Murphys Law: Exhibit A

[Gregory]

I started my first job in the field on monday. All went well. Then the second day comes. I’m told to pull in an 06 DTS. I do an MPI and an oil change. Just about every car gets a car wash. I’m told to run it through, this time on my own. Okay, simple enough. I get the car wash going and then it happens. Three quarters of the way through and the rear windows go down, on their own, and won’t go back up.

So here is little ol’ me. Soaked. With a customers car that now has a drenched interior, thankfully leather. Noone was mad and I panicked for nothing. Actually the customer said it happened to them in a carwash. So at the price of rattling my nerves we got an upsell.

Welcome to the field me. I’m sure there is more to come.

Anyone else living proof of Murphys law?

Topic

[James O’Hara]

I have been up to this point. Whether it be someone installing inverted torx bolts crossthreading them and rounding off the top of the fastener causing me to remove everything from the passenger side of the engine. Lost 3 days of time on my proficiency on this one.

My first week i dropped a washer into an injector hole took a bunch of mechanics a week to figure out wth was going on. Three days of proficiency on this one not counting the other mechanics that looked at it.

I have a current rubbed wire or possible bad module issue atm. Fixed one rubbed wire already. Have rubbed/broken wires on one leg of the circuit 10 ft out of12 ft of loom removed still can’t find it and another rubbed wire or bad module on another part of the circuit. Verified the rubbed/broken wire by load testing. Had to remove the entire interior to get to the wires to load test the other 3 sections have yet to do that. I am currently at 10hrs in and the truck has been down for 4 days due to other bad components, 1 wiper switch, 1 washer pump, 1 level sensor and yes they were all bad. No the fuse wasn’t blown or tripped more then likely the shorted wires on the outside as the ground for that circuit is non existent the wire is cut clean through or broken completely internally somewhere.

Then there are countless other little things mainly from flat rae sops not putting bolts in, over-tightening bolts and stripping stuff out, forgetting gaskets, not zip-tying harnesses and hoses is a really big one (normally wears through in 1-2 weeks), etc, etc.

So no your not the only one that murphy seems to like. I am just hoping karma will come along and sweep him off his feet and carry him away cause i got a lot of good karma and I am getting tired of murphy.

[Bluesnut]

Luckily the customer was understanding. Some are not quite so forgiving.

At a shop where I worked once a utility man was told to service all of the lifts. One of them in particular was very balky. He raised the lift all the way up, removed the plug from the floor, and dumped 5 gallons of hydraulic oil down the hole. He then turned around, walked over to the lift lever, and hit DOWN. The safety catch was not on, the plug in the floor had not been reinstalled, and all of that oil in the floor went gushing to the ceiling when the rack fell like a ton of bricks. It looked like one of those old movies when the oil well struck black gold.
The rack falling rattled the entire shop. Thankfully no one was under it.

Not only did it saturate the ceiling, workbenches, etc in that area it also half soaked a mechanic, his tool box, and the car he was working on in the next stall.
The stall on the other side of the falling rack had a brand new VW sitting in it for an accessory installation before delivery to a customer.
The sunroof was open so not only did the outside get oiled down the seats and carpet inside the car also got lubed.

[Ryan Wofford]

I get up to go to work in the morning, the power goes out, so no hot breakfast on that December morning, next I go to start my 1997 Ford Expedition, tire is flat so I air it up using the air left in the air compressor, now go to start it, battery is dead tried to jump start with my truck and the jumper cables are shot, so I decide to take my truck which was illegal at the time, go to stop at a stop sign in my neighborhood and rear brakes go out, I limp it back home, yank out the battery put it in the expedition and get to work 30 minutes late. Boss yells at me and at this point I don’t really care because I’m just happy to be at work. work goes by without a hitch, now I get ready to go home and I go to start the Expedition and I get the click of death, battery was dead again,only I had stayed late to make up for being late in the morning so nobody was there so I had to unlock the shop again grab a battery charger and charge the battery. needless to say I had a rough day that day

[Brandon Garner]

About 10 years ago I was working at a GM dealership. I was new to the field, had only been out of school for a year and a half. Customer came in and had a funky whining noise coming from the rear. Determined it was the pinion bearing in the rear end. I had never done one before but didn’t seem like anything tricky and it’s not. Got everything done and took it for a drive. Sounded great and then it started, whining and gradually into a grinding almost clunking. Get it back on the lift and open up the diff. New pinion bearing is destroyed. The problem. I didn’t correctly set the rotational torque for the bearing. So I destroyed a new bearing and race and had to redo all of my work. It was a good learning experience. Have rebuilt many rear ends since and haven’t not made that mistake since.

[Brandon Garner]

Had a similar thing happen. Lube tech was filling a lift that had the reservoir on the side. He didn’t put the cap on and lowered it, shot all the fluid on the car I had on the alignment rack. Luckily it was the passenger side and the window wasn’t down. But it was a nice mess he had to clean up.

[Nick Warner]

Had a late-90’s Caravan that needed suspension work. Customer was a real trashy welfare type with a POS that must’ve had 180k on it. Had that mentality of all techs are out to cheat him. Always had a complaint after any work done. So I take it for a test drive while he is waiting to be sure he can’t complain about anything. Get a little over a mile out and go to turn around when I hear a clunk and the van will not drive. Look underneath and see the CV shaft is snapped in two. For those not familiar with these vans this is not an unheard of thing. The joint doesn’t break, the solid steel shaft between the joints does. Have seen at least 6 or 8 of them do this. Never seen it on anything but a Caravan.

Called boss, who came over with the wrecker. He had seen this before so he had my back with the customer and sold the job amazingly. Guy tried to act like I was beating on his van. Boss explained to him how that van doesn’t have the physical power needed to shear solid steel like that unless there was a flaw in the steel. Did a search online to show him how common it was. Shut him up quick.

[Jon Hart]

I hate customers like that remember having that argument with a customer over a snapped spring she though it was perfectly legitimate that the spring didn’t snap in the 160k miles she’d driven the car it must of snapped in the 50 yards we drove it to get it into the workshop for it’s service.

Not been in the trade that long but one that will stick with me for awhile was doing a timing chain on a little 1l corsa if you know what you’re doing ~2-3 hours for me having been at the dealership about 3 weeks at this point was safe to say it took a little longer 😉 but anyway I got it all apart and drained the water pump from a bleed screw at the bottom timing it up all went ok and i put it all back together started it up and started to bleed the cooling system, At this point i could see the car leaking coolant and after removing the covers again I saw it leaking out of the bleed screw checking it all tight at this point i consulted a more experienced tech. it was at this point he told me that while it was technically a bleed screw if you removed it would never seal up again and as the job was a warranty job I would have to replace the water pump, after stripping it all back down and doing the entire job again i triumphly through the old bits in the big bins outside that’s when they told me I needed to keep the old bits for to send back to warranty.

[James O’Hara]

I know not technically the right way to fix it but, thread sealant and about 2 hrs to dry prob would have fixed it np. On the up side though I bet you could do that job a lot faster for the next time it came in. I know that is how I can do high pressure fuel pumps so fast. Did 4 of themthe first week i was there another 2-3 the second week.

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