Share yours...what started out as, or at least on paper, was foreseen to be a relatively painless repair or upgrade, but went to hell in a handbasket. Priming the pump...Was with my good friend Scuba putting in a poly steering rack bushing(s), bolt snapped. Took us hours to drill out the old one, tried re-tapping. Ended up just running a bolt thru it and using a hanger with chewing gum to hold the nut in place while we ran the bolt thru...looking back hilarious. At the time...it really really sucked. But wait, went to remove the IAC, two easy to reach bolts, snapped one of them as well, same night.
LOL, man I have tons of these. How 'bout the time I spent nearly a grand on machine work for a 2.2L turbo block and it turns out Wiseco gave me the wrong wrist pin clips. 3 days after pouring my money and time and alot of other people's time into assembling it, the retaining clip falls out, and the wrist pin inflicts un-repairable damage on the cylinderwalls. Not really un-repairable, it just needs new sleeves. Drilling bolts and studs out is childs play at this point. Try ordering and assembling a complete shortblock with forged pistons and have it in the car and ready to run in an afternoon because your glorious 2.2L built motor took a fat **** on your chest and you have 3 days till the tuning session you prepaid for and you have to get 500 miles on the ticker for break-in before hand.
umm... Pay a guy roughly $500 to install a turbo on your car. Have it take several weeks longer than its supposed to, get it all installed, and crossthread the oil filter. Drive a mile down the road and kill the motor. Remove the motor and spend a grand getting it rebuilt. Pay to have the motor put in. Turn the key and have nothing happen. Exhaust any and all logical causes of the problem, give up, and drop another 2 grand at a local shop having their tech go through the car top to bottom. Get it all back together, on the dyno and back home. Blow turbo. Cry.
w00t! Yup, nothing else can really compare to this. I'm still amazed at how fast the 2.5L motor got built and swapped in.
putting roughly 2K into my olds 350 (which i bought for 300) for a rebuild, bore, cam, pistons, bearings, heads totally redone, then the rod that drives the oil pump snaps (new oil pump) wee 0 oil pressure while im trying to break my cam in (2K for 15 minutes) locked it up, the oil pressure light was burned out :ugh:
Tried to install an UP and DP with just me and brother-in-law, no previous subaru mod experience between us. Forget to check all of the connections when done, drive to town ~6 mi. to see oil light come on and off repeatedly. Stop car look underneath oil everywhere. Push car to back of parking lot. Next day find out turbo oil return line popped off and subsequently drained my car of oil. Spend 6 hrs in the Tobie's parking lot trying to get the line back on. Drive car back to in-laws, develop serious exhaust leaks. Have to drive back to EP from Hinckley with annoyingly loud car. Next weekend drive it to flake to fix exhaust leaks find out nut seized on bolt. Try to saw off stud (fail) try to drive home to take it to Nathan's shop. Get Flashing CEL. Tow home then get Mike Wagner to trailer my car to Nathans. Fix CEL (had destroyed a coil pack) Fix exhaust leaks. Have WoTVs try to tune it, do one pull and have the engine basically blow up. Failed bearing. Tow car home to EP, wait 5 months tow car to Isanti have Brian swap shortblocks. Have Tom tune. Car then works right After a total of about 6 Months. I never want to go through that again, although I did learn quite a bit through the process.
My 89 toyota, that I've only had since august. Lock keys in truck, after destroying the door getting it open, you start driving and realize you have no breaks. "Stop" in at a buddies house to try to crimp the line off and make it home...fail. Drive around Duluth during "Rush minute" so you can go to the parts store and drive all the way home with no brakes. Replace the break line, and while your bleeding the system, the Rear proportioning valve fails and is leaking fluid everywhere. Replace that with a T-fitting. During bleeding attempt #2 the rear hard line on the other side fails.... While driving in the woods, drove over a log and it smashed up between the tire/frame and took out that brake line. It took 3 attempts to do the brakes. the first 2 times, I spent 2-3 hours trying to get the hubs off. The 3rd time I got the hubs off, broke 2 studs for the hub, and the last old brake line failed... Then the starter died. That wasn't the issue...the issue was that to get the starter out I had to touch the main fuel line...which immediately broke in atleast 2 places...But at least the tank was absolutely full so there was only 16 gallons of fuel to potentially leak out. Oh, and I had what I thought was a slow bead leak, so I tended to put a little more PSI in that tire so that it'd stay round longer...then one day, I got it up to about 45psi (40 recommended) and the wheel blew out. Not the tire, the wheel blew out a rusted spot. After running to the junkyard to get another steel wheel, I had it mounted balanced and figured out it was bent...Luckily I nailed a curb with it a few days later and apparently straightened it back out.
troubleshoot an electrical problem and stick the mulitmeter probe into a harness that goes back to the ecu. brdige a couple prongs together accidentally and pop! and $700 later i've got a new ecu installed.
Funny thing about that. The instructor down here in chicago did the same thing to the Outback he has, except he wrecked the valve, not the ECM. However, if anyone ever triggers the valve with the scan tool, they'll blow the ECM because the valve is shorted internally.
