Just did my brakes and inspection...TSK TSK TSK

[reno]

The guy i bought this truck from, might be a great carpenter, but I would never let him near a Ratchet-Wrench or screwdriver to work on a vehicle. This is the reasoning of my madness when i buy a used vehicle. I do not know the person or how well maintained the vehicle is\was. He put a lot of money in this vehicle before he sold it, changed all the sensors, all it was was a vacuum leak at the power booster and the MAF, which he changed, 1 day before I bought the truck, but could not find the receipt, so I had to shell out the $70.
well Today I changed the brakes all around, and when I got to the fronts, I was inspecting the Steering parts (tie rod ends,ball joints,etc...) and found the driver side wheel bearing not torqued to specs, not even close, the bearing was still good, so i repacked (both sides Driver and Passenger) the bearings and reinstalled them the correct way. The steering is a lot better now, used to drift left and right some what. I installed a Steering stabilizer when I first got the truck to take a lot of this out. Now I need to get radius arm bushings, passenger side does not look very healthy. I will be replacing the passenger side axle soon, so I guess I will replace the ball joints while I am there. (Don't know how hard these things will be, but I guess I will find out soon)

This guy that had the truck is not the only Do-Do though. I did the Wife's Venture Van also, and on her Drivers front Caliper I removed the top Caliper bolt by hand-meaning I simply just pulled it out. She has had this van for 3 years and this is the first brake job since we had it, I am amazed the bolt did not fall out!!! . Had to replace the caliper and the bolts due to being stripped. The bottom bolt had a touch of , what looked like, JB Weld!!! There are so many idiots out there.....you have heard of them, they probably even work on the vehicle, even crawl under them with a jack only, does not matter what kind of jack, as long as it raises the vehicle

 

[Insanejughead]

Holy crap! That's some EXTREMELY unsafe stuff going on...


That guys common sense never existed. I'm glad I'm not like him!

 

[LearjetMinako]

I know what you are talking about. Its my #1 reason why I do my own work. When I do it, I know its done right.

Kinda like my bay formen. He suposes to be our work leader, yet every one of his cars leak oil & atf fluid every time he drive it. And all it needs is a o-ring replaced and a transmission pan seal. Both of which are direct access to, so a simply job.

 

[MAKG]

Yikes, that's nasty.

My favorite "unsafe shop" story was the time a "professional" alignment shop returned the truck to me with all four tie rod adjuster clamp bolts hanging loose. Good think I inspect shop work routinely....

 

[Original_Ranger84]

The bottom bolt had a touch of , what looked like, JB Weld!!! There are so many idiots out there.....you have heard of them, they probably even work on the vehicle, even crawl under them with a jack only, does not matter what kind of jack, as long as it raises the vehicle

Yeah The Ice Racer I have had the transmission go out last year. When we got it out and took it apart 5th gear and the 3rd/4th and 5th/rev. shifter forks were JB Welded together. what kinda idiot would do that? well got it fixed but i was surprised it lasted as long as it did though.

Atleast you know what your doing and don't have to go to a shop to get work done, that would break your wallet for sure.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Wow... I thankfully haven't had anyone go to too much extreme with the mechanical end of things... the worst I've had to deal with was a total lack of routine maintenance.

I have had to deal with mickey-mouse wiring from hell though. It seems to be a common theme with BIIs I've bought... I've had to do re-wiring on every one of them that I've worked on so far...

First one I bought would try to stall every time you hit a bump in the road. Couldn't figure it out for awhile until I was under the hood poking things and decided to unwrap the duct tape from the one ground wire... what I found were two bare wire ends laid next to each other and wrapped firmly with tape.... this was repeated for the other like 3 spots on the SAME wire that had tape on them.... After I replaced it with a COMPLETE wire, the truck ran fine. Same truck also ended up with me rewiring all of the speakers cuz someone ran 28 gauge speaker wire...

Second one I bought had a TON of lights and wires... I tore it all out cuz it gave me headaches to just look at it (NONE of it worked right). Disconnected power (or so I thought) and started snipping it free... only to have my cutters spark... then I found that the yahoo pulled power from wherever he ran across a hot wire... *shudder*

Third one I bought... well... I haven't messed with any wiring yet, it was bought for the axles...

Fourth one... wow... when I pulled the radio out to find out why it wasn't working right I wanted to puke... someone had cut every single wiring end they could find in the dash off... so I had a TON of wires in there that I had no clue what they were for (I know now that there was the regular wiring connector, strangely a regular speaker wire connector, a premium sound connector, and a connector for an electronic t-case.... well plugs were gone but the wires there). Pulled the gauge cluster to find a ton of wires that had a piece of insulation stripped off an never covered. Under the dash there was another collection of wires missing chunks of insulation. It's a wonder that thing never shorted out and lit on fire... I went through with liquid electrical tape... and I learned why they say to disconnect the battery.... it conducts electricity in it's liquid form... which results in sparks... and I must say, it burns rather nice inside a dash...yikes!



Thankfully for me, my first year of college was for electrical engineering... only left the major because after thinking about it long an hard, I realized that it was not a job I'd enjoy having on a daily basis. I like playing with electronics, but I could never stand to work in an office building designing and troubleshooting circuits every day, it's more a hobby thing with me. And I'm anal as hell about it.