“I shouldn’t have done that.”
I usually utter that immediately after trying to do something to improve a vehicle, only to make it worse. Sometimes, I end up feeling like I shouldn’t have bothered to try working on the car in the first place. How about you? Have you ever accidentally made your car worse? As a goofball, I feel your pain. I’ve made my own vehicles worse more times than I can count.
You may remember my 1972 Yamaha U7E motorbike, the rare competitor to the Honda Super Cub. I bought the Yamaha from a family who owned the bike since 1976. The Yamaha spent three decades teaching generations of one family how to ride. Then, they let it sit for years before I picked it up and then I let it sit for more years. I decided to reverse that course by finally getting it running. I took the motorcycle apart, cleaned its carburetor, and then halted my progress once I saw how nasty the tank was.
Fast-forward two years and nothing has happened. That tank is the only thing keeping the Yamaha from riding again, but until I get around to cleaning it out, the poor thing will remain in a bunch of pieces sprawled out in my mini-warehouse.
It’s a problem echoed by our Jason Torchinsky. Years ago, he pulled the carbs off his Beetle’s engine for cleaning and synching and the improved performance that would surely result … then life got in the way and the project stalled out. The last update was that the poor Beetle’s engine seized up, presumably from sitting out in the open for so long. We both made our vintage vehicles worse by not actually finishing our work. “Awesome.”
The car I carry the most made-worse regret for is my 2012 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe. I bought it new as my first Smart, and that car served as proof that dreams can come true. Unfortunately, I haven’t really treated my Passion Coupe like the beloved almost-family-member I like to think it is.
I babied that car for years, keeping it in as perfect shape as I could keep it in. Then, in 2018, I began taking the little machine off-road. In 2019, I had a few White Claws and proceeded to spray-paint it. My beloved Smart went on to pull Toyota Tacomas out of mud pits, drive down waterfalls, log miles with low oil, and frolic in Tennessee clay. Then, the car’s alternator went out, the fun stopped, and I parked the car for two years – without cleaning off all that caked-on mud.
Now that I’m a little older, a little wiser, and have other cars to take off-road, I regret what I did to my tiny friend. I loved (and still love) the car so much, yet I was willing to beat it up so hard that it ran low on oil. It’s complicated, too, because the adventures I had in that car helped me become who I am today.
Thankfully, cars are just things, and I was able to bring my little Tucker (did I mention his name is Tucker? His name is Tucker) back up to health. Now, I just need to finish the restoration job.
Here’s where I turn things to you. Have you ever set out to repair or improve your car, only to make it worse? It could be a wrenching job gone wrong, a crash, a wrong turn, an ill-advised “performance mod” … you name it.
See you in the comments!
1986 Pontiac 6000.
Installed a fuel filter backwards.
I had a 2009 Honda Fit (base model, man trans) for about 13 years since new. I had a self-imposed rule that anytime something wore out, I would use that as an opportunity to upgrade to a “better”, more performance oriented replacement. That worked well for suspension (added Bilstein coilovers when the shocks wore out and the stock springs rusted through), for brakes (performance Hawk pads, cross drilled rotors, stainless brake lines, and even for interior parts (upgraded to some mint Civic Si seats when my fat ass wore the stock seats flat.).
BUT, when it was time to replace some worn out motor mounts, my plan completely backfired. Instead of replacing the stock mounts with OEM, I did my research and went with a complete set of poly mounts from a company called Innovative Mounts. Big mistake. Despite opting for one of their softer compounds for daily driving, they completely changed the character of the car for the absolute worst. Buzzy. Rattly. Loud. Terrible. I immediately regretted the install, but decided to wait it out and let them loosen up a bit as forum experts said they would do over time. Within 6 months of slow daily driving, they only got worse — to the point of completely shredding themselves to pieces. If they couldn’t handle all 117 neck-snapping, bushing ripping HP that my little Fit reliably delivered, I can’t imagine how they worked on any other car that made more power than a mid-sized motorcycle.
Lesson learned: OEM motor mounts or (literal) bust.
The Evo needs new motor mounts and I should probably source some before they’re impossible to find…
Definitely depends on the car. Cherokee XJ OEM motor mounts are quite terrible, fail quickly, and feel soft and twisty. Some nice poly mounts were a nice upgrade.
Fool me once…
When I did the first oil change on my Mercedes R-class (with OM 642) , I put the oil seal for filter in the wrong groove. This decision led to a pressurized oil explosion about 5 miles later down the road and a tow home.
Also on this list is some questionable repairs on my Peugeot 505 wagon, including replacing the rear differential with a used one that has a bad pinion bearing and makes quite a racket. I had thought that by replacing the u-joint, transmission mount, torque tube bearing, and rear end I would solve all my driveline noise at once. Instead, I traded a minor clunking for a whine…
Replaced a filter in my boat and the old filter gasket stuck to the block. The mess was as you would expect – will not make that mistake ever again.
“Accidentally”?
Try on purpose. I welded the diff on my very first car, a 1990 240sx that was bone stock… I mean, it was a blast, but it definitely made the car worse to drive as a daily haha.
I really don’t get why lockers aren’t more popular with drift guys, I’ve only seen a few drift cars with an E-locker online, but they seem like the perfect solution to the problem with welded diffs.
AFAIK, lockers aren’t designed for high speed driving and limit your ability to control the car on longer corners. LSD’s are more predictable.
I bought a used 1986 Civic coupe that was in great shape. I decided to upgrade the suspension and rims, and put strut bars on the front and back, and oh man it was a fun little car to drive!
Unfortunately it became a break-in magnet and it was broken into 4 times the following 6 months. Smashed windshield, side doors damaged from unsuccessful slim jimming, steering column destroyed, you name it.
It was never stolen though because I put an alternator kill switch on it too, which was well hidden. I paid almost as much fix the damage to it after being broken into so many times than I did for the car and the upgrades combined. Ended up selling it to a Honda mechanic.
So yeah, upgrading the car made it ultimately worse for me. 🙁
At some point, we tried fixing the VW’s carb with a wood screw somehow. No, I don’t know what logic was involved. There is no logic. Only wagen.
Yeah, I put one of the aftermarket ignition systems (Lucas?) on my SC300 that claimed to increase power AND efficiency — because, you know, the engineers at Toyota clearly didn’t have that figured out.
The module left me stranded so I ripped it all out with the exception of the nice looking plug wires…
I once crashed my car into a Volkswagen. That was accidental and it definitely made the car worse
When I was 16, I crashed my Dad’s Volkswagen into a car. That definitely made EVERYTHING worse.
Yup. I’ve been trying to make custom, longer sway bar links for my 6th gen Off Road Camaro build, and they keep getting loose.
Originally, I started with some adjustable links from BMR, in a typical male and female layout with one jam nut. They were designed for lowering, not lifting, so they are of course shorter than the original links.
My great idea was to take out the male rod end and replace it with a separate threaded rod and then use another female end to get the length I needed. Turns out, this didn’t work. You need to have two jam nuts and a custom threaded rod with right and left handed threads with two jam nuts to keep it together.
The result? My Camaro now creaks and groans after repeated use, and the sway bar links are uneven on top of that, resulting in some weird handling.
The pleasures of trial and erroring this build into existence
You mean pretty much anything I’ve ever done to my cars? Lol
The valve cover in the Sonata over this past weeked (ok, not my car but still). It originally had a crack that had been badly patched with silicone, which was continuing to leak because it didn’t seal a damn thing. I cleaned everything thoroughly and used JB Weld plastic bonder to seal the crack back together. This was the escapade with the torque wrench that never torqued out, snapping a bolt. I quintupled checked the cover for new or regressive cracking after that little prize moment.
I took that thing on and off three times, I think. Maybe four. Whatever the case, the last time was most definitely done in anger, and I have a more than as sneaking suspicion the timing chain bumped the gasket just the tiniest bit and now it’s not sealed properly, as evidenced by the pictures from my sister.
I told her I’m 99% sure it just needs to be reseated because it’s tricky to install, going over the timing chain but under an unbending refrigerant hose, a passage that is virtually always smaller between any arbitrary two points than the valve cover is tall. As such, there’s a high chance that wanting to, ahem, clear out space in the driveway, I bumped it that last time.
It didn’t leak a drop in the test drive and there was no further evidence of oil intrusion into the spark plug wells, but she also didn’t give it the beans like I asked in the test drive, choosing instead to putter mildly, so who the hell knows. Now she’s convinced she knows it’s the valve cover, and honestly, whatever.
She sends me a text “I bought a 10mm socket and I can’t tighten the bolts any more.” Fuck! No! I specifically said I think it’s the gasket, don’t touch the bolts unless you’re loosening them to retry fitting the cover. I had literally told her that four times at that point. If she’s not gonna listen, that’s on her.
So yeah, it’s been a few days, and I’m considering just never talking to her again. Not to be a shithead that abandons their work for good or for ill, but because it just seems like a happier, simpler life if I do so.
That and the time I took the Sentra apart and it never ran again, but that was palliative care/a learning experience, so I’m okay with that.
I need a spoiler tag/editor/therapist, yikes.
Without risking further inflammation, can I say I enjoyed the purchasing that specific-size socket part of this?
I kinda expected to also see “did you know you can buy just this one? But they were nearly out!”
Haha, it’s all fair game. Clearly, the car wasn’t my actual problem that weekend 😉
I put fans on the heat exchanger for my supercharger..no noticeable difference in heatsoak but they are much louder than anticipated and are clearly audible with the windows down even over the V8. I am probably removing them soon and putting them on the oil cooler in my Mazdaspeed instead.
I mean, I didn’t replace it myself, but I bought and had some guys in my shop replace my lower radiator bracket in my ’06 Dakota because it was pretty well rusted out.
The cob-job that I got out of it was far worse than what came out of it, somehow. Still held on though!
We just had to replace the clutch and flywheel in our ’16 Jeep Renegade (go ahead, laugh it up. But one of the reasons we bought it was the then available manual). The stock flywheel is a dual mass unit that retails for 1500 bucks. Clutch Masters makes a slightly lighter single mass replacement for less than half that. So I can’t say we quite made the Jeep “worse” but there are more fun little noises and vibrations that the dual mass part was definitely tuning out. But also, 1500 goddamn dollars for a flywheel is outrageous.
Laugh it up? Never…a manual Jeep Renegade is the best! Or rather really really good; the best would be one with a manual AND those bitchin’ removable roof panels.
It’s been mostly good. Well, up until early this year when it lunched on a bit of exhaust valve. That was unexpected. I’m of a mind to send pics to David Tracy. I’ve got the offending valve on my desk. Mechanic really could figure what caused it. I’m lucky the little valve bit didn’t cause trouble in the turbo downstream.
I’m convinced in a decade or so, the Renegade will be held up as a minor-key classic by enthusiasts, along the same lines that the Bronco Sport is shaping up to be.
A good all-around reasonable combination of attributes, can be actually fun, and a fairly rare example of a vehicle that provides the actual “sport” in “SUV.”
Gotta agree that’s something else re the flywheels’ price…I guess there’s more Italian in her than we might expect. I can get a Ford Racing Performance Parts flywheel for my Mustang for like maybe $500.
Oh, the Italian in it makes for the fun AND the weirdness (see above valve comment and that it sometimes switches the info screens to Italian all by itself).
Wait, you’re telling me you still paid $700 for a flywheel?
Not quite, it was $650.
$1500!!! The clutch for my 80000 lb semi costs $1000!
Put an oversized carburetor & too-large exhaust—complete with a Cherry Bomb—on a 4 banger. It made good noises, and scared deer, but was sluggish off the line & the exhaust drone meant I didn’t want to take trips in it
“Scared deer,” huh?
You might want to offer the car to that “Torchinsky” guy….
Considering they have taken out the Pao twice and the XB once, it is clear to me that Torch has done something to enrage all of deerdom and he is being targeted. You think his heart just developed an issue? That was a deer black ops mission. Bambi 007, license to kill.
I saw a stack of Cherry Bombs at an Advance Auto the other day and was amazed – I can’t imagine what they must sound like on the modern engines whomever would buy one at the store would have.
What leads you to believe that 1. People with old cars can’t buy a muffler at Advance and 2. It would sound especially different on newer cars vs older cars?
Oh absolutely. When the muffler rusted off my K1500, rather than replace the entire exhaust (which I should have done), I cut out the muffler and replaced it. Two weeks later the driver side exhaust donut broke. I put a new donut in on both sides but didn’t replace the pipes. Then , a month later, the element inside the car broke off and plugged the exhaust. Cut off the cats but still didn’t replace the rest of the exhaust. I think I’ve done a total of 6 repairs on an exhaust system that has about 250000 miles on it, and I always ask myself “why?” Why not replace the whole exhaust so I dont have to keep repairing it? I still am not sure the answer. What I do know is that there’s a flex pipe under that has an annoying leak, so fundamentally I’ve made the truck worse by being a cheap bastard.
I hear ya on cheap bastard exhaust repairs. My hatch’s muffler rusted through around 130k miles, so I dropped a stainless muffler in there. The thought was it would pay for itself at 260k miles when I wouldn’t need to replace the muffler again.
Now that I’m nearing 260k miles the muffler is fine, but the rest of the exhaust is a rusty mess. I keep patching holes because the whole pipe between the headers and the muffler is one piece, and I don’t want to replace the catalytic converter… but there’s not enough good metal left to weld the cat to a new pipe. So once a year I go under there, patch the holes, and enjoy my lack of exhaust leaks for another 3 months before the car starts sounding like shit again.
I felt like the Mondial’s front seats were unnecessarily stubborn, and discovered that they were switched left/right! I removed them, greased up the tracks, and reinstalled them, losing one of the bolts inside the anchor in the process. Upon testing, they both promptly locked in place. Now they both flip forward for backseat access, but one is only secured by three bolts and my knees touch the steering column. And the brackets block the bolts so I can’t get it out to analyze!
Have You Ever Accidentally Made Your Car Worse?
(looks left . . . looks right . . . confirms wife is not in the room)
Every time I give my mother-in-law a ride.
Only if you consider putting $5,000 worth of flip out screen, subs, and amps in a 1994 Geo Prism “worse.”
I wouldn’t. Especially in a car like that where there’s really nothing to listen to except road noise. Always been a fan of good car audio. I’ve replaced almost every factory speaker in my S5 and added a JL 10 because the sportback factory sub is comically small.
That’s definitely not worse. A huge win in my book.
the middle muffler in my 240, Svenskefaen, rusted through where the exhaust meets the muffler, and getting it off meant grinding off the bolts on the cat. the cat was already gutted so I replaced it with a badly-welded race pipe with a sus O2 sensor bung. this “repair” “completed”, the car still sounded like a goddamned tractor.
it turns out the downpipe also rusted out so badly that I got pulled over for a noise violation despite actively trying to drive quietly; my attempted tape patch failed mid-drive and that’s exactly when the cops appeared in my rearview. I’d also uh, failed to update my registration, so that was a $500 experience. rather than buy a new downpipe with the $500 I no longer had, I attempted to weld a patch over the worst of the holes. this categorically did not work, and also made the holes totally inaccessible for further repair attempts.
finally, removing and reinstalling the downpipe in situ meant that the manifold flange gasket wasn’t doing anything; you could feel the exhaust pulses on your hand in the engine bay and the car was still impossible to have a conversation in.
ultimately, months of picking at the issue and half-assing repair work would have been avoided with a $250 exhaust kit from iPD and it would all work properly; the Volvo is currently parked in my driveway, still sounds like a tractor, and I’m dailying the Magnum.
Yes. Several times. In most cases I am repairing my repair.
But I persist!
In most cases I am repairing previous owners’ “repairs.” Thus far almost every single problem my car has had has been a direct result of someone else’s bad idea.
I am apologizing in advance, should you find your way into a former car I worked on. Avoid Saabs and Volvos to be safe.
A year or two ago, I tried to replace the wiring harness in my 1966 Thunderbird. I did not know what I was doing, but I bought multiple assembly and wiring guides for the car to aid me.
This was… a bad idea. It turns out removing the dashboard in a ’66 T-bird is a massive pain in the hindquarters. It’s like trying to solve a puzzle with a million pieces that have to be removed in a specific order, which is always wrong, while doing hot yoga positions from hell and sweating your balls off.
So instead of replacing a single wire, I trashed the interior of my car for no reason, didn’t fix anything, and disabled one of my two horn buttons permanently by accident, so I gave up and sent the car to a mechanic to get the car moving electrons properly.
Months later, I called the mechanic and he admitted they had no time to work on an ancient car like that and had only managed to fix the headlights and turn signals, but hadn’t gotten around to fixing the power windows or installing the radio. So I said I’ll finish the rest myself, paid them for what they did do, and took the car back.
As of now, the car’s interior is still in shambles, the windows still don’t work, there’s still no radio, and I have in fact intentionally removed the wire powering the power window switch as it turns out that was a sketchy “fix” from a previous owner that had already melted multiple wires and posed a massive fire hazard. So, in that case I made the car worse, but a better safer worse.
I won’t be able to address any of that properly for a long while yet, since the car has since been rear-ended and now I have a whole new list of things to fix before I get to the interior and electrical system. Sigh…
Back in high school, a guy came into the gas station where I worked. In the back of his truck I noticed a gorgeous set of mag wheels, which he offered to sell to me. I didn’t need them, but I had to have them and the price was great. The lug pattern fit just fine so I bought them and put them on my car. Man they looked awesome. Unfortunately, the wheel offset transferred the load too far outboard and I quickly fried my bearings. I had no idea what wheel offset was … until then.
Accidental? No. On purpose? Yes, of course.
I’ve lowered my car to the point where I have to put real thought into where I can and cannot go but it’s also haven’t had this much fun with my car in years. Sometimes it’s fun to have something that’s a bit inconvenient for no reason other than it looks cool.
Put a short shifter in my Miata, and forgot one of the shims/bushings, so it would constantly pop out of the shift turret. That was a long couple months before I diagnosed it.