Worst repair you ever did

[Kris]

Well its sunday night here in Australia and all weekend i’ve been dreading this Mazda 3 warranty dash replacement thats sitting at work at the moment in about a million and one peices, its not the worst thing i’ve done but comes close too ( thanks jap engineers ), so that leads me to the question whats the worst repair you’ve ever tackled?

Cheers

Topic

[Greg]

I think it is a toss up between an oil pan gasket on a 2000ish Chevy S-10 or timing chains on 2013 Infiniti Q56 all wheel drive.

[Justin]

Austrac, what year Mazda 3? I’ve put many a pads on the later models from them
Deforming or having some gooey substance on them lol. But the worst thing I’ve done personally was a tie probably the front evaporator on a 2012 Chevy traverse. It was the first I’ve done and everything had to be stripped or the crankshaft position sensor on a chevy 8.1l. 2500 Avalanche. I never want to do one of those again.

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[Jason White]

Engine replacement on a Jaguar HF. The engine was locked up, and there is no room. The trans could not be separated due to no room to get it off with the torque converter attached to the flywheel which would not budge at all and the bolts were unreachable without turning it. Had to take off so much to get the engine and trans out together. This required specialty tools we didn’t have so I had to make my own. Once out I had to completely tear the motor down to get it to turn at all because the torque converter was 3 grand by itself. There was no core after that, broke the block in little peices, worse lockup I have ever seen. When you remove all main caps and it stil won’t’ turn, and 6 of 8 pistons are siezed in their bores, connecting rods, two had dissolved, makes you wonder. Got it back together, which was no ordinary engine install, everything had to go back together in just such an order and the SM is kind of vague so I did a lot of taking things back apart. Then, there were electrical issues so it wouldnt’ start. Got through those. Finally got it running and the A/C compressor was internally damaged when the motor locked up so it had to be replaced and it was not easy to get to. The trans fluid, $85/liter is the slickest stuff I have ever come across and I had a bad slip and fall and could barely walk for a week, landed on my tailbone. Meanwhile hearing all kinds of BS coming from co-workers “what’s taking you so long, it’s just a Ford”. Yeah, sure. Yes, this job beat my tail bad (litterally) but I got if finished, drove it out of the bay, and it made me stronger as a tech. After that, everything is just easy now for the most part.

It gets worse. The car was owned by one of the sales girls, who didn’t like the car and you could tell the whole time was trying to get the dealership to buy it from her. They did the engine job for free because she called a higher up corporate guy and they told our dealership to do so. So it was an internal ticket, and a big one, that was a pure loss, so nobody wanted to close it, so it took me 2 months to get paid on it.

I’ll never work on a Jaguar again.

[Bluesnut]

I don’t know that I have a single worst repair; more like a number of them.

One was on an old Renault LeCar. Remember those? The starter motor had failed and I could see the little booger but could not figure out how to get it off. I obtained a LeCar repair manual and it stated that the motor and transmission had to come out to change the starter.
The owner of the car was adverse to this for obvious monetary reasons so I said I’d try to figure something else out.

I ended up pulling the carpet back on the driver side floor and cutting a hole in the firewall behind the clutch and brake pedals. I then removed and replaced the starter through the hole.
I then cut a patch panel and riveted it back in place with some sealer. It worked anyway and didn’t take more than a few hours of time.

[Larry Bible]

It’s difficult to choose just one. Two that really stand out are changing a transmission in a Superior motor home with a Dodge truck chassis under it. They built the coach such that it was near impossible to get to anything. It was an amazing and frustrating challenge. How hard can it be to R&R a transmission in anything?

The other I did several times. An A/C evaporator in a Mercedes W124 series car. This is the 300E, 260E and a few other model designations in the same series. It was a challenging job, but everything was made such that you could get it apart and put it back together without breaking plastic tags and such. SO, when you get done with it there are no rattles or things that don’t fit properly. When those cars were built at the factory, they started with the evaporator and built a car around it. To aggravate the situation, the evaporators had aluminum cores and copper tanks, so they expanded and contracted at different rates, so they separated frequently.

[Mike]

Very early on in my career, I did a engine on a 1995 S-10. Was a 4cyl 2WD automatic, which certainly sounds easy enough on paper. Gmule mentioned doing a oil pan gasket on one, and I have some ideas why.

There is a non-removable ‘pan’ under the engine that connects the frame rails, which also makes doing a starter on one suck pretty bad.

There is also the metal fuel pipes that are flared with tube nuts like a brake line, and they are rigid from the fuel rail all the way back to the middle of the frame. They go into the end of the fuel rail from the bottom and are jammed right against the firewall so it’s really hard to spin the tube nuts by hand or with a tool. I ended up not being able to thread them back in on the install and had to cut sections out of the pipes to add hoses in to allow for flexibility.

There was also another thing that really bothered me about the truck’s design aside from making it hard to work on. Most vehicles share the same design of having the fuel system run to the back on one side of the engine and underbody, and the exhaust system on the other. If the fuel rail and intake is on the drivers side of the engine, the fuel system and filler neck is on the driver’s side and the exhaust system on the passenger side. On this S-10 the fuel and exhaust systems crossed sides around the transmission. The exhaust crosses over under the transmission, presumably to help it overheat sooner. Then the fuel pipes, which are a rigid complex bend that is at least 5 feet long, cross over above the transmission in a very tight space between the trans and the tunnel.

All in all, including the first junkyard engine being seized, I had about 40 hours into it. Luckily I was paid by the hour at that point. That was about 11 years ago, and I was still pretty green.

[Bluesnut]

Some engines or transmissions that could be horrible to work on are the SAABS from the 70s and 80s. The engine sits on top fo the transmission with the engine facing backwards (pulleys against the firewall and clutch against the radiator) and the transmission case acting as the oil sump for the engine.

For instance. If you have a torque converter seal or crank seal leak it requires removal of some of the front suspension and halfshafts, hood off, headlights and radiator out. and removal of both engine and transmission.
A heavy cart or table is required. The pan has to come off of the transmission and there are about a dozen fluid tubes (each one a different shape and fitting in a different spot in the valve body) that have to come out. A large number of bolts have to be removed while the trans is brushing the table or cart top. It’s much more complicated than I’ve stated here due to a number of unmentioned steps.

An even trickier part is mating the engine and trans back together as the gasket is quite sizeable and when you’re trying to match 2 heavy items like that with one of them dangling from a hoist it can be very frustrating to say the least trying to line them up and get bolts started without mangling the gasket.
Then it’s time to figure out that maze of tiny aluminum tubes that are simply push fits in the valve body.

All of that for a 10 dollar seal…….

[zero]

PT Cruiser timing belt. With the humidex it was about 40C (104 freedom units) and everything said to just pull back on the tensioner and the belt will slide on. They were wrong. I eventually had to loosen the idler pulley to where there was only a couple of threads holding it on and then install the belt. Then of course I was off by a tooth. Twice.

I can honestly say there haven’t been too many times that I absolutely stop making progress, but that was one of them. Everything just ground to a halt as it took me over an hour just to get the fucken timing belt on. Never again, I swear, will I touch a timing belt on one of those abominations.

[Greg]

[quote=”Fopeano” post=164298]Very early on in my career, I did a engine on a 1995 S-10. Was a 4cyl 2WD automatic, which certainly sounds easy enough on paper. Gmule mentioned doing a oil pan gasket on one, and I have some ideas why.

There is a non-removable ‘pan’ under the engine that connects the frame rails, which also makes doing a starter on one suck pretty bad.

There is also the metal fuel pipes that are flared with tube nuts like a brake line, and they are rigid from the fuel rail all the way back to the middle of the frame. They go into the end of the fuel rail from the bottom and are jammed right against the firewall so it’s really hard to spin the tube nuts by hand or with a tool. I ended up not being able to thread them back in on the install and had to cut sections out of the pipes to add hoses in to allow for flexibility.

There was also another thing that really bothered me about the truck’s design aside from making it hard to work on. Most vehicles share the same design of having the fuel system run to the back on one side of the engine and underbody, and the exhaust system on the other. If the fuel rail and intake is on the drivers side of the engine, the fuel system and filler neck is on the driver’s side and the exhaust system on the passenger side. On this S-10 the fuel and exhaust systems crossed sides around the transmission. The exhaust crosses over under the transmission, presumably to help it overheat sooner. Then the fuel pipes, which are a rigid complex bend that is at least 5 feet long, cross over above the transmission in a very tight space between the trans and the tunnel.

All in all, including the first junkyard engine being seized, I had about 40 hours into it. Luckily I was paid by the hour at that point. That was about 11 years ago, and I was still pretty green.[/quote]

Ha ha yeah, I remember doing a few of those starters. I just had to do motor mounts on a 4×4 s-10 with a 4.3 that wasn’t much fun either.

[Scott Osborne]

[quote=”gmule” post=163937]I think it is a toss up between an oil pan gasket on a 2000ish Chevy S-10 or timing chains on 2013 Infiniti Q56 all wheel drive.[/quote]

That’s about as bad as it gets. I had to drop the oil pan on a 2001 s10 4.3 4wd due to the head gasket leaking and putting the pink ozze of death in the oil pan. I think I put more time into the oil pan than changing out the head gaskets. In retrospect if I ever have to do that job again I’ll just pull the motor out.

Also I am currently replacing the exhaust manifolds on a 88 Sea Ray Sundancer. They are no fun. The engines are so close together its almost impossible to get between them, couple that with the outside manifolds being completely under the deck and the engine bay only having one spot to stand in just makes it miserable. The customer had taken the boat to two other shops and they turned down the job, unless he would pay for them to pull the motors. Me (Being a dummy) said “No Problem I’ll do it”.

Another particularly horrible job I have been putting off is a Wet brake service on a Cat D3C. I’ve been trying to milk the brakes on our D3 for as long as I can. Its a flat out PIA. Even the Cat dealer cringes when I bring it up.

[Greg]

[quote=”Bsosborne1″ post=165349][quote=”gmule” post=163937]I think it is a toss up between an oil pan gasket on a 2000ish Chevy S-10 or timing chains on 2013 Infiniti Q56 all wheel drive.[/quote]

That’s about as bad as it gets. I had to drop the oil pan on a 2001 s10 4.3 4wd due to the head gasket leaking and putting the pink ozze of death in the oil pan. I think I put more time into the oil pan than changing out the head gaskets. In retrospect if I ever have to do that job again I’ll just pull the motor out.

Also I am currently replacing the exhaust manifolds on a 88 Sea Ray Sundancer. They are no fun. The engines are so close together its almost impossible to get between them, couple that with the outside manifolds being completely under the deck and the engine bay only having one spot to stand in just makes it miserable. The customer had taken the boat to two other shops and they turned down the job, unless he would pay for them to pull the
motors. Me (Being a dummy) said “No Problem I’ll do it”.

Another particularly horrible job I have been putting off is a Wet brake service on a Cat D3C. I’ve been trying to milk the brakes on our D3 for as long as I can. Its a flat out PIA. Even the Cat dealer cringes when I bring it up.[/quote]

[Greg]

[quote=”Bsosborne1″ post=165349][quote=”gmule” post=163937]I think it is a toss up between an oil pan gasket on a 2000ish Chevy S-10 or timing chains on 2013 Infiniti Q56 all wheel drive.[/quote]

That’s about as bad as it gets. I had to drop the oil pan on a 2001 s10 4.3 4wd due to the head gasket leaking and putting the pink ozze of death in the oil pan. I think I put more time into the oil pan than changing out the head gaskets. In retrospect if I ever have to do that job again I’ll just pull the motor out.

Also I am currently replacing the exhaust manifolds on a 88 Sea Ray Sundancer. They are no fun. The engines are so close together its almost impossible to get between them, couple that with the outside manifolds being completely under the deck and the engine bay only having one spot to stand in just makes it miserable. The customer had taken the boat to two other shops and they turned down the job, unless he would pay for them to pull the
motors. Me (Being a dummy) said “No Problem I’ll do it”.

Another particularly horrible job I have been putting off is a Wet brake service on a Cat D3C. I’ve been trying to milk the brakes on our D3 for as long as I can. Its a flat out PIA. Even the Cat dealer cringes when I bring it up.[/quote]

I feel your pain boats are a whole other game when it comes to access for repairs.

[Devin]

S10 oil pan tip. Undo body mounts raise body 2 inches and life is good. Ever since I’ve learned this trick oil pans and transmission removals have been much easier.

[Greg]

I think I will give that a shot. I did that one time to remove an AWD transfer case out of one but never thought of it for other work needing done.

[Justin]

[quote=”2500Avalanche” post=169457]S10 oil pan tip. Undo body mounts raise body 2 inches and life is good. Ever since I’ve learned this trick oil pans and transmission removals have been much easier.[/quote]

I will have to look into that. Haven’t had to do a pan on one yet thankfully.

I have another to add to the list. Egr cooler on a 2011 express commercial transit bus with the duramax. That job sucked yesterday, and to top it off it was under a special coverage so turned into a warranty ticket.

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[Author]

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