It’s Wrenching Wednesday! Each week, we use this space to welcome only the coolest car people (Autopian Members, specifically) to participate in an open forum about all things car repair/maintenance/modding related. Where the convo goes is entirely up to you, but it’s fun to have a prompt to get things rolling. So let’s roll!
Famed novelist, playwright, poet and haver of great hair Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde (yes, we’re using his full name, thank you very much) penned a bunch of epigrams that you can purchase on throw pillows and fake-patina’d wooden signs, and they’re pretty much all bangers. One of his greatest hits is, “Experience is the hardest kind of teacher; it gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.” But surprise, that’s the edited version; Wilde’s original included “… ask me how I know. I swear to God, this friggin’ curved-dash Oldsmobile will be the death of me.”
Experience truly is a great teacher in so many aspects of life, but especially so when it comes to wrenching. For decades, countless how-tos, diagrams, and repair manuals have been published to show you what parts go where, the torque specs for each fastener, which sequence A, B, and C must be removed and installed, and so on. But at best, that’s half of what you need to know. The rest? Experience. Like when teen-me did his first-ever oil change. Did I place a bucket under the oil pan before plucking the the plug out? Obviously. Did the hot oil shoot clear over and past the bucket in a perfect arc and completely Exxon-Valdez the driveway with burned 10W-40? You bet it did. Experience!
What has wrenching experience taught you? To the comments!
Images: open engine compartment by pavelkant/stock.adobe.com; facepalm guy by Vulp/stock.adobe.com; Oscar Wilde via Library of Congress; curved-dash Olds via National Museum of American History.
find good someone to give money to make the problem go away 🙂
Also the difference between cast iron and cast aluminum when tightening a thermostat cover.
Finally invest in a hidden tool set filled with 10 mm and all other parts that walk away when you need then.
Do not sit on the nice sofa after working on your car or motorcycle…
Never work when you are exhausted. Stop and go back to it when you are fresh and clear-eyed. That’s how you end up cross-threading a stainless bolt into a cast aluminum intake manifold and necessitating a tow-in to the shop for a helicoil instead of finishing up and driving off.
For REALS. And don’t work angry/stupid, either.
1. Having a dedicated fun car and a reliable daily is worth its weight in gold. That way, when your fun car is on jack stands and you realize you’re running out of weekend, your boring ol’ reliable car is there to get you to work Monday morning.
2. When you buy a used car, you are buying all the previous owner’s deferred maintenance and things that they never got around to fixing. Factor all the time and effort that will go into getting the car into a state you are happy with.
3. Sometimes it’s worth it to pay extra for the OEM part. That way you know it’ll work right the first time and it’ll last longer than the budget/remanufactured version of whatever you are replacing.
4. Doing it right doesn’t necessarily mean doing it yourself. Depending on your skill level, that might mean paying someone else to do it. Some of my most expensive repair bills were caused by me goofing something up thinking I could save a few bucks doing it myself (when I really didn’t have the skill to do it properly).
To your 1st point:
Doesn’t every reasonable person do this?
Then, when the fun car starts acting all ‘old yeller’ you start giving the reliable daily the flirty eyes.
These are all excellent points. And to #1, having the fun car is also a nice back-up for the daily. I dropped off my truck for service last night for a recall and 2 annoyances that will be covered under warranty and, despite having made an appointment 3 weeks ago, they told me that it would be about 5 days before they can even look at it. I don’t understand why I can’t simply wait another 5 days to drop it off, but that never seems to be an option (I’ve had it happen at a few dealers). So I’ll be driving the MG to work for about a week and a half and working from home if there’s rain in the forecast. Glad to have a “fun car” and a job where I work from home 3 days a week and have some flexibility on the 2 days that I’m in the office. Otherwise I’d be renting a car, since it’s over a 2 month wait to get a loaner vehicle for service at this dealer.
Heh, there’s a reason why I named my bicycle “Reliable Transportation.”
If you’re trying to find the current draw that is draining your battery, don’t forget to close the door fully each time you get out of the interior to check the meter… I spent half a day chasing an intermittent draw that randomly appeared and disappeared with no pattern to the pulled fuses because of this.
Just because that o-ring or seal appears tight in it’s groove, double and triple check. I’ve had to completely tear down a rotary engine a second time because of this (fortunately I caught my mistake while it was still on the engine stand), and similarly had to undo and redo a while lot of work for an o ring between the block and manifold too.
If you frequently work on battery connections, buy a goddamn insulated wrench.
I know we are all taught this as toddlers, but I still haven’t managed to learn the lesson yet.
“No! Hot! Don’t touch!”
If you are absolutely going to HAVE to drive the car to work on Monday morning, start working on it Friday evening, not Saturday morning. This gives you a chance of hitting the point where you discover that you are missing a part/ have the wrong part/ broke some damn thing, early enough that you can go to the auto parts store and get what you need and still have enough weekend to get the job finished,
There’s nothing more maddening that hitting that point late Saturday night after the parts store has closed, and suddenly being dead in the water until the store opens at 10 am on Sunday morning. It’ll be noon before you get working again, and your helper friend will need to leave at 5 p.m. Sunday evening. You will be spending a long Sunday night alone in the garage trying to bolt things back together enough to drive to Work on Monday.
Great advice, been there, done that.
I’m hijacking this thread to say that you all need to talk me out of this, and fast
https://www.porschehuntvalley.com/used/Porsche/2006-Porsche-911-b95e38e00a0e0a920f6a2590dd8f68c8.htm
Go for it… err umm
This is the way?
What am I missing here? It’s a manual, well maintained 997 drop top with a clean Carfax being offered by an actual Porsche dealership. Why the fuck is it so cheap? This is a $50-$60,000 car
Yeah, that’s a screaming deal, and as you say, from a Porsche dealer. All I can think of is maybe it’s a flood car?
The CarFax is spotless…not to mention this is the first model year when the infamous IMS bearing stopped being a concern. It’s also a base 911 so there’s no forced induction or all wheel drive system to worry about…it being stick is a real plus reliability wise too because if a tiptronic (yuck) or PDK (less yuck) shit the bed you’re looking at 5 figures.
My best guess here would be that it’s rusty underneath, as it spent a lot of its life in New England. But that’s about all I got.
I just read through the Carfax: it’s not bad but not quite spotless, in aggregate.
The car has been all over the eastern seaboard: SC, NC, MD, PA, CT, NY, MA. The 20K mile service was done when the car had 28K miles, and at that time only two tires were replaced. There are a lot of entries for brake work and tire balancing/replacement with alignment.
It’s been sold at auction at least twice. The car was for sale at the current Porsche dealer in Towson on 25 April. On 06 June it was on sale – with an additional 20 miles – at a Jaguar Land Rover dealership. On 08 June it was for sale again at the Porsche dealership in Towson.
No big individual flags, but added together it looks a little odd.
Some thoughts:
Overall it looks like a good deal.
Values on these must have dipped quite a bit lately…or maybe I’ve just been thrown off since I’m used to seeing DC prices and this is a decent distance away. The 6 owners thing caught my eye too until I realized it’s only had two over the last decade…one of which kept it for 7 years and the other 3, so I can’t imagine it’s been too much of a headache as of late.
Nope, they haven’t. This one’s just in absolute shit condition and $37k is a bullshit price regardless. These engines don’t like miles, they fixed none of the common interior problems so it looks like shit too, and cabriolets pretty much always sell at a discount.
Thank you, this is what I needed and what I come here for
De nada. TBH that it looks THIS rough at 60k is… pretty damning. Because my friend down the street with a similar vintage and similar miles (and the maintenance bills to show it) doesn’t look anywhere near this bad. Particularly not the driver’s seat leather or buttons.
-delete/edit-
just a fly on the wall
(This is good content)
Okay.
It’s a mid-mile 996 asking low-mile Cayman 987 to early 981 money.
$40k with some negotiation puts you into an ’08-09 Cayman S with half the miles and none of the disintegrating interior pieces.
No.
Given the opportunity, long hair will try to kill you.
Yeah don’t give it a chance
I spent 3 hours on a creeper after I ran over and tangled my hair in the wheels, luckily a friend showed up and got the scissors from the tool box. I was one person in a repurposed factory/race shop. My wife got her hair eaten by an overhead router in a wood shop years later and trashed her wrist in the cutter in response. Her scalp was reattached, but the wrist and the nerves will never be right. It is why she drives an automatic, now.
To anybody reading this with long hair, be careful out there.
Some guys at the body shop use soda cans to deliver a sugary liquid to their innards. Others use those same cans as containers for tobacco-soaked saliva they’d rather not deliver to their innards. If you’re in the first camp, make damn-well sure you haven’t mixed up your can with someone in the second.
Don’t leave parts randomly around your work area if you plan to move the vehicle anytime soon. A Carter 4-barrel will quickly puncture a tire when driven over. Doesn’t do any favors to the carb either.
Always look before closing the hood. A bad windshield wiper motor makes an interesting “outie” dent.
30-year-old hoses you plan to replace anyway can be cut off instead of yanked.
Tires: just because they’re round and hold air does not mean they’re any good.
And finally, speaker wire will not hold up an exhaust system for long.
Fencing wire, otoh, will hold your exhaust up for at least a year
Find a mechanic and a community before you find the car.
I do the same thing. Small towns only have so many good shops, and what they’ll service is what I look for.
Don’t use the self serve car wash sprayer to wash out your engine bay.
If you do, make sure you label the plug wires before you just take them all off to dry them out. I got home way after my curfew that night.
(Pre-cell phone era)
Remembered another: do not hold a valve cover with your fragil fleshy hand while you spray it clean with the magic wand. If you do, you can quite easily inject soap-covered greasy dirt well under your skin which is a great place for it to fester and produce an amazing infection
Always tie a long string on any part you intend to install in an enclosed or nearly so area without removing the assembly.
There’s an VW Cabrio running around somewhere that has multiple extra door lock mounts and a blower motor resistor rattling around in it.
My first car was a 1991 RX-7 that I didn’t have a compression test done on first (in my defense, it seemed to run great at the time, and I was 16). I think that’s enough said.
Don’t rewire something over a bad fuse.
Learn to read a schematic.
ALWAYS check the voltage with a meter and never a test light; you don’t just need to know it is there you need to know how much there is.
Just because you have fuel/oil/whatever it does not mean you have it in sufficient pressure/volume; put a gauge on it.
Water is the enemy of everything.
10 minutes of thinking can save you hours of extra doing.
Take notes and pictures.
Never start with the biggest hammer.
Hand tight before wrench tight.
More force, more caution.
Wear gloves.
Wear the safety specs.
Clean it before you work on it if possible and clean it after you work on it EVERY time.
The ultimate winter car is meh without snow tires, make sure you can get snow tires for a car before buying said car if you plan on using it in the winter. Many cars sold in the 90s use tire sizes you CANNOT get street legal snow tires for in the US.
Fluids in a vessel are always trying to escape said vessel. With that knowledge the more fluids your vehicle requires to operate the more fluids you have to keep in the vehicle, including the actively used fluids and the spare fluids.
The spicy magic container that is a battery will fail you, the question is when and what you’ll do then.
Many coolant temperature gauges read the temperature of the coolant, not the temperature of the engine, and if your liquid coolant has been swapped for ambient air said gauge will tell you everything is fine while your engine melts (My dad learned this on my first car the day I passed my driver’s test after driving 50 miles without a pressurized coolant system at 80 MPH).
*tied into above* DON’T LET ANYONE BUT YOU DRIVE YOUR CAR unless you’re willing to let anyone who drives your car possibly destroy themselves, their passengers, your car, other people, other cars, etc.
If your car is reliant on power steering to turn, and or power brakes to stop what will you do when they fail?
If you want a job done right do it yourself.
Take good care of your spare tire, keep it overinflated (within specs for the tire) to account for lost pressure over time.Make sure you got the tools in your car to put on your spare.
Don’t blindly trust open containers you didn’t open yourself.
Disassembly is inevitable, parts yearn to return to their original unassembled form and some will even break themselves in an effort to return to their base parts.
Diesel doesn’t evaporate.
When the weakest link fails the next weakest link is the new weakest link till the previously weakest link is repaired or replaced.
An oil filter with a built in nut is worth every penny provided you can reach it with the tool sized for said nut.
A pretty car can become an ugly car at any moment, and any premium you paid for the prettiness of it is lost in that moment.
Power lessens feel, whether it be a bolt you cross threaded and torque gunned “tight” or power steering that numbs the feedback of the road.
Turning crap into quality takes more and costs more than keeping quality quality, no matter how simple or cheap the crap is.
Insurance will only pay out if it’s cheaper to do so than fighting your (covered) claim in court.
Give a teen speed demon a good handling car with the expectation it’ll handle whatever they throw at it and said teen will find the limits of its handling, just at a much greater speed than a car with crap handling.
Those are all the hard vehicle related lessons I’ve learned that I can think of at the moment.
*edit to add bullet points for easier reading
Corollary to the open container line: never empty fluids into an empty of whatever you’re drinking at the time.
—The Poison Control Center told me that used brake fluid is not considered lethally toxic-and that it’s ok to make yourself throw it back up. Lesson learned: I now apply a ring of yellow electrical tape to any bottle I drain stuff into.
Comments section mod: What happened to the bullet points I added in my edit?
Corollary to “If you want a job done right do it yourself”: Or hire someone you know knows how to do the job right, and get them to teach you if possible.
If you don’t have the time to do it right, how are you going to find the time to do it over?
That reminds me of a supposedly Amish saying: “The faster I go the behinder I get.”
Reminds me of a riddle.
The faster you run, the harder it is to catch me. What am I?
Your breath!
Sometimes removing everything is faster/less effort than trying to fix it in place. Lesson being the water outlet on my Cruze. It’s a bugger fitting on a radiator hose with it in place. Three bolts later and it’s free with the hose slipping on in seconds.
Going along with that is that sometimes specialty tools can be worth every penny. See the Toyota-specific cartridge filter socket or generic serpentine belt tool or locking constant tension hose clamp tool. Those have made maintenance on my cars easier. No more wrestling with kludged-together tools when the specialty tool does that task in a fraction of the time and effort.
If you don’t want your child to learn those words, make sure they’re at a friends house when you work in the garage.
If you’re going to drill a hole through a small piece of sheet metal, hold it in place with a clamp. If you try to hold it with your hand, when the drill bit snags in the hole it will spin the piece and cut the hell out of your finger.
Always wear full eye protection – goggles, not glasses – when working under a vehicle.
yep. thumb scar agrees. And eyes sting like hell until until you wash out all the gas.
If you find yourself thinking “just this one time” or “just for a second” stop what you are doing.
These phrases are equal to “hold my beer”.
Yep. We joke about the “safety squint” but I cringe seeing folks on YT working under a vehicle on a lift without eye protection.
You know my dad didnt teach me anything about tools and cars. And between school and working i didnt have much chance to learn. But i am pretty sure with a bigger garage and more tools ill be fine.
This is the way.
Just because the instructions say something is so, doesn’t mean it is actually true. Doing my VR swap into the MK1 Cabriolet the harness directions said to tap into the ignition 12v for the accessory power to the ECU. It took me almost 2 weeks of troubleshooting and replacing parts before I discovered by accident that when the key is turned to the start position it temporarily cuts all the accessory power to the vehicle. Then one morning for giggles I decided to hard wire the ecu directly to the battery and the VR sprung to life. At the time the exhaust wasn’t connected and it was dumping right out of the headers which my wife really appreciated at 5am on a Saturday morning.
Pay attention to where your hand will go when the bolt breaks loose or the wrench slips off.
I punched myself in the face, and cut open a few knuckles before I really took this lesson to heart. Push the wrench open-handed using your palm. Don’t pull straight towards your face
Indeed. Also, if for some reason you do have to pull on a tool, keep in mind where the back-swing of your elbow is going to land. I still have a burn scar on the back of my arm from a Suburban exhaust Y-pipe from my service center days.
Really i did the same but what are odds that will happen again?
OUCH!!
I also punched myself in the face! I described it here once, I think, but will do so again because it’s therapeutic.
I was working on an air-cooled VW, which meant the battery was under the back seat. I leaned over and pulled up on the strap that raised the seat. The strap broke unexpectedly and I punched myself in the nose. I immediately recoiled and hit my head on the dome light.
To the rest of your excellent advice: the nephew got me a sign one year for Xmas that says ‘Busted Knuckle Garage’. 🙂
This is precisely why I have an oversized mouse pad and a few spring clamps in my tool kit.
I hate wearing gloves.
it’s imperative that the suds are cold; learned the hard way.
warm beer sucks