It’s Wrenching Wednesday! The Autopian Membership roll continues to grow, so once again we’re extending an extra-hearty welcome to our newest members–we deeply appreciate your support! Wrenching Wednesday is your opportunity 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!
Aw geez, would you look at that? It’s Wrenching Wednesday Evening. Clearly meeting deadlines isn’t my superpower, or even a regular power. I wouldn’t say my wrenching powers are exactly super either, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t come through in the clutch like some kind of stud sprung from the imagination of Stan Lee (or whoever Stan ripped off) when a mechanical malady threatened to ruin someone’s day. Is there a better feeling than effortlessly taking a situation from seemingly hopeless to heroically solved as if it were a plumbing leak at Pete Campbell’s house and you’re Don friggin’ Draper, adoring crowd and all? I submit to you there is not.
Now, I wish I could tell you I have sexier saved-the-day stories than the usual flat tires and dead batteries, but that’s all I gots. Not that the flat-tire and dead-battery havers thought my efforts were mundane; you’d think they had witnessed an incredible feat of skill or knowledge or strength. Do not be impressed, I always say, anyone can do this, and I’ll show you how. Does the lesson stick? Probably not. That’s fine. I’ll take the call, it’s a free pizza and grateful vibes. Pizza and grateful vibes can keep me going for a looong time.
Tell us about the times your wrenching skills saved the day. To the comments!
A friend has a 2004 F250 Powerstroke and it kept blowing fuses,. The stealership was wanting a couple grand to change the cluster. He asked me if I knew anything that could help since I do all my own work on my vehicles. A quick forum search and I had a possible solution. About 30 minutes work and a penny’s worth of electrical tape and the problem was solved. That was several years ago and the truck runs just fine.
Turns out the wire that runs out to the overdrive button on the gearshift rubs on the lug in the column and had worn a hole in the insulation and it was shorting, blowing several fuses each time.
Came across a guy who couldn’t get his truck started in a fairly remote truck stop parking lot. Pulled out the multimeter and the battery looked decently healthy. Figured it was worth trying the old “smack the starter with a hammer” trick, and sure enough that did it. Warned him it might fix it for anywhere from minutes to years, and off he went towards home. So far I’m 2 for 2 on that actually working, and the first time it lasted a couple years until the motor died.
Crossing the plains of MN mid January came upon a full sized bronco broken down. Broken main ground wire. Had a suitable sized ring terminal on the floor of my 89 cougar. “Stereo” -5 guy.outside. Swapped it out with 2 leathermen. He went on his way
This was back about 25 years ago. I was camped up at a USFS place near the crest of the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana and about 40 really rough miles from the pavement. In the site next to me were a bunch of young “country” sorts blasting Kid Rock, letting their dogs run free to try to steal my food, etc. In the morning I was woken by the fruitless grinding of a starter motor and a heated exchange between a young woman and her male companion: “You MF, the car won’t start and if I don’t get back to town in three hours they’re going to fire me at the hair salon.” I had a full tool box in my car, so I took my wooden-handled mallet with a rubber head over to them and said: “If you’ll keep your dogs away from me, maybe I can help. Now go find a thick stick about a foot long and bring it to me.” With stick and mallet in hand, I get under the rear of the 1980s GM sedan and begin to forcefully knock on the gas tank. “OK, get and try to start it now.” And to their amazement, all that mess of American iron rumbled to life (there was a hole in the exhaust). “What ‘chu do?” “The fuel pump is inside the gas tank, and it probably got stuck closed because of all the bouncing around. The wooden stuff is so I wouldn’t make a spark. So go with grace and tie up your dogs.”
Great story! The Bitterroots are amazingly beautiful…went on a 50-miler there over a week’s time
I’d rather tell how someone saved *my* day. When I was about to graduate from high school, I signed up for a BMWCCA driver’s school at Road Atlanta as a graduation present to myself. The car that my sister and I shared in high school was our dad’s ’83 320iS, and since he wsa responsible for maintenance, I wasn’t aware of all the little details about it, like the fact that there was a plug in the left front tire. I had a great day on Saturday but after getting home Saturday evening, the tire started losing a lot of air. A plug on the most heavily-loaded part of the most heavily-loaded tire on a very fast track (and this was before the chicane was put in the back straight) with mostly right-hand turns was obviously not a good thing. So when I got to the track Sunday morning, someone with a jack helped me move a good tire to the left front and put the spare on the right rear. The spare was a full-size spare, but it was also ten years old at that point. I went out for my first session of the day, and about ten minutes into it, as I was going through the Esses the ten-year-old P3 experienced a complete tread separation, and I experienced a rapid unplanned departure from the track. I was terrified that I was about to stuff my dad’s car into a tire wall; I had just learned “when you spin, both feet in” the day before, so I did that and hoped for the best. I started breathing again when I came to rest in the sand trap, having hit nothing. The session was flagged and someone ran a wheel and tire out so that I could get the car back to the paddock.
I thought my weekend was done, but not long after I was back in the pits a complete stranger, who had driven his 2002 over from North Carolina with a set of track tires in the back, offered me his street tires so that I could enjoy the rest of my weekend. He helped me mount them and I had an uneventfully great day. I don’t know his name, though I did eventually find and still do have, somewhere, the run group list from that day so I *could* find it. His help totally saved *my* day and made a lasting impression on me (I’m talking about it 30 years later). I remembered him whenever I found myself potentially in a position to save someone else’s day, whether with their car or in some other context. I’m sure I’ve done it, but I can’t remember any of those times. This is the one that keeps coming back to me because it set an example.
I don’t know if this counts, but this story comes to mind. This was back in the mid-90s when five or six of us friends piled into the K family’s 7th gen Suburban for the 2.5 hour drive from MA to NH. About 30 minutes shy of our exit, the otherwise reliable tank klunked out and we rolled onto the shoulder, dead as a doornail.
I’m no expert now, and at 19 or 20 I knew a lot less. Our driver called his dad and after a minute on the phone, turned to us and said “What’s wrong with it?” Without thinking I blurted out “I think it’s the fuel pump.” It was a semi-educated guess, but again, no expert here. We set up to camp on the side of the road and waited.
The next morning his dad shows up, fresh from an early junkyard dive, with a fuel pump and the tools to swap it out. No more, no less. Imagine my surprise when I found out I was right, and the luck I felt knowing how I’d never live it down if I was wrong.
So not exactly saving the day – that was Dad K’s job – but I felt like in that game, I got to lead in assists.
Talk about good luck!
Just last night, as a matter of fact. Some lifelong friends who now live 10 hours away were nearby and we had them over for dinner. As we joked, his car, an older Toyota hybrid, saw my Cruze in service position and got jealous. It drained its battery just enough to not start once they had to drive back. Tried jumping it with my Toyota, no dice. Since the car still had some power, we hooked up a battery charger for about 20 minutes, polished his car’s headlights, joked about how it seems we’re doing car work every time we get together and tried jumping it again. Success! They made it home without further car issues.