I was a mechanic for over 30 years ... had my own shops for a time and I was the Service Manager of a Porsche Repair /Bosche Warranty Center for about 10 years .... so this is probably not fair.

We used to say ... "A Car Fire Starts When the Owner Installs His OWN Radio." I've seen where people AXED into harness and probed around until they found any old hot wire ... then Scotch Taped, House Hold Wire Nuted, Duct Taped twisted bits of disaster together. Not good on a $200 Ford P/U ... Not good on a new Porsche.

It seems NOBODY knows how to double flair steel brake lines!!! I've see broken brake lines spliced with rubber hose and clamps. A LOT!!! Single Flairs? as we usta say in New Jersey ... fagetaboudit.

How about a broken rear leaf spring ... with a 2X4 cut to length and jammed between the chassis and the rear axle of an MGB?

"Professional Mechanics" are no better. I had a mechanic come to work for me ... I gave him a simple brake job to do ... 2 hours later I caught him tightening (torqueing?) the front axle bearing and nut WITH A FREAKIN' 1/2 DRIVE AIR GUN!!!

Never tune up a customer's car (truck) ... and start it up ... leaving a screwdriver on the air cleaner. Radiators are expensive.

Never start a customers car ... that's parked in front of the glass shop doors ... without stepping on the clutch ... or slipping the freakin' trans into ... "N". Some customers leave their cars parked in gear.

When the guage (or light) indicates a water Temp or oil pressure problem ... STOP THE FREAKIN CAR AND TURN IT OFF IMMEDIATELY!!! I cannot tell you the number of times a customer told me .."I only drove the vehicle a little while after the light came on. I figured I "could make it".

I saw a 2 month old 944 Turbo that was so badly overheated after a coolant hose slipped off ...THAT THE FREAKIN' POLY ARIMID FUEL LINES WERE MELTED TO THE HEAD.

The best??? ... a 911 RS with a fresh engine rebuild. The owner took it home from our shop after the rebuild ... fooled around in the engine bay ... took the air cleaner off. and forgot about it.

It rained while he was trailering the car to Lime Rock ... and he couldn't figure out why it wouldn't start in the AM ... even after pull starting it on the front straight of LRP with a Chevy Station Wagon.

He had filled the cylinders with rain water. Water don't compress.

Monday AM he was waiting for me when I got to the Shop ... and was hotter than a pistol. When I got him to explain what he had done with the air cleaner ...I had a mechanic remove the spark plugs ... and key the starter.

Six streams of water gushed over the rear quarters of the 911.

Bone head? Yep ... I seen it.

oddshot

 

PO said the headlights stopped working so he rewired them. After looking into it, the problem was a terribly corroded dimmer switch that crumbled apart when I tried to unplug it. Replaced the switch, rewired everything back to the way it should be and no problems. So instead of replacing a $7 switch, he bought a nice toggle switch with bracket, about 40 feet of wire (didn't bother with a fuse coming directly off the battery though) and spent half a day "rewiring", and still had no high beams! This was only the beginning!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by CampD

I did this to my 84 F150, would never pass emissions, after the hack job it passed with flying colors and got better gas mileage.

I really doubt that...a truck that won't pass the e-test suddenly passes "with
flying colors" after an owner-inflicted hack job is very much doubtful in my
mind and sounds like BS.

I guess this might be possible if the e-test is merely a tailpipe sniff test and one
of your emissions components is stuck or inoperative and you disable it/make
your engine run correctly in your hack job. But, any e-test I've taken my truck
to requires a visual verification of all the factory-installed components, no hack
job is gonna pass such a test, specially not with any sort of colors involved.
And, no matter what, definitely not in California!

My understanding of the emissions control system is that it's basically a good
system that does what it was designed to do and works very well when all the
components are functioning as designed.

 

Which is rarely the case on a 20+ year old truck which explains why there are so many hack jobs out there.

 

Ever truely work on a E4 tech system? Ford just keep throwing more junk on it to see if that would work. And yes they rarely worked
correctly after you left leave the show room. did you buy one new? Yes these systems only get sniffed here in MA(alterior motive to Obama and Gore's cash for clunkers program, if we can't make the changes to the vehicles we'll give them the insentives to instead) I never hacked the wiring and didnt disable the vacume system, just the crap they tried to attach to the poor single barrel carb! Let me ask you, Do they pull off the air cleaner when they do the visual inspection? doubt it, do the techs that do yours actualy know what this system is supose to look like? Hmmm, again doubt it.
And yes for 5yrs I spent more money each yr trying to get it to pass the sniff test, never did! Till I disabled the crap!
I guess I used the term "Hack" alittle to liberly for your professionaly opinionated mind!
Just my 2c response

 

I bought an MGB once ... a Limited Edition" that was really beat ... but had a lot of LE parts I could sell ... so for $50.00 I bought it.

anyoldwyas ... when I got it back to the shop, I found that at some time in its life the owner removed EVERYTHING out of the interior (seats, rugs, center console, kick panels, door panels, EVERYTHING) ...

and put a 1' think layer of expanding foam ON and IN every thing ... even inside the doors.

My only guess was that he was trying to sound proof the thing.

But its a ROADSTER!!! Just the buffeting of the wind when the top is down ... and the flapping of the top when its up ... is almost deafening.

MGB's a just about as noisy when the are being TOWED as when they are under power.

oddshot

 

i just bought an 86 f150

-po used 3 inch wood screws to attch the 5inch stainless stacks to the bed.
-cut 6 inch holes in the kick panels of the doors to mount his pos speakers because the factory speaker holes are 6.5in
-driving it home the night i bought it i needed a 75 dollar tow from 2 min down the road because he didnt tighten the lug nuts and i had the drivers rear tire fall off..
-stainless toolbox in the bed but not fastened down.
-painted the whole truck with flat black rattle cans, and has over spray and weld spatter on the windows, also didnt bother to remove the pin stripes before painting it
has a cb radio mounted to the ash tray and dash with wood screws so i cant open the tray to access the 12v outlet (no antenna for the cb as well)
-cd deck is sitting in the dash with a homemade piece of metal bent with off centre holes in it not even mounted to the dash in any way. radio does work tho but i cant hear it over the exhaust because of no muffler and dual 5 inch pipes behind the reg cab.
-had to replace fuses to get turn signals to work
-baha lights mounted to a homemade diamond plate front bumper(bumper is an awesome step to work on the motor) hard wired to the battery with a togle switch in the cab, it is fused tho...
-lights mounted on the cab above the windshield are not securely fastened .. used screws that were too short and rattled em loose
-had an amp for a stereo mounted to the cab back with self tappers and left holes in it all over the place that go outside

but from what i read on here i had it easy lol.. engine runs great other than low oil pressure which i am workin on now. a burnt tranny cause he ran it with about 4-5 qts of fluid in it for months.. brakes work great. ride is pretty smooth too, i havent tried the trailer wireing yet tho.. pass power window dosent work, i can pull it down by hand

-Chris

 

Welded the tranny (M5OD) fill plug shut (probably leaked or he stripped the threads so why not weld)? Had to fill from top.

Spare Tire carrier has no spare, no center carrier and has a padlock on it. Have to cut it off as someone here has mentioned before.

Either removed the dash or some panels. took off the headlight and wiper *****. Didn't put the retainer clips back on. Have to grab the shaft most of the time now.

There are about 6 exhaust C Clamps before the flowmaster. It passed emissions so guess it's just ugly.

Truck was probably sitting in a field for awhile. Last sticker was early 2005. Tires were probably flat and therefore had compromised sidewalls. They worked great when I took it for a test drive. Next day 2 of the tires had lost 20 PSI. Replace them with some good used ones. Gonna have to do the others soon. That's just plain cheating when you do that with tires. At least he could have told me.

After working on the dash/steering wheel he put the steering wheel back on but it's at 10:00 instead of 12:00. Steering is fine with just a slight pull.


Can't wait to see what else the PO has done.

/Ricache

 

my first and only truck is an 85 F250, and luckily I have yet to find any boneheaded things the P.O. did ... its nice when you only have to fix your own harebrained ideas and not theirs

 

The PO of my '82 F150 had put a NEW 351W crate engine in it (had only a few thousand miles when I bought it) and also replaced the tranny. However, he kept the new carb that he had on it and put an old 4bbl that leaked gas all over the place. I took it apart and realized that he had made gaskets from a cereal box. It was actually some impressive work with a razor blade, but not too functional. I didn't realize this until after I had driven it 2 hours, and only got 6mpg. All of the paint is now stripped of the intake manifold from the leaking gas. I have since replaced the carb with a new Holley 4bbl, and I get 16mpg now (on the highway, when I'm easy on the pedal).

Also, most of the emissions stuff is all capped off. I'm planning on fixing it at some point, I just don't know what it's supposed to look like. The engine runs great, though. Everything (and I mean everything) under the hood is brand new, and that makes me happy.

The only other thing missing is the flux capacitor. Usually it's mounted right behind the seat, but the PO must've just cut it out at some point. I'm hoping LMC Truck or JC Whitney has a new one, because I really need to go back and see what this emissions system was supposed to look like before it was all capped off.

Great Scott!

 

oh i just found out that the double pumper car was sitting on top of a 1in carb spacer then sitting on top an egr spacer. Which is funny because the double pumper did not even have a spot for the kickdown linkage to attach to. I read the instructions for the carb and in bold letters it states that it will not work for a ford auto tranny. How was the previous owner planning on shifting? Then i found out the tranny came from a junkyard because they pierced the pan in the corner to drain the fluid so now or course you can not put a universal drain plug kit in a corner of the pan. If only they put it on a flat surface then it would have worked. So i go a new pan. This has been a frankenstein truck. SO so close to getting it running right. Now i got a correct carb and tuning it as we speak. Woo hoo

 

Oh god, where do I begin... I got my truck off ebay from Ashland Kentucky. So there is no state inspections there. He pulled all the emission equipment off, added a "custom steering wheel", Tarred the fire wall covering all the bolts (Steering colium , ec..) Had a strap holding the battery down, and the washer fluid container. Glue holding the ugly dash cover.................. Still a work in progress getting it to the way I want it.

 

Rofl sounds like some stuff i would do, cough cough or have done hahaha.

 

I found the bolt that holds my IFS together was about to fall out cause it was never tightened... That would have been quite a bumpy ride if that fell out!

 

It's not a truck that I bought, but I was looking through Craigslist and saw a 1986 F150 that was completely painted with Rhino liner, save for the glass and lights. I suppose there is a certain utility to that, but . . .?