Helping a buddy "fix" an off idle stumble on his dad"s car ( we were 16). Had the top off the carb and hit the throttle. When we were done "fixing it" we started it and right away we could hear the accelerator pump checkball bouncing between the top of the piston and the head. His dad talked us through the r+r of a cylinder head on a 57 Ford 292. Found the ball, put it back together and it ran fine. His dad never mentioned it again. Nice guy.
I had a bad distributor AFTER the first start on a swap. It ran then it stopped. It had spark, just weak spark, and i had 2 other bad distributors of the same type. I finally modified to try a different year distributor. Then it finally started and I made final adjustments, ran great for a year and a half til the distributor went again, but it ran... so I was checking other things for awhile. At least the newer disty was repairable and cheaper.
I have found that sneaking up behind someone and blasting them with the compressed air blow nozzle works pretty good for payback. It would even be better if it was videoed.
My dad always said that is why mechanics are bald. From hitting head when the horn gets honked. Kudos to Eric, He took it in stride. I would have flipped out for a few seconds.... Got to a point that I would disconnect horn if my younger sisters were helping me.
Imagine rebuilding an Engine from scratch. Hundreds of Parts assembled in the correct Order and Way, just to miss a few tiny Contactsprings on one of the very last Parts. This is so dump it's hard to believe. I would pass it off as an honesty check, to save myself the embarrassment.
@@brettfrancis1527 No you are. I'm sure you couldn't build nothing but a big angry mouth. Stop being a negative person, the man deserves a lot of credit for re=building his own engine, not many could!
My first over haul was a 1966 Buick skylark. The car would studder, go blam blam pop pop. After three days pulling my hair out I called a moble mechanic and he came out to look it over. Did a double take when he saw me. Asked how old I was, told him I was thirteen and this was my first car. He thought my Dad helped me and nope he didn't, did it with a Chilton Manual in one hand and a wrench in the other. He looked over the engine and found out the timing was a 180 deg off. Reset and the car started and ran great. He didn't charge me and handed me a card and said if my parents said it was OK I can learn from him on weekends and Summer as long as I keep my grades up. Spent several weekend and Summer's riding and working with him. Learned a lot about gas and diesel car's and trucks. He was a great guy. Passed away a year after high school graduation.
@@kevinritchie9227 your right. This country need more men like him. That guy encouraged and sparked the inner me to learn and to have the courage to try new things, not just in the auto/truck industry but others things in life. If you could take just one boy or girl (I have daughter's) and just give them the time of day a word of encouragement or teach them i feel we can help build a better country. But sadly to say in this highly toxic environment created against men now days would you take the chance and liability to even try? If you do be very careful. Look at the crap that went down for the Scotus nomination. And please everyone go and Vote...
@@TheWaterman1000 What's sad is that today that certainly wouldn't happen..parents would not leave you alone with any older man let alone hangout and go places.
I remember my boss connected jumper leads to a car and just as he put the second one on his cell phone went rang and he jumped back.... "these farkan phones"
That poor guy! My dumbest mistake like this was doing a fuel pump on an 89 ramcharger. The massive 36 gallon gas tank was completely full and I to siphon as much as I could, remove the skid plate, rip my hand apart disconnecting lines before I could drop the tank. Major pain in the ass job getting that damn tank out. Upon re-installing the tank I realized there was a fuel pump access hatch in the floor....
As a young mechanic, I double threaded an oil filter on my '91 MR2 2.2L. Couldn't figure out why it was knocking. Blew up... Found out later. Now, I triple check that my filters spin on freely all the way to the lip.
A mechanic told me tank had to be talken down to replace the fuel pump, appently he didn't know there is an access hatch under the seat in the 98 pathfinder, pretty convinient.
@@TheKnightDrag0n I own a 94 pathfinder and yeah it's pretty lovely not to drop the tank. But honestly it's pretty easy tho. Like 10 bolts and 30 mins.
Suprised to see you here! I like seeing that one of my favorite TH-camrs has similar taste in content. I like your electrical videos and I was raised by a mechanic and have taken to mechanical work myself now. In my spare time I like to mess around with little electric gadgets,amp/tv repair and little diy projects.not to mention it helps with the automobiles to have electronic knowledge.
Such a good dynamic between them. Gotta love that small town living. It's a laid back life style compared to being big city, lifeless corporate drones.
Sometimes it's worth the learning experience. I rebuilt an engine in my 03 Liberty. Learned a hell of a lot. Lol. Hopefully I get some time to actually put it back in someday. 😂
Kevin Burns - I know a mechanic who would rip someone off like that. And that is why I quit that job. I won’t even take him to church with me cause he’s the type that would steal the blessings out of the holy water. Not even kidding L.o.L
Many years ago I swapped a 350 out of a wrecked '78 Nova into a '79 Malibu. The Malibu came to me with a 267 V8 in it, wasn't running very well, knocking and overheating. My friend and I did the engine swap, got everything back together, and the engine fired up and ran great first go. However, it kept tearing apart the alternator belt. I must have replaced that belt 5 times. I took the alternator off at least 4 times, tore it apart, examined the pulley in great detail looking for any bending, or sharp bits, or roughness in the surface. I examined the belt path looking for any kind of miss alignment. I spun the center shaft probably hundreds of times feeling for any king of binding. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why the thing was eating belts. I was probably 3 weeks into this fiasco, and pretty much at the end of my rope when my wife (then girlfriend) pointed at the front of the engine, and said "is that supposed to look like that." So, it turns out that while putting things together, we managed to use the crank pulley off one of the engines, with the water pump pulley off the other. One of them had a smaller diameter groove for the outer belt, which was the alternator, while the other pulley had all three grooves at the same diameter, so the two pulleys were trying to pull the alternator belt at two different speeds, literally tearing it apart. Not bad, it only took 6 belts, 3 weeks, and my wife to figure out what the heck the problem was.
i remember being like 6 or 7 years old...... watching my dad try to get his 72 Plymouth satellite running i kept saying "dad, its the coil!!!" "no it isnt..... your just a dumb kid" (and he was being sarcastic..... he knew i was a smart kid... and i had/have the grades to prove it) so after like 3 hours of checking everything else..... he puts on a new coil crank crank VA-ROOM!!!! and thats how i became a mechanic...... watching/helping my dad he can set dual point distributors by feel..... but i can figure out computer/sensor problems with out a scan tool (went to college for computer science....but was a HUGE nerd before that) together..... not much we cant fix -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- now days we dont even have to say a word to each-other.... i remember working on a car..... and getting done with my side of the engine right as heh got done with his with out a word..... we both switches sides at the same time didnt bump into each other.... or anything was like reading each others minds idk.... hard to describe..... but holy fuck it felt good
@@kainhall I remember working on a car with my dad and he was fighting with one of the springs and retainer clips for rear drum breaks. I was there looking at it and the way he was trying to do it I wouldn't do it that way. I tried to say something and he started yelling at me so I kept quiet. I waited until he went in the house about an hour later and lots of swearing. He came back out in 10 minutes and i had the spring on and the rest of it together. He looked it over and didn't say much about it but put the drum back over it. when I have issues with something I normally can look it over and think of another way of doing it and normally never have issues and I don't even swear working on them like he did.
@@kainhall oh breaking something does suck. I messed up a rear rotor before bending it. I didn't know the caliper was to screw in. I was trying to use a pry bar against the rotor to push it in. It was a 1988 pontiac fiero. the rotors were 1988 fiero only. this was back in the late 90's it was my own car. The auto parts store they were 300 dollars each. you couldn't find a used one at a salvage yard as in 1988 they changed the suspension for 1988 and they changed the breaks and 3 months into making them they stopped production of the pontiac fiero. That was a learning experience. I still didn't swear. I thought they would just push in like the front.
Back in the day I was an automotive machinist. Every so often I would have a proud father show up with an engine to rebuild for his kid's car. This time it was a customer with a 396 for his kid's Chevelle. He wanted the engine bored, balanced and blue printed, and ported heads. I was well into the build when the customer came into the shop and said he wanted to "save" money so he and his kid would have a memory of putting the engine together themselves. I told the customer that I was not happy with that request, mainly because my name was on that engine. The customer finally agreed to let me short block it, but he would do the rest with his kid. A week later, I got a call at about 2:30 in the morning. The customer was yelling at me from the get-go. "This GD engine doesn't have any oil pressure!!!!!". "What the hell did you do or not do!!!!" I stopped at the shop and picked up my drill and pump priming rod and went to the gas station the customer was using to test run the engine in the kid's Chevelle. I saw they had the valve covers off and the top of the heads were dry as a bone in the desert. So I pulled the distributor and put light in the hole and I could see all the way to the top of the oil pump. I asked the customer where he assembled the engine and he told me his garage. I told him the oil pump shaft between the distributor and the oil pump was missing. He told me I must have forgotten to give it to him at my shop. I told him we were going to his garage. In the middle of the garage floor was the box I had given him at my shop. I walked over, looked in the box and there in all its singular glory was the shaft. I didn't say anything to him, just picked up the shaft and went back the the station. I primed the engine oiling system, put the shaft in and put the distributor back and told him to start it. I was younger then and a bit pissed-off, so I stepped back while the crowed gathered around the engine bay. The customer had a remote start and cranked the engine. The engine instantly fired, and all those gathered around the engine..... , well let's just say they received a break in oil baptism. There was oil everywhere. I guess I should have told them to put the valve covers on, but hey, short block it was. I walked out and went home to bed with the biggest smile of my lifetime.
My dad did the same thing. Knew a guy that did rebuilds all the time for reasonable rates, and my dad took it to a different shop at the last minute that charged more and left the thing completely disassembled and expected me to put it together between my job and school lol.
As a network engineer this is super true. You look at the same thing so many times you're sure you checked it...go to sleep, wake up the next day look at it and say "doh!" that was it?
This is a bit long. I was working as a tech in a Cadilliac dealer and had a complaint that a/c did not cool with radio on. Went on a road test and sure enough if you turned on the radio the a/c stopped cooling. fan still worked but warm air. Back in the stall, I had key on engine off and when I turned off the radio I heard the A/C chitch engage. Wow! After following all the wiring, I pulled the Wiring harness from the plug that went into the vehicle. Looking inside the male plug, I saw one of the spades missed it's mark into the plug and the spade bent to the side shorting against the neighbor spade. The bent one was compressor coil wire and the other one it was touching was "antenna down" so it only sent power to the a/c when calling the antenna to go down. This was a "brand new" car built from the factory with this error. Thought you would enjoy this.
About 25 or 30 years ago, I bought a brand-new, steel gray Mercury Grand Marquis with air suspension. It rode a little low, and wasn’t that smooth a ride, but no tickets due to its appearance. I asked the dealer to check it out. When I went to pick it up, he told me the factory had forgotten to install the compressor, air hoses and air bags, and nobody had noticed. They put the air suspension in. How could the factory and dealership not notice? How did I not notice when I was test driving it? Why did I get rid of a car that no one ever got a ticket in?
@Ron Rhoades newer caddys have them underneath the back seat, under the hood, 2 under the dash and one in the trunk depending on the model. Same with the battery its either under hood. Under back seat, or hidden in the trunk on pass side behind a carpet panel.
rsx123 The horn is an inductive system with connections getting made and broken quickly, which can generate high voltage back-EMF (that said, there are several ways to make a horn, some of which are worse than others - the greatest spike will be developed when the horn relay reopens to turn off the horn as then there is no return path to the battery that would have otherwise helped to absorb the surge. Nowadays you would either use a reverse biased diode or a capacitor across the terminals to absorb the back-EMF spikes and thus clamp the high voltage spikes as such spikes in the electrical system are not good for all the sensitive electronics in a modern vehicle (nor for radio reception).
+rsx123 Ethan Poole has it correct in his reply. First time I remember seeing this was when my father hit the bonnet so hard with his head it dislodged the stay.
Love the comments, I was especially impressed by how sensitive you were to the owner missing first start....very refreshing! Thank you for recording this.
Bro I'm a mechanic myself... I work for myself as well... I was trying to acquire the repair contract for fleet vehicles for a local Transport company... They sent me a vehicle to fix for them it had the same thing missing...the coil springs... They were testing my honesty... When I called them and let them know it was less than a $50 fix I got the contract LOL... Honesty pays
About 45 years ago, when I was in school, I worked on cars in my front yard in the student apartments area (1 story GI-Bill surplus tarpaper shacks from the late 1940’s ). After working on foreign cars exclusively, I took on the tune-up of a US made V-8. I can’t remember exactly what make it was, but to do the job, I decided I had to remove the distributor from the rear of the engine, behind the air cleaner, and it was a long reach with very little working room. The tune-up was all routine, gapping and installing the plugs, checking the wires, checking the distributor cap for carbon tracking, and checking that whatever triggered the spark, either points or a primitive electronic system, etc. was working fine, replacing parts as needed, etc. It was still daylight when I thought I had finished and first tried to crank it up. No spark! At midnight I was still out there in the yard fooling with it. Did I mention it was a dark winter night near the Virginia mountains and it was really cold? The car absolutely, positively had to be ready by 8:00 a.m., and I was sweating bullets, in spite of the freezing weather. Defeated, I finally went to bed. An hour later it hit me - the only major change I had made was to pull out the shaft that turned the distributor, check it out and put it back in. As I remember, back then most distributor shafts on foreign cars could only go back in one way - it either worked or it didn’t, but it only went in one way. Not so for my buddy’s American made V-8 - that night I learned that the distributor shaft would go in the correct way, or you could turn it half a turn (180 degrees) and it would also go in and seat properly, but the ignition timing would then be 180 degrees off, and the engine would never start. There may have been a way to know right away that you had installed the shaft incorrectly, such as marking the position of the distributor cap before you took it apart, but there was no glory in using common sense or caution, so this fool rushed in where a real mechanic would have feared to have gone. I fixed it at about 2:00 a.m., and made about 50 cents an hour for my labor. Was there any valid reason to take out the distributor shaft? Of course not, but I didn’t know how ignorant I was. This was the Dunning-Kruger Effect making one of its early appearances in my life. Look it up - it has universal application, just like Murphy’s Law, the only law that has never been amended or repealed!
I just finished an engine swap on my bmw yesterday..took like 4 months. Put the finishing touches on it and turned the key... battery dead... it was dead when I parked it... forgot to charge the battery for 4 months. Lol
Every single electrical install I've ever done, think to myself "Yea I'll wire it all up but leave the fuse until last" then forget the fuse, every single time
My first clutch! I was 16 and had no idea what a alignment spline was. Man! Three very frustrating days of holding a tranny up and cussing. Thankfully, the corner gas station mechanic enlightened me? Thank you Jim!
In this episode, Eric O closes the gap (literally!) between customer and his vehicle. and puts the spark back in another vehicle and sends another customer on his way WITH a spring in his step (and his plug wire boot).
Well not something "I" did, but was involved in... my wife was an RN working the graveyard shift at the local county hospital and usually started for home around 3:45am when one early dark morning my wife calls home and is crying saying her Jeep won't start. It was a Cherokee Laredo with an automatic... I get there and it is COLD out... here I am at 4am, in the winter, cold as hell, wearing my flannel pajama bottoms, a sweatshirt and my carhartt jacket. Grabbed the keys from her, got in and tried to start the jeep and no go, looked down at the gear selector and it was in DRIVE still! Put it in Park, started it up and let her know "it was fixed"... (Hubby's gotta be the hero right?) 😜
The guy rebuilt the engine and didn't realize the springs for the coils were still in the trunk. We've all been there ! On a more serious note the guy is very lucky he brought the vehicle to you. Some out there unfortunately would have given him a $700. bill and said it was something else. Sad but true. Nice one Dr. O
Didn't tighten the high speed tire balancer... wheel came off tire hit the floor running out the shop so did I chasing it across the dealer parking lot till it hit a parked car. Looked real professional in my mechanic uniform. New Olympic event.
LMAO that sucks , i have had a few tires come loose on tire balance machine but i was able to catch it before it was spinning to fast. what i do now is we keep a hammer on the balance machine and once i think i tighten it down i wack it with a hammer a couple of times to "snug" it up.
1968, junior in college working part time at a Chrysler Plymouth dealer, new car set-up, sometimes tune up. Old customer brought in 1967 T-Bird for a tune up (we worked on anything). I did the tune up, plugs, points etc. Opened the drivers door and set the emergency brake and started the engine to set the idle. When it came off high idle it was still too fast so, per the book, I reached through the window and put it in gear to set the idle. Also, per the book, driver door shut, put in gear, the emergency brake automatically released - a FoMoCo convenience. So there I was hanging through the window as the car idled away with me across the shop. I managed to slam it into park before it hit another car in the shop. I was the talk of the shop for the week; one of the mechanics carved a set of chocks with my initials on them, I was to chock any car I worked on. I still have the chocks.
I did something very similar when I was an apprentice a few years ago. We had an old Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow on a four-post lift for some fixes. The windscreen washer system was not working, but I had tested the pump itself and found it was ok, the problem was between the pump and the switch. For reasons I can't remember, the lift was raised about 4 feet in the air, and I was standing on it doing the work. I had the engine running, because the washer system wouldn't work without the ignition on, and I didn't want to burn out the coil. The button to use the washers was on a stalk on the left side of the steering column. I reached through the driver's window (car was right hand drive) to press the switch for the 10th time, and it still didn't work. Frustrated, I withdrew my hand quickly, and accidentally bumped the column shifter, putting the car in reverse. For a heartstopping moment, it reversed along the lift, and came within inches of overcoming the chocks on the ends of the lift ramps, specifically put there to stop cars falling off. Had they not been there, I would have hung the arse of the Rolls over the edge and probably put massive dents in the sills and been in a shitload of trouble. All future work was done with the handbrake very very on.
My cousin and I put a replacement engine in his mom's 1970 mustang in the backyard. Went to start it from under the hood jumping the starter relay with a screwdriver. Car was in gear and took off pretty fast. My cousin being 300 pounds and myself being the 125 pound skinny guy, I was the one who ran after the car and jumped in dukes of hazard style and got it stopped before it went through the back of the garage.
I did that once. I forgot about the vacuum release on the emergency brake. Wasn't a big deal there was a house in front of me! Thankfully it was my house! Just got to remember to yank the vacuum hose if you wanted leave the parking brake on and put it in Drive. It's right above the pedal on most of them.
I replaced our family car's engine (2005 Honda Civic 1.7) by myself when I was 15. I pulled the blown engine out and replaced it with a junkyard engine that I had taken apart, cleaned up, and fully rebuilt. New bearings, rings, seals, etc. When I installed the engine in the car and bolted the engine to the transmission I went to turn the crankshaft to line up the holes in the flexplate with the holes in the torque converter so I could get the bolts in and the crankshaft wouldn't turn. I loosened the bell housing bolts and the engine would turn again, but as soon as I tightened the bolts down again the crankshaft would lock up. I called a mechanic friend and he told me I probably put the flexplate in backwards. I pulled the engine back out to check the flexplate and sure enough it was on the engine backwards and it was sticking out, so when I bolted the engine to the transmission the crankshaft was shoving the torque converter into the bell housing and locking everything up. Once I turned the flexplate around everything was fine, that engine still runs perfectly to this day. February 2022 update: That engine is still running perfectly. I recently did a compression test and got an even 210 PSI on all 4 cylinders. I'm currently driving that car 50 miles a day 5 days a week to and from college and that engine has been totally trouble free.
@uhチュンチュンマル I cant see how sucking hot air will lead to an overheat. Something else had to have happened. I have run my subaru without an air filter in the garage to test things and it never overheated. It idled like a pig as it had no MAF sensor data, but it ran.
@H. Bailbondsch You just expect too much from these civilian vehicles. I have to admit that I expected too much from my 2002 car (in comparison to my 1990's one). They're not as structurally sound nowadays, but easier to work on (for the most part). Still, I haven't blown any engines up due to abuse (though I did drive one too far after the water pump blew out on the interstate - it was only a half mile at most but it was still enough to seize the engine up). 🙄🤬😞
I rebuilt a NP231 for the first time last year. Heard everyone complain about how hard it is to get the pump in right. Was super easy, didn't even have a problem getting the pump in! Had the transfer case all sealed up, full of fluid ... then noticed the pump sitting on the workbench.
@@1936Glen can a weak distributor cap be visible using an oscilloscope? I saw spark and such but it was still bad lol, no cracks in my case but it was dirty but was still working ok. I wish I did a capture of a weak spark going through the coil wires to compare with a good one.
The fact that this guy rebulit his engine and(as you stated, Eric) everything was neat and tidy and appeared to be in place shows that he had done everything right....almost. Even good professionals make mistakes from time to time and if anything this little video shows how fallible we all are. I can understand your words regards 'being set up' completely but you did your customer proud and credence to both of you for 1.) Having a go at rebuilding and engine 2.) You being a genuine professional and concentrating on the basics in your diagnosis....I know many who would not attempt the first and others who would use the second as a money making exercise..Thumbs Up....!!
I had a code for a cam position sensor in my 97 Cougar. Went to Carquest picked one up and put it in. Error stayed. I spent countless hours researching expected resistance in wires, shielding issues, etc. I spliced in new wires, picked up a different ECM, tested wire ohms, etc. I finally cried Uncle and took it in to the Dealer. They couldn't see anything with their equipment and said I went further with my diagnostics than they would have. I finally told them to throw a different sensor in. Turns out the parts store sensor was bad. A bad $20 sensor that takes 2 minutes to replace cost me hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours researching and diagnosing. Never assume the new part you buy is good. The bonus is I did learn a lot about how signal wires can affect the ECM.
It was Carquest before Advance Auto Parts even bought them. Frankly, I think it was a fluke I've never had issues with a Carquest product other than that one time. I did avoid anything electronic from them for quite awhile though.
A few years back, I had a VW TDI with a starter going south. Got a Bosch remanufactured and popped it in. Car started fine the first three times. The next start, car running , but I hear a whining noise. The starter is not engaged, but the motor in the starter is running. Okay, a bad starter, I got another one. Installed it, and the same thing occurred again. Three normal starts, then the fourth start, the starter motor is running, but not engaged with the flywheel. I spent the next week chasing diagrams, checking wiring etc trying to figure out what the hell? Finally decided to check the starter on the floor AGAIN! Three normal operations,the fourth,the gear retracts, but the motor keeps spinning merrily along. I really wanted to tear it down to see how it was possible, but I didn't want to void the warranty. The next starter works fine 8 years later. What are the chances of 2 identical weird problems in row causing you to doubt your sanity?
At work (IT) when we have the same stupid problem with hardware occur within a short period we always say they were made on a Monday after a big party weekend.
I needed that laugh today, a huge THANK YOU MRS. O!! As our normal tradition, Sophia and I sit on the couch with my cell phone and watch your video before she goes to school and I'm out patrolling the streets we watch your videos. Today Sophia said watch Mr. O get zapped (she knows what a coil or Magneto's are) but Sophia wasn't anticipating the horn so when she tooted the horn Sophia jumped a mile off the couch or jumped the same time you did. She literally levitated off the couch. Hilarious....thanks for the laugh
We had a car towed to our shop years ago that had a no crank no dash lights issue. The customer replaced the battery himself and it still didn't start. When it arrived at our shop we discovered that the customer forgot to remove the plastic caps that cover the positive and negative poles on the battery and installed the battery cables right over them. He was very embarrassed to say the least. Really enjoy your videos Eric!
Heck, sometimes someone inexperienced can be a godsend! People with experience may tend to look for a more difficult answer while the rookie may just go "... is it supposed to look like that?"
I spent four months on my first engine build. I did everything myself. I spent time polishing everything inside and out, I cleaned and painted every bolt, I hand made gaskets and adapter plates, I meticulously lubed and aligned, I tested each and every part and all systems from oil to fuel to coolant, I simulated temperature to be absolutely positive the fans would come on (electric fans were new back then), I checked and rechecked the timing to be sure it was perfect. I tried to start it and got nothing. I somehow didn't have any spark. I checked the coil and the plugs and every wire individually, I pulled the cap and checked it for cracks. Still no spark. I went over it all day and all night before I realized that I was an idiot. I got mad and slammed the hood..... And there it was...... The rotor was sitting on the windshield wiper. That's the stupidest I've ever felt in my life.
Sorry. I had to laugh. But be grateful. If that is the "dumbest" thing you do in your life, you are doing well. I am now a retired mechanic in Land Down Under and still help people in need. Wish what you did was the "dumbest" thing in my life. If the Good Lord leaves me alive on this Earth past my current 70 years, I am sure I will have more tales to tell others when I missed something staring me in the face.
As a teenager left the wrench on the air cleaner slammed the hood shut ,started the car it fell hit the fan shot up hit the hood and dented it then fell back back hit the fan one more time and went thru the radiator.. to this day I never leave anything in the engine compartment I guess it's true you always learn from your mistakes
Many years back, when washing a car for the first time after it had been in the body shop (at someone else's expense) I found two small bumps in the centre of the bonnet. Opened it and found a bumper bracket sitting on top of the air cleaner - and a nice shiny new one where it should have been. Body shop were rather embarrassed.
Confession is good for the soul, so: After replacing the blown turbo on my CDTi Astra, I'd almost finished reassembling everything so it was time to fill the radiator. I decided to just pour the coolant straight into the top radiator hose and I'd poured about 3 litres into it before I looked down and noticed this wasn't the top radiator hose, it was the air intake. I'd filled the intake, manifold and two cylinders with coolant. After I'd finished panicking I managed to recover by cranking the engine with the injectors removed (which emptied pressurized coolant all over my garage). I still can't believe it actually made it back to life after that. It wouldn't be so bad if I was a beginner, but I've spent my share of time under cars and I'll never forgive myself for this one.
You are an honest man. Cranked on a 1957 Dodge 318 , no start. Towed it for two miles and no start. Opened the distributor to find no rotor. We all have our lapses.
I'm sure the owner got excited towards the end of his dilemma. Took his time rebuilding the engine but when it came to plugging in he just rushed it. He was looking forward to the fruits of his labor and he just missed the springs. Cudos to you for finding it so quickly. Good vid!
Chris Jepson I agree, it would be nice to know the rest of the story (Paul Harvey). I would bet that you will restore his faith in his mechanical abilities. And all without any OBD hook-up :).
If I were the customer I'd have a good laugh and then be very proud of how well that rebuild ran first start. (And hey, Eric's got it on video so he didn't really miss it!)
My first rebuild was a 69 Plymouth fury hardtop with a 318. Took me two days to figure out that the distributor turns counter clockwise. When I finally got it right it was the best feeling in the world. I remember it barking to life, the hair on my arms stood up. I finally had a V8. There's just nothing better to a 17 year old kid.
Did some work on a v8 engine one day. Finished putting it together and noticed a 14mm socket missing. Decided it must have been left in the valley under the manifold. Stripped down and not there. Turned out it was in another draw in my tool box by mistake. Waste of an afternoon that one.
Hey, that's why in aircraft building establishments they shut the place down if a tool or documented part is not accounted. Production continues only when tool/part is found.
@@davidgwin4540 Yeah we do, and then when we don't find it we order new ones XD. Then we find it 2 years later in a special tool kit, or in a engine preservation container... We got some idiots working here from time to time. Oh and once we found a tool in a helicopter fuel tank, that was after we shut down the maintenance. But mostly if we don't find the tool... it's somewhere not in the airplane...
Sapphire1987 Man, I bet you have some crazy stories to tell! I was going by some of the stories my buddy told me building F18's back in the day ( what he was able to tell me anyway) Iv always had a fascination and respect for what you guys do! I was an engine assembler at a machine shop but always loved aircraft and everything about them👍
Hello Eric . Brings back memories of customer towed in a no start after battery install , found black protective plastic cap still on negative terminal with cable installed over cap . Then the overheat after customer install radiator , to find rubber cap still on radiator inlet neck .. Then my mistake . Replace timing belt on a Mitsubishi Montero, only to notice i installed old belt instead of new one ####***. KEEP up the faith Eric , MOD # 5
I've seen that a ton of times, stapled or plastic tag fasteners, I always look and automatically trim the hose end down, they're usually a bit oversize anyway
Ha! That reminds me of the time decades ago i had an intermittent "no crank" on my '72 Vega. I got a rebuilt starter, pulled the old one out and laid it next to the rebuilt. I got distracted and forgot which one was the rebuilt, as the old one wasn't dirty in the least. I basically did an eeeny, meenie, minee, mo, and installed one of them. Luckily i picked the right one, as i never had a problem again. (Why a Vega? I needed a car and bought this for $200 as a non-runner. Had to have steel sleeves installed, as the bores were hopelessly scored, as the previous owner ran it without water and didn't tell me. This ended up being the worst car i ever owned).
Sean Jones - I soon turn 61 yrs old, and lately ive been catching myself hooking up battery chargers wrong!😡...i bring the box over, put my hand on the red positive battery terminal and say to myself: "red-positive", then, before i plug in the charger i do a final check, and the dad-blame black clip is on the positive battery terminal!😠. Good thing i do a final check before plugging in! I maybe did this ONCE in several decades of shade tree mechanics since i was 17... I hope this is not "the shape of things to come" LOL.
Someone, or a group of someones, did send me a "test car" once. It was a Supra, about a 1991 if I recall. I had owned an '84. A nice car, 5MGE motor. Anyway, the complaint was "no AC." I attached a gauge and saw the standing pressure looked very reasonable, yet the compressor would not run. I knew that Toyota likes to use several fused power sources, and their module is called an "AC Amplifier." I called our help desk and got a fax (it was the 90's, no email) of the AC schematic, and found that one of the fuses was in the right hand kick panel. It was missing. We replaced the fuse and sent it on its way as a "no charge." Later, we were contacted and told that it had been a test car.
Art Houston Toyota still likes to do that, burying one or two fuses off in never-never land for no apparent reason for the AC system. Why they can’t put those fuses in the main fuse panel is a puzzle.
In my younger years in high school around 1990, my brother was teaching me how to change the oil in my 1969 Camaro that he gave me. I removed the oil filter, put in 5 quarts of Kendall 10/40, started her while seeing the lack oil pressure on my Auto Meter gauge. I quickly shut her down, looked underneath and realized I forgot to install the new filter after seeing all the oil on the floor. I have never made that same mistake ever since. Lol
Similar to my first oil change, i forgot to replace the sump plug, poured in new oil, and watched a puddle slowly form under the car and realized my mistake. Always double check the plug is back in before adding the oil
My first motorcycle oil change i ran all the new oil right back out the drain plug because i forgot to put it back in.. i did the filter just fine just forgot the plug LOL. $40 of oil down the drain..
You are so right about that first fireup. You should get the man......That first fireup even after routine maintenance let alone a full engine rebuild is just nerve racking and so rewarding to hear that purrrrrrrrrrr. I remember a honda timing belt I did not too long ago. I hit the key after putting it back together and it just didnt seem right...Tore it all back apart to double check mechanical timing just to be sure of course it was spot on but just needed to run more than 5 seconds to straighten out......then the smooth sound of idle.............BINGO BANGO
Hi Eric from the UK newish to your channel going back through some of your old stuff as I'm enjoying what you do. At 57 now and short of money as a youngster learned alot about cars and the worst thing I did was put a new clutch in a mk5 Ford Cortina and forgot to put the thrust bearing in found it in the box after I had put everything back together . NOT A HAPPY BUNNY 😁
It was the first oil change after Dad and I finished a total restoration of a 69 Camaro. Took off the old oil filter, but the old rubber gasket stayed on the engine. Put the new oil filter and stacked the gaskets, unbeknownst to me. Fired it up, and oil everywhere! They don't stack well! Wouldn't have been such a big deal, but the underside of the car was as clean as the body. It took some doing to get all that oil off the undercarriage! Now I check for a gasket every time on every car!
My dad just did a tune up on the family car and now no start. Frustrated he went inside for a cup of coffee. I looked over the engine and noticed the negative wire on the ignition coil was disconnected. Reconnected the wire by that time my dad came back out and I told him to start it up. Started up and ran fine. Told my dad what it was and he just called me a smartass. I told him this smartass just saved your bacon.
At 16, I did a garage bench overhaul on a 289 small block engine out of a 68 mustang. I had basic tools and a lot of motivation. Using a chain hoist slung over the center beam in my dad's one car garage, I was able to lift it out of the car and onto the floor. After having the heads milled, i installed new valves, rings, bearings, seals, and gaskets. I rebuilt the carb, then reinstalled the engine. I tightened everything up, put in all new fluids. I was feeling great. I had also painted the motor, so it looked spanking new. I bought a used dual point distributor from a swap meet and dropped it in as the finishing touch. The good news is it fired right up, but the bad news was it ran like crap, sputtering, backfiring, and having very little power under acceleration. I thought I must have jacked up the timing, maybe rebuilt the carb incorrectly, installed the cam wrong, etc. I tried different spark plugs, new coil, wires, etc. Then my sister's boyfriend came over, took a look, then listened to it run, then said, "did you install new points." What...points, what are those? Sure enough, he taught me how to install and gap new points and you know what, the engine came alive. It drove so well I was amazed it was all due to $7 in parts. I learned that buying used parts is sometimes a gamble and you really need knowledge. Experience comes from doing stuff and in those younger days, I wasn't afraid to tackle anything.
I rebuilt the 289 in my 68 mustang when I was around 16 years old and couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t start. Drove me crazy. Figured out It had no spark. Changed the coil still nothing. During the disassembly we had removed the rotor out of the distributor to see if everything was clean inside and forgot to put the rotor back. Chased it for a couple hours over the duration of two days before spotting the little rotor sitting in the corner of one of the parts boxes
Hats off to the owner to be able to walk away when the frustration set in and something really bad happened. And I understand Mr. O's desire to have the owner there for the moment of pride on the engine's first start. But business is business.
Once I had to replace a battery on a car, at night in the cooler weather. No issue except now the tachometer no longer worked, but that's mostly for show anyway. Once the warmer weather came around I found the A/C system not cooling, but did not associate it with anything other than random A/C failure. I traced the problem to the fact that the compressor clutch was getting no voltage when the A/C was on. Using the wiring diagrams I found there to be a control module that switches voltage on/off for the clutch and found power into the module was 12V as needed and also that jumping that pin to the compressor lead would indeed engage the compressor. So I bought a spare module and soldered a bridge across those two pins and just plugged in the module when I wanted cool air. A year goes by and when performing a valve clearance adjustment (diesel) I found a loose wire with a ring terminal on the end. I can have no loose wires. Using the 'how long is this and what could it possibly connect to' method I found that it perfectly lined up with the positive battery terminal. RUH ROH! Connecting it made my tach work and plugging in the original A/C module now had that working as well!! Apparently, in the darkness I had missed reconnecting this cable and the wiring diagram had a fold out section specifically for this year of car that I guess I never unfolded. GREAT video Mr. O, you and Mrs. O made my wife and I LOL this morning (that she blew the horn means you've chosen wisely!)
I had a 1983 Camaro with an automatic transmission. Wanted to learn how to drive stick, got all the parts from a junkyard and successfully converted the car to a 5 speed. A few months later, doing an oil change, I spent 45 mins looking for the transmission dipstick to check the fluid. Couldn't find it.. jacked the car back up, looking underneath to see where the dipstick enters the transmission to finally realize.. there's not even a transmission pan anymore.. doh!!!
Not a mechanic problem really but a friend of mine decided he'd be nice and start his sister's truck for her when he left for school that morning. I came by the house the next morning to pick him up for school and I said is your sister going somewhere soon? He's like IDK let me ask her, she was upstairs asleep, he comes running back down and says no, I said why is her truck running then? He says Holy sh** that thing has been running out there since yesterday morning when he started it for her, she never left the house that day...so I said well tell your sister her truck is warmed up and the tank of gas I put in it 2 days ago well is gone, it was literally on empty....so an 89 Chevy S10 4 cylinder will idle for a whole day on a full tank of gas if anyone is curious LOL.
I installed calipers upside down and was stumped as to why I had a spongy pedal after bleeding. Oops. Thanks for being such a humble mechanic. And not grilling the kid for a simple mistake. 👍🏻
OMG! Mrs. O and the horn I laughed hard! Enjoy the channel and your relationship with the Mrs. the fact that your a great mechanic is just a bonus. You seemed very jumpy about the Mrs. cranking that key, kind of like she may have done it a few times on you? LOL!
Silly as this sounds. Maybe I’m watching too intently as I think my heart skipped a beat when Mrs. O beeped the horn. Too funny and the whole interaction after made my day! Love the channel and content.
I love your encouraging words everytime you end your videos. "Remember, if I can do it, you can do it." Because of mechanics like yourself Eric, people, including myself are trying to save money by fixing their own cars. This customer in particular, even though he failed with his own repair. We as the viewer, win because now we can learn and do it better because you showcase how it's done. We all win, Thanks Eric!
He did a great job overall. I've made plenty of silly mistakes as well. The one that comes to mind is when I was a kid doing a tune up on my 1970 Corvette. (Simple plugs, distributor cap, rotor, and condenser). It wouldn't start to save my life. My dad came out, asked me what I replaced, told me to sit in the car while "he fixed it". As he walked away he smiled and said start it. Sure enough it started and ran great leaving me to soak in my own embarrassment realizing I had installed the rotor backwards.
I'm sure you made this guy's day when you called and told him what you found. He was thinking big money screw up and he got off I'm sure with a minor bill for your diagnose etc..
After fixing a heater pump motor that was seized due to rust and age (I oiled it up and replaced the brushes), I was dismayed to find it would not shut off when installed on the car. After an hour of tracing circuits, looking for a stuck relay, etc. I got in the car and realized the heat was simply turned on. I hadn't noticed because it wasn't working before!
My first full engine rebuild, Vauxhall Astra 1200s. Forgot the oil filter.. 1st crank spewed oil into the blower intake and then the cars interior. Dashboard out to clear up the mess (and stink), you live and learn :D
Hey Eric, new within the last few months. Totally enjoy all of your posts. Even though this was an old post it reminded me of putting a low mile wrecking yard 350 small block engine in a Chevy pickup years ago for a friend, I like you felt I was duped. After first startup it had a major miss, after an hour or so I found that it had a 6 cylinder distributor cap on it. Looked the same as a V-8 only after pulling the plug wires off two of the posts were dummies. Nobody ever fessed up, I caulked it up to an honest mistake. Although now retired I’ve had the honor of knowing some top notch master mechanics, and you sir I would rate in that same company. Keep up your great sense of humor and professionalism.
The back porch light went out and sideways rain, thunder, lightning and wind rolled in, so I slammed the hood shut. I wanted to go back inside. The hood gave me grief, I figured it was just the wind trying to blow it upward out if my hands. I forced it down several times until it latched. Next morning, sunny weather and a few loud words of French saw the 5 inch gap between the middle left edge of the hood and the left side fender. I slammed it down with a tall spray can of throttle body spray cleaner still sitting at the edge of the engine bay. The hood was unrepairable and I even managed to damage the abs unit! A two fer! I felt like a genuine boob that day.
Took mine off and rain rusted the hinges open. Replaced, daft dad tried to close, tore the bolt eyelets out of the fender well. Don’t remember fixing it have the car still.
I built a gas turbine from all the parts supply by our production stores and had seven parts left over. Spend the next week tracking down those parts to see where they went on the engine, after all I managed the build of material during the engine design. Someone just left the parts on the parts cart from another type engine build. Scared the hell out me that I wouldn’t know where these parts went on the engine.
@ Bobby Ossenbeck similar, thanks for sharing. tried to help bleeding the clutch by pumping the throttle, for a whole 15mins. wasn't teenager though, just tired. the old man i was helping wasn't that happy list goes for long, of course
When I was about 18 or 19 (about 50 years ago) my good friend and mechanic and I decided to drive the 70 miles to the beach on the Washington coast in my '59 Ford ranch wagon for the day. Just before we got there started to hear a little noise from the engine, sst sst sst. Started slowly getting louder as we drove, my friend said, oh oh, you gotta head gasket startin ta go, we better head for home. got real loud eventually and wasn't sure we were gonna make it, about a hundred feet from our driveway it let loose altogether and sounded like a steam engine going down the road. Dad was in the yard raking leaves and came over to see what the heck was going on, took a look under the hood and said: "this thing will run way better you put that spark plug back in."
HA. My brother bought a car from a government auction last year. He went to pick it up and could not drive it home, stated engine was misfiring and had a rod knock. I had a transporter ship it to my house. Transporter said it wasn't a rod knock but the exhaust was disconnected. HA. Turns out after looking it over, a spark plug was "missing". It was a Ford, so same "COP" style coils as this video. Cop was there and bolted in place. Checked compression on that cylinder and it was fine. Screwed in a new $8 spark plug and it ran perfectly. To funny
I'll give you silly. When I first started working at NAPA I didn't know anything about cars, *anything* and I totally fell for the muffler bearing prank. I went from the computer to the book too, the book! Finally I called my manager over to ask him and I could immediately see it in his eyes. I think someone pressed a little too hard on my soft spot when I was a baby.
Replaced my fuel pump on my Silverado, put all back together. Turned over but no start...oh man maybe it wasn't the pump...1 hour later..oh yeah! Maybe I should reattach the ground wire by the tank. Fired right up. Simple things can get you at times.
Well, I haven't got a car mechanical goof to share with you because I don't "do" much on cars, but, during my national service, I did send out two 10t trucks and six personnel to pick up what was listed as two anti-aircraft guns for HQ. They came back with two small cardboard boxes containing a scale model of an anti-aircraft gun. Never quite lived that one down.
@@ckeller07 Indeed. I couldn't find the catalog number on the request sheet in the documentation I had. That should have set off alarm bells, but I knew what the real thing looked like and how it was packed up, so I just forged ahead.
2003 Vauxhall Omega V6, (Caddy Cantera in USA, Holden Commodore in Aus). Using an adapter, swapped the crappy paper element with plastic housing oil filter for a spin-on canister. No problems with that job itself, but 5000 miles later when I went to do an oil change, I’d not checked the pressure rating of the oil filter, got the wrong one, fitted it, topped up the oil, cranked it over and blew the oil filter clean off, complete with most of the contents of the sump over my driveway. Luckily no damage to the engine, but the wife wasn’t happy about the large oil slick over our red bricked driveway.
Eric I'm still wondering. I truly think he just made a honest mistake. Once again you know why I've been watching you since day one. Your the best you tube repair channel ever. I do like Ford Makuloco also.
In the early to mid 2000's i used to drive a 93 GMC Safari aka Chevy Astro van. I was out in the backyard during a hot summers day changing spark plugs, and there was this one on the drivers side in an odd spot that kept breaking on me. I was sweaty, ornery, and annoyed. When i got the plug back in i of course had to start up the engine. Well i started the engine, but i forgot the floor jack was under the van when i attempted to drive off. The saddle of the floor jack ripped a fist sized hole in the oil pan. When i saw oil was pouring out below i immediately turned the key off. Before i had it towed to a garage i disconnected the battery just so some greenhorn did not attempt to start the engine with no oil in the pan. That 2 dollar spark plug ended up to be a 350 dollar brainfart!
*OTC (3050E Noid Lite/IAC Test Kit: amzn.to/2ID8aKt
*Spark Tester: amzn.to/2ID9nBv
Helping a buddy "fix" an off idle stumble on his dad"s car ( we were 16). Had the top off the carb and hit the throttle. When we were done "fixing it" we started it and right away we could hear the accelerator pump checkball bouncing between the top of the piston and the head. His dad talked us through the r+r of a cylinder head on a 57 Ford 292. Found the ball, put it back together and it ran fine. His dad never mentioned it again. Nice guy.
Eric ...you don't get off that easy .... give us the follow up drama !
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;-)
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I had a bad distributor AFTER the first start on a swap. It ran then it stopped. It had spark, just weak spark, and i had 2 other bad distributors of the same type. I finally modified to try a different year distributor. Then it finally started and I made final adjustments, ran great for a year and a half til the distributor went again, but it ran... so I was checking other things for awhile. At least the newer disty was repairable and cheaper.
Matco spark tester way better touch it to wire or coil an crank look for spark
WHAT WAS IT?
SPARK PLUG?>]
Mrs. O tooting your horn was hilarious, thanks for not editing that out 😁
Haha I can send her to your shop Homie!
I have found that sneaking up behind someone and blasting them with the compressed air blow nozzle works pretty good for payback. It would even be better if it was videoed.
South Main Auto Repair send her over, let’s see what she can do with the Cheeta Bead Sealer 💨
My dad always said that is why mechanics are bald. From hitting head when the horn gets honked. Kudos to Eric, He took it in stride. I would have flipped out for a few seconds.... Got to a point that I would disconnect horn if my younger sisters were helping me.
That was awesome! I jumped as well.
If that's all the DIYer forgot, he deserves a beer
Imagine rebuilding an Engine from scratch.
Hundreds of Parts assembled in the correct Order and Way, just to miss a few tiny Contactsprings on one of the very last Parts.
This is so dump it's hard to believe.
I would pass it off as an honesty check, to save myself the embarrassment.
No he's a fucking moron
@@brettfrancis1527 No you are. I'm sure you couldn't build nothing but a big angry mouth. Stop being a negative person, the man deserves a lot of credit for re=building his own engine, not many could!
He deserves a case, lol. Why the coil pack didn't come pre-assembled is beyond me. Never purchased coils that weren't ready to go.
@@snoopunit watch as it was a bad batch that snuck through.
Just saw the rest. At least it was a simple mistake.
My first over haul was a 1966 Buick skylark. The car would studder, go blam blam pop pop. After three days pulling my hair out I called a moble mechanic and he came out to look it over. Did a double take when he saw me. Asked how old I was, told him I was thirteen and this was my first car. He thought my Dad helped me and nope he didn't, did it with a Chilton Manual in one hand and a wrench in the other. He looked over the engine and found out the timing was a 180 deg off. Reset and the car started and ran great. He didn't charge me and handed me a card and said if my parents said it was OK I can learn from him on weekends and Summer as long as I keep my grades up. Spent several weekend and Summer's riding and working with him. Learned a lot about gas and diesel car's and trucks. He was a great guy. Passed away a year after high school graduation.
Thats a lovely memory
There are not many people like that anymore. You were very lucky to have someone like him. Sorry to hear he passed.
@@kevinritchie9227 your right. This country need more men like him. That guy encouraged and sparked the inner me to learn and to have the courage to try new things, not just in the auto/truck industry but others things in life. If you could take just one boy or girl (I have daughter's) and just give them the time of day a word of encouragement or teach them i feel we can help build a better country. But sadly to say in this highly toxic environment created against men now days would you take the chance and liability to even try? If you do be very careful. Look at the crap that went down for the Scotus nomination. And please everyone go and Vote...
@@TheWaterman1000 What's sad is that today that certainly wouldn't happen..parents would not leave you alone with any older man let alone hangout and go places.
Thanks for sharing!
I literally laughed out loud when Mrs. O. honked the horn to mess with you and made you jump!
Me too. Lol
@@eddiebear8370 And me as well!
😅😂I did too!!
The honk made me jump😂
Me too lol
He was 99.5% there. That guy is still lucky to have found you. This would be a dream rippoff for an dishonest shop. Blinkerfluid, lol!
4jrgolf I get mine change every year
I got charged $50 for change my blinker fluid once.
Blinker fluid is gonna be very expensive sometimes, depending on clarity ;)
@@tysimon just stick with full synthetic Blinker Fluid!
I use synthetic blinker fluid, it's expensive so I rarely use the blinkers.
Thumbs up just for the horn honk while you're in the engine compartment.
Thumbs down!!! I would be royally pissed!!!
The Underhood Horn Honk is a classic move! Never gets old! Except for the poor fellow under the hood, that is! 😂😂
@@nosuchluck9477 you gotta do it....it's mandatory. lol
I remember my boss connected jumper leads to a car and just as he put the second one on his cell phone went rang and he jumped back.... "these farkan phones"
You know thats not the first time she has done that!
The horn honk was freaking perfect. Well done.
Exactly I would like a live replay 🤣🤣
Hopefully you didn't charge him for that lol
You are what we need in America, honesty and integrity and I want to say Thank you! 👍👍
That poor guy! My dumbest mistake like this was doing a fuel pump on an 89 ramcharger. The massive 36 gallon gas tank was completely full and I to siphon as much as I could, remove the skid plate, rip my hand apart disconnecting lines before I could drop the tank. Major pain in the ass job getting that damn tank out. Upon re-installing the tank I realized there was a fuel pump access hatch in the floor....
I have a beautiful 89 ramcharger as well!
As a young mechanic, I double threaded an oil filter on my '91 MR2 2.2L. Couldn't figure out why it was knocking. Blew up... Found out later. Now, I triple check that my filters spin on freely all the way to the lip.
A mechanic told me tank had to be talken down to replace the fuel pump, appently he didn't know there is an access hatch under the seat in the 98 pathfinder, pretty convinient.
@@TheKnightDrag0n I own a 94 pathfinder and yeah it's pretty lovely not to drop the tank. But honestly it's pretty easy tho. Like 10 bolts and 30 mins.
Live and learn
Those fun little moments like at 6:00 are gold.
I did not expect to see you here. Small TH-cam, eh? LOL
@@dashcamandy2242 Garage/workshop videos seem to be mostly what I watch.
This and seeing electronics that are very close to blowing up in a stiff breeze.
Suprised to see you here! I like seeing that one of my favorite TH-camrs has similar taste in content. I like your electrical videos and I was raised by a mechanic and have taken to mechanical work myself now. In my spare time I like to mess around with little electric gadgets,amp/tv repair and little diy projects.not to mention it helps with the automobiles to have electronic knowledge.
I swear you're subbed to all of my subs. Glad to see you around.
$1 to hit it with a hammer. $299 to know where to hit it.
I tell people that all the time. I don't charge you to turn a wrench, any idiot can do that, I charge you because I know which wrench to turn.
That's great! Never heard it.
@@S8_10 That one's great also!
Yea the percussive maintenance charge
Actually did that with a buddies car, 6o's something Chevelle, wouldnt turn over so I crawled under and hit the starter with a hammer and it cranked
It is refreshing to see someone who is honest and displays integrity. I wish I lived closer to your shop as you would be my go to mechanic.
Mrs. O and the horn nearly knocked me off my chair laughing. That was GREAT! She's pretty quick thinking!
Such a good dynamic between them. Gotta love that small town living. It's a laid back life style compared to being big city, lifeless corporate drones.
Ha ha Mrs O is funny. Also much prettier than Eric.
Mrs. O is hilarious and attractive as well
Customer.... Hey, I saved 800 bucks changing my own engine! How much do I owe you for putting those springs in?
Mechanic......800 bucks..... 😂😂😂😂😂
Sometimes it's worth the learning experience. I rebuilt an engine in my 03 Liberty. Learned a hell of a lot. Lol.
Hopefully I get some time to actually put it back in someday. 😂
Yup
Kevin Burns 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Kevin Burns - I know a mechanic who would rip someone off like that. And that is why I quit that job. I won’t even take him to church with me cause he’s the type that would steal the blessings out of the holy water. Not even kidding L.o.L
@False Flag 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Many years ago I swapped a 350 out of a wrecked '78 Nova into a '79 Malibu. The Malibu came to me with a 267 V8 in it, wasn't running very well, knocking and overheating. My friend and I did the engine swap, got everything back together, and the engine fired up and ran great first go. However, it kept tearing apart the alternator belt.
I must have replaced that belt 5 times. I took the alternator off at least 4 times, tore it apart, examined the pulley in great detail looking for any bending, or sharp bits, or roughness in the surface. I examined the belt path looking for any kind of miss alignment. I spun the center shaft probably hundreds of times feeling for any king of binding. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why the thing was eating belts.
I was probably 3 weeks into this fiasco, and pretty much at the end of my rope when my wife (then girlfriend) pointed at the front of the engine, and said "is that supposed to look like that." So, it turns out that while putting things together, we managed to use the crank pulley off one of the engines, with the water pump pulley off the other. One of them had a smaller diameter groove for the outer belt, which was the alternator, while the other pulley had all three grooves at the same diameter, so the two pulleys were trying to pull the alternator belt at two different speeds, literally tearing it apart. Not bad, it only took 6 belts, 3 weeks, and my wife to figure out what the heck the problem was.
i remember being like 6 or 7 years old...... watching my dad try to get his 72 Plymouth satellite running
i kept saying "dad, its the coil!!!"
"no it isnt..... your just a dumb kid" (and he was being sarcastic..... he knew i was a smart kid... and i had/have the grades to prove it)
so after like 3 hours of checking everything else..... he puts on a new coil
crank crank VA-ROOM!!!!
and thats how i became a mechanic...... watching/helping my dad
he can set dual point distributors by feel.....
but i can figure out computer/sensor problems with out a scan tool (went to college for computer science....but was a HUGE nerd before that)
together..... not much we cant fix
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now days we dont even have to say a word to each-other....
i remember working on a car..... and getting done with my side of the engine right as heh got done with his
with out a word..... we both switches sides at the same time
didnt bump into each other.... or anything
was like reading each others minds
idk.... hard to describe..... but holy fuck it felt good
@@kainhall I remember working on a car with my dad and he was fighting with one of the springs and retainer clips for rear drum breaks. I was there looking at it and the way he was trying to do it I wouldn't do it that way. I tried to say something and he started yelling at me so I kept quiet. I waited until he went in the house about an hour later and lots of swearing. He came back out in 10 minutes and i had the spring on and the rest of it together. He looked it over and didn't say much about it but put the drum back over it. when I have issues with something I normally can look it over and think of another way of doing it and normally never have issues and I don't even swear working on them like he did.
@@JUST_ONE_ID10T I only swear when it's so rusty or abused that it makes my job harder...
Or I break something lol
@@kainhall oh breaking something does suck. I messed up a rear rotor before bending it. I didn't know the caliper was to screw in. I was trying to use a pry bar against the rotor to push it in. It was a 1988 pontiac fiero. the rotors were 1988 fiero only. this was back in the late 90's it was my own car. The auto parts store they were 300 dollars each. you couldn't find a used one at a salvage yard as in 1988 they changed the suspension for 1988 and they changed the breaks and 3 months into making them they stopped production of the pontiac fiero. That was a learning experience. I still didn't swear. I thought they would just push in like the front.
Back in the day I was an automotive machinist. Every so often I would have a proud father show up with an engine to rebuild for his kid's car. This time it was a customer with a 396 for his kid's Chevelle. He wanted the engine bored, balanced and blue printed, and ported heads. I was well into the build when the customer came into the shop and said he wanted to "save" money so he and his kid would have a memory of putting the engine together themselves. I told the customer that I was not happy with that request, mainly because my name was on that engine. The customer finally agreed to let me short block it, but he would do the rest with his kid.
A week later, I got a call at about 2:30 in the morning. The customer was yelling at me from the get-go. "This GD engine doesn't have any oil pressure!!!!!". "What the hell did you do or not do!!!!"
I stopped at the shop and picked up my drill and pump priming rod and went to the gas station the customer was using to test run the engine in the kid's Chevelle.
I saw they had the valve covers off and the top of the heads were dry as a bone in the desert.
So I pulled the distributor and put light in the hole and I could see all the way to the top of the oil pump. I asked the customer where he assembled the engine and he told me his garage. I told him the oil pump shaft between the distributor and the oil pump was missing. He told me I must have forgotten to give it to him at my shop. I told him we were going to his garage. In the middle of the garage floor was the box I had given him at my shop. I walked over, looked in the box and there in all its singular glory was the shaft. I didn't say anything to him, just picked up the shaft and went back the the station.
I primed the engine oiling system, put the shaft in and put the distributor back and told him to start it.
I was younger then and a bit pissed-off, so I stepped back while the crowed gathered around the engine bay. The customer had a remote start and cranked the engine. The engine instantly fired, and all those gathered around the engine.....
, well let's just say they received a break in oil baptism. There was oil everywhere. I guess I should have told them to put the valve covers on, but hey, short block it was.
I walked out and went home to bed with the biggest smile of my lifetime.
I was a bit younger when remote start was popular too lol
What an idiot 😂 never try to save money when it comes to engines.
My dad did the same thing. Knew a guy that did rebuilds all the time for reasonable rates, and my dad took it to a different shop at the last minute that charged more and left the thing completely disassembled and expected me to put it together between my job and school lol.
Nice one, that made me laugh! 🤣🤣🤣
One of the best stories I've heard
sometimes you just need a fresh set of eyes :)
Some times ur a dumb ass
Gotta love when you forget to do something...
🤣👍
As a network engineer this is super true. You look at the same thing so many times you're sure you checked it...go to sleep, wake up the next day look at it and say "doh!" that was it?
@@bluesclues3428 like your grammar.
This is a bit long. I was working as a tech in a Cadilliac dealer and had a complaint that a/c did not cool with radio on. Went on a road test and sure enough if you turned on the radio the a/c stopped cooling. fan still worked but warm air.
Back in the stall, I had key on engine off and when I turned off the radio I heard the A/C chitch engage. Wow! After following all the wiring, I pulled the Wiring harness from the plug that went into the vehicle. Looking inside the male plug, I saw one of the spades missed it's mark into the plug and the spade bent to the side shorting against the neighbor spade. The bent one was compressor coil wire and the other one it was touching was "antenna down" so it only sent power to the a/c when calling the antenna to go down.
This was a "brand new" car built from the factory with this error.
Thought you would enjoy this.
It would have really freaked you out if you put a cd in and the AC turns on.
This is actual trouble shooting. Unlike Chris fix it
About 25 or 30 years ago, I bought a brand-new, steel gray Mercury Grand Marquis with air suspension. It rode a little low, and wasn’t that smooth a ride, but no tickets due to its appearance. I asked the dealer to check it out. When I went to pick it up, he told me the factory had forgotten to install the compressor, air hoses and air bags, and nobody had noticed. They put the air suspension in. How could the factory and dealership not notice? How did I not notice when I was test driving it? Why did I get rid of a car that no one ever got a ticket in?
@Ron Rhoades newer caddys have them underneath the back seat, under the hood, 2 under the dash and one in the trunk depending on the model. Same with the battery its either under hood. Under back seat, or hidden in the trunk on pass side behind a carpet panel.
@Ron Rhoades ALL CAPS !!!! WTF!!!!!!!!
Honking the horn when your husband has the coil in his hand pure gangster laughed my ass off well done Mrs. O.
Yes Mrs O got off a good one.
Even more fun back in the old days before fully insulated connectors if husband had their hand on the horn terminal.
What would happen if you had your hand on the horn "terminal" Is it not 12v?
rsx123 The horn is an inductive system with connections getting made and broken quickly, which can generate high voltage back-EMF (that said, there are several ways to make a horn, some of which are worse than others - the greatest spike will be developed when the horn relay reopens to turn off the horn as then there is no return path to the battery that would have otherwise helped to absorb the surge. Nowadays you would either use a reverse biased diode or a capacitor across the terminals to absorb the back-EMF spikes and thus clamp the high voltage spikes as such spikes in the electrical system are not good for all the sensitive electronics in a modern vehicle (nor for radio reception).
+rsx123 Ethan Poole has it correct in his reply. First time I remember seeing this was when my father hit the bonnet so hard with his head it dislodged the stay.
Love the comments, I was especially impressed by how sensitive you were to the owner missing first start....very refreshing! Thank you for recording this.
Exactly! ⬆️
Score 1 for Mrs o, great honk.
Bro I'm a mechanic myself... I work for myself as well... I was trying to acquire the repair contract for fleet vehicles for a local Transport company... They sent me a vehicle to fix for them it had the same thing missing...the coil springs... They were testing my honesty... When I called them and let them know it was less than a $50 fix I got the contract LOL... Honesty pays
Wow
Great story, and great lesson displaying their wisdom in testing your honesty.
About 45 years ago, when I was in school, I worked on cars in my front yard in the student apartments area (1 story GI-Bill surplus tarpaper shacks from the late 1940’s ). After working on foreign cars exclusively, I took on the tune-up of a US made V-8. I can’t remember exactly what make it was, but to do the job, I decided I had to remove the distributor from the rear of the engine, behind the air cleaner, and it was a long reach with very little working room. The tune-up was all routine, gapping and installing the plugs, checking the wires, checking the distributor cap for carbon tracking, and checking that whatever triggered the spark, either points or a primitive electronic system, etc. was working fine, replacing parts as needed, etc.
It was still daylight when I thought I had finished and first tried to crank it up. No spark! At midnight I was still out there in the yard fooling with it. Did I mention it was a dark winter night near the Virginia mountains and it was really cold? The car absolutely, positively had to be ready by 8:00 a.m., and I was sweating bullets, in spite of the freezing weather. Defeated, I finally went to bed. An hour later it hit me - the only major change I had made was to pull out the shaft that turned the distributor, check it out and put it back in. As I remember, back then most distributor shafts on foreign cars could only go back in one way - it either worked or it didn’t, but it only went in one way. Not so for my buddy’s American made V-8 - that night I learned that the distributor shaft would go in the correct way, or you could turn it half a turn (180 degrees) and it would also go in and seat properly, but the ignition timing would then be 180 degrees off, and the engine would never start. There may have been a way to know right away that you had installed the shaft incorrectly, such as marking the position of the distributor cap before you took it apart, but there was no glory in using common sense or caution, so this fool rushed in where a real mechanic would have feared to have gone. I fixed it at about 2:00 a.m., and made about 50 cents an hour for my labor.
Was there any valid reason to take out the distributor shaft? Of course not, but I didn’t know how ignorant I was. This was the Dunning-Kruger Effect making one of its early appearances in my life. Look it up - it has universal application, just like Murphy’s Law, the only law that has never been amended or repealed!
Honestly. If I had a dollar for every time I did a job, turned the key, and remembered oh yeah that battery thing is kinda important, I would be rich.
I just finished an engine swap on my bmw yesterday..took like 4 months. Put the finishing touches on it and turned the key... battery dead... it was dead when I parked it... forgot to charge the battery for 4 months. Lol
But you already got MORE than a dollar every time you did a job.
Every single electrical install I've ever done, think to myself "Yea I'll wire it all up but leave the fuse until last" then forget the fuse, every single time
Yup!
My first clutch! I was 16 and had no idea what a alignment spline was. Man! Three very frustrating days of holding a tranny up and cussing. Thankfully, the corner gas station mechanic enlightened me? Thank you Jim!
In this episode, Eric O closes the gap (literally!) between customer and his vehicle.
and puts the spark back in another vehicle and sends another customer on his way WITH a spring in his step (and his plug wire boot).
Well not something "I" did, but was involved in... my wife was an RN working the graveyard shift at the local county hospital and usually started for home around 3:45am when one early dark morning my wife calls home and is crying saying her Jeep won't start. It was a Cherokee Laredo with an automatic... I get there and it is COLD out... here I am at 4am, in the winter, cold as hell, wearing my flannel pajama bottoms, a sweatshirt and my carhartt jacket. Grabbed the keys from her, got in and tried to start the jeep and no go, looked down at the gear selector and it was in DRIVE still! Put it in Park, started it up and let her know "it was fixed"... (Hubby's gotta be the hero right?) 😜
The easy fixes are my favorite!
Shoulda drove off and made her walk home for makin u have to do all that so early 😂
So how did she even get the keys out of ignition to go to work if the shifter was in drive
@@beastfromtheeast9318 Easy dumb ass it was in park then, It only got in drive while she was fumbling around in the cold, dark night.
bob m ahh man fuck you fucken millennial. Sorry sack of shit. You probably don’t even know how to change oil on a car.
The guy rebuilt the engine and didn't realize the springs for the coils were still in the trunk. We've all been there !
On a more serious note the guy is very lucky he brought the vehicle to you. Some out there unfortunately would have given him a $700. bill and said it was something else. Sad but true.
Nice one Dr. O
Mrs. O gets an award! We learn many things by making mistakes. No harm no fowl. Thanks for the great videos.
Didn't tighten the high speed tire balancer... wheel came off tire hit the floor running out the shop so did I chasing it across the dealer parking lot till it hit a parked car. Looked real professional in my mechanic uniform. New Olympic event.
LMAO that sucks , i have had a few tires come loose on tire balance machine but i was able to catch it before it was spinning to fast. what i do now is we keep a hammer on the balance machine and once i think i tighten it down i wack it with a hammer a couple of times to "snug" it up.
I literally laughed out loud
1968, junior in college working part time at a Chrysler Plymouth dealer, new car set-up, sometimes tune up. Old customer brought in 1967 T-Bird for a tune up (we worked on anything). I did the tune up, plugs, points etc. Opened the drivers door and set the emergency brake and started the engine to set the idle. When it came off high idle it was still too fast so, per the book, I reached through the window and put it in gear to set the idle. Also, per the book, driver door shut, put in gear, the emergency brake automatically released - a FoMoCo convenience. So there I was hanging through the window as the car idled away with me across the shop. I managed to slam it into park before it hit another car in the shop. I was the talk of the shop for the week; one of the mechanics carved a set of chocks with my initials on them, I was to chock any car I worked on. I still have the chocks.
I did something very similar when I was an apprentice a few years ago. We had an old Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow on a four-post lift for some fixes. The windscreen washer system was not working, but I had tested the pump itself and found it was ok, the problem was between the pump and the switch. For reasons I can't remember, the lift was raised about 4 feet in the air, and I was standing on it doing the work. I had the engine running, because the washer system wouldn't work without the ignition on, and I didn't want to burn out the coil. The button to use the washers was on a stalk on the left side of the steering column. I reached through the driver's window (car was right hand drive) to press the switch for the 10th time, and it still didn't work. Frustrated, I withdrew my hand quickly, and accidentally bumped the column shifter, putting the car in reverse. For a heartstopping moment, it reversed along the lift, and came within inches of overcoming the chocks on the ends of the lift ramps, specifically put there to stop cars falling off. Had they not been there, I would have hung the arse of the Rolls over the edge and probably put massive dents in the sills and been in a shitload of trouble. All future work was done with the handbrake very very on.
My cousin and I put a replacement engine in his mom's 1970 mustang in the backyard. Went to start it from under the hood jumping the starter relay with a screwdriver. Car was in gear and took off pretty fast. My cousin being 300 pounds and myself being the 125 pound skinny guy, I was the one who ran after the car and jumped in dukes of hazard style and got it stopped before it went through the back of the garage.
grin
I did that once. I forgot about the vacuum release on the emergency brake. Wasn't a big deal there was a house in front of me! Thankfully it was my house! Just got to remember to yank the vacuum hose if you wanted leave the parking brake on and put it in Drive. It's right above the pedal on most of them.
@@Scrubworks Finish the story!
I replaced our family car's engine (2005 Honda Civic 1.7) by myself when I was 15. I pulled the blown engine out and replaced it with a junkyard engine that I had taken apart, cleaned up, and fully rebuilt. New bearings, rings, seals, etc. When I installed the engine in the car and bolted the engine to the transmission I went to turn the crankshaft to line up the holes in the flexplate with the holes in the torque converter so I could get the bolts in and the crankshaft wouldn't turn. I loosened the bell housing bolts and the engine would turn again, but as soon as I tightened the bolts down again the crankshaft would lock up. I called a mechanic friend and he told me I probably put the flexplate in backwards. I pulled the engine back out to check the flexplate and sure enough it was on the engine backwards and it was sticking out, so when I bolted the engine to the transmission the crankshaft was shoving the torque converter into the bell housing and locking everything up. Once I turned the flexplate around everything was fine, that engine still runs perfectly to this day.
February 2022 update: That engine is still running perfectly. I recently did a compression test and got an even 210 PSI on all 4 cylinders. I'm currently driving that car 50 miles a day 5 days a week to and from college and that engine has been totally trouble free.
Nothing beats a Honda 4 stroke engine.
Especially an older cast iron engine.
You can't kill it.
@@davecrupel2817 Yup, Honda makes great engines!
@H. Bailbondsch is there any part of that you're proud of or did you just want to brag about how inept you are when it comes to taking care of cars?
@uhチュンチュンマル I cant see how sucking hot air will lead to an overheat.
Something else had to have happened.
I have run my subaru without an air filter in the garage to test things and it never overheated.
It idled like a pig as it had no MAF sensor data, but it ran.
@H. Bailbondsch You just expect too much from these civilian vehicles. I have to admit that I expected too much from my 2002 car (in comparison to my 1990's one). They're not as structurally sound nowadays, but easier to work on (for the most part). Still, I haven't blown any engines up due to abuse (though I did drive one too far after the water pump blew out on the interstate - it was only a half mile at most but it was still enough to seize the engine up).
🙄🤬😞
“Don’t you touch that button”
.....”honk”
Made me laugh pretty hard. Got a sub from me man haha.
I rebuilt a NP231 for the first time last year. Heard everyone complain about how hard it is to get the pump in right. Was super easy, didn't even have a problem getting the pump in! Had the transfer case all sealed up, full of fluid ... then noticed the pump sitting on the workbench.
He took the springs out and it wouldn't start so he rebuilt the motor.
lolol
My buddy works at a shop that just replaced an engine over a cracked distributor cap. Lol, whoops!
@@1936Glen can a weak distributor cap be visible using an oscilloscope? I saw spark and such but it was still bad lol, no cracks in my case but it was dirty but was still working ok. I wish I did a capture of a weak spark going through the coil wires to compare with a good one.
Maybe? Lol. Using an oscilloscope for such things is above my pay grade!
@@scientist100 look at engine run at night you will sparks moving on outside of cap
Sticking to the “trouble shooting tree” is just beautiful. Shows how first verifying basics can lead to a quick fix.
I know this is several years old, but it is my all time favorite video from Eric and Venessa. Please know that I smile every time I watch. Thank you.
The fact that this guy rebulit his engine and(as you stated, Eric) everything was neat and tidy and appeared to be in place shows that he had done everything right....almost. Even good professionals make mistakes from time to time and if anything this little video shows how fallible we all are. I can understand your words regards 'being set up' completely but you did your customer proud and credence to both of you for 1.) Having a go at rebuilding and engine 2.) You being a genuine professional and concentrating on the basics in your diagnosis....I know many who would not attempt the first and others who would use the second as a money making exercise..Thumbs Up....!!
I had a code for a cam position sensor in my 97 Cougar. Went to Carquest picked one up and put it in. Error stayed. I spent countless hours researching expected resistance in wires, shielding issues, etc. I spliced in new wires, picked up a different ECM, tested wire ohms, etc. I finally cried Uncle and took it in to the Dealer. They couldn't see anything with their equipment and said I went further with my diagnostics than they would have. I finally told them to throw a different sensor in. Turns out the parts store sensor was bad. A bad $20 sensor that takes 2 minutes to replace cost me hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours researching and diagnosing. Never assume the new part you buy is good. The bonus is I did learn a lot about how signal wires can affect the ECM.
Better safe then sorry I always say when working on cars!
Was it AutoZone? NAPA usually gives higher-quality parts.
It was Carquest before Advance Auto Parts even bought them. Frankly, I think it was a fluke I've never had issues with a Carquest product other than that one time. I did avoid anything electronic from them for quite awhile though.
A few years back, I had a VW TDI with a starter going south. Got a Bosch remanufactured and popped it in. Car started fine the first three times. The next start, car running , but I hear a whining noise. The starter is not engaged, but the motor in the starter is running. Okay, a bad starter, I got another one. Installed it, and the same thing occurred again. Three normal starts, then the fourth start, the starter motor is running, but not engaged with the flywheel. I spent the next week chasing diagrams, checking wiring etc trying to figure out what the hell? Finally decided to check the starter on the floor AGAIN! Three normal operations,the fourth,the gear retracts, but the motor keeps spinning merrily along. I really wanted to tear it down to see how it was possible, but I didn't want to void the warranty. The next starter works fine 8 years later. What are the chances of 2 identical weird problems in row causing you to doubt your sanity?
At work (IT) when we have the same stupid problem with hardware occur within a short period we always say they were made on a Monday after a big party weekend.
OMG the horn.. so evil ...
I LOVED IT!!!
I Lol'd
Newby garage prank.
He's going to be thrilled it was something simple instead of something he screwed up. Having trouble with my fresh rebuild.
@Joeys Tomatoe Mine was something simple too. Had the distributor off by a couple of teeth. Runs like a top now.
I needed that laugh today, a huge THANK YOU MRS. O!! As our normal tradition, Sophia and I sit on the couch with my cell phone and watch your video before she goes to school and I'm out patrolling the streets we watch your videos. Today Sophia said watch Mr. O get zapped (she knows what a coil or Magneto's are) but Sophia wasn't anticipating the horn so when she tooted the horn Sophia jumped a mile off the couch or jumped the same time you did. She literally levitated off the couch. Hilarious....thanks for the laugh
We had a car towed to our shop years ago that had a no crank no dash lights issue. The customer replaced the battery himself and it still didn't start. When it arrived at our shop we discovered that the customer forgot to remove the plastic caps that cover the positive and negative poles on the battery and installed the battery cables right over them. He was very embarrassed to say the least. Really enjoy your videos Eric!
faf
I just saw one of these on Utube a few days ago
I've seen that more than once.
That is actually pretty funny.
That's incredible. I feel bad for people that stupid.
Sometimes a new set of eyes make all the difference. The guy probably just got caught up looking for something more difficult and just overlooked it.
So true!
Heck, sometimes someone inexperienced can be a godsend! People with experience may tend to look for a more difficult answer while the rookie may just go "... is it supposed to look like that?"
I spent four months on my first engine build. I did everything myself. I spent time polishing everything inside and out, I cleaned and painted every bolt, I hand made gaskets and adapter plates, I meticulously lubed and aligned, I tested each and every part and all systems from oil to fuel to coolant, I simulated temperature to be absolutely positive the fans would come on (electric fans were new back then), I checked and rechecked the timing to be sure it was perfect. I tried to start it and got nothing. I somehow didn't have any spark. I checked the coil and the plugs and every wire individually, I pulled the cap and checked it for cracks. Still no spark. I went over it all day and all night before I realized that I was an idiot. I got mad and slammed the hood..... And there it was...... The rotor was sitting on the windshield wiper. That's the stupidest I've ever felt in my life.
Sorry. I had to laugh. But be grateful. If that is the "dumbest" thing you do in your life, you are doing well. I am now a retired mechanic in Land Down Under and still help people in need. Wish what you did was the "dumbest" thing in my life. If the Good Lord leaves me alive on this Earth past my current 70 years, I am sure I will have more tales to tell others when I missed something staring me in the face.
We've all made that mistake. I've done it more than once!
Sometimes the obvious things get overlooked b/c you’re so focused on the meticulous things. Happens to many.
Wat rotor?!?
Loved it when Mrs. O honked the horn!
As a teenager left the wrench on the air cleaner slammed the hood shut ,started the car it fell hit the fan shot up hit the hood and dented it then fell back back hit the fan one more time and went thru the radiator.. to this day I never leave anything in the engine compartment I guess it's true you always learn from your mistakes
Many years back, when washing a car for the first time after it had been in the body shop (at someone else's expense) I found two small bumps in the centre of the bonnet. Opened it and found a bumper bracket sitting on top of the air cleaner - and a nice shiny new one where it should have been. Body shop were rather embarrassed.
That would be about my luck, but you certainly will never forget to account for your tools at the end of a job now,
I once lost a socket in my wife's Nissan.. Had this little cavity under the battery mount plate. Never did get that socket back...
Confession is good for the soul, so: After replacing the blown turbo on my CDTi Astra, I'd almost finished reassembling everything so it was time to fill the radiator. I decided to just pour the coolant straight into the top radiator hose and I'd poured about 3 litres into it before I looked down and noticed this wasn't the top radiator hose, it was the air intake. I'd filled the intake, manifold and two cylinders with coolant. After I'd finished panicking I managed to recover by cranking the engine with the injectors removed (which emptied pressurized coolant all over my garage). I still can't believe it actually made it back to life after that. It wouldn't be so bad if I was a beginner, but I've spent my share of time under cars and I'll never forgive myself for this one.
James Skipworth :Holy shit ! That’s awesomely bad.
@@frazerguest2864 Yep it was definitely the dumbest thing I've done to a car that didn't involve setting it on fire.
James Skipworth sorry but I laughed so hard reading this!!! Thx, I needed that. Certainly did my share of blonde moments
You are an honest man. Cranked on a 1957 Dodge 318 , no start. Towed it for two miles and no start. Opened the distributor to find no rotor. We all have our lapses.
OMG, when Mrs. O blew that horn...I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Thank you for making my Monday!
I'm sure the owner got excited towards the end of his dilemma. Took his time rebuilding the engine but when it came to plugging in he just rushed it. He was looking forward to the fruits of his labor and he just missed the springs. Cudos to you for finding it so quickly. Good vid!
Oh Eric we need a follow up on this one. We want to know what happened when you told him.
you try not to embarrass the guy, weve all done something silly, hope eric will be a bro and discount his bill
They'll both get a good laugh, but most of all, he'll be relieved it was a simple fix.
@@jusb1066 I think the first hour diagnostic fee is appropriate.
Chris Jepson I agree, it would be nice to know the rest of the story (Paul Harvey). I would bet that you will restore his faith in his mechanical abilities. And all without any OBD hook-up :).
If I were the customer I'd have a good laugh and then be very proud of how well that rebuild ran first start. (And hey, Eric's got it on video so he didn't really miss it!)
My first rebuild was a 69 Plymouth fury hardtop with a 318. Took me two days to figure out that the distributor turns counter clockwise. When I finally got it right it was the best feeling in the world. I remember it barking to life, the hair on my arms stood up. I finally had a V8. There's just nothing better to a 17 year old kid.
Did some work on a v8 engine one day. Finished putting it together and noticed a 14mm socket missing. Decided it must have been left in the valley under the manifold.
Stripped down and not there. Turned out it was in another draw in my tool box by mistake. Waste of an afternoon that one.
You can never be too safe.
Hey, that's why in aircraft building establishments they shut the place down if a tool or documented part is not accounted. Production continues only when tool/part is found.
@@davidgwin4540 Yeah we do, and then when we don't find it we order new ones XD. Then we find it 2 years later in a special tool kit, or in a engine preservation container...
We got some idiots working here from time to time.
Oh and once we found a tool in a helicopter fuel tank, that was after we shut down the maintenance. But mostly if we don't find the tool... it's somewhere not in the airplane...
Sapphire1987 Man, I bet you have some crazy stories to tell! I was going by some of the stories my buddy told me building F18's back in the day ( what he was able to tell me anyway) Iv always had a fascination and respect for what you guys do! I was an engine assembler at a machine shop but always loved aircraft and everything about them👍
Hello Eric .
Brings back memories of customer towed in a no start after battery install , found black protective plastic cap still on negative terminal with cable installed over cap .
Then the overheat after customer install radiator , to find rubber cap still on radiator inlet neck ..
Then my mistake . Replace timing belt on a Mitsubishi Montero, only to notice i installed old belt instead of new one ####***.
KEEP up the faith Eric ,
MOD # 5
Sean Jones You sir, have turned a wrench. Only people that work on cars can share that type of pain. lol.
I've seen that a ton of times, stapled or plastic tag fasteners, I always look and automatically trim the hose end down, they're usually a bit oversize anyway
Ha! That reminds me of the time decades ago i had an intermittent "no crank" on my '72 Vega. I got a rebuilt starter, pulled the old one out and laid it next to the rebuilt. I got distracted and forgot which one was the rebuilt, as the old one wasn't dirty in the least. I basically did an eeeny, meenie, minee, mo, and installed one of them. Luckily i picked the right one, as i never had a problem again. (Why a Vega? I needed a car and bought this for $200 as a non-runner. Had to have steel sleeves installed, as the bores were hopelessly scored, as the previous owner ran it without water and didn't tell me. This ended up being the worst car i ever owned).
I've done that with the terminals aswell lol
Sean Jones - I soon turn 61 yrs old, and lately ive been catching myself hooking up battery chargers wrong!😡...i bring the box over, put my hand on the red positive battery terminal and say to myself: "red-positive", then, before i plug in the charger i do a final check, and the dad-blame black clip is on the positive battery terminal!😠. Good thing i do a final check before plugging in! I maybe did this ONCE in several decades of shade tree mechanics since i was 17... I hope this is not "the shape of things to come" LOL.
Someone, or a group of someones, did send me a "test car" once. It was a Supra, about a 1991 if I recall. I had owned an '84. A nice car, 5MGE motor.
Anyway, the complaint was "no AC." I attached a gauge and saw the standing pressure looked very reasonable, yet the compressor would not run. I knew that Toyota likes to use several fused power sources, and their module is called an "AC Amplifier." I called our help desk and got a fax (it was the 90's, no email) of the AC schematic, and found that one of the fuses was in the right hand kick panel. It was missing. We replaced the fuse and sent it on its way as a "no charge." Later, we were contacted and told that it had been a test car.
Art Houston Toyota still likes to do that, burying one or two fuses off in never-never land for no apparent reason for the AC system. Why they can’t put those fuses in the main fuse panel is a puzzle.
@@ethanpoole3443 I love hunting for relays in my early nineties Subaru
I laughed so hard when his wife honked the horn, and him jumping was the “money light “😂
In my younger years in high school around 1990, my brother was teaching me how to change the oil in my 1969 Camaro that he gave me. I removed the oil filter, put in 5 quarts of Kendall 10/40, started her while seeing the lack oil pressure on my Auto Meter gauge. I quickly shut her down, looked underneath and realized I forgot to install the new filter after seeing all the oil on the floor. I have never made that same mistake ever since. Lol
Similar to my first oil change, i forgot to replace the sump plug, poured in new oil, and watched a puddle slowly form under the car and realized my mistake. Always double check the plug is back in before adding the oil
My first motorcycle oil change i ran all the new oil right back out the drain plug because i forgot to put it back in.. i did the filter just fine just forgot the plug LOL. $40 of oil down the drain..
As a teenager I replaced lots of parts on my old hot rod. Turns out that they run much better with gas in the tank....... Lesson learned.
mine was installing the gas tank without the pump
been there done that.lol
John Baugh - after an MGA rebuild, I found the distributor rotor sitting on my work bench. 🤦♂️
You are so right about that first fireup. You should get the man......That first fireup even after routine maintenance let alone a full engine rebuild is just nerve racking and so rewarding to hear that purrrrrrrrrrr. I remember a honda timing belt I did not too long ago. I hit the key after putting it back together and it just didnt seem right...Tore it all back apart to double check mechanical timing just to be sure of course it was spot on but just needed to run more than 5 seconds to straighten out......then the smooth sound of idle.............BINGO BANGO
Hi Eric from the UK newish to your channel going back through some of your old stuff as I'm enjoying what you do. At 57 now and short of money as a youngster learned alot about cars and the worst thing I did was put a new clutch in a mk5 Ford Cortina and forgot to put the thrust bearing in found it in the box after I had put everything back together . NOT A HAPPY BUNNY 😁
mrs O and the horn definitely gets a like from me!
I read that back to front first time round. My mind is filth
Mine too....although it's been a while for me so I don't know why of what for anymore....
Eric you are 100% correct. The guy who installs the engine HAS to be there for the initial start!
Oh Yes...The climax.! Totally agree. 🍻😃
Wish I could say I've never done anything like this!
Love when the Mrs. blew the horn! Love her sense of humor!
It was the first oil change after Dad and I finished a total restoration of a 69 Camaro. Took off the old oil filter, but the old rubber gasket stayed on the engine. Put the new oil filter and stacked the gaskets, unbeknownst to me. Fired it up, and oil everywhere! They don't stack well! Wouldn't have been such a big deal, but the underside of the car was as clean as the body. It took some doing to get all that oil off the undercarriage! Now I check for a gasket every time on every car!
My dad just did a tune up on the family car and now no start. Frustrated he went inside for a cup of coffee. I looked over the engine and noticed the negative wire on the ignition coil was disconnected. Reconnected the wire by that time my dad came back out and I told him to start it up. Started up and ran fine. Told my dad what it was and he just called me a smartass. I told him this smartass just saved your bacon.
At 16, I did a garage bench overhaul on a 289 small block engine out of a 68 mustang. I had basic tools and a lot of motivation. Using a chain hoist slung over the center beam in my dad's one car garage, I was able to lift it out of the car and onto the floor. After having the heads milled, i installed new valves, rings, bearings, seals, and gaskets. I rebuilt the carb, then reinstalled the engine. I tightened everything up, put in all new fluids. I was feeling great. I had also painted the motor, so it looked spanking new. I bought a used dual point distributor from a swap meet and dropped it in as the finishing touch.
The good news is it fired right up, but the bad news was it ran like crap, sputtering, backfiring, and having very little power under acceleration. I thought I must have jacked up the timing, maybe rebuilt the carb incorrectly, installed the cam wrong, etc. I tried different spark plugs, new coil, wires, etc. Then my sister's boyfriend came over, took a look, then listened to it run, then said, "did you install new points." What...points, what are those? Sure enough, he taught me how to install and gap new points and you know what, the engine came alive. It drove so well I was amazed it was all due to $7 in parts. I learned that buying used parts is sometimes a gamble and you really need knowledge. Experience comes from doing stuff and in those younger days, I wasn't afraid to tackle anything.
Unless it was a HP 289 I'm not sure dual points were worth the time. Most 289s had only a 2 barrel carb in 68
I rebuilt the 289 in my 68 mustang when I was around 16 years old and couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t start. Drove me crazy. Figured out It had no spark. Changed the coil still nothing. During the disassembly we had removed the rotor out of the distributor to see if everything was clean inside and forgot to put the rotor back. Chased it for a couple hours over the duration of two days before spotting the little rotor sitting in the corner of one of the parts boxes
The only way most of us learn, and remember it, is to make those mistakes.
Wow!! That's unbelievable!! That was just too easy!! I'd have to agree, the customer did a heck of a job for a DIYer!
I agree with you, if that little oversight is all that he missed... Wow
All except leaving out a couple of pretty vital parts that would make the major overhauled engine actually do something other than turn over LOL.
@@wildbill23c probably over excited or ready to be done with the job. I've been there! Lol Those springs easily can fall out when the COP is pulled.
Like I tell my customers, it usually turns out to be something simple and stupid. Once the plugs were sorted though, engine sounded great.
All well that ends well.
Hats off to the owner to be able to walk away when the frustration set in and something really bad happened. And I understand Mr. O's desire to have the owner there for the moment of pride on the engine's first start. But business is business.
Once I had to replace a battery on a car, at night in the cooler weather. No issue except now the tachometer no longer worked, but that's mostly for show anyway. Once the warmer weather came around I found the A/C system not cooling, but did not associate it with anything other than random A/C failure. I traced the problem to the fact that the compressor clutch was getting no voltage when the A/C was on. Using the wiring diagrams I found there to be a control module that switches voltage on/off for the clutch and found power into the module was 12V as needed and also that jumping that pin to the compressor lead would indeed engage the compressor. So I bought a spare module and soldered a bridge across those two pins and just plugged in the module when I wanted cool air.
A year goes by and when performing a valve clearance adjustment (diesel) I found a loose wire with a ring terminal on the end. I can have no loose wires. Using the 'how long is this and what could it possibly connect to' method I found that it perfectly lined up with the positive battery terminal. RUH ROH! Connecting it made my tach work and plugging in the original A/C module now had that working as well!! Apparently, in the darkness I had missed reconnecting this cable and the wiring diagram had a fold out section specifically for this year of car that I guess I never unfolded.
GREAT video Mr. O, you and Mrs. O made my wife and I LOL this morning (that she blew the horn means you've chosen wisely!)
I had a 1983 Camaro with an automatic transmission. Wanted to learn how to drive stick, got all the parts from a junkyard and successfully converted the car to a 5 speed. A few months later, doing an oil change, I spent 45 mins looking for the transmission dipstick to check the fluid. Couldn't find it.. jacked the car back up, looking underneath to see where the dipstick enters the transmission to finally realize.. there's not even a transmission pan anymore.. doh!!!
They still have oil in them though.
Not a mechanic problem really but a friend of mine decided he'd be nice and start his sister's truck for her when he left for school that morning. I came by the house the next morning to pick him up for school and I said is your sister going somewhere soon? He's like IDK let me ask her, she was upstairs asleep, he comes running back down and says no, I said why is her truck running then? He says Holy sh** that thing has been running out there since yesterday morning when he started it for her, she never left the house that day...so I said well tell your sister her truck is warmed up and the tank of gas I put in it 2 days ago well is gone, it was literally on empty....so an 89 Chevy S10 4 cylinder will idle for a whole day on a full tank of gas if anyone is curious LOL.
I did it once. Let my truck idle in the garage overnight. OOPS! Garage was nice and warm though, so there's that.
Cool
brilliant! cant stop laughing lol
@@danhillman4523 In the garage???? You'd be dead??
@@arnemaeschaelck5012 Why? Not all garages are attached to the house....
I installed calipers upside down and was stumped as to why I had a spongy pedal after bleeding. Oops. Thanks for being such a humble mechanic. And not grilling the kid for a simple mistake. 👍🏻
OMG! Mrs. O and the horn I laughed hard! Enjoy the channel and your relationship with the Mrs. the fact that your a great mechanic is just a bonus. You seemed very jumpy about the Mrs. cranking that key, kind of like she may have done it a few times on you? LOL!
Yeah. My wife never chats or hangs out when I'm wrenching.
Silly as this sounds. Maybe I’m watching too intently as I think my heart skipped a beat when Mrs. O beeped the horn. Too funny and the whole interaction after made my day! Love the channel and content.
Tim Simmons RIP headphone wearers.
I love your encouraging words everytime you end your videos. "Remember, if I can do it, you can do it." Because of mechanics like yourself Eric, people, including myself are trying to save money by fixing their own cars.
This customer in particular, even though he failed with his own repair. We as the viewer, win because now we can learn and do it better because you showcase how it's done. We all win, Thanks Eric!
Your honestly and humbleness will bring you even more business than you have now. Stay blessed.
He did a great job overall. I've made plenty of silly mistakes as well. The one that comes to mind is when I was a kid doing a tune up on my 1970 Corvette. (Simple plugs, distributor cap, rotor, and condenser). It wouldn't start to save my life. My dad came out, asked me what I replaced, told me to sit in the car while "he fixed it". As he walked away he smiled and said start it. Sure enough it started and ran great leaving me to soak in my own embarrassment realizing I had installed the rotor backwards.
I'm sure you made this guy's day when you called and told him what you found. He was thinking big money screw up and he got off I'm sure with a minor bill for your diagnose etc..
After fixing a heater pump motor that was seized due to rust and age (I oiled it up and replaced the brushes), I was dismayed to find it would not shut off when installed on the car. After an hour of tracing circuits, looking for a stuck relay, etc. I got in the car and realized the heat was simply turned on. I hadn't noticed because it wasn't working before!
What you can think Eric, is that people up there should be thankful for you, and what you do!
I’m sure red flags fly when a customer “overhauls” an engine seems this guy did a good job !
The old bip the horn trick.
Gets 'em every time!
My first full engine rebuild, Vauxhall Astra 1200s. Forgot the oil filter.. 1st crank spewed oil into the blower intake and then the cars interior. Dashboard out to clear up the mess (and stink), you live and learn :D
Hey Eric, new within the last few months. Totally enjoy all of your posts. Even though this was an old post it reminded me of putting a low mile wrecking yard 350 small block engine in a Chevy pickup years ago for a friend, I like you felt I was duped. After first startup it had a major miss, after an hour or so I found that it had a 6 cylinder distributor cap on it. Looked the same as a V-8 only after pulling the plug wires off two of the posts were dummies. Nobody ever fessed up, I caulked it up to an honest mistake. Although now retired I’ve had the honor of knowing some top notch master mechanics, and you sir I would rate in that same company. Keep up your great sense of humor and professionalism.
The back porch light went out and sideways rain, thunder, lightning and wind rolled in, so I slammed the hood shut. I wanted to go back inside. The hood gave me grief, I figured it was just the wind trying to blow it upward out if my hands. I forced it down several times until it latched.
Next morning, sunny weather and a few loud words of French saw the 5 inch gap between the middle left edge of the hood and the left side fender. I slammed it down with a tall spray can of throttle body spray cleaner still sitting at the edge of the engine bay. The hood was unrepairable and I even managed to damage the abs unit! A two fer!
I felt like a genuine boob that day.
alors, vie de merde!
Took mine off and rain rusted the hinges open. Replaced, daft dad tried to close, tore the bolt eyelets out of the fender well. Don’t remember fixing it have the car still.
I used to binge watch other channels. Now I binge watch this channel.
I think we've all reassembled something and had an extra part leftover.
Extra parts are a key indicator that you may have not completed the job.
I built a gas turbine from all the parts supply by our production stores and had seven parts left over. Spend the next week tracking down those parts to see where they went on the engine, after all I managed the build of material during the engine design. Someone just left the parts on the parts cart from another type engine build. Scared the hell out me that I wouldn’t know where these parts went on the engine.
Gerrick Slogar LOL
happened to me with an airplane rudder. I had one extra little screw, the supervisor excoriated me lol
That just means you did it better than the manufacturer lmao
This is what keeps me coming back your honesty and great work ethic can't be beat. Keep up the great work Eric 🇬🇧
when I was a teenager I tried bleed the brakes by pumping the clutch
Lol
Ok boomer
@ Bobby Ossenbeck similar, thanks for sharing. tried to help bleeding the clutch by pumping the throttle, for a whole 15mins. wasn't teenager though, just tired. the old man i was helping wasn't that happy
list goes for long, of course
u2 ?
Ahhaha nice thank you good sir I needed this comment
When I was about 18 or 19 (about 50 years ago) my good friend and mechanic and I decided to drive the 70 miles to the beach on the Washington coast in my '59 Ford ranch wagon for the day. Just before we got there started to hear a little noise from the engine, sst sst sst. Started slowly getting louder as we drove, my friend said, oh oh, you gotta head gasket startin ta go, we better head for home. got real loud eventually and wasn't sure we were gonna make it, about a hundred feet from our driveway it let loose altogether and sounded like a steam engine going down the road. Dad was in the yard raking leaves and came over to see what the heck was going on, took a look under the hood and said: "this thing will run way better you put that spark plug back in."
LOL
I blew three head gaskets on my '59 Ford Ranch Wagon within a month...
Where is Washington ya from?
HA. My brother bought a car from a government auction last year. He went to pick it up and could not drive it home, stated engine was misfiring and had a rod knock. I had a transporter ship it to my house. Transporter said it wasn't a rod knock but the exhaust was disconnected. HA. Turns out after looking it over, a spark plug was "missing". It was a Ford, so same "COP" style coils as this video. Cop was there and bolted in place. Checked compression on that cylinder and it was fine. Screwed in a new $8 spark plug and it ran perfectly. To funny
I'll give you silly. When I first started working at NAPA I didn't know anything about cars, *anything* and I totally fell for the muffler bearing prank. I went from the computer to the book too, the book! Finally I called my manager over to ask him and I could immediately see it in his eyes. I think someone pressed a little too hard on my soft spot when I was a baby.
Just about fell out of my chair laughing when Ms O honked the horn.
Replaced my fuel pump on my Silverado, put all back together. Turned over but no start...oh man maybe it wasn't the pump...1 hour later..oh yeah! Maybe I should reattach the ground wire by the tank. Fired right up. Simple things can get you at times.
Well, I haven't got a car mechanical goof to share with you because I don't "do" much on cars, but, during my national service, I did send out two 10t trucks and six personnel to pick up what was listed as two anti-aircraft guns for HQ. They came back with two small cardboard boxes containing a scale model of an anti-aircraft gun. Never quite lived that one down.
Good story.
The devil is in the detail. Great story!
@@ckeller07 Indeed. I couldn't find the catalog number on the request sheet in the documentation I had. That should have set off alarm bells, but I knew what the real thing looked like and how it was packed up, so I just forged ahead.
That is certainly funny.
2003 Vauxhall Omega V6, (Caddy Cantera in USA, Holden Commodore in Aus).
Using an adapter, swapped the crappy paper element with plastic housing oil filter for a spin-on canister. No problems with that job itself, but 5000 miles later when I went to do an oil change, I’d not checked the pressure rating of the oil filter, got the wrong one, fitted it, topped up the oil, cranked it over and blew the oil filter clean off, complete with most of the contents of the sump over my driveway. Luckily no damage to the engine, but the wife wasn’t happy about the large oil slick over our red bricked driveway.
Owner did a great job on the rebuild. Kudos!
Eric I'm still wondering. I truly think he just made a honest mistake. Once again you know why I've been watching you since day one. Your the best you tube repair channel ever. I do like Ford Makuloco also.
brian and eric are great..anytime i have problem with my f150 brian is my first stop...both have saved me big money..
@@workingshlub8861 absolutely
In the early to mid 2000's i used to drive a 93 GMC Safari aka Chevy Astro van. I was out in the backyard during a hot summers day changing spark plugs, and there was this one on the drivers side in an odd spot that kept breaking on me. I was sweaty, ornery, and annoyed. When i got the plug back in i of course had to start up the engine. Well i started the engine, but i forgot the floor jack was under the van when i attempted to drive off. The saddle of the floor jack ripped a fist sized hole in the oil pan. When i saw oil was pouring out below i immediately turned the key off. Before i had it towed to a garage i disconnected the battery just so some greenhorn did not attempt to start the engine with no oil in the pan. That 2 dollar spark plug ended up to be a 350 dollar brainfart!
Eric,
You are just amazing! How you found the issue with 30 seconds of opening the hood is almost uncanny.
SMA#1
God bless
Paul