Automobiles have a sense of humor, it seems. They’ll run flawlessly for years, but fail right when you need them the most, in the worst possible conditions. Temperature extremes are hard on cars, so things are bound to break down more often in the cold or heat, but sometimes don’t you just wish that something would go wrong when it’s sunny and 70 out for a change?
We haven’t been hit as hard here in the Pacific Northwest by the recent cold snap as other parts of the country, but it has still been brutal. We got about three inches of icy sleety snow over the weekend, enough to render my steep dead-end street impassable, so I called in to work on Monday. On Monday evening, I hopped in my trusty 4×4 Chevy pickup (which David wrote about over at the old site) so I could tiptoe down the hill to the grocery store, turned the key, and got nothing but a click.
Dammit.
It took three trips to three different parts stores, in my wife’s 4WD GMC Yukon, to get it going again yesterday. First I replaced the three-year-old battery, thinking it had failed in the cold, but that didn’t help. I could hear the solenoid clicking, and the engine turned fine by hand, so I figured the starter itself had gone out. There are two different starter types used on these old Chevy small-block-based V6s: One with direct drive, and one with a gear reduction. They are not interchangeable. The direct drive unit is half the price. You can guess which one I bought first, and which one I actually needed.
All the while I was working on it, the temperature never got above twenty degrees Fahrenheit. The worst part about wrenching in the cold isn’t the air temperature, though; it’s the fact that the tools and parts are all the same temperature. You have to hold on to a bunch of freezing-cold chunks of metal, while your fingers go slowly numb. At one point, I had on two pairs of gloves, grippy mechanic’s gloves over Gore-Tex ski gloves. They kept my hands warm, but made it impossible to pick up nuts and bolts. You know those space movies where an astronaut fumbles some critical bolt or tool in their big clumsy gloves, and it goes flying off into space? I get it now.
I grew up just outside Chicago, and lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin for many years after that, so you’d think I would be used to wrenching in the cold. But you get used to not wrenching in the cold far too quickly, which is why I feel for David and his unnecessary minivan heroics. A lifetime of Midwestern toughness can be lost in just a mild West Coast winter or two.
Things aren’t much better at the other end of the thermometer. Back in 2011, when the clutch in my old beat-up Miata finally wore down to the point that I had to do something about it, a friend let me borrow his garage with a four-post lift in order to replace it. I somehow chose the hottest day of the year. The thermometer outside the garage peaked at 107 degrees, and I’m sure it was hotter than that inside – just what you want when you’re handling a bunch of big, greasy, heavy parts.
What about you, dear readers? What are the nastiest conditions you’ve faced while having to fix something?
(Image credits: me)
I’m late to this discussion, but if you wear nitrile or latex gloves under your work gloves they hold the body heat in and allow you to work in cold temperatures without your hands freezing!
Years ago had a ’76 Chevy Blazer that seemed like a deal when I bought it cheaply with a bad motor but decent looking paint so I could go off-roading with my college buddies. Replaced the motor with one from an abandoned Blazer my friend bought for the shell at a sheriff’s auction (with what should have been a warning-a nearly new starter on the passenger floorboard.) The motor wound up being in great condition with one weird exception-the starter was difficult to install properly to get lined up with the flywheel teeth properly and even once installed so it would start over time it would somehow get to a spot in the flywheel where it wouldn’t engage the ring gear and turn the motor over-thus requiring me to loosen and re-tighten it or sometimes throw a shim or two in.
I got quite good at R&Ring a Chevy truck starter and had to fiddle with it in some odd spots but the time that caused me to throw in the towel was when the starter quit working in the middle of a small stream. The truck stalled while climbing up a muddy creek embankment and I let it roll back thinking I would get more of a run at the hill-except it refused to start with that telltale mechanic rattle that caused my heart to hit the floor. It took a couple tries lying on my back in the icy mountain stream before I was able to get the starter to a spot where it would engage and start. Totally fed-up, I backed it out of the creek and off the trail to let my buddy pass me in his more capable Jeep Cherokee. He helped pull me up and over the embankment I had been struggling to climb. Needless to say I didn’t keep the Blazer for much longer after that- the starter was just one of many problems that truck had.
I have nothing nearly as rough as others describe. The guy in the Chicago tunnel wins for sure. The worst I can come up with is several instances of getting a 20 YO snowmobile running again so I didn’t have to walk home through hip deep snow. No groomed trails where I rode….
I helped a friend change a timing gear on a 1974 ford pickup with the straight 6, of course with the bakelite timing gear, which broke leaving the metal hub stuck to end of one of the shafts, outside in the winter, in Brockton Mass, in a snow storm, with a tarp tied to the open hood for “protection”. All that timing gear parts wound up in the oil pan to add insutl to injury.
I do endurance racing (24 hours) I have several times swapped motors in a grass field tools on the tailgate. Could do a motor swap in a 98′ ZX2 in 4 hours.
I’m sure folks have worse stories, but I had to replace the water pump on my 1966 Plymouth Sport Fury. At night, below freezing in the parking spot in front of my apartment. What was annoying is we thought we were close to done and found out the auto parts store gave us the wrong one. Fortunately another nearby location had the right one.
65 Olds 442 on a -12 degrees night, on the side of a two lane, in central Illinois. So cold that the power valve in the front bowl of the carburetor froze. Encapsulated in ice due to moisture in the fuel, the car simply ran out of fuel. Always carried tools then. With a flashlight perched on the fender, disassembled the carb, removed the power valve, and flawed it in my armpit. After about an hour of wrenching, car started and I made it home. Don’t tell me about the good old days…
1972 Chrysler Newport with a blown freeze plug on the side of US-41 in Calumet, MI (far northwestern reaches of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula). 3′ of snow on the ground. Warm day though so shoulder of road was mushy and muddy. Bumper jack kept sinking into the mud and tipping sideways. I was too broke to own jack stands or ramps. I’d work on my back in the mud and snow, then have to quickly crawl out before the car fell again. Took 5 tries before I was able to get the freeze plug installed.
My turbo-diesel Tahoe seemed to eat starters for dinner every winter when the temperatures dropped below freezing so i had to replace at least a few of them each winter laying on my back in the snow. Always fun.
Not me but my dad. Along with a couple of other families, one summer we took a deep sea fishing trip together to the Gulf of Mexico. We were all the way out, no land in sight, and broiling on the open sea. Boat shuts down so we can reel in some lemonfish, then wouldn’t start. For 30 minutes or more, the captain and crew tried to get that diesel going, but came up from below deck and told us they would have to radio the Coast Guard, and we might be out here a while. Since we weren’t moving, the sun was unbearably hot and of course extremely humid.
The family men we were with (I was the only kid), knew my dad was one hell of a diesel engineer, so they told the captain he would fix it but the trip was free. Captain wasn’t very agreeable but they negotiated something, no one ever said what, and dear ole dad went below deck. We were all roasting, the women were hiding in the limited cabin to get out of the sun.
Dad didn’t come above deck for a long long time other than sticking his head up to ask something, then finally popped up smelling of that smell totality of all your engine compartment odors together. He was soaked in sweat, said he couldn’t take it anymore below deck, but to give it a go.
Started up after a couple of sputtering attempts. Smiles all around and off we go. That gulf breeze was warm, but at least it was moving. Dad told me later it was the hottest engine room he had ever worked in, thought he would pass out at one point, and that’s not happening again. At least the fish were tasty.
Replace the clutch cable on our ’76 VW camper in a 5 degreee F blizzard. Not pleasant. Successful however.
Basically just a whole decade of being a pizza delivery guy in Minneapolis without a garage.
Changing the starter in my delivery co-worker’s Taurus at the store in the snow. I live in eastern NC. We don’t get snow very often. In fact, my general rule is if it’s below 40, I don’t work on cars.
Back in the late ’70s, the points broke (physically snapped) on my VW van while driving up I-25 in Colorado. A state patrolman gave me a ride into Castle Rock where I could buy a set, and the tow truck driver gave me a ride back, where I was able to put the points in (using his headlights) in 20-degree weather on the side of the road. I eyeballed the gap and, amazingly, it started up and I made it back to Denver.
Changing driveshaft u joints in a Geo Tracker around Christmas 2013. That was one of the worst winters on record. The snow never seemed to stop, I couldn’t even get my other vehicles out, no place to put the snow. Strapped with child support and had no money left. I had to get it done on my break and it was like -20F in the daylight and no garage or even a flat surface. Best I could do was bring the shaft into my semi enclosed porch, and go at it with grinders, hammers, and a small vise. Took me all day but I got it.
In my airline days, I also did a winter engine change and fuel trim on a 747 where the ice was bad and we couldn’t get the airplane to stick to the ground when we ran the engines up to trim it.
It is really scary when things that big slide around on the ground.
I remembered another fun one. During the polar vortex a few years ago we had a customer who had a bunch of issues because their container handlers shut down and the machines cold-soaked so bad they wouldn’t even crank because the hydraulic oil was so cold. They did not have the power available to use the artic kits on the machines. We built tents and surrounded them with torpedo heaters. Even then one of them blew the hydro pump because the thick oil over-pressured it.
In the middle of all this, I had to figure out how to disable the 3 separate auto-shutdown systems on the remaining machines; one of which required rewiring some relays…
The first night of that mess I briefly thought I was having a heart attack because the pens and tools I keep in my breast pocket got so cold it was making my chest hurt…
I lived in Buffalo for 5 years, but it was too long ago to remember any of the bad ones. I know I have worse, but the best I can remember is doing a radiator in a heavy snowstorm on my Trooper in Jan ’05.
You gotta do what you gotta do when you gotta get to work the next day.
So a couple of winters ago I had to work in one of the storm overflow tunnels for the Chicago sewer system.
The tunnel is about 300′ underground and accessible only through a shaft via a man basket on a crane.
The first time down there, it was in the teens, but the tunnel was warmer. However it had flooded and completely submerged several machines in 100PSI RAW SEWAGE. We had to go down and prepare the machines to be dragged and craned out. It had been pressure washed and bleached but was still very, very gross. Several used condoms.
Next time we had to disassemble a machine to fit down the shaft and then reassemble in the hole.
After that, we had to do the reverse on that same machine to get it out of the hole. Also freezing cold and I ended up soaked in water in the tunnel and found a condom in the puddle I had to lay in to take the drivelines out. When we got it to the surface at 9PM it was so cold that when I laid on the ground to reinstall stuff the legs of my bibs froze solid and I had to be helped up and have somebody hit them with a hammer to break the ice so I could bend my legs. There was a point in it coming out of the hole where we were still in that there was a worry it was stuck in the hole…
Last time in the hole disassembling machines to go up it had been opened to the outside so it was about 15 degrees with a nasty wind. Once again we got to see a bunch of condoms.
Moral of the story? DON’T FLUSH RUBBERS!
Winner winner chicken dinner. Holy shit is this a scary story. Just the concept of having to disassmble something to push the parts through a smaller hole only to reassemble them is daunting. Thank you for sharing. I feel better about my story, which is a joke compared to this.
It’s all relative; I have a lifetime of working as a mobile or line mechanic. Most of what I do is outdoors so you do get used to it and I have invested in gear to make it much less painful.
Oh, i’m sure you have. I can’t imagine doing that kind of work without being fully prepared. People like you are the answer to the confusion us pleebs have when we actually see that gear for sale and wonder who in hell needs to spend four figures to stay warm and dry.
Doug does.
I’ll confess I first read the “we” of your crew and then “several used condoms,” I thought good god what are you doing with these machines?!? 😉
But then I read the rest and totally agree with Parsko, what a tale. Esp that far underground in those temps…makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end just thinking about it.
Great war stories!
Misery loves company, it seems.
I will never forget the time I had to replace the clutch in my Saturn in college. It was summertime and I was one of 5 guys staying in the fraternity house taking a couple summer courses. The clutch goes out on my ‘95 Saturn SL2. I rode my bike several miles to work while I saved up for the parts and the day finally comes to do the work. It’s 100+ degrees in the parking lot with no shade and I gash open my finger on a cooling fin trying to work something loose. I get it stitched up and we soldier on because I didn’t want to pay for an extra day of rental for the engine hoist (pulled the motor/tranny out together too do it). That was brutal, but there was no better feeling than taking that first drive after she was back together!
Two instances come to mind.
First, replacing the starter in my friend’s Tundra years ago in the middle of the desert near Yuma. The conditions themselves weren’t too horrible, but this was the 2UZ engine which has the starter underneath the intake manifold and I only had a very basic tool set and zero shade from the desert sun. Got the starter replaced only for the engine to still not start. Turned out the problem was a bad connection at the main battery terminal all along. I was less than pleased at wasting several hours in the sun for no reason.
Second was a 24 Hours of Lemons race at Buttonwillow Raceway in July 2013. Daytime high temps were near 120F, and it was still 90F+ overnight. At the end of Saturday’s session my team was in 5th place (out of 150+ cars), but we lost 4th gear in our BMW E30’s transmission. If we weren’t doing so well I probably would have just nursed the car around on Sunday without 4th gear, but we decided to swap in our spare trans overnight. That was a hot, dirty, and miserable job and I didn’t get to sleep until like 2am, but we amazingly got it done and ended the race in 5th, our best finish ever. I still have a scar on my nose from where I clocked myself with a prybar while reinstalling the driveshaft and bled all over the place. It was also so hot that my jackstands melted into the pavement, and I burned my arm just leaning on the trailer fender while loading my car to go home.
When I was a car crazy kid of maybe 14 my brother and his friend were changing the clutch in an Austin Healey Sprite in an unheated, detached garage in below zero (F) temperatures. I had no skin in the game, and at most was grabbing a wrench or screwdriver, but I wanted to be part of it. We would go out about a half hour at a time, coming in when fingers or toes felt like they were cold enough to snap off.
The car in question ultimately became my first car a couple years later.
Similar story : changing a starter in a pickup, but it’s spring on the Canadian prairies. And the truck is parked on the street. Good news is the air temperature was just above freezing. Bad news is that the truck is parked on 6″ of ice with water on top. The wrenches are in the ice water, the new starter is in the ice water, the bolts are in the ice water and I’m lying on my back in the ice water.
I block those memories from my brain so I will continue to believe that working on cars is fun, and therapeutic, and a great stress reliever.
Has to be the timing belt, serpentine belt, water pump and a few other things this past summer in Texas when it was 112f for almost the entire day. Couldn’t lay on the driveway even with a cardboard sheet for too long because it was so hot. Absolutley miserable. Stupid me thought I’d get it all done in one go, forgetting that a VW always puts up a fight. Got almost everything done on the first day, finished up on the second. Never again