Ever have a bad day wrenching?

It's been a while. I've learned that I'm prone to making unforced errors when I start to feel frustrated, so the rule now is that I put down the tools and walk away any time I start losing my cool.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Eh, Brock's book tells how to do it. You torque the bolts down like a half turn at a time while rotating the cam. I did it, once, sold the car and it was still being thrashed on last I'd heard, back in the day. IIRC, that was the only way to swap cams on those L series but that was a long time ago and there's every chance I either have it wrong or misremembered... I've seen me do  both!

 

 .....But I don't think I woke up in my own vomit. So I had that goin for me, which is nice

Buddy of mine and I built a new engine for my panther LTD. We got all done with it, fired it up and broke in the cam, everything sounding good. No leaks, so we drove it down the street and back to try and seat the rings.

Pull back into the driveway, he gets out and walks over to the workbench. Turns around holding the block plate, that's supposed to go between the engine and the transmission.

We got to replace it the next week when the flex plate was found to be out of round.

Fast forward 5 years, and the same engine starts pushing coolant. Being a small block Ford, I figure it needs a set of head gaskets. After I got the heads off, I found the crack in the cylinder wall. 

I got to do a full engine swap in the parking lot of the apartment complex, fortunately the property manager really liked us, and the mechanic up at the corner gas station loaned me his hoist.

I bought a short block from NAPA, swapped everything over and got it in the car. While I did remember to put oil in it, I forgot about coolant. The headers got really hot on the camshaft break-in, especially with the timing retarded a little bit. 

I let it cool down overnight, put coolant in it the next morning and changed the oil, drove a 5 mile loop, and then came home and loaded it up for a road trip. I had an externship in North Carolina starting on Monday morning, and this was Sunday.

When I got up there, the sealant around the lower row of head bolts was seeping, probably due to trying to run it with no coolant, so I had to replace the head gaskets again so that I could torque the head down again and seal them properly.

Few years later, that third engine in the car starts pushing coolant. I have swapped the heads on the second engine, replaced it, and replaced the head gaskets on the current engine, so I had it pretty worked out.

Got the job all done, and could not get the car to start. I ended up having it towed to a garage. it was a simple fix. I had forgotten which direction the distributor rotated so all the wires were off. That cost me $50 plus the tow.

I just know enough to be dangerous.

Just remembered another bad day.

Was swapping the truck to a "Factory" big brake kit, did the I-beam bushings at the same time.  The massive c-clamp that they rent out with the ball joint install/removal kit slipped and fell.  Only came down maybe 6 inches, but it landed 100% on the pad of my left pinkie finger.  Swelled up big enough that it rivaled my thumb in size, and turned the most interesting color of purple I've seen in a long while.

Didn't lose the nail somehow.

wlkelley3 said:

I gave up on small engines. Wacker or mower start to give fits I replace it. Have messed around trying to fix them before. After all I am trained on engines and a licensed A&P. No simpler engine than a weed-wacker or mower, should be simple. But I have the darnedest time with them. Now give a turbine or even a radial engine and I can get those running and keep them running but small engines, I give up. Cheap enough to not mess with and just replace.

On a similar topic. I've recently disassembled the front part of my Opel GT motor, timing chain cover for a pesky oil leak that got bad enough to start slinging around the engine compartment. Amazing what you have to remove just to get the timing cover off. One of the things that come off is the oil pan. Won't completely come off because of the engine mount brace but lowered. Was removing the gaskets and seals for replacement and dropped the rear pan seal inside the pan. Room enough to get my hand in and dig it out. I dug out 2 old seals. So now I have 3 old seals on the ground and only need 2 new ones. Wonder how long that piece has been in the oil pan. Could it be the reason my oil pressure read 1/2 bar low from partially blocking the oil pickup? Ended up finding what I think was the leak when I pulled the crank pulley, it was scored pretty badly. Have a replacement and replacing all the timing cover associated seals anyway. Just in case.

That’s an easy one to understand.  A radial aircraft engine or jet is designed from the ground up to be maintained. They figure that the average homeowner chainsaw, by contrast, will see 50 hours before it sees the dumpster.  They aren’t designed to be fixed.

In reply to A 401 CJ :

Interesting.

A completely tangential bit of trivia I've read is that the average tank saw 30 miles of use before it was destroyed in WWII.  That seems VERY low unless tanks were delivered to the front lines by train, or they include island-hopping.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

I haven't met him personally, but I've been told there's a mech-e (working at a car company) who once put lug nuts on the wrong way. Like, the hex side in and the seat side out.

To make everybody else feel better, I have awful project ADD. I'll start something and lose interest before finishing.

If a bad day wrenching doesn't end up in a trip to one of the following, it really isn't "all that bad":

- the Emergency room(pick the injury).

- doctors office for any of a number of reasons.

- eye doctor(metal/rust in the eye).

- Lowes(spackle/paint for where I threw a wrench into the wall and need to do drywall repair).

- windshield replacement guy for when I punched and broke it.

- light bulb for drop light that was thrown across the garage and/or stepped on.

We are all car addicts and most bad days are really nothing more than minor set-backs. We get past them, move on and keep on wrenching. It becomes a game at some point, a game that we will eventually win.

You guys can add to the list.

lotusseven7 (Forum Supporter) said:

If a bad day wrenching doesn't end up in a trip to one of the following, it really isn't "all that bad":

- eye doctor(metal/rust in the eye.)

Done that one once, when I was a young Airman.  Porting a head, blew the filings away, somehow they swirled around behind my goggles and I got a piece in my eye.

Tried to flush it out to the point that I got in the shower and stood with my eye open and in the water for 10 minutes.  Decided to try and go to sleep and let it work itself out.  Unbeknownst to me, it had rusted to my eyeball.

Went to the ER on base and they took me in. Asked me all the questions about how I was dumb, then they put me in a hospital bed and dropped numbing drops in my eye.  Heaven.  Nothing has ever felt so good.

Then my doc came in and said I need to hold very still.  She lay half across me to steady herself and took her biggest gauge needle, laid it against my eyeball and then spun it so it would scoop out the portion of my eyeball that had the rust speck.

I was managing a Goodyear store and a very good commercial client rolled in with his personal Corvette with a nail in his left rear tire. I am Run Flat certified as well as a shop tech. I'm the only person on the counter and the other tech is off. It also happened to be on a holiday weekend at 4:00 and we close at 5:00. I mortarforker all the lazy SOBs working for me and go about removing the wheel from the Vette with a floor jack. I get it apart, perform the repair and am wheeling it back to the car with my head down when I run square into the jack handle at speed and with enough force to be heard inside the showroom. About 30 minutes later the customer asked a technician if anyone was going to do anything about the guy bleeding out on the shop floor. I had been knocked out and was gushing from my forehead. 

By the following Friday everyone in the shop was Run-Flat certified.

Bad days wrenching always seem to happen when there is a time deadline associated with it. It is a big reason I don't do much wrenching on my DD cars any more. Ever since I stopped wrenching on my DD cars wrenching became fun again. 

I have an interesting story that involves an exploding SBC water pump the poliece me not being able to hear anything for a couple days and now permanent degraded hearing in my right ear and tinnitus.  
 

EDIT. Ya were were rushing to complete a motor swap on my 79 z28 so I could get to work the next day. 

Take your pick:

Doing a "quick" brake job on the Fit. Just pads and rotors on the front, should be 40 minutes and done. I hammer on the front rotors for an hour and a half before I realize there's a small retaining screw holding the rotor to the hub. In the midst of hulking out with my engineer's hammer, I managed to berkley the threads on two of the wheel studs. At the time I worked next to a tire shop, so I decide to just drive the thing to work the next day with only 2 lug nuts, then let them handle it. Things turned expensive really quickly.

Bought a '98 Camaro Z28 for a song off CL. Engine and trans were good, but the body was so crusty that the wife forebade me from parking it at the house. Eventually end up pulling the drivetrain with hand tools, in my work parking lot, in July, in Texas. For those who don't know, the Camaro drivetrain doesn't come out the engine bay, you drop the subframe, jack the front end up as high as physically possible, then pull the whole shebang out the front. By the time it was done, I was badly dehydrated and badly sunburnt. I had contracted a local scrapper to come pick up the hulk at the end of the day...shocker of shockers, he says he can't do it, won't be there until late on Monday. Boss calls me into the office first thing Monday morning, he was laughing hysterically, but he still wrote me up.

The first gen CTS-V had fluid filled motor mounts that were guaranteed to break every 40k miles. One was easy enough to replace, but the other required your arm to have four joints, and even then you had to do the entire thing by feel. I managed to round one of the nuts completely off and spent four hours with an easy out just to get one nut free. My shoulder and elbow are in absolute agony, and that's when my wrench made contact with something (starter? part of the alternator? I couldn't tell, this entire part of the job was blind), there was a loud BBRRAAPPP and a few sparks as the wrench welded itself in place.  

I had a dowel pin stay in a transmission after I pulled an engine and had the donor engine have the same dowel pin in it. Spent hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get the two of them together.

I pulled the engine (a third time) and spent about 15 seconds figuring out what went wrong. It's on the priority list of things I check now.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

We see dogs with corneal foreign bodies occasionally. Owners let them ride in the car with their heads out of the window.

A study a few years ago reported that a strong stream of saline would nearly always dislodge it. I've only been able to try it once.  The FB had been in the eye for days, but it still worked.

Obviously wasn't rusted! 

I had a biggish piece of steel embedded in my eye once.. I tried to sleep it off which of course didn't work, so I cleaned my strongest small magnet and managed to pull the piece out in the morning.  Of course, it still hurt like mad, so after two more days I went to the eye doctor to see if I missed something.

Nope, I just had rust on my cornea and I scratched the inside of my eyelid.   He tried to numb it to scrape off the rust (to make sure there wasn't anything big left), but I almost passed out every time he got near my eye with the scraper..  I guess I'm not made for that.

Luckily it cleared up by the next day.  And the doc said he was going to keep a neodymium magnet handy :)

And yes, I was wearing safety goggles over my glasses when it happened.

I just walked in the door from working on my old Plymouth Colt.  It had a noise happening, i figured was most likely the timing belt tensioner bearing.  Took it apart.  Bearing seems to be ok.  Alright, stick it back together and not worry about that part.   First bolt to go in is the tensioner pivot/spring bolt.  Go to tighten it aaaaaannnnnd : pop.  Threads pulled out of the block...... 

You know when you have a whole list of projects that need to get done on a vehicle but you choose the most simple one because you don't feel like digging in to a multi hour job?

And then it turns into a multi hour job because something simple goes horribly wrong? Yep, that is what happens to me ALL THE TIME.

Building a fiberglass 1934 Ford three-window for a customer.

I f-ing hate fiberglass bodies now. Never, ever again.

NOTHING fit, the body is not the same left to right, nor is it in any way the same as a steel 1934 Ford.

The windshield frame was not flat, had to build a mold and have the glass bent with a wave in it to fit the windshield frame. It was that or have flat glass with the glass tight to the frame in some places and a 1/2" thick layer of urethane in others. You can't tell what we did unless you look real close and the car looks great.

The body kept changing shape as we worked on it because I guess 'glass takes a long time to cure fully. We would get the door fit perfect and a week later it was out again.

Steel one piece hood had to be sliced and stretched at the back to fit the cowl, was probably fine on a steel body.

Steel fenders had to be sliced and tweaked to fit properly.

No provisions for door seals on either the doors or the body.

Must have had the body on and off the frame 5 times just to get the shifter through the double layer floor without cutting a gigantic hole for it.

The car looks great now but going together was a nightmare.

Fiberglass cars suck. Just don't do it.

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Forum Patrón) :

This kinda e36m3 right here. Some simple stupid easy to miss dumbcluck item that has an impact all outta proportion to its size and scope. Gad what a perfect example. 

For little dumb mistakes wrenching, my "favorite" was when I snapped a Mopar master cylinder cover hold-down clip closed on my little finger. It left a visible dent in my finger that didn't go away for a month. It felt like I'd guest starred in a Loony Tunes episode - trivial injuries aren't supposed to leave your hands comically deformed in real life.

lets just say there are a lot of holes in the walls all around my garage and its not from animals...

I got fed up with my last race car. I stripped it, sat the shell on a brush pile, and burned it. It made me feel a lot better.

Oh boy this is a fun topic. Let's see.

Piston rings stuck in my 1995 Miata and I decided the easiest fix was to swap in a newer engine from a 1999 NB. I had never done an engine swap before but my roommate and I tackled it. We did it all ourselves and it went back together okay. Started the car while on jackstands and let the clutch out... no wheelspin. berkeley. Roomie put the clutch disc in backwards on accident. Turns out it'll all bolt back together that way. He pulled the transmission and fixed that. Then the engine blew up 1200 miles later. I'd been told it was a strong-running engine by the shop who sold it to me. They lied, the thrust bearings were bad and the engine ate itself internally. I sold the car.

Fresh out of college, working on my E34 BMW 535i. I was laying under the car and sprayed some PB Blaster on a nut (suspension, I think?) that was pretty tight. Made sure to keep my face really far away from where I sprayed. All fine until the PB followed the pinch weld seam on the body of the car and dripped directly into my eye. Then-roommate said he'd never heard me yelp like that or see me run so fast. Had to run across the parking lot and up three floors of our walk-up apartment complex to get to water and flush my eye. I ripped my contact lens out while running.

Replacing the cooling system on my then-boyfriend's E46 330i. He had wanted to help so I was having him reassemble everything. He got the water pump in and bolted up, then asked me to check his work before he kept going. I put the socket on the first nut and *ping* broke the stud. Did that three more times (out of four bolts total). The water pump on the M54 has studs coming out of the block that hold it in place. I managed to get vice grips on each stud, thread them out, and use four power steering pump bolts to get the WP installed. Same length, but a bolt instead of stud/nut combo. I broke up with him later but the BMW didn't have anything to do with that.