worst job you have done on any car

[War_Wagon]

Worst jobs I've ever helped with? Headgaskets on a Deathstar powered Cadillac (front cradle gets dropped, engine/trans come out the bottom just so you can get at the back of the motor), and headgaskets on 6.0l Powerstroke Ford (faster to take the cab off the frame to make room to work).

Worst job I've ever done myself? Any job on a VW made after the '80s!

[darcane]

Beat me to it War_Wagon. I had to do head gaskets on my Eldorado. Did it myself, shadetree style and it took forever (months, but only worked on it about 1 day a week.)

DOHC transverse V8 with every option imaginable at the time, so it's quite cramped under the hood and hard to get at a lot of bolts. Nothstars have poorly designed head bolts which makes them highly prone to headgasket failure.

Not fun at all.

[mcrews]

Originally Posted by t vago

Changing a transmission on a 1981 Dodge Aries, using nothing more than a 2 ton bottle jack, and hand tools.

66 mustang 6 cylinder. removing old and installing new tranny with THE MUSTANG SISSOR JACK and borrowed hand tools.
(I was 18 and VERY clueless....my family only owned a hammer, screwdriver and 1 pr of plyers)

[War_Wagon]

Those Northstar cars are nightmares. They are great when they work, but when they fail, which they all do, they are usually not worth fixing. At my buddies old shop a kid came in, he had got money from his parents and blew it on a Caddy. Paid $4500 for it, bought it from "a mechanic, so it has to be good, right?" Ya, theres a reason the mechanic got rid of it ha ha. Had it a week and it was blowing so much steam out the tailpipes it looked like a James Bond option. My buddy tells him, don't fix it, sell it cheap, take your loss, buy a Civic and move on, which was the exact right thing to do. Nope, kid wants to fix it. Pull the cradle to drop the motor, pull the heads, send them to the machine shop and one is cracked. At that point the parents stopped paying for their kids bad choice in used cars. Long story short, the car went from the hoist to the scrap truck still apart, and the kid still owed money for the work it took to get to that point!

I'll edit this with some good cheats that make things the easiest job you can do. '93-'02 Camaro fuel pump. They die at 180k-200k KMs, and you have to drop the exhaust, gas tank etc etc to get at them. Or, cut a hole in the floor of the cargo area and do it in about 20 minutes. Same goes for '92-'99 GM pickups - ya you can take the time to move everything and drop the tank, or just hack a hole in the bottom of the box. Usually covered by a box liner anyway. Things to look for if you are looking at a used car - if you see that then you know someone like me used to own it ha ha ha.

[Frank Lee]

When the F150 is excluded, I don't think I've spent $4500 sum total on all the cars I've owned in my life!

[slownugly]

intake manifold in a 96 altima 4 cyl. called for 6 hours. ive never been so mad at a car in my life. id rather pull the engine next time.

[CFECO]

97 Jeep Cherokee, I had the angle grinder with metal cutoff blade ready, and the carpet rolled up, then I replaced the fuel pump relay..LOL!

[War_Wagon]

I hear you Frank_Lee. I export cars for a living but when it comes to what I actually drive, man it's a $300 Civic, not a $30000 BMW. I have a fleet as a result of all the auctions and deals I find, but none of the fleet is expensive ha ha. I've seen deals that would make people on this site cringe, so much money wasted on stupid things, bad advice, or just out of stupidity. I bought a 2008 F350 Lariat 4x4 crew cab diesel long box once for $5400, because there was something wrong with the engine and the dealership told the guy it needed a new motor. And yes it sounded terrible, but my genius diesel tech said it was fixable when we looked at it. $1700 later (broken rocker arms), it was fixed. That's an $18k truck in the US, and if the guy had done any research he would have got a second opinion on what was wrong. But he just blew it out and bought a new truck as he apparently had too much money. There are so many stupid rich people around here that I don't even feel bad when I get a score like that! He was happy to get it out of his really nice driveway, and I was happy to take it ha ha.

[slownugly]

Originally Posted by CFECO

97 Jeep Cherokee, I had the angle grinder with metal cutoff blade ready, and the carpet rolled up, then I replaced the fuel pump relay..LOL!

Haha!! If you were in the rust belt you would leave the carpet up and use the same tools to fix the rusted out floors!

Edit: or maybe there would already be a hole rusted out abovete fuel pump. Problem solved

[RedDevil]

Certainly not the worst job ever, but just bad in the comparison between cause and resolve:
I replaced my parking lights with LEDs but they did not fit very tight in their connectors.
Afraid that they would drop out into the lamp unit I took the retainers out to fixate them, which worked fine with the first one but the second LED dropped into the lamp house just when I removed it.
What to do. The lamp holes were small, the unit was big.
I could take it apart but then I would have to remove the side panel and support beams and stuff.
So I tried button hole surgery with sticky tape on a stick, magnets, a micro grasping device, fishing gear, a paperclip bent to grab...
After an hour of fruitless tinkering I gave up.
My wife took over and eventually did get the LED out!

Same LEDs are back in, firmly locked now