Last night, a reader and I did some high-quality wrenching on my 1954 Willys CJ-3B ahead of my wedding next month, and something happened that has ruined far, far, far too many days in my life. So here I am venting, and giving you, too, an opportunity to lament your worst wrenching annoyances.
This is something I’ve had trouble with for years, especially since I spent the better part of a decade in Michigan: Brake fittings seizing to brake lines.
If you’re unfamiliar, with what I’m talking about, you see this brake line fitting slipped over this brake line?
Its job is to squeeze that flared part of the brake line against the inverted flare in the master cylinder or wheel cylinder. Here you can see where the fitting threads in, squishing the flare you see above against the conical surface you see below:
Notice in the photo of the brake line that the fitting is separate from the line — it just slides over top. This is important, because you don’t want to twist the brake line, or it will brake. So when you tighten that fitting in the master cylinder (or wheel cylinder like the one shown directly above), the brake line doesn’t spin at all, it just gets squished against that conical surface to create a seal.
The problem is that those brake lines often will seize to the fittings, and if that happens, you aren’t able to loosen the fitting from the master cylinder or wheel cylinder without twisting, and thus shearing, the brake line. The result? You have to replace the brake line, which is a huge pain in the butt.
I’ve had various levels of success using heat and a vice grip to get the brake line to stay in place while I hold the fitting, but like last night, it doesn’t always work, meaning the small job of replacing my master cylinder just became a significantly bigger job.
D’oh!
This is among my least favorite annoyances that occur while wrenching. I also hate breaking bolts, to be clear, but at least with bolts you can heat them up cherry red, get vice grips on them, and be a bit rougher without worrying about squishing them like you do with a brake line.
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Anyway, let out your wrenching frustration in the comments!
When you drop something, but it never hits the ground…
It’s always lodged someplace dark and inaccessible by hands. If you try to use a magnet, that’s when you discover it’s either nonferrous, or it’s completely surrounded by ferrous metal, so the magnet just sticks to that instead.
And of course, whatever it was that you dropped, it was the last one. The last one you needed to install, maybe the last one the parts store had, maybe the last one in existence. It’s just the last one.
*clang sound in engine bay*
Nearby radio: “This just in, no 10mm sockets are in stock in any stores for 500 miles away from [exact town you’re in]. That’s right [your first and last name], specifically, that 10mm socket that just fell into the infinite void in your engine bay, is the last one for 500 miles. Except for these ones owned by [several specific people you hate].”
Having kids. I barely have time to keep my regular cars doing good, let alone work on my old Lincoln.
Just this morning; driver’s side headlight is out. Unfortunately, modern crash structures, and I only have one wrist per arm. I am happily paying someone to actually do it tomorrow.
Needing a unique tool and then not being able to find a reliable version of that tool.
I bought my Mini Cooper used and it had aftermarket wheels with Bimecc 10-spline lug nuts. There was no lug bolt key/socket with the car, so I had to buy one. Apparently Bimecc is the only maker of the 10-spline design and they make shitty sockets. Any version I found included reviews that the sockets split the first time the reviewer used them.
So naturally, I just bought the best reviewed version I could find on Amazon. Got the tires off for rotating without issues. I was extreeeeemely fortunate that I got all the tires bolted back on before the socket split on the very last bolt. I was using a torque wrench, so I know I wasn’t being careless on the last one and over torquing. But damn, that was close.
I have not found these stupid keys at any brick and mortar store, so I have to buy it online. If I was smart, I would have bought replacement hex lug bolts. Next time I will.
My used Kia came with aftermarket lock nuts and at least has the key included. Replaced those with standard nuts when I put snow tires on.
Also the joy of ford 2 piece nuts. The ones on my mustang lasted 8 or so years before I tossed them when I struggled getting one off.
Two things:
1) Finding the engineers designed a part that requires a highly specialized, dealer only tool for no reason other than to frustrate home wrenchers.
2) Breaking a part that is expensive or worse, unobtanium. At least most brake lines are dirt cheap and can be easily sourced even if they need a bit of customization.
Edit:
OK three things:
Finding the guy who was there before rounded off every single hex because he tried to get away with using standard tools on a metric car (or vice versa). Or forced a coarse threaded bolt into a fine threaded hole. And of course locktite or grease being an extra step never happened so now add rust or galvanic corrosion for extra fun.
It’s not so much of a problem now but back in the day I ran into it a few times.
Thanks DAD!
Damnit, now it’s FOUR things:
Haynes/Chilton manuals that glaze over the hard stuff or leave out key details. Like DRAIN THE TRANSMISSION OF FLUID BEFORE REMOVAL!!. Because when you tilt the transmission to get it out all the oil will otherwise get dumped out the driveshaft onto your head.
Oh and those old cars used oil made from sperm whales. And that shit does NOT wash out! Which my friends is why Cheap Bastard had to go to school the next day with a head full of greasy, frizzy hair smelling like a rotting dead whale.
My manuals are filled with margin notes I make to try to capture all the stuff that went wrong/wasn’t covered in any detail. I even draw little triangle-exclamation point symbols like in owner’s manuals to remind me of something really critical I learned the hard way. Also, lots of notes on which size wrench to use, as the manuals almost never cover that.
One of the reasons I resist buying electronic versions of them, no matter how much Haynes tries to get me to do it.
“One of the reasons I resist buying electronic versions of them, no matter how much Haynes tries to get me to do it.”
Counterpoint: You might be able to convert those manuals into an editable format and write in the corrections directly in whatever font or color you like.
Most of my marginalia in my manuals is literally written in blood.
It’s a fair point and I probably should try one out, just to see how I like them. I guess I just enjoy the tactile nature of the physical books and being able to quickly leaf back and forth.
But I do use a hybrid approach as I think a few others here do, utilizing Google Keep as well; I like its simplicity and it’s great for notes on things where you end up having to go to the autoparts store during the course of your repair or where you might get delayed.
Like I currently have an extensive write-up with pics on the correct order in which to reinstall the the underbody paneling on my Porsche. I haven’t touched it in months, and I’d have forgotten if I hadn’t put it all down at the time.
Another advantage to digital format: Imbedded pictures and video.
Chilton manual has bitten me in the ass more than once!
One, what you describe with the tranny. Removing a manual 4 from a Datsun 510 sedan to rep[lace the clutch, I figured that the tranny couldn’t weigh more than fifty pounds, so just got under there on a creeper and went to lower it to my chest. Twenty-year-old transmission oil not only stinks, but the stink never washes out.
Two, Chilton never mentioned that the chain tensioner for the 1600 OHC of the aforementioned 510 had to be blocked out before separating the chain. My simple afternoon head gasket job became a week long odyssey of cursing and improvising how to get that chain back from the depths of the housing without pulling the engine–not an option at the time.
I hear you. Most of my HS friends were into 510s.
Finding out what you planned on doing won’t work. The older the car, the more likely you are going to find something you don’t expect. Ends up you either don’t have the right tools or parts, completely derailing the project.
Older cars sometimes it’s just lack of good documentation on what was done with year to year changes of available options. But it could also be due to a prior owner changing the part once already with a different one.
Either way, stops the project in it’s tracks until you can come up with a new plan/tools/parts.
Cross threaded bolts or nuts in impossible locations. Every other fastener except the most inaccessible location has been loosened. That last one….”Bleep, bleep that bleeping bleep!” My tap and die set has saved my tail enough to make me forget how much it was. Whatever it cost, it was totally worth it.
”you don’t want to twist the brake line or it will brake” classic!
Sheared off a total of 4 head bolts in one wrenching session on my Olds 442. Of course it would happen on a weekend. Learned how to use an extractor once the stored one on Monday. Great fun. Also snapping off bleed screws, and brake line ends. Then discovering the brake lines were all so rotted they had to be replaced.
Know what’s worse than a brake line fitting seizing? Finding out that no one in this country carries that oddball British thread fitting last used on a production car in 1973.
This seems to becoming more and more common, at least in my experience: aged plastic parts held on by clips that invariably don’t survive removal. The functional element of whatever the part still works fine, but there’s now no way to keep it where it belongs when you put it back.
Feelings range from annoyed at having to replace an otherwise working part to dejected when it’s some piece of unobtainium trim or whatever, even if you’re the only one who’ll actually ever know.
Those half-done repairs bother me the most, where functionally it looks ok but I’m the only one who knows it wasn’t completely fixed or can’t be undone or whatever. Cognitive dissonance is my favorite!
And I’m the kinda guy who’s doing his best to learn to live with things not being perfect, after too many times of trying extra hard to get it just right, only to irreparably damage things and then being upset I just couldn’t leave well enough alone in the first place.
One time my dad and I were trying to change my brakes on my 2003 civic (this was like 4 years ago so it wasn’t ancient but aged a bit) and a cop walks up with a giant tire iron after seeing us struggle with one of the lugs. I don’t especially love cops and what happened next would have happened to me regardless but: “Heh, now THIS is how you get a stubborn bolt loose-”
And like that, the bolt had snapped, head still in the rotor. (We asked our mechanic about fixing it and he told us that while it’s not something they could legally do, it’d be easier and cheaper to dremmel out a little bit of metal covering it from behind and swap the bolts from there. It fucking sucked.)
“What Are The Most Annoying Things That Can Happen When Wrenching On An Old Car?”
I would have thought running out of money and skin on the knuckles…
Good answer!
If I don’t sacrifice blood at least once every time I work on my car, I will anger the car gods.
Blood for the car gods!
It’s a requirement of wrenching. Blood must be spilled for a successful session.
It always find it amusing when I find blood on parts and have no idea where I cut myself. I mean, I curse and complain that I don’t have time to bleed before dumping on some rubbing alcohol and making a bandage from electrical tape and paper towels as I never have anything else at hand, but there’s humor in the source of the blood being unnoticeable in the chaos of general bruises, scrapes, and so on.
I’ve been working on a patent for a device that would dispense bandaids like Scotch tape on a roller. It seems feasible