Worst DIY maintenance stories

[sierraman]

What is the worst bit of DIY you have seen on a car done by the owner/previous?

 

I've had a few where its had sump plugs tightened to 200nm or new pads installed on wanked out discs...

[Squire_Dawson]

Expanding foam used in hollow box sections.

[sierraman]

I like it, both thrifty and has insulation qualities with the added benefit of buoyancy should you encounter a flood.

[HH-R]

I tend to tighten everything by hand until the bolt shears, the head shears, or the tool snaps. That's not the aim, just trying to make sure it's tight Snapped a couple of spanners/sockets. The Fiat doesn't stand up to this very well and has cost ££ to replace broken things, I tend to leave it to garages now.

[xtriple]

I put the disc pads in on an X1-9 the wrong way round (metal to the disc!) and once left a pair of pads out completely! That was my Omega.... both times I was busy talking to people instead of watching what I was doing.

[sierraman]

As tight as possible the rule for everything from sump plugs to spark plugs. Forget fannying around with the 3/8 drive to put the plugs in. Get the 1/2 drive 600mm breaker out to make sure them plugs are nice and tight. Don't waste time locating the plugs with your fingers, just whack them in, doesn't matter if they are straight.

[sierraman]

Top tip! Old biscuit tins or road signs make excellent patches for sills/ floors etc, especially when pop riveted in.

[lisbon_road]

Broken wheel mounting studs?  Then ignored......

 

Many years ago, I was fitting a manual choke to a Sierra and drilled a hole through the bulkhead from inside the car.

 

Made a hole in the vacuum servo!

[sierraman]

Why bother!? It's got another 3 studs anyway!

[John F]

One of the injectors had been araldited into the head of my Disco 300 TDi... it was an absolute bastard to get out (in pieces) when I had to sort out the last OMGHGF.

[bub2006]

Thick wire attached to slam panel under bonnet of Peugeot 205 diesel. Red wire so think it was to a relay of some sort. Snapped off so got car home by wedging it with a screwdriver. When home,used a window key with a bolt through it and then screwed it on to the relay. Was still on the car when I sold it.

[Lacquer Peel]

new pads installed on wanked out discs...

 

I HAVE DONE THIS.

[mercrocker]

Having begun shite-ing in the 70s I have actually encountered sawdust in a diff as well as pop-riveted sills and what I can only guess had once been an egg in an Austin radiator.   Even today, my Cowley turned out to have newspaper soaked in resin as a constructional part of the headlamp bowls.   FFS - how much do they cost?    Also, I once gave a friend the oil out of my Mini - I thought he was going to paint a fence or something but he strained it through his mums tights and used it in his Mini.   No, she wasn't wearing them - he had fished them out of the bin.  Perv.

[beko1987]

Used a fair few wood screws to put trim back in the zx last week to replace missing ones... Its rattle and squeak free now! Used the filter holder out of a Hoover Constellation to hold the old backbox into the meriva for 4k until I replaced the exhaust, it did well.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

First oil change I ever did , on my mom's Capri II 1600 XL , when I was 15 . Went really well ,right up to when I started the engine to move it off the axle stands- oil everywhere. I couldn't work out what had happened until a neighbour came over,fished the filter box out of the bin and took the nice shiny rubber gasket out of it.

Luckily he took me to the factors to get another gallon of oil too, the stain on the drive was still there 20 years later when my mom moved.

[dollywobbler]

I tend to tighten everything by hand until the bolt shears, the head shears, or the tool snaps. That's not the aim, just trying to make sure it's tight Snapped a couple of spanners/sockets. The Fiat doesn't stand up to this very well and has cost ££ to replace broken things, I tend to leave it to garages now.

 

Seriously, just get a torque wrench. Stuff generally does not have to be that tight. Sadly, a 2CV specialist I visited once didn't seem to know this, and the oaf on spanner duty that day over-tightened the spark plugs. This infuriated me, because even a novice 2CVer knows you have to be careful about spark plugs - aluminium cylinder heads can strip threads very easily. I was doing a plug change before driving the 2CV to Switzerland a few days later. I was considerably pissed off when the plug came out along with a large chunk of cylinder head. I'd had to use a breaker bar to get the front wings off too. Needless to say, I've not been back to that place again... A friend kindly baled me out by helping fit a new cylinder head. 

 

One of my messiest DIY fails was doing an oil change on the Mini. The rocker cover gasket was so knackered that the weight of fresh oil filling the engine was enough to force most of it out of the engine and all over the floor. There may have been anger.

[Leyland Lawrence]

1. Using a 1 litre jug to collect oil as it left the sump during my first oil change. Nowhere to put the other 4 litres except the drive.

 

2. Using the blow torch to warm up an already compressed tin of waxoyl which then burst with a deafening bang and I was covered in Waxoyl

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Expanding foam used in hollow box sections.

 

Guilty as charged, 1981 Fiesta Mark 1 followed by GRP paste (hairy mary) and Underseal.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

1974 Cortina Mark 3 1300 four door Decor*

 

Sounded a bit rattly so I did the tappets. Until there was zero clearance. It was very quiet and ran well for weeks/months. I was 17 and didn't know any better.

[UltraWomble]

Expanding foam used in hollow box sections.

THIS.

 

Its like fucking florists Oasis for retaining water.

[Matt]

One of my cars had the rear silencer held up with a proper rubber hanger, garden wire AND zip ties. German over engineering innit (although the bloke who looked after the car for his elderly mother from whom I bought the car claimed to be from the AA so maybe it was an AA approved bodge).

[2MB]

Fitted a new manifold-downpipe gasket to my volvo 240 while very drunk. Forgot to tighten it up and wondered why it still sounded like a fighter bomber the day after

[catsinthewelder]

Ahem, when I was rushing to get my camper MOTed for the first time in my ownership I filled the cab step with crushed up expanded polystyrene, fiberglassed over the top and slapped the rubber step cover on top. I'd already bought a replacement step/wheelarch and seven years later it's still in the loft.

[Bren]

Squirted expanding foam into the tailgate of my vitesse SD1 trying to stop driver and passengers dying from carbon monoxide fumes. SD1 's have a habit of sucking fumes in due to the shape of the car's rear.

 

It actually worked - I was thinking of telling rimmer brothers so that they could keep it in stock.

[AndyW201]

The boot floor on a mate's Mini was almost completely constructed of expanding foam and filler. God only knows how the subframe stayed in.

My old Metro I bought in 1991 turned out to have a drivers side floorpan made mostly out of flattened coke cans and quality street tins, slathered in underseal. Later a piece of gravel went straight through the sill as well.

A few years ago, my brother had a tidy mk3 Capri S. He was working under it and saw a repair on one of the chassis rails, near the bulkhead. It was made of three metal plates stuck together to form a U, stuck onto the rest of the rail with bathroom sealant, then undersealed. Lucky he's a welder by trade...

I also remember my mate and me having to chew through a whole pack of Wrigley's gum en route to a mini club gathering to stop rainwater pissing through the windscreen of his clubman estate. It was the era of McGyver being on the telly...

[sierraman]

A co worker once had a Renault Scenic. He was that tight he bound up the perishing anti roll bar bushes with some gaffer tape, then put the lot back together. He must have spent more on gaffer tape than the cost of a new bush.

 

Another favourite for overheating used to be taking the thermostat out, usually to hide a knackered fan or failing water pump. Ditto bridging the fan supply terminals on the older type fords so the fan was running constantly.

 

Another friend had a K-reg Transit minibus running at an indicated 84k, which seemed absurdly low. Note on timing belt with 148670 written in tippex. It was fair to say it didn't have the hallmarks of something that had done a low mileage, the crust of baked on oil around the transmission was what was keeping the remaining oil in. Needless to say at the MOT it wanted only for a piffling 13 hours worth of welding.

 

Don't understand why putting sawdust in the transmission would hide anything, I would have thought it would make it worse!

[nacho man]

So basically expanding foam is what Inneed for all future structural repairs, none of you are dead, so it must be fine.

[Pillock]

Are 1990s Transits the same as all other 1990s Ford in only having a 5-digit odometer? Pessimistic, realistic, call it what you will.

[Bren]

Are 1990s Transits the same as all other 1990s Ford in only having a 5-digit odometer? Pessimistic, realistic, call it what you will.

The idea being that the bodywork would be like a ryvita long before 99999 miles.

[Squire_Dawson]

I was surprised to see what could only be described as an immaculate 'R' reg Transit today. No rust whatsoever!

 

Also, there's nothing at all wrong with filler, indeed it is a God-send. The trouble begins when some cretin uses it in a structural area, or fails to prepare the underlying surface properly.