Vehicle repair gone wrong

Reading over the Replacing brake pads threads got me thinking of some of the things that has happened to me when trying to fix a problem with my vehicle. You start off thinking this job will be easy or I have done that before. No problem.

The heater blower motor went out in my wife’s car. I thought 10 min and I will have it done like when I have replaced them on my trucks. 6 hours later I was done. It was located in the very top center of the dash. The whole dash had to come out along with the radio, heater core, ducking, blender… It sucked. A year later it started making some noise on high only to find out you have to balance the motor. What a joke. She is still putting up with the noise since the dealer quoted her $1,000 to replace the $45 part. I am not doing that again.

My truck battery was starting to get old and seemed to be having a little trouble when it was very cold out. I went to get a new battery and they said they would replace it for free. When they hooked up the battery it shorted out my HVAC system. It switched to max AC coming out of the front vents. I could not turn it off and it was -10 outside. The people looked at me and said to go to the dealer. I was smart enough to pull the fuses to shut the blower off. I gave my son my jacket so he could stay warm and it was a cold 25 mile drive home. It was the blender motor that shorted and messed up the whole system. Took about 20 min to fix and the part was $40. Not a nightmare to fix but a cold cold drive.

My wife brought her truck to have the oil changed and tires rotated right before we drove to Houston over the 4th. The next morning she drove to school for the last day of summer school and I noticed a huge pool of oil where her truck had been parked. I immediately texted her and told her to check oil level. Of course these dipsticks are a pain to read these days, but she said she couldnt see any oil. I drove over there and laid underneath to see oil running down the filter which obviously wasnt fully tight. It took 5 quarter turns to tighten up. Went back to the dealer and had them completely redo the oil change. Was not happy, but I think it was only about a quart low thankfully.

Glad you caught it Musky. I will never get the idea of having your car fixed or serviced right before you leave on a trip. Have it done well before hand so you have some local miles and a chance to make sure everything is ok. Being in the industry I have of course seen everything and we are human so take that into consideration before saying you know I need to get that fixed right before we go out of town or across country.

John Rasmussen wrote:

Glad you caught it Musky. I will never get the idea of having your car fixed or serviced right before you leave on a trip. Have it done well before hand so you have some local miles and a chance to make sure everything is ok. Being in the industry I have of course seen everything and we are human so take that into consideration before saying you know I need to get that fixed right before we go out of town or across country.

Yeah, normally that is what I do, but I had literally just gotten back from my Canada fishing trip with only 1 week in between. The shop schedules weeks out so the Thursday appt was the first she could get. Thankfully I had taken the day off and saw it right away. The icing on the cake is this is the vehicle that the engine went down and this is a GM Remanufactured engine so it was definitely a pucker moment since we were already without it for like 4 months waiting on that.

Bought my wife a Toyota Sienna years back, put 120,000 on it only had to change oil every 7500 and tires every 50,000 miles.

I’ve been very lucky in the last 20 years having a close friend who’s a master mechanic. He would do everything I couldn’t and out of warranty. Those days are gone and now I am back to doing everything I possibly can to avoid paying someone else. I’ve always done my own fluids and tire rotations though.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>John Rasmussen wrote:</div>
Glad you caught it Musky. I will never get the idea of having your car fixed or serviced right before you leave on a trip. Have it done well before hand so you have some local miles and a chance to make sure everything is ok. Being in the industry I have of course seen everything and we are human so take that into consideration before saying you know I need to get that fixed right before we go out of town or across country.

Yeah, normally that is what I do, but I had literally just gotten back from my Canada fishing trip with only 1 week in between. The shop schedules weeks out so the Thursday appt was the first she could get. Thankfully I had taken the day off and saw it right away. The icing on the cake is this is the vehicle that the engine went down and this is a GM Remanufactured engine so it was definitely a pucker moment since we were already without it for like 4 months waiting on that.

Sorry if that came off as though it was directed at you as it was not really, just talking in general.

The only thing I have failed at was the HPOP on my 6.0L. All the basic crap I usually just take care of it myself. Once in a while I will bring it in if I don’t have the time. I do have a air injection pump I need to delete on my 4 runner.

This is not a repair gone wrong story. This a customer gone wrong story.

Several years ago I get a call from a lady needing an oil change ASAP. She like, wants it NOW. It’s 10 AM on a Friday. She needs to go on a trip to a certain town. I tell her I can work her vehicle in at 3 PM. Never mind the other shop can get me in at 1 PM. Told her to go there then. She was worried over an 180 mile round trip because she was 10,000 miles OVERDUE for an oil change!! This is when recommended changes were 3k.
Have heard many such real life crisis like this. LOL

John Rasmussen wrote:

Sorry if that came off as though it was directed at you as it was not really, just talking in general.

No offense taken at all John!

MX1825 wrote:

This is not a repair gone wrong story. This a customer gone wrong story.

Several years ago I get a call from a lady needing an oil change ASAP. She like, wants it NOW. It’s 10 AM on a Friday. She needs to go on a trip to a certain town. I tell her I can work her vehicle in at 3 PM. Never mind the other shop can get me in at 1 PM. Told her to go there then. She was worried over an 180 mile round trip because she was 10,000 miles OVERDUE for an oil change!! This is when recommended changes were 3k.
Have heard many such real life crisis like this. LOL

P,i,s,s Poor Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine. I love using this one.

I was fresh out of high school and replaced the starter on my 1979 10th anniversary Trans Am. I went about 10 min down the road and all the lights and gauges started going wacky. The engine died and smoke start coming up out of the hood. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and popped the hood only to find my battery negative smoking and melting off. I beefed up the engine so much that I had to push the hood back down every time I got on it. That engine twist caused the positive cable of the starter I just installed to touch the headers. New battery, some extra straps, and power cable and I was going back down the road. After so much abuse that chassis broke in half leaving me sitting on the ground in between the wheels.

Too many late nights to count with vehicle repairs. Young family trying to save money, great place to get er done. Got lots of tools this way, lots of character building, but not a single bit I enjoyed. Vehicles overall suck

Hated repairing stuff, always one nut that was impossible to reach, impossibly tight, loose but just spinning, or would come off fall but not hit the ground so now you’re searching in the engine compartment for the thing. Thankful that I now have a few bucks and a mechanic that I trust.

My experiences have been akin to a base runner turning a single into a triple, but in reverse.
Growing up, I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, so most of my vehicles were already old by the time I could afford them. They became my training ground. Now, 40+ years later, I’ve developed the skills to fix or diagnose almost anything I encounter(with a tip of the hat to youtube). As a rule of thumb, if it requires working on anything under the dash, triple your estimate. If it’s suspension, frame, or hubs/knuckles, it’ll be a day long adventure. Nothing seems to come apart like it should on a 20+ year old Toyota. EVERYTHING gets rusted solid! Don’t even waste your time trying to salvage things like the knuckle bolts. Cut ’em off and spend that time saved extracting the rusted-in section.
Having learned how to fix stuff is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that I don’t have to pay $100/hr for work I can do. A curse in that any time working on cars is time not spent fishing/hunting/with the family.

MX1825 wrote:

This is not a repair gone wrong story. This a customer gone wrong story.

Several years ago I get a call from a lady needing an oil change ASAP. She like, wants it NOW. It’s 10 AM on a Friday. She needs to go on a trip to a certain town. I tell her I can work her vehicle in at 3 PM. Never mind the other shop can get me in at 1 PM. Told her to go there then. She was worried over an 180 mile round trip because she was 10,000 miles OVERDUE for an oil change!! This is when recommended changes were 3k.
Have heard many such real life crisis like this. LOL

I remember my old Toyota pickup, recommended oil change for my normal driving was 7000 miles.
With my 2006 Liberty I use synthetic oil and only change it twice a year. I likely could only change once a year if the synthetic is good for 20k miles

1971

1 time 3 friends and I were going to put a clutch in a 67 Impala SS. The SS was owned by another friend of mine. My Dad owned the shop so we were doing it after hours. Got it apart and back together in about 90 minutes. Backed it outside spin around the block. Perfect! Put everything away, cleaned up, and ordered a couple pizzas. Got 15 minutes to kill, let’s take a quick spin. Headed out of town and about 2.5 miles out of town. Missed a 2/3 shift and exploded the new clutch! DAM!! Cold pizza by the time we got it back to town.

Years ago doing the pre-vacation check out on the family station wagon, and to my horror the radiator was about 15 minutes from complete melt down. The fins had rusted out and the tubes were bulging out badly. I started calling around and kept hearing “we can order that for you”. Not good. Finally talked to a guy down on Concord Street in South St. Paul and he had one, but didn’t have time to put it in. I asked him if he had an empty stall and he said sure. A short time later I had it all buttoned up and it wasn’t leaking so I was good to go. The guy that owned the shop offered me a job right on the spot!

Sometimes you get lucky.

SR

I attempted an injector job on a mid 2000s Ford Ranger. Can’t remember quite what my problem was but I knew I didn’t do it right. Was able to get it to a mechanic, explained what I did and they “fixed” it. A week later the entire truck caught fire. I paid $5500 for the truck and insurance gave me $9500 on a truck with 200k+ miles on it (back in 2016ish mind you). Turned around and paid $2500 for a 2000 Silverado and bought myself an Ulterra and Helix 10. Sometimes when life shuts a door, God opens a window.

Oil change gone wrong. Last year I was changing my oil in the truck right when I got home from working outside on a 90 degree day. Being in a hurry, I failed to realize the oil filter seal from the old filter was stuck on there. About 4 quarts of oil spat into the driveway when I started it up. On top of that, the threads on oil pan felt like they got stripped out when I got done with my mess. Thankfully it was just the threads on the drain plug not the oil pan.

You guys haven’t even messed anything up.

As a teenager, I torqued a rear wheel bearing like a front wheel bearing on a FWD car. Didn’t even get a few hundred yards down the road before that wheel locked up. RIP.

I am still driving my biggest mistake/project. I bought this old truck and noticed the headgasket leaking so I dove in. Nothing went right. The machine shop guy laughed and said the heads were cracked. I went shopping. I pinched the crank sensor wire. No start. I put one cam in backwards because the instructions were not clear. I dropped a nut down the intake. It was a stainless nut. Off everything came again. I didn’t torque the main pulley enough so it backed off and the truck died a few blocks from home. The brakes went out in the driveway one day. Soon after, the fuel lines over the gas tank did too. I tried to braze the cracks in the gas tank up but there were just more and more pinholes and cracks. Apparently the gas tank sealer stuff works really well. 1997 is getting pretty old now.

Jack wrote:

Oil change gone wrong. Last year I was changing my oil in the truck right when I got home from working outside on a 90 degree day. Being in a hurry, I failed to realize the oil filter seal from the old filter was stuck on there. About 4 quarts of oil spat into the driveway when I started it up. On top of that, the threads on oil pan felt like they got stripped out when I got done with my mess. Thankfully it was just the threads on the drain plug not the oil pan.

I did the double oil filter seal once when I was around 15 ish or 16. Puked oil from garage to the street. My mom was not thrilled to say the least.

Bearcat89 wrote:

I did the double oil filter seal once when I was around 15 ish or 16. Puked oil from garage to the street. My mom was not thrilled to say the least.

I’m in the exact same boat as you guys… One of the first times changing my oil when I was 16 on my old civic, left the old filter seal on there and thought I blew up my engine when I started it up. Had quite the mess to clean up in my moms garage. That is one of those mistakes you only make once.

Many years ago I changed the oil on my Jeep Cherokee in the garage very intoxicated. As I was putting the last of 6 quarts in (this was the first vehicle I ever owned that took more than 5) I noticed a shadow approaching me on the floor. It was a massive oil puddle. I forgot to put the plug in. I sobered up really fast cleaning up that mess.

I enjoy fixing everything on my truck and my wife’s truck. There’s been numerous times a quick job took much longer.

Best one was when I put a leveling kit in my 2007 silverado. Torsion keys are a b1tch on those, usually stuck. I ended up having to cut the bracket that mounts to the frame of the truck with a torch, then take the bar out, weld the bracket back together, and finish the job. Should’ve taken 30 mins, took like 4 hours. I’ve saved a lot of time with a big electric impact on old rusted bolts!

Just when you get to a point in life where you can afford vehicles you don’t need to wrench on, along comes your kids and they buy crappy cars you need to wrench on…

One day son #2 comes home and says he needs to have his rear brakes done. No problem for you dad, I’ve seen you do this many times, we’ll be done in 15 minutes. Oh, its drum brakes. Still no biggie, make it 30 minutes. Well, it was no problem, saved him a couple hundred bucks, EXECPT the $500 trip to the clinic to get a rusty piece of metal removed from my eye.

I did a complete top end refresh on a Kawasaki once. Replaced pistons, valves, chains, cams and water pump. I forgot the base gasket on cyl 1…Ran decent…but wasn’t a fun teardown…

I had a beater Ford Escort years ago. Driving into work, I could smell something was hot, so I turned the radio up in natural beater car fashion. Pull into work and start backing into my spot and see smoke under my hood…my AC compressor seized and started the belt on fire…put it out and drove it about 10 miles home before that crusty Nancy Pelosi looking belt finally popped. Called a buddy, he rushed tools and a new belt to me on the side of 52…fun stuff.

Yeah, my son is learning a life lesson on the fun with working on cars. He bought a 86 Fiero GT that he was told the clutch was out. The car didnt run and we had to push that SOB off a trailer and onto another trailer (with a flat tire) to haul it home. We got it in his garage and he believe the fuel pump is out so he started dropping the tank. The car is sitting on jack stands with very little room beneath and he cannot reach the wire to unplug the fuel pump. He cut off some rubber hoses, etc, but he is just at a standstill. He tells me he regrets buying it, but it is something he has always wanted. I told him to get an estimate from the dealer he works at for replacing the fuel pump and he was quoted over $800. So there it sits until he can try again to get it out. Even at that he has no idea if that is the problem, but it will fire on ether. Still had to figure out the clutch issue, but wants it running first.