Whether it be due to a lack of funds, a dearth of time, a need for tools, a lousy wrenching spot, inclement weather, or minimal ambition, we have all had to take on repair or maintenance jobs that we would just rather not.
Looking back at my 133+ car history, I can say that each one needed a shit-ton of work. Every. Frickin’. One. Honestly, each was a blessing, since I learned something new with every challenge thrown my way. Some repairs turned out far better than others; some were straight-up disasters.
But there are a certain few that, once completed, called for a celebration. Repairs that went so well, you immediately afterwards run to the gas station and local pizza shop for a case of beer and a pie to share with whomever helped you torque-in your good fortune.
Repairs where every bolt comes right out with ease, every angle gives you good purchase upon each fastener and all the tools in your bag are the right ones for the job. Repairs where the instructions and tasks involved are straightforward and clearly laid out, rust isn’t a factor, no wiring diagram needed, the forum guys were helpful and not just judgmental jerks and pretty much everything just turned out waaay better than expected.
Here’s one of mine: My neighbor-and-close-friend Thomas C. had his always-troublesome ‘07 Passat leave him and his wonderful wife Hope on the side of the road while on vacation this summer, sidelined by a temperamental fuel pump. It would turn on, they’d go a few miles, then it would shut off and they’d wait on the side of the road, cranking and cursing it. This happened on repeat, for hours, all the way back to Wilmington. Google-map the state of North Carolina – it’s huge.
You can probably guess his frustration and end-of-his-wits sentiment towards that VW when he asked me to “put some prayer on it” and see if I could provide some friendly hobbyist mechanic direction that following weekend. Anytime that car breaks down (and it often does), I immediately think of the worst-case scenario (since it’s an ‘07 VW product) and start semi-panicking. In the following couple days before the agreed-upon Saturday morning driveway diagnostics, I started shivering, and having cold sweats. I couldn’t eat. My Chi was unbalanced, my center unfocused. I think I’m allergic to Piech-era VWs; don’t tell Mercedes Streeter.
Well wouldn’t you know, the fuel pump is actually super easy to get to and replace in those cars! Of course there are a ton of them in the local parts yard, so practicing the task and obtaining parts was not an issue. Check out how easy this was:
After installing a replacement pump and having the issue remain (goshdarnit!), there was thankfully another blessing by the German God of Easy Repairs (who, by the way, does not come around very often): I noticed the connectors of the fuel pump module were all corroded.
I’m not sure why an on-pump mini computer is needed, VW. My ’94 Buick Parkamino Avenuero surely doesn’t need one.
Eureka! One more trip to the local yard for a non-corroded fuel pump module and that Passat was back in action. Way easier than expected; which honestly was a really nice outcome.
How about you, my fellow Autopians? What wrenching job of yours turned out to be way easier and turn out much more smoothly than expected? Let’s hear it below!
Until next time, my friends; let’s keep those wrenches spinning.
Photos by Stephen Walter Gossin, taken at The Old Spain Wrenching Lair
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Replacing the rear wheel bearings on my old 2007 Honda Fit. I figured, as old it was with over 175,000 miles, they’d be stuck.Took 30 minutes to do both in my driveway. Hardest part was removing the left brake drum.
Also replacing the Start/Stop button on my 2016 Honda HR-V. There was an extended warranty thing where Honda would replace it for free but my car was over the mileage. I thought I was going to have to take it to the dealer and pay out the nose. I thought they had to use a dealer scanner to do it. Nope. $50 part. No/minimal tools required. 5-10 minute job.
Removing the dashboard on the datsun 280z. All the backlighting bulbs were out which I thought wasn’t a big deal, until I realized I had no speedo at night.
I’m always dreading messing with electrics but that job was a breeze.
Same experience, but on a VW Cabrio. I was amazed at how simple it was to remove the gauge cluster, and then “wait, they’re just little bulbs…I get it.”
Replacing the timing belt and water pump on my old ’93 Maxima with the VG30E engine was surprisingly easy for a FWD car. After removing the right-hand engine top mount, there was plenty of room to do this job and I think it took less than 4 hours from start to finish. Replacing the transmission is a whole other story, though.
Pushrod tube seals on a ’62 Corvair. Worst part was actually removing the sheetmetal pans under the engine without damaging the near irreplaceable extractor vent bellows. A Chevy valve lifter removal tool pulled the tubes in a jiffy and the new Viton “o” rings slipped right on. Cold resetting the valve lash is a bit tedious but not hard.
Fascinating old school engineering on this car. There are vents that open to help extract hot air from under the air cooled motor as temps rise. They are controlled by sealed brass bellows with alcohol inside. As it warms, the alcohol expands, opening the bellows and opening the louvers by pushrod. Still cannot believe that some carb and choke adjustments are literally made by bending the actuating rods. We are spoiled by modern cars.
04 Taurus power steering pump. Manual said drain coolant and remove coolant bottle and some other shit. Nope. Just remove passenger side headlight with 3 bolts I think, and you can reach everything. And even have room to use the pulley remover/installer.
Replacing the rear air springs on my E39 540i wagon.
I did it some years ago with the help of my dad and a neighbor but the extra hands quickly proved superfluous. It was really a one-person job, but having others to locate things from below & to above made it absurdly quick. Just handful of 10mm & 13mm bits, pliers and a screwdriver got it done in minutes.
That said, getting it done in such a way that the system holds pressure for a month instead of dropping to the bump stops in a week or two has proven far testier.
Dealing with the electric door locks on the rear doors of my ’91 F350 longbed dually crewcab. After find that the electonic bits were in the $150 each range (and both were bad), I found a workaround on a forum. Drill out the single rivet holding the electronic gizzy in place and when you lift the locking knob, the electronic gizzy also lifts. Drilling out a rivet, easy peasy.
Installing fog lamps on my 16 year old Jeep. I was prepared to run wires and mount switches, but I discovered factory wiring in the wheel wells, did a quick Google search, and found out I could just replace the headlight stalk with one that had the factory fog lamp switch, plug in the lamps, and they’d work.
Well, they didn’t…but I did a quick cleaning of the never-used contacts and now I can blind people at stoplights!
This is going to sound crazy, but the engine swap on my Peugeot. It’s not been easy, and it’s taken me a year to get it almost done, but it’s really not been terrible. When I have time to work on it, if I get stuck I can the shop in England that I bought the engine from, and he’s able to guide me through whatever I was fighting with literally in seconds. With his help this job has been manageable and not overwhelming which is nice.
Oh also spark plugs on like any transverse 4 cylinder. I grew up with transverse V6s where the rear spark plugs require removal of the intake manifold so when I got my 94 Honda it was so nice to be able to do that in like 15 minutes and not have to replace gaskets or anything like that.
Snapped a rear wheel stud on my 94 Toyota pickup. Remove wheel (already jacked up), remove brake drum, push out broken stud, push in new stud, put on brake drum, put on wheel, torque to specs, lower, tada!
Wow. That makes me happy to hear, as I’d always envisioned it being way heavy duty to fix something like that.
Same here, luckily I had a very seasoned mechanic nearby who knew his stuff. However it could be harder for other vehicles but for my Toyota with its rear drum brakes it was obscenely easy considering how vital wheel studs are.
That being said some cars have wheel bolts instead of wheel studs and if you break a wheel bolt you’re probably going to need a welder to get that broken bolt out.
I have two. First was coil packs for a VR6. Dealer quoted an insane price. I looked at what was involved and just did it. Second was the fan blower motor for an 09 Land Cruiser. Couple of bolts and it just fell out after some jiggling. Getting the new one in and working was a breeze.
The abs control module conked out on my friends -01 Audi a6. I’ve heard many nightmare stories about trying and failing to replace abs head units but as it would cost more than the cars value to fix it in the shop (and it wouldn’t pass inspection in Sweden without it) we gave it a go ourselves. Found a refurbished unit online with matching numbers from an old vw jetta for about $100. Took us about 4 hours replacing it (including bleeding the whole system) and it worked perfectly. We don’t really have any experience with tinkering on cars, so I was very surprised by how relatively easy it was.
Rebuilding the carb on my 2CV. I had never done anything like that before and it ended up being much easier than I expected. And it made a huge improvement on how it ran!
To be fair a 2CV probably has an extremely simple carb, there are some carbs that are pretty horrible to put back together.
For sure! I know I had an easy one for my first try. It was still very satisfying, though.
Next up is either an upgrade or rebuild on my ‘74 Javelin carb. I’m sure that will be a bit more challenging.
I recently DIY’d the accessory belt replacement in my 2016 Porsche Boxster Spyder.
To be fair, I had the entire 981 Boxster/Cayman workshop manual as a PDF, which weighs in at something like 6300+ pages, loaded with diagrams, part numbers, torque specs, and every pre- and post- step for the job you’re trying to do. It’s what the dealer techs (and independents who subscribe to access) use, and it covers everything.
Long story short, pull the seats forward, take carpet and trim off the rear bulkhead to expose the access panel. Remove the access panel. After that, a 30mm wrench was something I needed to pick up for the pulleys, but getting the torque wrench in there (with suitable adapters) was easy enough. The packaging is tight, but sane. Even for big hands (I’m 5’8″/172cm, but can palm a basketball), it was fine! You’re doing it from inside the cabin. Since it’s a roadster, I dropped the top for better light/access.
What was funny is I was out in the garage and my upstairs neighbor came down to put trash out, then apparently probably went back inside and told her Nissan tech boyfriend that I was probably being a crazy and taking apart my fancy Porsche. So he saunters on down, he looks at what I’m doing and was like, “shit, that actually… looks kind of easy.” Showed him the shop manual, and he said, “I wish ours were this good.”
——
A little bit of taking time to be careful and not yoink on anything, and to ensure everything went back into place as intended, but simple enough. I’ve helped friends worked on S2 Lotus Elises, and there’s some occasionally nasty packaging situations in those where it’s hard to even get a hand in there, and you need to wear gloves to avoid cuts.
The S2 is awful to work on. Just replacing the air filter took me over an hour. If you get a kit that allows the rear clam to open up it’s super easy, but stock it’s terrible.
A Porsche trademark seemingly. On 911s, changing the oil involves removing much of the HVAC piping to even get at the drain plug/filter. Ugh.
Gross. Good to know. I’m hoping to get into a base 996 in the next few years.
What Jack said is absolutely not the case on a 996 or later.
Oh good. Yeah I’ve heard they’re weird but not anything crazy difficult.
Yeah, my apologies/Goof saves the day! Mine’s a little older, so still has a little of that old school Teutonic, er, charm.
What 911 is in this regards to? Remember, there’s 60+ years of them.
On anything modern it’s as easy to get to as a modern Miata.
You make an excellent point – my apologies! Mines a ’98, and I’m thrilled to hear it’s better now.
I lay out everything in the driveway in position when I do it.
Oh, I get it! Yeah, air cooled stuff had some, “this is how we’ve always done it” still about it, whereas when Toyota came in to help drive costs down, the 996 was an incredibly wild rethink, including reducing the time and cost of servicing the things.
For example, this is a 997 911. Nothing for this photo was removed. This is just what you see. It’s that absurdly easy.
https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=168850&stc=1&d=1328130834
A lot of cars aren’t horrible now. Even Ferraris from the 360 on up are a lot better, and a 458 is dare I say reasonable. What screws most cars still are packaging decisions since there’s more stuff, bigger stuff, et.c, but thankfully Porsche gives an immense amount of attention on servicing, at least for their sports cars.
Wow that looks wonderful…I’m so envious.
For mine, even the freakin’ Bentley manual gets parts of it wrong (where to disconnect certain piping so it can most easily be removed).
I appreciate Porsche’s engineering acumen to put so much into a relatively tiny space, but I’m really glad to hear it’s now focusing on serviceability too.
Yeah, Bentley manuals sometimes get Honda stuff wrong. Just the nature of the beast, as they put out so many.
Again, it’s why I don’t use a third-party manual. If you go on the forums and ask, people will point you towards a PDF of the actual Porsche workshop manual for your car. For the 981 it was 6300+ pages (in just English!), and it’s loaded with everything, and it’s all correct with an insane amount of detail and diagrams.
Replacing the steering box on my Jeep TJ was easier than I expected. Messy, but pretty quick. This made up for the water pump, which was difficult AND messy. I had to do the job twice because I reversed the gasket and didn’t realize my mistake until I buttoned everything up and started the engine.
Replacing the cam, knock and crankshaft sensors were easy on my DD, a 2012 Kia Rio. I replaced all three in one go because intermittent engine codes indicated some or all of these sensors were bad.
I bought a non running but rust free Volvo 240 sight unseen, 6hr round trip to get it. Dragged it home and started diagnosing, after about 20 min of poking around at stuff I noticed a lot of the euro fuses were fairly corroded. Little scuffing later it fired right up. I don’t even know what fuse was causing the problem.
Bought an older truck recently and the seller said the passenger window motor didn’t work. Even had a replacement motor to swap in.
Decided to look at it when I popped off the door panel to replace the door speakers. Motor just wasn’t connected to anything. Plugged it in and it worked.
These are the best “fixes” and the IT world is often full of them as well. “Hey, it’s weird that’s XYZ isn’t working anymore. Oh, the plug came loose”
Probably reupholstering the seats in my ’95 Miata M-Edition. It was laborious but went really smoothly. The ’95 M has low-back buckets with headrests instead of the “neckbreaker” high-back buckets every other US market Miata had. I was able to source the new tan leather upholstery from an aftermarket company called Ridies… I was skeptical but Miata forum guys recommended them highly.
Removing the seats, which had been in situ for 27 years, was a bit tricky but I was able to get them out without damaging the bolts. The seat disassembly was easy enough, and while they were out I was able to sand and paint the pans and the reclining mechanisms. Removing the old upholstery was gross but fun (and I’m still finding clipped hog rings in my garage!) and the foam was in pretty good shape. Good news, as new foam blanks for these seats are unobtanium. I did add some 1/2 inch foam to “plump up” the seat bases.
I learned how to use hog-ring pliers pretty quick while installing the new upholstery, as well as learning how to massage the wrinkles out with steam and brute force. I could have ripped a coconut in half by the time I was done with the seats… there’s a lot of hand strength involved in upholstery work!
Reassembly was easy and once the seats were bolted back in my interior looked like that of a 3-year old car instead of a 30-year old one. I learned a lot and saved about $800 by installing the seat covers myself as opposed to paying a shop.
had a car blowing coolant all over the place. Bad radiator cover. 10 minute repair.
Also Plug and Points on a 53 Chey was easy. The condenser not so much. Had t put the original back on.
Any brake rotor change since they went to coated rotors. A little tap with my 16oz ball peen, and off they come.
I do not miss having to swing a sledge hammer into a wheel well with all my might to brake the rotor free.
A particular job: Timing chain and tensioner on my 86 Olds Calais with the Quad 4. It was as easy as the Haynes manual said it was (even the “installation is the reverse of removal”). It was a long, but easy job. The only annoying thing was having to swap between going through the wheel well and from the top.
A few years ago, I bought a very clean low-mileage ’02 Ranger for very cheap that had a misfire at idle – not -quite- enough to set the CEL, but I could feel it. It had the 3.0 Vulcan V-6, the engine that makes the limp-wristed power of the 4-cylinder but has the lousy fuel mileage of the larger 4.0 V6. The engine’s saving grace is its incredible longevity, they often go 300K miles or more without major issues.
Unfortunately, the misfire turned out to be low compression on cylinder 3, which after some research I discovered to likely be a manufacturing defect that plagued the ’00-’02 Vulcans – seems the induction-hardened valve seats weren’t inducted properly, causing valveseat recession and subsequent low compression. I groaned, thinking of cylinder head jobs I’d done in the past that took multiple days and much profanity.
So I bought a set of reman heads and new gaskets/TTY head bolt and tore into it. Amazingly, it came apart quite easily, no broken studs, plenty of room to get to the fasteners, a minimum of wiring to disconnect, no issues. Even more surprisingly, everything looked great inside the motor, other than a couple exhaust valves so receded that I could push the valvespring down with my thumb. I slapped the new heads on, torqued everything to specs, filled it with coolant and it ran perfectly right out of the gate. Well, as good as a Vulcan’s ever going to run.
I’ve put another 130,000 miles on it since, and it still keeps plugging along, slow but steady. I wish they still made small long-bed single-cab trucks.
I wish they made small long bed single cab trucks too, same for small long-bed extended cab trucks.
Really I only need seating for 3 people max in any car of mine (including me the driver), a little sideways jump seat in an extended cab pickup like the old Rangers would be perfect for my use case.
What I’m hoping for is an Aluminum body and aluminum bed Ranger extended cab 6ft bed with the 7 speed manual out of the Bronco. I know there’s basically a 0% chance of that happening or if it happened a 0% chance of it being sold in the states but I want one.
I’d settle for a 2 Door 3 Seat F-150 6.5ft bed with either a manual transmission or a BEV drivetrain though.
I’ve always been surprised when replacing motor mounts is easier than I expect.
I’m sure it can a total pain on some cars, but on the few I’ve done, it’s mostly slightly raise engine, remove/replace fairly easily, and then toss old one in air/catch a few times with a wry look on my face, like a tv mechanic.
Good one… I got pretty good at replacing motor mounts on my PT Cruiser GT, which chewed them up at a fairly prodigious rate (Stage 1 Mopar chip, which bumped torque up to 265 ft/lbs. It was a fun car). It got to be an hour job by the third time I did it.
…except for the right-center mount, which is an engine-out affair; the other 3 mounts are cake in a PT.
Thanks for reading and the comment, my dude!
Installing an Eaton M112 supercharger from an 04 Cobra onto my 2004 Mach 1. The hardest part was grinding down the block because the Cobra came with an iron block but the Mach had a aluminum block with 2 knock sensors located in the V. Due to this, the knock sensor locations had to be ground flat. Other than that, it was not particularly difficult and most stuff swapped over. I wanted to say the total time was around 10 hours start to finish including grinding. The other part that took a bit was modifying the shaker to mount on the blower. I had expected a lot more little things to crop up but none really did.
I can’t remember anything that would truly be called wrenching that was easy-peasy. Quick parts swapping, sure. Changing the battery, swapping a carb, etc. That stuff is nice and simple.
But actual wrenching?
I guess the closest would be when I swapped my entire steering system with brand new parts, as well as upgraded the front brakes on my truck. Basic front-yard alignment and then a quick drive to the shop for a warranty alignment.
That was all brand new parts, though.
Replacing the cabin air filters on my Mazda 3 and CX-5. Instructions say to remove the damper from the glove box and swing it down. Turns you can just fit your hand in the opening at the top of the box, reach in and grab the old filter, and put the new one back in. $12 for the filter, 10 minutes on YouTube, 2 minutes for each car to do the swap, NO tools required! Dealer wanted $90 to do the same thing!
Blower motor resistors can be like that too – remove the entire dash OR just reach in & replace by feel.
Related, what I learned: tie a long string around the new resistor, just in case.
Glad they’ve improved that process. I had an ’07 Mazda3 and an ’08 Mazda5 and the filter was between the passenger’s left foot and the driver’s right. I was basically upside-down trying to get that thing out.