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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As silly as it may sound: anything that has me heating up/cooling down components to allow for an interference fit. My weekend job is to redo the seals on the final drive of my old BMW bike, and it’s going to involve heating up the housing to remove components. I’m honestly a little terrified. I also plan on replacing the steering-head bearings, which ALSO requires heating and cooling. It’s probably why I put all these jobs off for so long.
Runner up: are there shims to ensure the correct spacing? Good luck!
My other answer is, ‘literally anything on my 996, because it has the potential to become expensive.’
Whenever I have to undo some bit of plastic I shudder a little bit. Then again, when I bought mine the little piece of plastic trim on the passenger seat that covers the hinge had broken off and so I went to the local dealership, who were able to source the exact part i needed in the colour of my interior and it was, like, 60 bucks, so… sometimes it isn’t SO expensive?
Getting the flywheel nut off my RX-8. Despite the engine only making about 5lb-ft of torque, the single nut has a torque spec of like 250.
I didn’t have anything that could get that thing off, at least not while the engine was in the car. So I borrowed a 1-inch impact driver from a friend. It looked like the Gatling gun from Predator.
So I’m on a creeper, holding this thing over my face, thinking ‘is this a button press I’m going to regret? Like, should I just not do this and keep all my teeth?’
I pressed the button and the nut came off in less than a second. Everything was fine.
Yea, that’s a giant nut on all the rotaries – I’ve only successfully gotten them off on an engine stand, which required repositioning the engine with the nut down, putting in about 3-4 feet total of breaker bars on the nut and sticking out of the end of one of the legs of the engine stand, then basically taking a rowing posture with my legs braced against the engine stand breaker bars to get it loose. I think its actually 350 lb-ft for the tightening spec too, so breaking it loose is usually a bit more once it’s thermally cycled and has a little corrosion. The one time I had to tighten this nut with the engine still in the car, it was on jack stands in my parent’s yard and I literally needed to dig a hole under the car to be able to fit the torque wrench on at an angle that would allow me to swing it enough to tighten.
5lb-ft of torque got a good laugh out of me.
Now a drink to the long life of your apex seals!
These are all mostly done, but replacing the fuel sending unit on Frontiers and Xterras. You are in the customer’s back seat (or have removed the bed, but that was less worrisome) and about to reach into the bottom to remove electrical fasteners. Just that gives me the willies, right there, but then you need to get the unit up and out without turning the interior of a customer’s car into an Exxon Valdes spill. To make matters worse, the opening of the fuel tank is apparently made out of recycled razor blades. I still have scars on my right wrist.
Thing is, I knew the procedure and had the tools, but it just wasn’t quite the same each time. More than a few vehicles ended up smelling like gas and splashed with my blood.
Oh, and the whole jackstand thing.
I am scared of anything related to cam timing on an interference engine. I have checked my BMW head and timing gear several times and turned it over but I’m letting the job steep in my brain before firing it up.
Wow, we already knew that Gossin was a Rock Star but not a bad reality TV Star also.
Suspension components, because I live in Michigan and everything is always a fight with rusty fasteners.
Get an induction heater, it’s a game changer. I got a cheap-ish Solary one off Amazon and it’s paid for itself in time, misery, and fasteners saved many times over by now.
I just bought one about a month ago. It’s a game changer for sure.
I don’t like compressing springs doing front struts. Long time ago I had a crappy HF spring compressor let one go when it was almost fully compressed. I was lucky changing my pants was the only casualty.
I wish that one had occurred to me. Compressing springs is kind of terrifying.
Working on rusty nuts and bolts. Given my two levels of strength (not quite enough and way the hell too much), it’s a game of chance whether the bolt comes off or only part of it does.
Then there’s electrical work. It’s a recipe for bad stuff to happen. Bad stuff that means you have no interior lighting or worse. My lack of aptitude/ability makes me tense, which makes mistakes more likely to happen.
Time pressures also make me nervous. If you’re l in a hurry, something always goes wrong, or you discover the problem is much bigger than you thought.
And lastly, just being under a car. Even with jack stands et al, you’re under something that can kill you if a single thing goes wrong.
Anything the requires removing fasteners that go into the aluminum engine block on any vehicle over 25 years old. Glad I own a set of left-handed drill bits.
I had to undo the timing advance unit on my 46-y-o bike, which a prior owner had tightened to the point where the bolt sheared off… in the end of the camshaft. That necessitated a bottom-end engine rebuild, all because someone couldn’t be arsed torquing to 7 in-oz or whatever.
Most things don’t really concern me, but automatic transmission disassembly/reassembly and engine assembly make nervous. Both make me anxious in steps where I can’t see the results, like putting in pistons and praying all the rings went in properly or not being able to verify (usually for the hundredth time) that all the piston ring gaps were properly staggered.
Stuff like rebuilding a transmission valve body is actually more stressful, simply because how they function still feels a bit like witchcraft, so I have no real basis to use to mentally verify that what I did should work. It’s a big reason that I don’t really rebuild transmissions myself anymore, but pay to have experienced professionals do it. I’ll drop one out or swap in a converter, but anything involving dropping the pan and doing more than a filter change goes to the transmission shop.
I got one more. Working with or trying to advise a determined idiot. A couple years ago, in Slack, a coworker was doing brakes or maybe just rotating tires on his Model 3.
He posted pictures of the thing up on one jackstand, rear on a jack, the whole thing on a slope. I tried to clarify this was wildly unsafe it literally says to only use jackstands in pairs on the jackstands, and he repeatedly replied that because it was a Tesla it was different and special and this was definitely the way to do it.
I put in writing that I was no longer offering advice or guidance to this person and let him carry on. I hope it crushed his dick. I hated that guy, especially after that.
Bullshit. Nobody that owns a Tesla does their own repair work.
Ha! The way things were going, assuming he finished his maintenance/repairs probably is pretty generous.
I read that as Mazda 3 and wondered if it was the guy across the street from me. Your description is exactly like watching him do brakes. He was also watching a youtube video of how to do them while doing it. He probably should have taken it to a shop at that point.
Pulling plug wires on a running engine (somehow it’s always a slant six) to find the dead hole. It will shock me every time. I guess pulling from the distributor is a little better, since you’re not holding a live wire, but more often than not it’ll still bite you as you’re pulling it off.
Why not check to see which part of the exhaust isn’t heating up? Can do it by dripping water on it or with a laser thermometer.
I ran a tire shop for 10 years, and being in the middle of redneck nowhere, a surprising amount of mid-60s and 70s heavy trucks are still on the road, putting in work every day. Some are old farm trucks, some are pet projects, some are actually still used by enterprising hillbillies to make a living.
The problem here? Many of them use the dreaded “Split rim” wheels to hold the tires to the truck. A quick YouTube search on “split rim accidents” will show you why I dreaded these things, and why most shops refuse to work on them.
In fact, the ones I’m talking about (two piece) are now Illegal in all 50 states, but hey, it’s Ohio, and we don’t do inspections here. It may as well be the Wild West when it comes to what runs up and down the highways here.
The outside bead of the wheel is actually a giant snap ring, and the only thing holding a 90-100 psi tire to the truck.
The process for these was fairly simple, you unbolt the wheel, let the air out, and begin prying the ring (Carefully-more on that in a second) from the main body of the wheel. Once off, you can proceed to beat your brains out with a wedge hammer (look it up) to free the tire from the wheel.
After repairing the tire or tube, or replacing them, you then clean up the wheel and the snap ring with a wire wheel, being careful to not remove too much material-These are often covered in rust, and thus do not like to come apart easily. If you are too aggressive prying the wheel apart, or grind away too much material, you risk compromising the integrity of the ring.
So, if you’ve done your job, the ring can be tapped back into place, and everything will look and feel good, and hopefully not too loosely.
Even still, once you put everything back together, the only way to know if you have failed is upon airing up the tire. You’ll know if you messed up, because if you did, the tire will simply explode, firing the 10-20 lb iron ring away from the wheel with enough speed to remove limbs.
Safety cages are mandatory for inflating these tires, and as an extra precaution (on top of only doing these myself and not letting any of my workers handle them) I would wrap a logging chain around them. I’ve seen a flew explode in my day, and once was enough for me to decide the chain was a necessary extra step.
But hey, if I did it right, I had a fella back on the road, and I was usually $50 richer for the trouble.
Didn’t change the fact that I DREADED seeing a truck pull in that had split rims, though. The folks driving these trucks usually didn’t have a pot to piss in, and I didn’t have the heart to turn them away or force them into buying expensive Dayton wheels.
They did a piece about them here maybe a year ago and it was the first time I’d heard of these things. All I can say is it all sounds as nerve-wracking as defusing a bomb every day. Glad you made it through it all okay!
This is a whole new thing I learned about today. Thank you for sharing!
This is a good one. Split-rim wheels are the worst. Dangerous on the vehicle, and even more dangerous off of it. Twenty years ago I helped a friend assemble some when one let go while another friend was inflating it. We got lucky that he only sustained a flesh wound, but it was absolutely the last time I will ever touch split-rim wheels.
I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with the two split rim wheels with tires that I removed from my truck. they are just sitting there under the deck. No shop around here understandably will deal with them and I don’t want to either. They have been just there for well over 20 years.
As in they’re on the truck and you want them off? Just jack it up and let the air out of them, and remove them. Like I said, if they’re going to go, they’ll go while being aired up. There’s not much to worry about if your just deflating them.
Sell them from scrap?
I don’t exactly hate such problems, but I will do everything possible to procrastinate on electrical issues. Far too often they involve 12 hours of disassembly only to find it was the 42nd most likely culprit and could have been done in 10 minutes.
Fear wise it’s gotta be working under a 6k+ lb truck or suv on a two post lift. I used to own a yukon that was 7860 empty and while it was rock steady on my 12k lb lift, hearing that thing actually load up the motor for the first time was terrifying.
Having clicked over to SWG’s link, have to say I’m impressed with how good of a bad guy he makes.
Diesel fuel injection systems and gas direct fuel injection systems.
Do not Google Image search Hydraulic injection injury.
Previous employer had us do high pressure hydraulic system safety training, those are really, really gnarly injuries with mega painful and long recovery times.
Three out of six comments going with Jackstands – in my best Capt. Holt impression….
VIN DI CA TION!!!!
Any task on my B5 S4 I used to own made me nervous. It always turned into a bigger job.
Using spring compressors makes me nervous. But maybe not anymore as Red Barchetta showed us just to shoot them down the driveway.
Anything from Harbor Freight. I’ve had too many things that should have just been Shaped Chunk of Metal fail. A jackstand or spring compressor? Absolutely not. I won’t help you and I won’t be responsible for what happens.
A combination of jack stands and trying to reef on a stuck bolt with a wrench. I have a horrible fear of moving the car enough that I’ll end up with a skid plate compressing my chest.
Anything involving a power drill. I can measure 10 times, use a punch and a brand new bit, line everything up perfectly and go nice and slow, do everything right! And still end up with holes in the wrong f*&#ing place. Every freaking time.
If the spring compressors scare you, take a loaded up shock and spring assembly, line it up down an empty driveway, put your foot on the upper mount, and go at the nut with an impact wrench. It’s not as death defying as everyone makes it sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ90ja3FmHU
I just want to offer my commiseration. I feel like I should be able to drill to the 32nd by now, and it’s a miracle if I end up in the right 16th.
Not only is your suggestion terrible and dangerous, but the spring will still have to be compressed to install the new strut.
Yes, this only works for disassembly. Although I’m sure if you were to throw it hard enough and time everything right, you might be able to reassemble it this way. Would be a neat trick if you can pull it off.
And disassembly this way is only dangerous if you’re standing in the line of fire. The guy with the impact gun is perfectly safe.
Jacking a car up & getting the jackstands into place. I double and triple check the location where it’ll eventually rest as I’m paranoid about accidentally jacking/standing even partially on a non-load-bearing part of the car.
Anything not easily reversible.
Grinding, cutting, brittle plastic tabs, etc
Damning crapass poprivets stupid breaking tabs mandatory destruction in removal crapping shit machine…
My most nerve wracking was the serious stupid Z4 headlight wiring harness that I literally had to drill into to depress the release tabs to loose them from the assembly. I spent hours trying not to do that, which was folly; it still took me an hour apiece to release the tabs even after I’d drilled the holes. Plastic is the worst.
Getting under a car on jackstands to torch a fastener. Something about the confinement combined with turning metal into liquid raises my blood pressure to unhealthy levels