Lets hear some horror stories

LSx S10

TCG Elite Member
Nov 15, 2007
1,264
47
Lombard, IL
Whats the worst thing that has happened while you were working on a car? Something like a tune up that turns into huge job because you snapped a sparkplug in a head and had to r&r the head.

I luckily haven't had that many bad experiences, but the one that I remember the most, I was doing a water pump on a 99 caddy northstar. I didn't have the correct tool to remove the pump from the housing. If you don't know, on the northstar the pump is driven off the cam by a belt, and the actual pump just locks into an aluminum housing. Well i didn't have the correct tool so i just tried using a chisel to spin it out. well i ended up punching through right through the housing and took a huge chunk of the sealing surface out.
I ended up having to replace the entire housing, which is covered by just about everything on the drivers side and it runs the width of the engine. What should have been an hour or so job turned into a 2 day job. pretty big pain in my ass.

so what kinda horror stories you guys got?
 

Spicy McHaggiz

The Gangs All Here!
Oct 6, 2007
3,950
0
Hampton, VA
When I first started at Leman's they wanted me to swap a downpipe from a lot vehicle to customers due to some "issues". After getting both downpipes out (a bitch of a time at that) I finally saw the flange that mounted in the engine bay. After looking it was different (one Trailblazer was a year older then the other) thus all my work had gone to shit. Luckily I was still hourly at that point and got to waste time!
 

Runtz52

Runs like a turtle with downs syndrome
Oct 7, 2008
4,587
4
Manhattan
Ive got 2: First last winter my power steering pump froze and cracked so obviously needed a new one, so i go buy one really cheap like $50, well get the old one off and then realize the new has no pulley, so i have my bro take it work cuz they had a gear puller and get the the pulley off the old one and on the new one, took me 2 days, well look in the box the new came in and it had a special screw that removed pulleys :roflpicard:

and number 2: This isnt really a failed repair story, before i bought my car i test drove it about 10 miles, liked it bought it for $1200, goin to drive it home dies about a 1/4 mi down the road, me and my dad work on it for 2-3 hrs get it sputtering, so we tow it to a shop, shops down here arent open on the weekends, so after 2 days on mon, it gets diagnosed, 4 clogged injectors FML, so replace all 6 and she runs like a champ now, but i was beyond pissed.
 

UWISHU1

TCG Elite Member
Sep 16, 2004
5,160
554
Hanover Park
I've had a shit load, but my memory is shot to think that far back. One I do remember was blowing up the motor #1 on the Mustang cuz i was getting greedy with the boost on the Vortech non I/C.
Motor #2 was an 03 Cobra short block which was running a snow performance kit for about 2 years no issues. Put it on the dyno to re-tune after redoing the complete exhaust seeing about 17psi of boost the meth pump took a shit on the dyno blowing motor #2 :(
Now I'm in motor #3 running a paxton FMIC, keeping finger crossed :)
 

Angus

TCG Elite Member
TCG Premium
Oct 12, 2007
11,796
862
HHI, SC
well blew the sebring motor's at the track last sept... that sucked.

but other than that, when installing new injectors in the bimmer, an O ring came of one of the old busted injectors and fell into the head. BARELY stayed in the head as the intake valves were wide open for that cylinder. So we had to dismantle the LIM as well (pita on a bimmer) and poke a pointy utensil into the head to try to get it out... added on an additional 4 hours to changing the injectors...
 

Euro

GM or Nothing
Oct 22, 2007
20,450
641
Roselle
Real Name
Matt
Only one I can think of is trying to drive home with rod knock. Out cruising through the little towns a little northwest of campus, it being a Sunday afternoon everybody was outside walking around by the stores....everybody turning to look wtf that noise was, then seeing my car cruise past :rofl:
 
Only one I can think of is trying to drive home with rod knock. Out cruising through the little towns a little northwest of campus, it being a Sunday afternoon everybody was outside walking around by the stores....everybody turning to look wtf that noise was, then seeing my car cruise past :rofl:

That's nothing...I had a 93 Eclipse and I drove that thing around with the rod knocking for almost 2 weeks if I remember right. It started out quiet and just got louder and louder until I sold it. The person that bought it was a complete idiot, I told them that it was knocking and would maybe last a day or maybe 2 weeks....30 seconds from my house it died on them and they got it restarted. Made it about 20 minutes further away and it croaked for good. They wanted their money back at that point:picard:

I once had my Accord on jack stands working on it when as I was adjusting the jack it slipped off the stands and one of the stands went right through the windshield wiper fluid resivoir and demolished it. Thankfully I wasn't under it.

I helped GSteffens replace brakes on a friend's truck. Supposed to just replace front pads/rotors on a chevy silverado 1500. Got the front tires off and found a bearing that was barely intact so attempted to pull that off to replace. He ended up bring a torch home, using high powered impacts, etc, and nothing seemed to work. What should have taken us a few hours to do took a few days.
 

Euro

GM or Nothing
Oct 22, 2007
20,450
641
Roselle
Real Name
Matt
That's nothing...I had a 93 Eclipse and I drove that thing around with the rod knocking for almost 2 weeks if I remember right. It started out quiet and just got louder and louder until I sold it. The person that bought it was a complete idiot, I told them that it was knocking and would maybe last a day or maybe 2 weeks....30 seconds from my house it died on them and they got it restarted. Made it about 20 minutes further away and it croaked for good. They wanted their money back at that point:picard

That's pretty good :rofl: I would've gone farther but it locked up on me
 

Smokinhot

3-man rules!!!!
Jul 4, 2007
14,060
1,836
Lansing, IL
Real Name
IM me if you wanna know more ;)
so who else here has killed a motor? (or two...)

me
euro
Uwishu1
....

:wavey:

I was headed to work one day and the expressway was backed up and i was in my K5 Blazer...... i went off roading to get around but i didn't have the pass-front hub locked so i ended up getting stuck. Somewhere in the midst of rocking the truck in drive anf forward i ended up frying the engine and fucking the trans :rofl: I went through 2 motors in that thing, they were old and very tired.

I was doing a tune up on 95 c1500 v6 b/c NO MATTER WHAT beating the piss out of it or driving like a granny i always got 10mpg and it had a 35gal tank. Well i was changing the plugs and stripped out the threads on #6.... i forced it in there somehow and traded of the truck for my first TA that later Panda owned
 

IDAFC21

WOW.
Staff member
Moderator
TCG Premium
May 23, 2007
56,948
24,184
Avondale, AZ
hmm...when i was installing the up pipe/downpipe on my wrx, i either didnt tighten the up pipe bolts down tight enough, or forgot to tighten them at all. i went to a meet that night, and by the time i got home most of the nuts were completely loose/missing and i was even missing a couple studs on the up pipe.


so the next day i had basically reinstall everything. w/ loctite this time.
 

epik_x

Addict
Jun 22, 2008
977
0
Elgin
I once had my Accord on jack stands working on it when as I was adjusting the jack it slipped off the stands and one of the stands went right through the windshield wiper fluid resivoir and demolished it. Thankfully I wasn't under it.

Fuck thats scary shit, even if you weren't under it.


One of my stories includes replacing the clutch on my WRX. I had to remove the half-shafts to drop the transmission. To remove them I had to pop the knuckle/hub off the ball joints, which was bolted on.. After many fruitless attempts and a can of PB blaster I finally decided to get the largest breaker bar I had and put about a 3foot pole on it and brute force that bitch out. Needless to say I snapped the head off the bolt completely and had to drill out the rest of the bolt and retap it. Took about a week, and several drill bits and tap bits.
 

Poopshinanigans

I'm a middle of the titties voter.
Nov 18, 2007
5,948
0
Was trying to replace the turbo oil lines on the SVO a couple days before the last dyno day. Well it wasn't as easy as everyone told me on the SVO forum. Ended up having to push the thing 4 blocks to my local shop after the weekend was over. I was very tired when we got it to the shop.

Another was when Primalzer and i were following his dad in my PT. His dad was towing their kit car to a house to store it. Right as we passed over 53 on euclid the car starts sliding off the trailer. I start blasting my horn and yelling out the window. Luckily the straps were just a little loose instead of fully undone. That could have caused a lot of damage.
 

RugBurn

The Beer Hunter
Aug 8, 2008
241
0
algonquin
Real Name
mike
my biggest mistake ever on a car: i was installing new 1.7 RR and pitching the old 1.6 rockers. well some dipshit (<---that guy) forgot to turn the crank for one of them when i was tightening them down, so i compressed a lifter which never came back up. sigh grrrr so then i got to tear down the top of the motor to install all new lifters w00t

i learned my lesson, TAKE YOUR TIME
 
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