Peter Vieira
Wow, you're reading this? Thanks! If you're into RC cars and I seem vaguely familiar, it's because I spent over 25 years writing and editing RC car news, reviews, and tech articles in print and online. What else, what else ... I have a degree in Film Studies (useless), most of a degree in Graphic Design (useful), and I'm married to a wonderful woman with horrible taste in men. Thanks to her, we have a terrific daughter who just earned her Journalism degree and is way, waaay more together that I was at her age. Or right now.
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I live in the northern part of Canada. Nothing is a 10 minute repair, doesn’t matter what time of year it is. Unless replacing the wiper blades counts as a repair.
Really if I’m being realistic I take the estimated time of repair and then multiply it by 5 or even 10. 🙁
I was dealing with an electrical issue on my (then new-to-me) ’78 Beemer that I had isolated to the timing system: an aftermarket Hall effect sensor. The aftermarket system is highly thought of, but things go bad after years, so I wasn’t so fussed. Well I go to unbolt the timing advance unit and the little screw-cap bolt shears off. I can feel the metal going plastic and it’s a sickening feeling.
Wouldn’t you know that the bolt is on the front end of the camshaft, necessitating a bottom-end engine rebuild with a new camshaft. This is the one thing on the bike that I’ve taken to a mechanic because I simply didn’t have the time (or space) to do an engine rebuild. It’s a good thing I did, though, as there were a whole lot of other issues including a loose and damaged flywheel and a spun main journal bearing. How did I not know these were issues? Well, if you’ve ever ridden an old airhead you’ll know that they’re noisy AF and keep on ticking even if a tonne of things are wrong.
So yeah, that’s how an easy remove-and-replace job turned into a much more expensive months-long endeavour.
Once, many years I replaced the leaf spring bushings in my XJ. They had been squeaking and I had made the mistake of spraying them with WD40 to shut them up. Don’t do that, WD40 ruins rubber, use silicone spray instead.
Being naive I decided to replace rubber with poly which I was assured by the manufacturer up, down, left and sideways would be squeak free. As I was in doing the passengers shackle the captive nut that held the shackle and thus the spring broke free.Did I mention that damn nut was INSIDE the unibody? No? Well it was!
Now this was a California XJ, No rust. There was absolutely no reason for that nut to break free other than a really shitty weld. I ended up having to cut into the frame and jury rig a couple of wrenches because of course one was just a bit too big to fit. It was a complete clusterfuck. But finally, FINALLY I got the bolt out, the spring off, the old bushings removed and the new squeak free poly bushings in. I was so tired from the job I stopped at one side for the day. The correct way to fix the now loose nut would have been to tack weld it into p!ace but A) I needed a tack welded which I didn’t have and B) I’d have to drop the gas tank. Fuck that, I epoxied the shit out of that nut instead and used red locktite to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere.
BTW that nut weld was a very common thing to happen thanks to (according to the forums) Chrysler no longer giving a shit about the XJ and shifting their attention to the ZJ when my XJ was built.
The next day I drove the Jeep to work and what did I find? Poly bushings squeak WORSE than bad rubber! FUCK YOU poly bushings! No amount of tightening would help.. I really should have read the forums before going poly because of course afterwards I found lots of complaints. This is why now I read Amazon reviews.
The company had provided a tiny packet of silicone lube “in the unlikely situation some squeaking is heard”, well I went through that pretty quick and the remainder of my time with that Jeep I had to spray the bushings with silicone spray every week to get them to shut up…until I stopped giving a shit and got used to sounding like a jalopy. Rain was a godsend since the water shut the bushings up for a while.
UGH!
anything that requires a 10mm socket
But all joking aside, anything that requires some sort of specialty tool that I don’t have and didn’t know about before starting the job. Like an extra-deep thin-walled socket to take the bolts out of a front wheel hub assembly that has the bolt heads sunken into a recess in the back of the steering knuckle casting.