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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Timing belt on my ’90 Miata, should have taken a day, ended up taking three, all because the crank gear that needed replacing was rust-welded to the nose of my crankshaft, and the 5-second section of the YouTube video where the guy just slides his right off turned into nearly 2 days of fighting the bastard until it came off.
Also upgrading suspension, when I assembled the coil and spring assemblies for the rear, I forgot the washer on the shock strut right below the nut, meaning the second I lowered the car, the struts on the shocks went right through the top hats. Had to completely remove the suspension, disassemble my newly made shock and strut assemblies (yay spring compressors!), add a single washer to each, and reassemble the entire rear suspension. Mercifully, I did not make that mistake again on the fronts.
Nissan Skyline R33, Engine smoked a little if you open the throttle after overrun. Valvestem seals I though. I can probably fix them without removing the head.
Anyway, It was the piston land areas on 5 and 6 had broke, Meaning rebore, new pistons, all new bearings, had a new oil pump drive flange fitted on the crank. While there I decided on higher performance parts, So new turbo, intercooler, injectors, fuel pump, ecu, exhaust, external wastegate, head gasket and so on, And while the engine was out I figured I might as well strip the rest of the under bonnet and paint it, That’s when I found the welding that I needed to do on the strut tops, Once the welding was done I decided on a carbon fiber wing to help prevent them corroding at the bottom again. I also had to modify the front bumper for the intercooler. So I needed to paint, That’s when I decided it would look better if I painted the whole car… And so on and so forth. So yea, it wasn’t the job itself, It was just a run on of events that where all easier once the previous step was done.
My 17y/o son and his friend have been fixing his 07 Miata and the other kid’s 05 Focus in our garage on and off as needed. Every time I go out there they have been “stuck” and I say: “how about trying this” and immediately fix what had stumped them for hours. But at least they are attempting and learning as they go.
Not exactly a 10 minute job but changing the brake rotors on my Subaru STI turned into over a week when removing the caliper mounting bolt stripped the threads on 3 out of 4 aluminium Brembo calipers (known issue of galvanic corrosion).
Had to order and wait for several heli-coil insert kits and new mounting bolts to arrive. I hand tapped the new inserts in my apartment on my coffee table. Eventually got everything back together and it works great but have slight PTSD every time I even look at my brake calipers.
Ugh! This is why I hesitated ordering the rear brake kit for my G37x – it has one caliper bracket bolt that is behind a suspension arm so I have to use a box wrench and not my impact wrench, and I am also scared about getting the rotor off – I think it is the original from the factory, last time I took one look at this and just did the pads. I did the front brakes last month and even that took me twice as long as last time. If I trusted a shop to do the work I would have brought it to a professional.
Yeah, that was the first time taking the rotors off and I had read about the issues so really I should’ve been more prepared but I guess I thought I’d get lucky. Getting one of those bolts off with just a box wrench sounds rough though…best of luck if you ever attempt that lol
I got the passenger side down with few problems – I used a 2 pound hammer and a flare nut wrench – turns out the flare nut wrench hangs onto the bolt head better than the typical 12-point box wrench. Rotor popped right off, no problem. The one issue was that the bottom caliper bolt was frozen to the caliper – had to use a pulley-puller to get it off – interestingly enough I just cleaned up the bolt and hole, put some new grease on it and everything worked as intended. I got stuck on the driver’s side (where the pads are ok because the caliper bolt didn’t freeze up). I am debating the next steps – harbor freight has a stubby impact wrench I could use on the top bolt (I think), and it looks like the problematic suspension arm may be able to be swung out of the way by removing one bolt. Or maybe I will apply a LOT of heat. Really bad design to have bolts requiring 100 ft-pounds of torque (on install). Bolting on a maintenance item.
Reading this makes me feel like I should just have some helicoil kits lying around.
The helicoils came pretty quick off Amazon but for some reason none of the dealerships had those damn caliper mounting bolts in stock. They had to order them from the US (I’m in Vancouver Canada) and it took 3-4 business days
The usual trailing arm bushing on a ’98 Civic. Lower control arm bolt to the trail arm snapped off. It’s a nice looking civic but spent it’s early life in Ohio. To get the cutting wheel in there meant removing the trail arm, hub/brake and strut/spring assemblies since the bolt was rusted permanently to the welded on nut and torching it wasn’t working. When I finally got that nub cut off I declared: “I won!” Spent the rest of the night putting everything back together. 9 hours later a 45 minute job was done.
Lets see. There was the time I needed to drain water out of the headlights. Changing the bulb? Minutes. Pull the actual headlight clusters out? Disassemble the front end. Managed to do it, not break anything, reassemble and aim headlights correctly.
Don’t drive into a still puddle of water in a trailer park in the rain folks. You may get an immaculate under body wash, but it is not worth risking water pouring into the engine. In my defense, I had a Dominos sign on the roof of my car at the time.
All of them.
When I was just a kid, probably 17, my buddies and I replaced the clutch on my 1991 BMW 318is. I don’t remember much about it, other than it took all night and the clutch never felt right again after.
I can still feel your disappointment when I read this. Reminds me of some early blunders in my wrenching years.
I wanted to replace the alternator in my ’75 Merc 280E because it wasn’t working and the car had stranded me with a flat battery after driving it somewhere, and when I got it diagnosed I also got the garage around the corner to leak test and remove the gas from the AC, as I also planned to get the compressor replaced as it leaked. Ended up going in through the front, removing the AC condensor and radiator, and then while I was in there decided to replace the water pump (just in case) and rebuild the power steering pump (it was leaking). Then I couldn’t find a replacement alternator in this country so I took it somewhere to get checked and possible rebuilt. About a month later I pestered them and they said ‘oh yea, it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with it’. So the alternator went back in, everything else back in, then it was off to an AC place that had been around long enough to know what to do with the old girl. Only took like 4 months in the end.
Later I tried replacing the front springs but it turns out the right spring compressor costs so much as to make it not worthwhile to do it myself, but then the car was stuck with a front spring with the wrong spring compressor stuck inside the spring for two months until a suspension place had time to rescue me from my own poor judgement.
Works good now though.. except that it needs a brake rebuild including flare nuts on the hard lines as they are munted from trying to remove them. And a full power steering flush because I put the wrong fluid in and it hitches. And the dash needs to come out to see if I can fix the blower fan. Otherwise though, it’s great! Except that the indicators are flakey sometimes.. and.. and..
This one is embarrassing. My son’s car simply would not start and I burned about four to six hours in diagnosis and futzing around to find the problem. The actual fix took about three minutes.
As many manual transmission cars have, there is a plunger switch which the clutch pedal bar presses on and acts as an interlock to ensure the clutch pedal is depressed when starting. What I didn’t know is that there was actually a hole drilled in the metal that contained a rubber plug, presumably to be more gentle on the switch than bare metal to plunger contact. The rubber plug had fallen out never to be found and the plunger switch was simply poking through the hole when the clutch was engaged.
It took a couple of minutes to find an appropriately sized short and round headed bolt, and about a minute to insert the bolt and wrap it with electrical tape to give the plunger a nice landing. It’s worked great for about eight years now.
The exact same thing happened to me on a road trip once, may have been my super high milage 85 Accord I got for $800 as my first car? I went through a toll booth, but had to contort myself as my wallet fell through the passenger seat then slid underneath it. In the process my foot pushed the plug out and 30 minutes later after refueling at an oasis, the car won’t start. Took me 15 minutes of troubleshooting to decide to push the car away from the pump to a curb, then about 30 more minutes to find the plug wonder where it goes, and realize what happened. If I remember correctly you can’t see that the plug is missing from a convenient angle to just check out the connector is inserted and tight.
My first Civic’s brake lights quit working and took me a minute to figure out there’s those plastic/rubber pads.
Replacing the alternator on my 1993 F150. Should be a 10 minute job that turned into a much longer ordeal. The alternator bracket on these trucks are cast aluminum. After however many years the steel bolt pretty much fused with the aluminum bracket. No matter how much penetrative fluid and heat I used it wouldn’t budge. I let the fluid sit for days with generous applications between. Then like 5 days after starting I was trying to get the bolt loose and I used a little too much force and the bracket broke. The part was discontinued and I was having trouble finding a replacement until an engine popped up on Craigslist for $50. I scooped that up quickly and brought it home. Got the bracket off and got my truck running weeks after the ten minute job began.
I had plans to do a brake job and replace the worn out sway bar links on my GTI in the spring of 2023 while I was swapping on my summer wheels and tires… until I stripped out the head out of the first rotor retaining screw. Then another one. The third one came out. Then the fourth one stripped. Each one that stripped required me to drill the head off of the screw, and since I didn’t have replacement screws I stuck everything together (the retaining screws are there to keep the rotors in place on the studless hubs. Those wacky Germans). Fast forward to last fall and the winter tire changeover. I ordered new screws, broke out my drill bits and metric taps… and immediately broke a tap off in the first hub I touched. Second hub the drill bit moved and I misaligned the hole. I did replace the third screw, but I didn’t bother with the fourth. At some point, new hubs are in my future, but right now the car is fine and only I know of my shame (and now you do too).
And I never did replace the sway bar links. They sit there on my bench, silently mocking me.
Swapping winter wheels onto my daughter’s Crosstrek. Whatever moron mounted the summer wheels cross-threaded a lug nut. Was nearly impossible to get off in the first place, then had to buy and install a whole new hub….just to change the blasted wheels.
Not quite a ten minute repair, but replacing worn out (S-shaped) leaf springs. The drivers side took two days because removing the shackle bolt turned out to be a complete nightmare. Passenger side took fifteen minutes.
Another was a rear wheel hub on a friend’s Mazda6. Six minutes to get everything off to remove the hub, but four hours of penetrating oil, butane torching, and hammering to get the rusty hub off. Like the leaf springs, the other side hub was done in under 20 minutes.
Replacing the rear brakes on the ’77 Buick Century I owned like 4 years ago. It had been a one owner car with only 65k that had been parked since the late 80’s. The plan was to just pop of the drums, replace the slave cylinders and shoes and put it back together again. But I came to find that the drums would not budge. No worries, I thought, just need to adjust the star wheel to give myself more room.
Only to find that the opening on the backing cover hadn’t been punched out. After spending an hour trying to chisel the blank off, I wound up grabbing a small air grinder and cutting it off. Finally able to spin the adjuster and bring the shoes inward. Except that the drums still wouldn’t move. Turns out that they had rusted to the hub. After several hours over the next couple weeks I tried sanding down the hubs, dowsing the drum with penetrating oil, and finally just heating it up red hot with a torch and smacking it with a hammer was I able to get them all apart.
O2 sensors on my SVT Contour. First one took 20 mins. Second one, the one on the rear bank, took two hours because my hands and forearms were too big for the space. My then-neighbour, a class-A mechanic with small hand came over and pulled the thing in a minute.
I still marvel at how such a cool car from Ford managed to have the ease of reparability of a European exotic.
Stupid simple, but…replacing the battery on my Focus last year.
Started with a surprisingly complicated tie-down bracket system to keep it in place that actually had a couple of different bolt head sizes and odd locations, and then once I got all that out, the cables were waaay recalcitrant, even after their bolts had been loosened.
I get frustrated but still manage to be mindful that I am dealing with a source of not-to-be-trifled-with electrical current, so I remain super careful/mindful of what I’m touching as I try to wrench the clamps open. They eventually do “worry” off (as Adrian might say), but jeeze what an ordeal.
And it was just a regular old battery in good condition, not corroded at all.
Had a buddy with a Focus that lost brakes and had fluid leaking inside the car. My memory is faded from the event but I recall the brakes and clutch sharing the same reservoir and a broken PLASTIC pushrod. Told him I don’t want to mess with this and called my mechanic. Once I mentioned Ford Focus the mechanic immediately said: “I’m not touching it!”
Ha! That happened to me like 3 years ago. It had been rainy, so I didn’t notice right away that there was a leak, but then it dawned on me “wait, water isn’t this slick…” I cursed Ford when I learned about this combination cylinder, and yep, same problem, the plastic pushrod had snapped. It took as long as the repair to clean all the brake fluid off the carpeting!
Not a repair, but swapping the stock intake out for a Corksport on my Mazda 3. I dropped one of the hex screws for the MAF housing in a crack in the driveway and it took two hours to get it out. Crack too small for a magnet, and too deep for the one I had to pick it up. Two magnetic screwdrivers, a few beers, and lots of cursing. Rest of the install was 20 minutes.
Any ten minute job is one broken bolt away from being a all day job.
This is especially true when you are working on a customer car or working on a deadline that the car has to be done by.
I’ve repressed my VW and BMW PTSD memories, but the one that really surprised me was in a 2001 yukon xl 2500. https://cdcssl.ibsrv.net/autodata/images/?IMG=CAB10GMS202D0104.jpg It sure looks easy to replace the battery but to get around that stupid metal bar connecting the fender to the core support an insane amount of rusty bolts had to snap off.
I posted a similar tale of woe…I was totally surprised with how long it took, and it reminded me of the shock at replacing a headlight bulb on my Focus – the entire front clip has to basically come off, you can’t just reach in from behind the housing.
Ugh I just had to deal with battery terminals on my friends 1500HD silverado with that awful battery location. The incredibly inexperienced but blindly optimistic person that my friend is managed to cross thread both of the terminal bolts when installing a new battery, and of course exact replacements would need to be ordered, and the O’Reillys ones were off on sizing, but not thread. It took a solid half hour of various angles, sockets, wrenches, and eventually cutting up the terminal covers, until I could get the damn things installed. All because GM gives you about 2 inches of clearance between the side of the battery and the fuse box shroud.
I recently did brakes on the Q7, a week or so after having a baby. Took way longer than it should have. I spent about an hour futzing with an anti rattle spring because I couldn’t figure out how to snap it in from inside the caliper. That’s because that’s not how it works. It just pops in with a light push from outside the caliper. I must’ve been real tired. On top of that the caliper mount bolts are torqued to something huge like 180lbft. I just couldn’t get the beans on it. The QuickJacks aren’t long enough longitudinal or horizontal so I was working off jackstands and just couldn’t get it high enough to get enough leverage to put that kinda meat on it, and a cheater bar would just hit the body or ground before a click. My chinesium caliper piston squeezer wasn’t wide enough without the wider extensions, but too wide with them so I had to make a tool to push all 6 pistons back in at the same time. 90 minute job ended up taking about 4 hours.
Not four hours, but more like 4 weeks. I just needed to replace the exhaust gasket on my old Taco to sell it. Just 3 bolts around a flange to swap it out. Maybe more than 10 minutes but surely no more than an hour. Things were going great until I went to loosen the 3rd bolt, and it broke. That sucks but it happens sometimes, I went to get my screw extractor and back it out…and the extractor broke off in the broken bolt.
I spent the next 4 weeks under that truck as time allowed hammering and chiseling and drilling and torching and doing whatever I could to get that damn bolt out. Finally I gave up and took my sawz-all to the damn exhaust pipe upstream of that flange, threw the rest of the pipe in the bed, and drove it exhaustless to a local muffler shop to have them weld it all back together with a new junkyard flange.
My car wouldn’t start and it wouldn’t jump. The starter made a click but wouldn’t turn over.
I knew the battery was old, so I took it down to the parts store where they tested it and said it was done. I installed a brand new battery. I went to start the car, and it clicked, but didn’t turn over.
It must be the starter. This car has almost 200k on it, its gotta be that. So I went back to the parts store, came home, and installed a brand new starter. I went to start the car, and it clicked, but didn’t turn over.
Out of ideas (I was new to this stuff), I called AAA to tow my car to the shop. The tow truck driver asked me what was happening, and I explained. He took a look under the hood and recognized a Y splitter on the battery cable, mentioning these always cause issues. He tightened the bolts down hard, clamping down on the cable ends with force and fury. I went to start the car, and it turned over.
A few months ago my neighbor had a really important trip planned, and about a week before, his truck wouldn’t start. He said to me at the time it was almost certainly a busted fuel pump, and got it towed to a shop. A buddy of his is a mechanic and promised to check it out and hopefully get it fixed in time for his trip.
Later in the day when it got towed, he got a call from his buddy.
It was out of gas. Didn’t even have any issues.
I truly have no idea how on earth even the tow truck person didn’t even catch it, but yeah…it got towed to a garage…for an empty tank.
I’ve seen the post office I work at tow an llv to the mechanic shop for a flat. One time I ran out of gas because the fuel gauge didn’t work. Called the supervisor and 45 minutes later someone brought me an empty 2 gallon gas can.
Years ago, a stoner buddy called and asked me to come look at his truck that wouldn’t start. Knowing him, i quizzed him about how much gas was in it. Assured there was, I warned him it would cost him a fancy dinner if the issue was something simple, then loaded my jack & tools up and drove 40 min—only to have it start right up when I put the gas I brought in it.
At least I got a good steak out of the deal.
My mom had a G37 with a faulty fuel gauge. Read half a tank when the car died on her. Had it towed and wound up mad at the gauge. Cost to repair whatever the issue was (not just the float, it was computer related) would have been too high, just reset the trip every fill up and didn’t go more than 300km before hitting the gas station. She was already looking at replacing it and this was the final straw.
Mine isn’t too exciting. But I have done brake pad replacement many times – just using a c-clamp to push back the caliper piston. Usually doing a pair is less than hour job for me.
Then I needed to replace the rear pads on our Saab 9-3 urgently – couldn’t get the piston to move – eventually worked out that you need a special tool to turn the piston as its pushed it. I had to go to a couple shops for find one with the tool in stock, I seem to remember I had to make another trip to get a proper torx connector for my ratchet, and I seem to remember having to make a third trip for brake fluid or something else. Ending up taking most of the day.
I think its due for rear brakes again… dammit.
Almost all of them.
Remember, we do this not because it’s easy, but because we thought it would be easy.
Lol, this is the answer.
Haha, you just created Autopian’s next T-shirt! @davidtracy