worst job you have done on any car
 

Hi
starting thread for the hardest and most frustating job you have tackled on a car.
Mine is swop spark plugs on wife's 2002 subaru legacy 3.0. Dealer quote four hours to do job. thst should of set alarm bells ringing. after three days with cuts brusies etc on both hands and only doing five out of six plugs discover that sixth plug can only be changed by lifting engine two to three inchs. ummmm waiting now to borrow an engine hoist. nearest dealer is 300 mile round trip and my local super machanic has sold his garage for housing devlopment. :-(

Unbolt the engine mounts and use a jack to push it up. Jack on the tranny, not the oil pan. A buddy at work did his that way. It is a pita.

Worst job for me was probably doing brake lines on a 93 Taurus in the middle of winter. I had borrowed the car because my car needed fixing. Then the Taurus blew a brake line... Thankfully I had mine fixed the next day so I had a car. The Taurus needed a few new lines run. Not absolutely horrible work, but cold and just not fun, and horribly timed.

While not the worst in terms of total effort, in terms of too much effort for the job, a starter on an older nissan, had to remove the intake manifold/etc to get at it.

Putting a set of headers on a 68 Cougar with a 390 engine...two days, cut holes in car, blood, etc.

That is a tough question; there are so many instances all vying for the worst. :mad:

Easily in the Top Ten Worst was replacing the clutch cable on a Starlet without removing the dash- OMFG! :eek: I don't think performing brain surgery would be any tougher or more inticrate.

Replacing the rear bank of spark plugs on Moon Unit while away from home in California without benefit of all the extensions and swivels and whatnot I have at home- OY. I had to remove the intake manifold to do it. Well, I'm not sure it can be done "manifold on" no matter what tools are available. Diagnosing and replacing the water pump on the same car ranks right up there too; everything was backwards and upside down. The t-stat is on the BOTTOM?!? The right front wheel and INNER FENDER must be removed to change the water pump?!? WTF????

Come to think of it, though, heater core replacements are usually even worse. Sometimes you have to lie upside down and turn inside out, and also have backwards flamingo joints in your arms and legs to maneuver down there under the dash or between the engine and firewall, all while putting your back and neck out of joint. Being a giant walrus of a galoot does not help either.

For sheer stupidity, replacing the failed oil pan gasket on the 3.0 V6 '98 Ranger has to take the crown. That was NOT one of Ford's better ideas! :mad: :mad: :mad: First of all, it had this funky spongy rubber gasket- of the likes I'd never seen before or since- with little metal spacers at each bolt hole to take the torque of the bolts. This brilliant design and material selection SPLIT the entire length of the gasket, so we're not talking about a little oil drip; when that thing let go the oil POURED outta there whenever the engine was running. :eek: Clearly a manufacturing defect, right? I brought it to the local Ford stealership and it sat in their lot about four months while we argued about who gets to fix it. Finally I decided that even if I did get them to do it, they would sabatoge it somehow so I brought it home to deal with it. Long story long, I had to remove the right front suspension and unbolt the engine and raise it up as far as possible without completely removing it in order to drop the oil pan enough to change the gasket. The thing looked like a model car kit all blown apart in my driveway, all for one lousy stupid gasket. :mad:

It is worth mentioning that living in the Rust Belt causes just about every "underneath" car repair job to be an adventure of twisted off bolts and other things destroyed by severe corrosion. Thanks for NOTHING, salt trucks! :thumbup:

It has just been -26 deg. F., and that seems to cause cars to demand service even more than usual. I have dropped gas tanks to replace fuel pumps is **** weather like this. I have replaced transaxle differential bearings out in the driveway in this ****, digging a pocket in the snow to work. Yeah, fumbling around with cold metal parts means lots of trips inside to warm up the fingers.

Oh well. I do it for the fun and joy of it.

Transmission swap, hands down. It was difficult. But it was fun. Overtime, I am sure the novelty will wear off. But I will also be more experienced. When I need to do it again, I will have a hoist handy.

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

With 60k hours of car work not including non customer projects, it would take the longest thread in Ecomodder history to relate the pains in the arse I still remember.

One was changing the dash light bulb in a 65 Lincoln Continental. Book says R&R dash. 90degree twist socket, could only touch it with two fingers, no thumb. I used a blindfold since my eyes were useless, hand cramps many times, had to quit, could'nt let the bulb drop into the abyss or I might never find it by touch alone, careful to not unintentionally disconnect anything, old tech wires and sockets.

Took an hour and a half.

Will post more as I think of them.

One of my techs, Nissan certified master, had the flywheel out of a 1991 300 so fast it was still too hot for the machine shop to surface it after a 6 mile drive to the shop.

regards
Mech

R & R, the truck 4 speed trans out of a 72 Blazer 4x4 by myself. While replacing, it fell off the trans jack I rented( after removing the trans by hand), trans landed on a 30' tape measure, which exploded. First and only time I ever "Saw Red".....

Front brakes on the Subaru. The caliper was seized, so I had to put it back together with mismatched old and new pads and drive to the parts store for a caliper. Took everything apart and found that the caliper was a bad listing. Put everything back together and drove to the dealer, got home and finished the job.

Subaru plugs are doable, if you have an assortment of adapters and extensions. After you manage to twist the coils around far enough to get them out, slip the spark plug socket in the well. Then cobble together an extension for your ratchet, stick that in and try to mate it up with the socket and then that with the plug. Every few turns you're going to have to take it out and remove one of the pieces in your homemade extension. Then do it all over again in the other direction with fresh plugs. When I did it, it took 2:45, most of the time spent wondering how to do it with what I had on hand.

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!

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.

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)

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.

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! :eek:

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.

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!

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.:snail:

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

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 ;)

If you think that was bad try replacing the seal between the block and the front timing chain cover. Early Altimas were notorious for leakage from that seal. Do you pull the head (after pulling the engine) or try to reseal the portion of the head gasket that is exposed when the front cover is removed?

regards
Mech

Bought a salvage 1977 280Z with 325 miles on the odometer. It had been rolled over several times. Bought a 76 280Z at the same auction. It was hit so hard in the right front wheel that it ripped the unibody apart at the cowl. The engine and transmission were sitting there, the mangled front end next to it and the rear clip next to that. Took the two and made one out of them. The only original piece of sheet metal that was used on the 77 was the hood of all things. Had it done but could not find a lower control arm (right front). I waited almost 6 months for the back ordered part to arrive and finally finished the car. Drove it from North Carolina to the Florida Keys to visit my parents and take a vacation.

When I got the two halves 77 front and 76 rear mated together I found out that the wiring harnesses were different. Spent a lot of time figuring out what wire to splice to the one harness to the other.

The car ran perfect until I got halfway to the Florida Keys. I noticed oil leaking out of the bottom from the bell housing. Dang rear seal leak. Do I keep going south or turn around and go back to NC? I kept going. It lost exactly one quart of oil and never leaked another drop, even 3 years after selling it. That remains a mystery to me today almost 40 years later.

I was following a Peterbilt just north of Jacksonville coming back to NC, doing 110 MPH (speed limit was 55) and that truck was still pulling away from me.

regards
Mech

#1, EDIS and Megasquirt conversion

Runners up:

-Audi 5000 waste gate

-Fiero gt spark plugs

-Anything hydraulic (my Achilles heel)

-VW ignition switch (the plastic connector, a bi-yearly ritual)

-fiberglass front end (fit, re-fit, repeat 100x's)

-lift kit on the suburban. northern truck, every bolt siezed, wouldn't air chisel, heat or kroil out, all sawzall both sides and replace all parts.

Guess Ive been pretty lucky? My worse job was as a go-fir at a tire shop and i had a mid 60s dodge to remove the wheels. Turned out one side of the car had left hand wheel studs and I didnt know anything about this. Just glad I didnt strip or break them. :thumbup:

1) Changing a heater core on a Geo Metro.
2) Valve cover gaskets on a 1992 Ford Aerostar.

Or take the front hubs off and reverse them, then the lugs fall off followed closely by the wheels.

regards
Mech

The computerized stuff in modern cars can be pretty maddening to deal with. Hence why I've never owned a vehicle younger than an '87. So putting that aside, my worst case scenario would be windshield replacement.

You guys make me realize my life hasn't been so bad after all :-)

Worst I can remember was doing the clutch on ex-GF's '80s Mitsubishi pickup. Maybe a small-handed Japanese guy could have gotten at the bolts, but not me. Ended up pulling engine % transmision as a unit (and even that was no picnic).

OTOH, best was anything on my old Austin-Healey Sprite. Previous owner had mounted the hood & fenders (as a unit) on hinges. Undo two clips, and it swung up & forward about 120 degrees. Pull two hinge pins and unplug an electrical connector, and you could take the whole thing away.

Changing the water pump on a 2.4 DOHC 2001 cavalier.

Normally, the water pump is an involved process, but not difficult. Clearly the people who designed the cavalier did not want people changing the water pump when it eventually failed.

The water pump is located underneath the exhaust manifold. And unlike every other FWD car I've worked on, the exhaust manifold is facing backwards. So you have to remove the wheel, the shields, the exhaust manifold, the upper manifold. Just to unbolt it.

THEN you have to open the engine up. Because unlike most other cars where the pump is driven by the accessory belt, the timing chain drives the water pump. Also, there is just no room to work and even less room to see. It's definitely a "Lay on the engine bay while the hood is up" type of job, and even then you're going to have a hard time.

I have nightmares about doing that job again.

There have been some difficult and pain in the ass jobs... but the worst jobs are when the clueless owner of the vehicle or know-it-all friend who is completely mechanically uninclined is blabbing at you with their opinions of what is wrong or how to fix it.

These are from back when I made my living as a mechanic.

Putting tire chains on milk trucks that were fully loaded, out on the road, and stuck in the snow. I was the skinny kid so I got to climb under them.

VW Beetle heater boxes.

One MGB gearbox in particular. The 2nd and 3rd gear synchros had gone. I took it out of the car, pulled it apart, replaced the bad bits, reassembled, put it back in. On the road test it popped out of 3rd when I lifted off the gas -- something I never saw a 'B' gearbox do before or since. Heavy sigh, lather rinse repeat.

Once upon a time I changed the timing belt of my 79 Honda Civic 2-speed Hondamatic on the side of I-275 in St Pete Florida with the only hand tools and car jack I had in back, inches from early morning rush hour traffic that was spraying me with sand the entire time. Although it was about twenty years ago, as I remember it went something like this:
Kick myself in the ass for not having already changed the belt (the new belt was in the trunk), jack up car with my quivering ass inches from traffic, crawl under car while expecting my legs to be crushed at any moment, loosen motor mount, jack up driver side of motor a couple of inches, remove the old timing belt (which was missing some grooves), cuss myself some more, pull plug #1 and manually find tdc intake stroke with a dirty rag while hand-turning the motor, eyeball the notches even on cam sprocket, pull distributor and keep re-inserting it until I basically had #1 lined up, which isn't that easy since it rotates like 35 degrees, put the new belt on (I probably reduced it's life expectancy by half by jacking it on with a screwdriver), jack motor down, replace motor mount, get in, pray real quick, hit the key (a screwdriver) and fire it right up! Check to make sure I hadn't peed myself at some point, throw the tools in back and headed on to work.
Total elapsed time 2 hours, total time it likely took from my life, 2 years.

Remember: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" :-)

Replacing the heater fan in a '91 Volvo 240.

The way I understand it, the AC blower, motor and ducting are held firmly in a jig in Trollhatten, then the rest of the car is screwed to it as it progresses down the line.

Getting that thing out is a challenge far and away more strenuous than you would think.

Surprisingly easy: water pump on a 1980 Chevy Citation. It's its own little housing just hanging down there. Couple of bolts, hose clamp, Bob's your uncle. After replacing about five of them, Dad could do one in about 30 minutes, that includes throwing down a doormat to lay on. Then he bought a genuine GM replacement pump and never did it again.

Some kind of Mercury passenger car... couldn't fit a standard wrench or socket onto the oil pain drain bolt (because of it's position next to the front crossmember or something) trying to help a friend change the oil... told them to take it to Jiffy lube and to buy a honda/toyota next time.

Jetta MKIV glovebox remove replace, I hate hidden bolts

Installing a shift kit on a 727 trans in my 1971 Dodge Dart.

Instructions, step # whatever: Remove piston spring and piston. Install piston stop.

What I actually did: Remove spring and piston, install piston stop, install spring. When putting it back together, that spring was a pain to keep in there. As I was tightening the bolts down, I heard a loud pop. Instead of taking it back apart to check, I put the trans back together, filled it and found out that reverse was not reverse, 1st was 3rd, 3rd was whatever, 2nd was everything, basically the trans didn't work. I pulled it apart to find out the piston had broken from the spring pressure and fluid was going everywhere inside the valve body, hence the weird gears.

The spring was not supposed to go back onto the piston since the piston stop was there to keep the piston from moving...oops.

Yep, I was doing a shift kit in a 72 Power Wagon. While trying to loosen the band adjuster lock nut, it came loose ALL at once sling my arm against the floor cut out 7 stitches later at the ER, I finished the trans about 2 am.

Ouch. That sucks!

My first experience ever working on a car was with my dad. I was 9 and we were pulling an engine out of a '65 Falcon. I was supposed to make sure the trans coolant lines cleared the radiator support. I did and then stood against the wall. One of the chains came loose, as he was backing the forklift up and the tail shaft of the transmission slammed down on the radiator support. The back end of the trans rolled off and hit me in the chest, throwing me into a parts rack behind me. I had two cuts on my back and a bruise on my chest.

The first thing I said to him as he jumped off the forklift and the engine and transmission were bleeding out all over his shop floor was, "Mom's gonna kill you!"

Ever since then, I was hooked on fixing cars...

:eek:

eek!

Most difficult repair for me was a week underneath while on stands a toyota celica 1989 taking out the old power steering rack, easy enough, but getting the new one in, a major pain with the engine and gearbox still in there.

I was not only scared of the car coming down ontop of me as the only thing holding it up was two stands, twas my first time underneath a car for longer than an hour, but besides that the rack had to come in at 360 angles and then clear quite a few poles and objects on its way to the firewall.

Aside from that, lifting the bonnet on a 1980s Ford Falcon XF Sedan X-Pack was enough for me, I bought a Toyota based upon the fact that in this paticular Ford each bolt on the engine or body was a slight variation from the other one, with a mix of imperial and metric bolts, some of them 25-30 years old and have seen a various number of badly made cheap tools on them.

And when I checked the timing gear, 1st piston exhaust and intake rocker/pushrods were pushed up higher than normal with a stack of 3 washers. Removing the washers resulted in an engine which would detonate and ping like crazy and once engine ignition had been cut the engine continued to run for at least 15 seconds after turning it off. The emissions control system was a mixture of vacuum operated and electronic solenoid with no clear indication of any match to anything in the service manual for any year that the car had come out, infact it was closest to a hybrid between XD and XE vacuum emissions control systems.

I never did figure out the proper arrangement of all of the tubes and solenoids, ended up sending it to the wreckers because the detonating and pinging was just getting too crazy and the rust had set in.

Car drove like beautiful though, I could put the front wheels right on the edge of a white line from feel alone, it had a beautiful front end suspension and steering system, all manual, no power steering to detatch from the feel of the road, and this is a real big car, no small thing.

In retrospect I wish I had kept it and rebuilt the engine, it would have made a great post-nuclear vehicle as the thing was EMP proof, should have done more repairs on the body, but it was just a sedan and I needed a wagon, and its not going to win any awards at the track on performance and the people around here thought it was an ugly car.

I'll have to wait until my father gives up driving then maybe I will get his XF Wagon to rebuild.