Other’s biggest screw ups you had to fix

[johnzcarz]

We have a thread going that talks about your biggest repair screw ups, how about one that talks about other people’s screw ups you have had to deal with?

I’ll start with this one:

I had my tires changed at a local tire chain store. Months later I go to rotate my tires and on one wheel I had 2 different size lug nuts. What the heck? Then I remembered, I had new tires put on. They must have lost or stripped mine and replaced them – unfortunately the replacement they used was a different socket size than the rest.

I can only imagine how that would have worked out if I got a flat somewhere and only had the factory lug wrench to work with.

Topic

[Matt]

Way back when I was a lube tech at a Cadillac dealership, a lady brought her nice very new Deville in for service. She requested that the wipers needed changing, because they were leaving a sticky film on the windshield. After looking at the washer fluid tank, I noticed that the fluid was green. Her husband had refilled the ‘coolant’ reservoir, because it was low…. He had put coolant in the washer fluid tank of course.

[Frank]

I bought my mum a peugeot 106 1.5 diesel, she had always drove petrol cars up to that point, a few days later she arrives at the house saying its driving very lumpy and smoking a lot, i take a look and cant get it started but the fuel gague has some fuel. I prime it up and can feel fuel in the primer. Then i go to the fuel cap and smell the distinct smell of petrol.i
It wasnt too hard to fix, a new fuel filter and filling the tank up with diesel, it ran a bit lumpy for a few minuites but eventually it ran smooth.

[TheArete]

Besides my mazda project I have done some dumb things (recently and in the past) and seen family and mechanics do some dumb things.

Subaru Forester 07: My mom mentions that her oil is low and that she poured a quart in but nothing was reading on the dipstick. Can the dipstick be broken?
I tell her no, not unless you’re using the wrong dipstick or part of it’s broken off, it goes straight down into the oil pan and measures how much oil is currently there and that’s as simple as it is. She’s about 3 quarts low I realize and we immediately pick up oil and put it in. Funny thing is it had been down recently (against my wishes) to those local putz mechanics for a full 100,000 mile major tune-up less than a month ago. We put in the oil in and we monitor the underside of the car… no leaks, no oil puddles nothing. A few days go by and I check the oil and again… BONE DRY. At this point I’m like where is it going? So she insists on taking back to them to have it changed (she apparently thinks working on more than my car at a time is a bad idea, lol). We go back and they come back with a crushed oil filter, and begin blamingmy mother for trying to replace her oil filter…until the head notices it’s their proprietary oil filter and says it must of been one of the FNG’s they fired a while back. They had crushed it with a tool and then we’re too lazy to replace it. Now it starts making sense, the leak is in the filter and as we are driving down the highway we are spewing oil out but only when under heavy pressure, when we go to our house down our 15mph road… and stop, oil returns to the pan, and very little drops on the ground. Meanwhile her engine’s check light comes on and the cruise control starts flashing (on these foresters, that’s the Idiot light for ENGINE MISFIRE STOP DOING WHAT YOURE DOING. Back to the mechs.

They tell her, her engine is misfiring and that the problem is the catalyst is below threshold and they’ll have to replace the cats for 1500, and that her rear diff is bad (there’s that slight ball bearing drone in the back wheel) and that’ll cost another 1500. she declines.

Here’s the interesting part… even though she forbids me to touch the car, I open it up yesterday to run some diagnostic practice on it, since it’s a known quantity. I go to pull the spark plugs and they are really stuck in there, like there’s serious suction. Refer to the manual and yes… it’s just like normal, pull on the boot top. So tug hard as I can and go what the heck I’ll replace the plug wires if need be and BAAM… oil everywhere starts pouring out. Same condition in other 3. Her Valve cover gaskets and rings around the spark plug hole are gushing, coating the spark plugs and causing a bad connection between them and the plug wires. A Simple check that they didn’t do. 2 seconds and they could of said… WELL there’s well your oil is going and probably why you’re having misfires.

[wafrederick]

Had a customer bring in a 2003 Buick in for grinding brakes and their cousin blamed it on a warped hub.Took off the rear wheels and the brake pads were installed backwards,metal to metal by this customer’s cousin.Ended up replacing both rear brake rotors and pads.Same with Bosch spark plugs in Chrysler products including a Ford Taurus.Had this Taurus in for a running bad condition and it was the Bosch spark plugs someone else installed.Get this with Chrysler products too,missfire codes appearing and one cause are Bosch plugs.Diesels don’t run good with gas poured in.An industrial painting place had this happen,an employee poured in gas instead of diesel and it was a diesel powered truck.Ended up pumping the contaminated diesel fuel which had gas in it out changing the fuel filter at the same time.Ran good when diesel fuel was poured in.

[Author]

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