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Just had to pull the transaxle from my Lotus Europa and put a ring and pinion in it…. literally everything was easier than I thought it was going to be. even sliding the gears on/off the pinion shaft. just mega easy!
I have an older Toyota Sienna that I use to camp in. A few months after I bought it, the blower motor was making noises, and then stopped working. I had to replace it and found the old one was totally seized. So, fast forward to a couple years later… stopped working again. I figured, “Aw crap, that aftermarket blower fan I put in must’ve died on me.” so I bought a new one, then proceeded to put of replacing it for a couple months because I wasn’t using it at the time. (Never mind that I was at least partially not using it because the blower wasn’t working.) Anyway, I finally got around to crawling under the dash to swap out the blower…. only to find that the plug was partially out. Plugged it all the way in, and it worked absolutely fine. *slaps forehead* Of course, by that time, the replacement I bought could no longer be returned……
I replaced the actuator arm in the driver’s window of my Matrix about five years ago. Pretty easy and straightforward. I did so well on it that I get to do it again soon.
I just replaced the front strut assemblies and sway bar end links on my ’19 Camry. Not a single expletive uttered the entire time, nary a tool thrown in frustration. Everything came apart and went back together easy as you please. It was nice.
I’m not an avid mechanic. I do some stuff here and there; Dad and I completely rebuilt an Opel GT CIH engine from individual parts including a complete teardown and rebuild of the carb – that solved a lot of issues. But I had been stressing over my Prius losing what little power it had and becoming more herky-jerky with each passing week. And the Prius is a lot techier than the garden tractors and carbureted pickup I usually work on.
Finally looked up the codes. “Multiple misfires.” Suggested fix: Plugs probably, coils maybe.
With over 300K on the clock I expected the plugs were probably indeed toast so I ordered a short handful and all the coils too. Not that expensive.
The Prius isn’t too bad for access but it’s not an unencumbered slam-dunk. But at my son’s place – because he has a garage and I don’t – it took us just an hour or so to do everything. A little more actually: I have a spark plug socket and he doesn’t, so there was a quick run to Ace in the middle of that.
Move some stuff out of the way: easy peasy. Despite all the stuff in the way, getting to the plugs was actually far less complicated than I had feared. Access is blocked, but the blockages aren’t bad. Couple more things – don’t even disconnect it, just lay it out of the way. First plug: “Well that’s gapped to about three-sixteenths of an inch.”
Him: “What’s the factory gap?”
“Less than that.”
They were all like that. One of the coils came out in more than one piece. Judging by the plugs, the car had been running on two cylinders – mostly two, sometimes one – for a while.
When it was all finally back together, the car fired up, went like hot buttered stink (for a Prius) and shut off with a smooth whisper at stoplights. Couple hundred bucks, an hour turning wrenches with my son who is not a car guy (but an avid tech guy), and the car has a new lease on life. Wins all around, and a jolt of confidence.
Next up: the PCV valve!
One of the first jobs I had to do on my 1992 Cherokee was to replace the O-ring for the oil filter mount. (Yeah, believe it.. an XJ that leaked oil.) I’d read all these horror stories of having to disassemble a hex socket and using a six-foot steel bar for leverage to remove the bolt holding the mount to the block because for some reason, they used red loctite on it.
Well, it turns out, I had the old mount design. No loctite… regular bolt… easy-peasy.
The 2020 Connect has been having issue with acceleration and hesitation. Turns out it’s multiple things.. So we replaced the EGR Valve, removed the air box, cleaned the intake accordion and removed and cleaned the throttle body. Plus last month we finally got confirmation from Ford that our 2.0L GDI van can handle e85 fuels.. but one has to do a mixed ratio. So the van has been running on $5.00 Reg 87 oct and 35.00 of e85 in that order. Although Instagram and youtube have suppressed my accounts, I did get some great news.. Seems I pointed out some discrepancies on the Motul oil site and because of this, Motul sent me a large gift box full of shirts, hats stickers and a large banner. I guess this means I’m unofficially sponsored by Motul now.. I’ve contacted QA1 in the hopes that they can create a coil over set up for our van..
So when are you guys going to have a microvan shoot out and include me..
What are those good surprises you speak of? Every mechanical repair I’ve done went “as planned” in the best case scenario. Never have I thought “oh that was easy”.
“Any of these issues could have been worse, but I lucked out when they barely cost me much time or money.”
$500 for the Smart, $1600 for the BMW? That doesn’t sound like barely much money.
“I got the bike working again without even lifting more than a can of carb cleaner.”
Ahhh, that’s better. You had me going there.
I hear you, but when you’re expecting a seized engine and it ends up being $500, that is a nice surprise. Not cheap, but still better than replacing the engine.
The other side when working on disk brakes. the first one takes a long time, but after that, the other side is a piece of cake.
Ignoring the problem! The speedometer in my ’92 f350 longbed dually stopped working, electronic of course. I spent some time investigating and since I don’t drive it much, ignored it for awhile. When I was actually ready to troublehoot, I went out, it was working, and it has worked ever since!
This dovetails well with yesterday’s big-guppy Grail selection. Last year when I was giving my F-250 easy-duty edition work-truck a good tune-up-plus, I thought I’d tackle the incredibly wobbly column-shift that wouldn’t show the correct gear nor stay in park anymore. I was expecting the worst – figured I’ve have to replace the column or some internal part that would be impossible to get to. Nope, 10 minutes of youtube, 2 dabs of loc-tite, and a few turns of a screwdriver later everything was back to good. It was sure nice not having to block a tire when parked with a chunk of wood anymore.
Clutch in my AWD V70r that lived in a salty environment, I planned the job in advance watched youtube and read the manufacturers procedure, then I dropped it off at my local Volvo place and gave them a credit card number.