I thought of this topic because I have a rear seal that went out in my straight 8 and a 4.00 part is proving to be the biggest pain in the **** to fix. I am having to pull the motor because of this problem. The still runs perfectly fine, but I am contemplating selling this motor and ******, and slapping a V8 in it. What better time than now What is something small that you had to fix that snowballed into something big. I was hoping this topic might help some people with when contemplating buying a car that has a "small leak" or "it can be fixed easily" Have a great day... I know I will....its my B-Day
I thought I could replace the windshield in my old truck over a four day weekend . . . ten months later, I was back on the road. http://www.laroke.com/larryk4674/2003/wip29.htm
1.6 rocker swap on an otherwise fine, installed, nearly ready to drive the car around 350 in my '57 Chevy g***er. "Hey, this'll be a quick an easy swap!" Well, turned out the heads need to come off to have screw in studs, guide plates and the spring pockets opened up for the now-required bigger springs. Four years and one out-of-state move later, the engine is sitting on the stand in my shop uncovered with no heads and needs to be taken completely apart and cleaned up, the heads need to have the valve springs blueprinted, and the car has taken a couple major steps backwards--new racing rear suspension, and a 12-point cage. It was soooo close to driving! And then there's the '54 Buick daily driver...Because it's a torque tube driveshaft, to replace the clutch you either have to remove the engine, or remove the rear end. Well, the new clutch I put in it died...I wasn't sure what was wrong, but I could hear the problem coming from the bellhousing, and the trans was hanging up in gear and grinding a good bit. Bought a new clutch disc and pulled the engine on a Saturday morning to swap it out...when the little balls from the pilot bearing hit the ground and rolled down the driveway. Seems the pan with the little coil springs on the clutch hub came unriveted and started rubbing the flywheel. The metal shavings got into the pilot bearing and destroyed it. No pilot bearing destroyed the input bearing on the trans, which allowed the input shaft to wallow around and break something inside. Manual transmissions for '54 Buicks do NOT grow on trees. 5 years later, the trans and engine are still out. I just located a better, heavier duty 6-bolt cover Buick Century trans that should cure the problem, but now the brakes need to be rebuilt, the gas tank will be an issue, the radiator got crunched in the move to Georgia, and who knows what else? -Brad
what started out as a tune up ended up costing a couple hundred bucks and a bunch of time. broke a spark plug off in the head, worked on it a couple hours to get the broken part out, and it ended up dropping into the cylinder. so off comes the head, and it is all corroded (aluminum head) had to get it welded up, and since it was off anyways got a valve job, resurfaced, timing belt, water pump, hoses and belts and a radiator. $800.00 for all this stuff, and my own labor. got it all done and the car ran just like it did before. though it did run cooler with the new radiator. moral of the story?? ALWAYS use antiseize on your plugs in an aluminum head
another one that I thought about! The quickest way to ruin a seal in your ******.....airbag the rear!
Long story short... A single flywheel bolt for reasons unknown decided to back its way out until it hit the clutch and sounded like a rod knocking when I reached Austin (250 miles from home). Got home and went to work. Since I had the motor pulled out anyway, I decided I needed to replace some gaskets and valve seals. Valve seals required the heads removed. I then found a couple of burned valves which lead to needing a new valve job. Got it all back together and drove it a couple of times when a 25 cent o-ring I used on the dizzy was too thick and caused some rubbing of metals which sent metal shavings into the dizzy and killed it. I pulled the dizzy out and cleaned everything and put it back together. It runs fine in the driveway, but 3 times now it has died for no apparent reason when I tried to drive it. I just gave up on it for a while during the summer. I'll get back to it pretty soon here.
Decided to replace the struts on one of my cars.... 2 hour job TOPS right? Well, I snapped a bolt and had to remove the entire hub ***embly which ended up *********** into a two day job.
yep. . . mine is ***led "how to drain your wallet one drop of oil at a time" OR "a $5.00 cap and rotor cost me over $2,000" read on... so, i bring my foot down a little (ok, a lot) on the throttle of the 455 buick in the willys a bunch of months back this spring on a road trip back home to Wisconsin... oil pressure drops, i start gettin lifter rattle and possibly a rod knock in the #7/#5 cylinder... limp her back home and tear the front of the mill down to do a rebuild on the oil pump/timing cover and inspect the mains and rods. easy fix, less than $200 IF the bearings are bad enough to warrent slapping in a fresh set to keep it running till i can rebuild it. mains and rods turn out to be fine, ****on up the bottom of the mill, rebuild the pump, put the engine back together and. . . oil leak comming from around the timing cover/oil pump housing. total cost this far? less than $100 pull the pump cover, clean all the surfaces, lap them flat on the top of my cast iron table saw with 1000 grit paper, re-pack and bolt on... still leaking. pull apart, fresh gaskets again, check for warped castings, re-pack and re-torque... still leaking. cost to date? over $200 now accounting for all the ****in OIL and gaskets. NOW the damn water pump starts leakin and the thing has broken my will to live. fast forward a month. one call to TA performance, and less than a week later i have: a new timing cover ***embly including oil pump installed fresh brandy new single plane high rise intake brandy new thermostat housing/water neck. . . gaskets ad nauseum oh yea, turned out the knocking i was hearing was from a ****ty cap and rotor... $10 worth of ignition parts cost me almost $2,000 but i DID get a nice new intake outta the deal
well my 53 had the original 6 in it until last winter. At the end of the season last year i was noticing a significant oil loss in the 235 -6 so i decided to pull it and go thru chaging all the gaskets and maybe even hot rod the engine a bit..well i found a 327 out of a vette that got wrapped around a tree..it was all down hill from there..1 winter and some hard earned money it is now under the hood where the 235 once sat. The car is alot more fun to drive now and i can keep up with every one on the e-way..hell i can blow by them like they are standing still..wooo hoo..love them v8's
Any bolt or nut that doesn't come off relatively easy gets marinated in PB Blaster and/or heat from now on. Probably rookie mistakes on my part, but I've had bolts snap at fuel pump and wheel cylinders that made the job 10 x longer.
i dont wanna jack this thread, but is that a 54 atmos pullin a trailer in your avatar? Yes, that would fall under "ridiculous stuff I wish I had" avatar.
I went to do front brakes on my 52 plymouth a few years back. Found out about the double wheel cylinder thing. While I was in there I noticed; cracked lower control arm and cracked frame. The other side was missing all the brake hardware inside the drum. I am slowly putting in Volare subframe now. Fred
Good friend's car had a leaky rear main seal. I asked if he was really, really sure it was the rear main. Yep. So I lead us through one rear main, oil pump, and clutch replacement and it's back on the road. Then the next week we replace the valve cover gasket (twice) to fix the actual leak. Doh. And then there's the little fact that we replaced a perfectly good high pressure oil pump with a stock replacement pump, thus losing 5psi oil pressure on a supercharged motor. Double Doh! Especially "Doh" because in addition to the "are you sure it's the rear main leaking" conversation, we also had the "are you sure this oil pump is also high pressure" conversation. He's a good guy but fortunately lives in another state now.
I was lonely once and though an easy fix would be to get married... that's another story though. Leaking oil pan on my '89 F-150 was an easy fix until I had to remove the ****** to get it out. The cross member didn't want to com out so sawzall and some selective surgery got that out. Once the trans was out I discovered the front seal on the trans was bad. Got that done. Of course this is the perfect time to replace the clutch. Damn it, flywheel needs resurfacing and I can't get it off. I had to make a special piece to lock the flywheel in place so I could break the nuts loose. Got that done. Now I have to lift the engine to get the oil pan out which reveals a broken motor mount. So I decide (stupidly) to cheap it out and replace the bad one. Of course the other one tore when I didn't take the bolt all the way off and lifted the engine - another trip to the dealer. 2 days later I've got a new oil pan & gasket, new clutch disc, clutch cover, throw out bearing, pilot bearing (HA!! I remembered it this time!) and two new motor mounts. As I finished my prediction of "2 hours - tops!" is shot to hell. Go take a test drive for the clutch - brake line to the rear gives up the ghost. Arrrgggggghhhhh!! Come home, go get brake line and replace the bad piece. Finally, the Gods of rust and grease smiled and I didn't break off the bleeder on the rear cylinder when I bled the brakes. I miss that truck, it was always good for an adventure.
Here's one. My Suburban... gas tank straps rot out.. so I have the muffler shop redo them while they're inspecting it for me, to throw them a bone. Well, they put on some universal stuff that was a lot narrower.. and lo and behold, the tank was rusted underneath and after a while it starts to weep. So I go to the you-pull-it yard figuring they'd have the tanks off to drain them and I could just grab one.. well yeah, except they punch them with a pickaxe to drain them. So $60 later at a place in the city I have a tank, and I start in on it. Except that I pull the tank off and the top of the sender crumbles apart in my hands. That was another $110. I painted it with epoxy primer and some anti-rust paint before I hung it up. Oh, and the gas tank straps have both fallen apart... for a long time it was just hung on there with mechanic's wire. At least I had already replaced the entire fuel lines, so they didn't fall apart. But the brake lines... I redid those with sectional from the parts store, and one joint is behind a crossmember and had to be ***embled before you slid it through. Well it starts to leak.. you guessed it, that one. So I figure maybe I got a bad connector or something, buy two new line sections and replace the whole thing - 8 feet of line - only to find that it just needed to be tightened up a bit. I sure tightened the **** out of the second line. The trans rear gasket leaks sometimes and either the rear main seal or the oil pressure sender is leaking oil... I'm afraid to touch it and have a $20 part turn into another $100 or more.
My first attempt at body work... My kid's Honda had one paint bubble on the rear fender. I just had to pick at it. 3 months later I had fabricated inner and other rear fenders for the car, built new floor pans and painted half the car. Ended up having to buy a welder and a compressor. Don't pick at Hondas.
If you guys havent checked out his site, you should. Neat little history of his day to day happenings and well written too.
Here is two great ones....A friend of mine heard the old Bon ami down the carburetor to help the rings seat.Only it was on a 1968 Cad. with 100,000 miles on it and it smoked,needless to say the motor ran for about 10 minutes then lock down solid.... And my brother`s 55 chevy`s transmission was slipping and he had heard if you put Pinesol in it, it would be a quick fix,well...it looked like a 4th of July glow snake. and that was the end of the transmission!
had a water pump go bad on a ford 302. Second to last bolt, one of the long ones, snaps off. I measure it against the motor, and it broke even with the block, behind the timing chain cover. I just cleaned up the tools, and had it towed to a garage. I think it was about $400... had them change the timing chain, fuel pump, and all related seals while it was off.
O/T for the car, but the same story... Daughter had a little Hyundai sedan, drove it forever and simply couldn't kill the ****** thing. Rang me a couple of times over the years... 'Dad, the oil lights come on, what do I do?" "Well first of all, SWITCH THE ****** ENGINE OFF!" Anyway, with almost 300,000k on the clock, it started leaking major amounts of oil from the front crank seal. A $5 part for sure, but to replace it the entire front wheel drivetrain has to be torn apart! And it's an auto to make matters worse. I sold it for $200 as a parts car. Cheers, Glen.
Replaced all stock brake components on my 1963 Nova SS with the exception of the front rubber brake lines. It would drive nice for about 10 miles then the front brakes would start dragging. Could never figure it out, I had actually forgot about the front lines. I wanted it right, so I ordered a complete disc brake kit from CPP and installed it. The day after I installed the kit a buddy asked me about the front lines if I had replaced them. I was ready to CRY
Input shaft seal leaking on the Corvair, no biggie. Drop the drivetrain, pull the diff from the engine, change seal, back together... Yea... While the engine is out, why don't I rebuild it. $3,000 later....
I just bought a 65 Comet 4dr parts car and my buddy said it looked like they bondoed the door. No they sprayed it full of expandable foam inside and painted it! LOL glad it's just a parts car!
My own CF* story: So, I buy this '64 Skylark a couple of years ago (May '05) because it was a running, driving car. I'd had enough of projects, and wanted something that I could drive for instant gratification. First up: this car had an aftermarket ammeter installed, which needed to be changed immediately. There was one big red wire going into and out of the ammeter, and the rest of the wiring in the car was so butchered that I couldn't find where it was coming from or going to after and before the gauge. So I did what any red blooded bonehead (gearhead) would do: I cut it and taped the ends. A couple days later, I go to pick up a girl for our first date. The sun was going down when we got into my Skylark to head to a restaurant for dinner. I hit the lights. No more than two minutes later, the car dies. And I mean it has no power at all; no lights, no engine, nothing. I look over at her and say, "I guess I'm not as cool as I thought I was." She laughs. I put the light switch in the "off" position, and the car starts right up. We get back underway. Two minutes later, the car dies again. Light switch to off position, car starts up, we get going again. By now it's well after 8:00, it's dark out, and there's traffic. I have no choice but to drive with my lights off (she lived in the 'hood), but if I can keep the speed above 30 MPH, the car stays powered up with the lights on (hard to do with LA traffic 24/7). We finish the date in my daily driver. As it turns out, that big red wire was going to and from the starter solenoid, and the solenoid was overheating. Keeping the speed above 30 kept enough air moving over it to keep it cool. Simply removed the wire, and problem solved. At least it was a "no cost" fix, and that girl and I are still together. Next up: Oil pressure. Had plenty at off idle, but at idle, the pressure went to zero. I had never experienced that before, and since the engine didn't smoke at all, had a hard time figuring out the problem. Rebuilt the oil pump (external on the early small block Buicks), no improvement. Drop the oil pan and clean up the oil pump pick up; still no improvement (in the meantime,the jack slips from under the engine while I have the pan out for cleaning, engine lands on harmonic balancer, separating balancer from hub; sent balancer out to be rebuilt). Realize that the bearings are shot. Pull engine, replace bearings, reinstall. Oil POURS from rear of block. Pull engine again, replace rear main rope seal. Reinstall, engine still pukes oil from the same area. Repeat FIVE MORE TIMES that week. Finally realize that I had been putting the seal in the wrong groove in the rear main cap. (In my own defense, I couldn't find any information on which groove the seal was supposed to go in, and I had a choice of three grooves in the cap and the saddle.) Finally figured it out, dropped the pan (being careful with jack placement this time), and replaced the rope seal under the car. The real cost with this fix was time. Third "incident": I find a set of aluminum heads and a four barrel manifold for the engine (it came with a two barrel and cast iron heads). I put them on, and can't get the engine to idle. After chasing my tail for a couple of weeks, looking for vacuum leaks that aren't there, I finally run a compression test. Cylinder number one is dead, and number eight is dying. The rest of the engine is fine. No idea what happened there, but I performed a full rebuild, and it ran like a bat out of hell. Again, time wasted by trusting the way the car ran before the heads and manifold. Should have run the compression test at the first sign of trouble. The last thing, before I put the car away for the time being: After I rebuilt the engine, I decided that I'd better rewire the car. So, one Saturday, I pull the dash and under hood wiring, and start to pull the wiring from trunk. I pull up the carpet in the trunk, and there's barely any trunk floor left. Just a couple of weeks before this, my girlfriend and I had been sitting (and smoking) in the trunk at the Blessing of the Cars '06. As it turns out, we were sitting on the friggin' gas tank. I replaced quite a bit of the trunk floor, but got sidetracked by a couple of other projects... This was meant to be a relatively short post. Sorry for the book. *"cluster ****" (picture of this particular CF):
LAROKE, that's quite a saga you've got there. One thing does indeed lead to another sometimes. I enjoyed reading about your pinchweld adventure and all the asides that came along with it. Your Dad and Walt Shipley sound like a couple of real good men and a life long influence on you. My father grew up farming in Bedford, PA so I know the kind of work ethic that area instills. Good folk out that way, as I suspect there are all over this country. Too bad it's the dumb***es and miscreants that get all the press coverage. Anyway, thanks for sharing.
The Jalopy Journal
