Horrors from work

Few little things from this week.

Up first This Jensen Healey experienced a driveshaft failure at 5500RPM in 5th gear at a HPDE. It actually sheared the transmission case clean in half but that wasn't as scary as the driveshaft trying to enter the passenger compartment.

Oh yeah and this had to be a huge pucker moment

that dent in the Kirkey is just about exactly where your kidney would be located

And for the human caused travesties. This series one E-type is in to have the 351W V8/C4 auto swap removed and go back to Jag 4.2/manual spec. Lifting the nose revealed this treat

No room for an air cleaner? No problem. Just put the baseplate under the carb, remove the chokes, cut up the filter element and wire in a piece of steel with holes in it for kickdown and linkage. Still to tight? take the top off and glue some rubber door seals to it and hope that it seals to the hood

Header collectors are necessarily..... uh. odd?

But here is where it gets really good. Those frame rails are awful tight for that wide Windsor block. Angle grinder to the rescue

Just a bit off that rearmost head bolt ought to do it. The other side?

Apparently the whole boss was in the way

But why let a little thing like that stand in your way for all that 2bbl ford power right? I think they actually tried to weld what was left of the bolt to the head.

Strangely the rest of this car is really nice. The paint and body is well done, the interior is all nicely crafted in wilton wool and leather.

I love pictures of hackery!

Whoops!

Edit: this happens a lot, we open 40 hoods a day and one a week is broken. Somehow it's always "you broke my hood", what?! Usually it's freightliners and volvos, peterbilts are usually better cared for. This one was a shock for the owner and my guys who opened it; that's a big chunk of aluminum and believe me it's heavy.

Was the healy running a driveshaft loop? Was looking at one piece aluminum shafts for my Mustang this week....this makes me want to install a loop if I'm trusting an aftermarket shaft...

I need to upload this to thereifixedit. This is the brake MC on a Mk3 Supra at the same shop where my 'rolla is. It had a number of other ultra-ghetto-fixes on it including a custom-welded bellhousing and an electric radiator fan that was on as long as the battery was connected.

That's the throttle cable going between the two cylinder feeds.

yow...

on the carnage and hackery

We just have people nearly electrocute themselves on rare occasion. Science is about adding small amounts of liquid to tubes with small amounts of different liquid. Occasionally you'll put this into a gel with liquid buffer and run a current through it.

We had a student who didn't understand why it didn't work without any buffer. We then explained that electricity doesn't conduct through air. You needed liquid on both sides of the gel "connecting" it to the electrodes.

The same student later assembled the gel apparatus backwards so there was glass between the buffer and the top of the gel. We then explained that electricity doesn't conduct through glass...

Eventually, this student departed the lab. We still have a police blotter of him getting arrested for public intox and urination. He wasn't very smart.

I once had to replace brake lines on a LeCar.......

kylini wrote: We still have a police blotter of him getting arrested for public intox and urination. He wasn't very smart.

Isn't that a requirement for an undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa?

Karacticus wrote:

kylini wrote: We still have a police blotter of him getting arrested for public intox and urination. He wasn't very smart.

Isn't that a requirement for an undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa?

Most people don't test the lessons learned in mandatory undergrad alcohol abuse class. That said, it's always fun seeing who has the "high score" every football game (BACs are published).

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I once had to replace brake lines on a LeCar.......

I heard this story. It stands as reason why there are none on the road.

Last place I worked, over $2K in just parts including a wheel and tire and I did not find the brake pads.

kylini wrote: We still have a police blotter of him getting arrested for public intox and urination. He wasn't very smart.

If being inquisitive, getting drunk, and peeing in a bush means one's not very smart...there's a lot of us here that need help.

In reply to Donebrokeit:

How did this carnage occur?

In reply to Donebrokeit:

I bet that made a cool whistling sound on the highway.

This wasn't mine but a couple years ago a bus crossing the Varazzano Bridge runs over a mattress. He keeps going to get off the bridge and damages a fuel line. He stops and empties the bus while a river of flaming fuel sets six parked cars on fire.

http://m.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/mattress-sparks-bizarre-bus-blaze-cars-torched-brooklyn-article-1.1057175

Donebrokeit wrote: Last place I worked, over $2K in just parts including a wheel and tire and I did not find the brake pads.

OK I've seen that E36 M3 on some hoopties before (including a 100$ town car my brother bought and a samurai an ex of mine owned) but that appears to be something like a late model impala, or thereabouts. Who the bleepin bleep is that stupid with a car got so damn many warning lights?/

In reply to Donebrokeit:

Those are my favorites on r/justrolledintotheshop. I've always wondered how people can't figure out that there's a problem when the evidence of the fact that you've cut into the vanes is right there. That leaves aside the noise and vibration it must be creating.

In reply to Ditchdigger:

Those pictures of the drive shaft made me cringe.

I'm glad my mechanical "abilities" aren't used to interact with the general public. Generally when someone botches up something I can reverse engineer the screw up through the engineering instructions. Helping people maintain one of their largest purchases which is generally essential in getting to and from their lively hood all the while not wanting to spend any money actual maintenance would infuriate me.

I have a buddy that worked at a shop and had similar horror stories of people wearing through the rotors, these same people think the shop is trying to rip them off when they get the estimate and can't understand why everything needs replaced.

evildky wrote: I have a buddy that worked at a shop and had similar horror stories of people wearing through the rotors, these same people think the shop is trying to rip them off when they get the estimate and can't understand why everything needs replaced.

Not unique to the automotive world. My metal fab shop does everything from complex, close-tolerance bits for Biotech to fixing Mrs. Smith's broken chair or teakettle. I've almost never get complaints from professionals, but we've got a list of knucklehead homeowners who do things like bring us a casting to weld, then refuse to pay because the heat of the weld effected their paint finish. - Then they go on yelp and bitch about us.

Stopping on the vanes? There's better ways to get that sweet baseball cards in the spokes sound than that.

A friend of mine was almost killed when his driveshaft let go in his GTV (like my gold car to the left). It tore through his leg and opened up the big artery. If not for some good corner workers + emergency workers + one of our other friends is a great surgeon, well, who knows.

That was going really fast at Road Atlanta.

Another friend had a similiar issue in his GTA- almost hit his grandson in the passenger seat. That was on the freeway.

FWD FTW?

chili_head wrote: FWD FTW?

If you like a spinning circlesaw blade / clutch plate that is lined up between your gonads and turning at very high velocity...