one good one, so I had to pull out 3 seperate alternators in one day, just go get the car to a point where it was charging.

7

This happened to a good friend of mine. He had a 1-ton Chevy pickup he bought used. He told me one day he was going to have to do a lot of work on it.
“Really? What happened?”
“I had a fire. It burned the engine bay, and it took out the dash.”
“Did you figure out what started the fire?”
“Yup. The carburetor sprang a leak. I’d just had it rebuilt.”
“Well, who did the work? Maybe you can sue 'em.”
He gave me a pained look, and he said, “My dad.”

He had no fire insurance on the truck, and rather than just junking the thing, he rebuilt it. He was foiled at every turn. Every scrap of wiring had to be replaced. Most of it worked for a while, then crapped out. It was a pain to know him for a while. Every time he got in the truck, he thought, “What’s it gonna be today?”

8

Years ago I had a 1969 Mercury Montego convertible.

The brakes went and being young and poor I tried to fix them myself even though I am not mechanically inclined. I got junkyard drums and had them ground smooth. I took the entire brake assembly apart on each wheel. I took polaroids as I went so I knew how to put them back together. Somehow, I reassembled all the springs, new pads etc. I was soooooooooo proud of myself.

But the brakes still didn’t work. The master cylinder was shot. :stuck_out_tongue:

9

I had a 1969 Buick Wildcat that I loved beyond reason. I still regularly dream about it. Anyway, I hit a bump once and the lights went out. The nut holding the headlight switch was loose, so it seemed an easy repair. But—the entire lower part of the dashboard/air conditioning duct work had to be removed in order to get to the light switch—it took about ten seconds to tighten the nut and about six hours to remove and replace all the obstacles.

Replacing the alternator on that same car revealed that one of the alternator mounting bolts was too long to remove. The head of the bolt contacted the radiator shroud while there was still about an inch of bolt inside the block. Removing the radiator shroud required the removal of the radiator, and that required the removal of all water hoses. Took the best part of a Saturday, too.

10

More things than I care to try to recall, and most of them pertaining to a pair of mid-60s fullsized Pontiacs.

Auto repair was my example here in the talent vs passion thread. I wanted to do it, I just wasn’t any damn good at it.

11

Ford 302 V-8 engines are known for rear main seal leakage. When I noticed it starting to leak again, I figured it would be no big deal, just drop the trans, pull the seal and drive in a new one.
Unfortunately, I had failed to notice when putting a new long block in, that I had been given a 1979 block to replace the 1985 original block, and as such I had a seal which could only be replaced by dropping the crank, oil pan, etc. I said &%$# this, and stuffed the tranny back in. It still leaks.