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Last year the system that regulates the cylinder deactivation feature in my Honda Accord failed. Only cost $600 to repair. I was seriously afraid the problem had trashed the engine.
About two days after I bought my Jaguar the left half of the instrument display died. A replacement was not going to be cheap, and I feared a pretty significant labor bill on top of that.
As it turns out all I needed to do to remove the instrument cluster was to telescope the steering wheel all the way out, remove the knee panel, and take out four 8mm bolts. I then violated the stringent warnings on the trusty Lucas electronics sticker and opened up the cluster. There I found a very large transformer and immediately suspected that some of the ancient solder joints had cracked. I reflowed all the power and ground traces, put it back together and it has functioned flawlessly ever since. Cost: essentially free, but whatever the electricity and a little bit of solder was worth.
It was definitely one of my prouder accomplishments in wrenching. Even my Jag mechanic was impressed.
Taking the wheel off is nerve-wracking.
I did it twice on my Prius v.
The first time to replace the turn signal stalk with one with the fog light switch went flawlessly.
The second time was to replace the wiper stalk with a matching one (was an aesthetic thing because I’m stupidly picky).
But, I forgot to disconnect two little tabs while taking the wheel off that time…and it broke the clock spring. That was roughly $700 for the part and another ~$200 for labor at the dealership.
Hoping that will remain “the most expensive mistake I’ve ever made, automotive-related or not” for a while.
The analog odometer on my W124 stopped working. I assumed a new instrument cluster for old German car money, if I could even find one. Turns out to be a common issue when a plastic gear splits and loosens on its shaft, replacement gears available for $12. But wait…
The cracked gear has a hub that’s a perfect press-fit into an M5 washer. Not only does this keep the gear tightly on the spindle again, it actually IMPROVES the design because it can’t split open again.
Total cost: $0.03.
Had a similar experience on my Porsche 993 – plastic gear teeth deform/break – and while I had to shell out about $25 for a new (much better) gear and then spend some nerve-wracking hours doing basically watch repair, it was so gratifying to be able to fix it myself/that cheaply.
My Saab 9-5 started gushing coolant after any more than five minutes of driving. Based on some forum research, I thought I was due for a head gasket job or a full cooling system refresh. A $5 replacement coolant tank cap fixed all my problems.
My friend had an overheating Outback due to the water pump dumping everything out at its seal to the block. $800 job at any garage. She ended up fixing the problem for about $75 in parts (including a new timing belt) by *checks notes* having me do the work in exchange for two bags of pierogis. Win-win.
My Boxster had a vibration at high speed shortly after a “lawn mowing excursion” on a track day. Thought I had possibly thrown a wheel weight. But then I remembered there was some grass sticking out of the edge of the wheel where it meets the tire. I had previously cleaned all that up, but wondered if there was something on the inside or stuck to the suspension, so I took it to a “no touch” car wash with jets underneath. I normally wash by hand because the car wash jest are too powerful and get past the seals, but this was worth it, as something much have gotten blown out by the underside jets. No more vibration. So I guess cost $10.
Had the same issue after an unexpected lawnmowing expedition in my old Envoy. Unfortunately I was not that smart and had it towed to a shop, where a mechanic got to inform me that the problem was just some mud caked on the wheels. That was not a fun bill to pay.
I had prior experience of a sort. During the winter I had taken a car in for some routine service, and had to navigate some snow-covered side streets to get to the freeway. On the freeway the car drove like I had lost wheel weights on both fronts, so I got off the freeway and turned around to go back to the dealer. Part way to the dealer it cleared up – I figured it was snow stuck in the wheels that eventually melted.
I decided to attach my trickle charger’s mounted lead to my motorcycle’s battery (the part that allows you to simply connect via a single socket vs putting the alligator clips on the terminals) as I park her fairly close to a wall outlet now. No more taking off the seat I figured.
One day I disconnect, then take her out. Almost immediately, I notice hesitation, the tach starts weirdly jumping around, and she has a very uneven idle. I’m no stranger to problems like this, so I start trying to mentally figure out what it might be as well as wonder if my tow guy will be able to come get her/me.
Then it dawns on me “what’s changed since the last time I rode?”. So I lurch into a parking lot, pop the seat off, and remove the lead. She fires right up and everything is fine again.
I still don’t fully understand what happened, but I’m relieved it was that cheap n easy to fix.
Exhaust on the wife’s 2007 Corolla last weekend. The muffler mounting flange rusted off the main intermediate pipe. Cut it clean with a wafer wheel, did the same on the muffler pipe. A $10 stainless band type clamp, 40 minutes and good to go.
Tire plug. It was raining buckets that night on I-95 South in NC when I ran over what turned out to be a twisted S hook from a load tie-down – it was essentially turned into a caltrop. Thankfully, I was a 1/4 mile from an exit that happened to have an old-school former Exxon gas station with a garage. By the time I pulled into the parking lot my tire was at about 5 PSI. The attendant was an old-timer with hands that looked like leather. He asked me to pull around to the front under the awning, and he brought out the floor jack and airgun. In a matter of minutes he had the wheel off and had pulled out the offending metal. He grabbed a plug kit from behind the counter, near the Lance cracker display, and proceeded to fix the tire and air it back up. Total time was likely less than 10 minutes. I told him I would go buy a new tire in Durham the next day, but he told me it wasn’t necessary.
He charged me $8, I gave him a $20.
Take your upvote for your use of “caltrop” – what a perfect, evocative term to describe it!
I keep a tire plug kit at the house, it’s saved me and friends a few tires over the years.
Upvote for old timer with leather hands. This man has seen things.
Plugs have a bad rap but I’ve had a lot of success using them. I had one that lasted 5 or 6 years without any leaks. Should I have taken it in for a proper patch at some point? Maybe, I always figured if it leaked I would but it never did. We also frequently use them at my work on trailer tires without issue.
I keep a plug kit, pliers and a compressor in all my cars. If it’s on the front, you don’t even have to remove the tire, just find a place you can turn in circles.
In 2019 I replaced a power mirror for $20 for a new one. I’m still confused how it was so cheap.
I did one on my old Econoline for $35 in 2016 or so. I also felt like I’d gotten away with murder. And that was from freakin’ Amazon but I doubt anyone could tell. Literally the only difference was a slightly different pitched electronic whine when adjusting that mirror versus the factory one opposite.
Receiver hitch for 2020 Grand Cherokee. Mopar part is $409 plus $75 shipping. This hitch goes through the bumper and requires a new panel after the cutout.
OR, Curt Class 3 hitch – $175 on Amazon with free 2 day shipping (Prime members only). Took 10 minutes to mount and lies snug up under bumper, no cutting. Easiest car project of my life.
While in college and with no place to work on a car my 85 accord with 240K miles on it developed a power steering leak where it lost all 8ish ounces in 2 weeks. I took it to a local mechanic to see if there’s a quick fix like replacing a hose or tightening a clamp. The mechanic calls me back and says the leak is coming from the rack itself, they cost $1100 just in parts, and at $5/qt and 1 qt / month it’ll take me about a decade to recoup that cost so I can come by and pick it up whenever I want no charge.
Upvote for the pure honesty.
On that note – the rack in my e39 was leaking horrifically, to the point where it wasn’t really ignorable anymore. A rack was about $230, which seemed pretty cheap to me. However, everyone says that the job to replace a rack in an e39 is horrible. There are forum posts that claim it’s an engine-out job, and I’ve seen people literally scrap the car because they got stalled in the middle of a rack replacement. I basically didn’t drive the car for two years because I was dreading it so much.
I jack the car up, unbolt the engine mounts, lifted the engine a few inches, unbolted the rack, swapped the new one in, tightened up the hoses, and lowered the engine. It took maybe 2 hours, and that included me taking an hour to clean the underside of the car. I have no idea what sorcery I figured out, as I’m not a great wrench, but… I was more than pleasantly surprised.
Not Specific, but every time I cross shop name brand parts between Rock Auto and *anywhere else* it always shocks me how cheap you can get good parts, or how REALLY cheap you can get questionable parts.
Seriously! My 1972 Super Beetle needs new brake drums, and to my surprise they had a set of Brembos (I didn’t even know they made drums) for cheaper than most of the VW specialty places sold their no-name parts.
My favorite thing is once I have a few “needs” in cart from a single shipping location for any given car, I’ll go to the closeout specials and just add anything I could even remotely need if it won’t ship separately and is significantly discounted. Doing things like that has gotten me a nice stash of blade fuses and common size interior/tail/marker size bulbs for I something like $3 total that are so nice to have on hand to avoid a trip to Advance Auto for something like a standard 10A fuse that’ll be $2.75 for 3.
Ha – I have a stash of wiper blades and assorted fuses/relays b/c exactly that strategy!
I get trade pricing at the local NAPA through my work and it is basically the same as Rock Auto pricing. The amount of markup for retail customers at parts stores is really high.
January, -40 and the V50 didn’t want to start, boosted it and drove 20km home with no heat- discovered there was no coolant- parking spot at work was covered in blue coolant. Next day car would start for a second and quit- waited until it got warmer and at -15 I got it started, it ran horrible for a while and then ran fine- I was sure I had cooked the headgasket but it was the cheapo Amazon coolant tank cap hat allowed all the coolant to come out- I refilled and have put 18000km on it since without a hiccup
The most recent one I can think of happened at a rallycross in a field earlier this year. Started hearing a weird noise near the end of a lap, and pulled in to see what it was. Some kind of clicking that seemed to follow wheel speed?
Looked around and couldn’t find anything wrong, until I found a pebble wedged somewhere, can’t even remember where now. Took that out, and the noise was gone.
Ha! I had a girlfriend with a convertible who also lived at an apartment with a gravel parking lot – I eventually figured it out first time it happened, and then afterward, I would often stop at the same place in her neighborhood to pick out the rock wedged into the tread.
If her car hadn’t been open-top, who knows how long it would have taken for me to figure it out.
Cool, I can still post, cuz I’m a cheapo.
Just got my car back from a Fuel Filter and Fuel Pump replacement. $250 total, way under the expected (all cars) according to the internet. Half that was for the parts.
Turns out, via YouTube, that the FF and FP are accessible from under the driver-side’s rear seat. I’d have done it, but electrical stuff next to gasoline makes me nervous.
Yeah, it’s funny how the prices for anything fuel-related are often sky-high. I think it’s b/c shops (esp. dealers) figure it sounds absolutely scary and threatening to most car owners and they won’t question it.
On my project Ford Explorer, the airbag light had been on since the day I got it. It had many other problems, so I ignored that until I fixed all the other stuff to get it running and driving. I finally was at the point where I started digging into the airbag issue, but couldn’t figure out what the issue was as everything was showing up fine in Forscan except the side airbags which my car wasn’t equipped with. I was scouring the Internet trying to figure out the issue when I ran across a comment on a forum stating that models without the side airbags have the same wiring harness, but with resistors plugged into the airbag connector under the front seats – and Ford put them right where people’s feet would reach and are easy to knock off as they don’t seat fully. Sure enough, the resistor wasn’t fully seated under the driver seat and clicking it in turned off the light. Much better than the hundreds-to-thousands of dollars for any other part of the airbag system…
I had the same issue with the same fix on my Frontier
I recently had this terrible vibration in my 4Runner when in gear. I thought I had a serious drivetrain issue, but on further investigation it turned out there were some small rocks & debris caught between the exhaust crossover pipe and aftermarket steel skid plate. I removed the skid to clean it out and no more noise.
A few years back I had a coolant leak in my Volvo, I thought it was the radiator or something serios, turned out a small coolant hose had a slight split, and was spitting out coolant pretty good. Cost about 2 bucks for a short length of hose and 5 mil to replace it.
My 4th gen Firebird had a headlight problem, one of the pop-up headlights would not go up or down, the motor would just keep spinning but nothing would happen. Turns out the drive gear only wears on one side, all I had to do was rotate the gear 180 degrees to the fresh side and problem solved.
I did the same on my Trans Am, though eventually the other side started losing teeth since half of it was worn off making it fragile. I found a guy locally (head of the local F-body club) who made replacement brass gears for $20 to replace the stock nylon gear and tossed those in to fix the issue. After looking into how much a replacement headlight motor was from the dealer, the $20 gears seemed almost free.
YES! I remember the brass gears. I regret not getting a pair at the time, I wonder if they’re still available. I hardly drive the car, so I’m not really worried about. It took over a decade of daily use to wear in the first place, and I still haven’t had to switch the other gear yet. It’d nice to have the brass gears on hand just in case though.
I think the same gears were used in both the Firebird and the C5 Corvette, so you might still be able to get some if you search for C5 headlight gears.
I had a focus wagon that I delivered pizza in for a while (loved that thing) that had rotting rocker panels from the winter salts here in PA.
When they started failing state inspections for any visible body rust, I figured I’d have to get new ones, or at least some junkyard rockers and re-spray them… Asked my step-grandpa about it (car was in his name at the time, long story) and he said he’d take care of it…. $3.50 (plus the cost of inspection) later he brought it back to me with a fresh inspection sticker on the window…. “A roll of white duct tape was good enough to pass”
My 991.1 was throwing all kinds of errors, the windows started working intermittently, even the alarm would go off randomly. Reading the forums, the suggestion was that the battery was on its way out. Turns out they were right – a new battery fixed all of it.
Separately, my gf’s old Mercedes had a bent door frame from a scam tow company. She took it to a body shop who bent it back, good as new, for free!
Other day eletronic parking brake failed. Scanned and said the line was open, so thought the actuator was busted.
Got under the car, the plug was really loose, just sprayed contact cleaner on both ends and reppluged. Worked as soon as I turned igntion on.
So, it was free, a good surprise.
The AC went out on my Acura two summers ago. I wouldn’t trust myself to do AC repairs so I figured it’d be an expensive trip to the shop.
It was a relay. $8.49 and 3 minutes, and I’ve had ice-cold air ever since
Door lock actuator on my ’05 Lexus SC430 gave up. Turns out it is a common issue. Found a guide online on how to open up the motor and replace the actuator. Relatively easy job. I figure the dealer would’ve replaced the whole motor and charged me at least $1,000.
The actuator cost me $4.
My heat in my S-10 would fail in my truck when I stepped on the gas hard. Turns out the controls need vacuum, and they’d lose it with full throttle, causing the heat control to fade to cold. So going in I expected needing new HVAC controls, and I fixed it with a $1.50 of vacuum tube, replacing a small cracked piece under the hood.
Kind of amazed the ingenuity of vacuum systems in vehicles, and all they were used to manage.
One of the mods I did to the ’72 Super Beetle was replacing the stock wheels and tires with EMPI clone 8-spoke wheels and 195/50s. These helped the handling immeasurably but placed added stress on the steering box, which broke.
At the time (ages ago) new boxes were about $400. I went to a salvage yard, found another SB perched conveniently on an RX-7, and pulled the box and various ancillaries.
Took the treasure up to the front of the yard and braced for impact. I was expecting the salvage price to be about half of new, or possibly a bit more considering the SB boxes were not common.
It was almost closing time and the guy was pretty gruff. He looked over the bits and pieces and said “Twenty bucks”. Woohoo!
Friend of mine has a 96 Mustang that had horrible rev hang. We found out that the SAI was tuned to open wide when you lift the gas, presumably to make it “easier” to shift “smoothly”, or perhaps to limit engine braking.
This, of course, made it really hard to shift smoothly.
I initially thought it would require some expensive reprogramming or a full SAI delete with a block-off plate and a re-adjustment of the throttle body idle position. Instead, we drilled a small hole in a 40-cent plumbing cap, put it inside the SAI intake hose, and it fixed everything. Now it has just enough flow to adjust idle, but not enough to affect above-idle behavior in any noticeable way. The only downside is that off-throttle the car makes copious pops and bangs, almost to an obnoxious degree.
Oddly, my 02 Mustang doesn’t do this, but my ’10 Focus does hang like crazy if you let off at high revs. I’ve always thought it’s the engine braking thing myself, but have never been sure.
For modern cars with drive by wire, it’s an emissions thing. Quickly closing the throttle creates a rich spike, which emits more hydricarbons than normal. Likewise, quickly opening the throttle creates nitrous oxides due to a lean spike. So modern cars are tuned to open and close the throttle slowly to avoid thus. It’s really hard to tune out that behavior.