nurkvinny Posted February 28, 2006 Report Share Posted February 28, 2006 I am bored. A thread about funny, odd, idiotic, or gross car repair stories could get interesting. A couple quickies. An elderly lady in her 80's pulled up outside our first bay. She got out and told us a story about how she THINKS she just ran over SOMETHING SMALL on her way to the grocery store. This is middle of summer, probably 85-90 degrees. We had both bays full, so we had her wait until we had an open lift... maybe 20 minutes. Another mechanic is driving the car up on the rack, me guiding him. I think I see something stuck to the front skidplate. Hmm. We put the car up in the air. We stop. We stare. We make all the guys come over. We stare. Jammed into EVERY possible area of her car's undercarriage is what looks like raw T-bone steaks and chunks of a racoon skin hat. Where there aren't 12oz chunks of meat, there is blood. This woman ran over a live, FULL sized dog and drug it who knows how far. We spent an hour with brooms, hoses, and a snow shovel picking pieces of dog out of this woman's car. We sent her to the full serve carwash; she came back; we picked some more shit out of the car. Fun day. --------- Different day, another old woman. Driving an early 80's Grand Prix stopped in and said her car started ok, but just didn't sound right. I went out and started it. Smoke, and I mean SMOKE was pouring out the exhaust. I think, "neat, blown head gasket." Pull it inside; ask her is she checks her coolant and oil frequently. She says, and I quote: "I sure do! I just added oil last night." "How much was it low when you added oil?" "Like 6 or so quarts." FYI. An early 80's Grand Prix holds a MAX of 5 quarts, probably 4.5 with the small filter. "So, you added 6 quarts.!?!?" "Yup, until I saw it in that fill hole." She filled the oil until it oozed out of the valve cover fill tube. We drained almost 2 gallons of oil out, let it run for 10 minutes, and as far as I know, it ran for years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lustalbert Posted February 28, 2006 Report Share Posted February 28, 2006 Thats good shit right there. Im surprided that she didnt blow a few seals in that engine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Removed Posted February 28, 2006 Report Share Posted February 28, 2006 About three years ago, A fullsize blazer was called in as a tow in and a no start. The repair order clearly stated, customer stated " when he tried to start it, he heard what sounded like a cat. The truck died and then would not turn over" So I grab the key's and go out to check it over...click click, ok. All the lights are working and you can tell the starter is trying to go but no. So I pop the hood and give it a quick look over but nothing seemed odd. We (me and a few other techs) pushed it inside for the night and went home. This is friday night, a holiday weekend and we didn't come back until monday morning. When we got there the whole shop just smelled rank. We could not figure it out. It smelled the worse right by the truck so I looked under the Blazer and I see what seems to be a cat tail hanging over the edge of the fan shroud. I look up a little farther and see the rest of the cat stuck in the belt and crank pulley...and in there rather messily..... Anyway, 10 dollars at the car wash a new belt because I cut the old one to get to the car wash... and I swear the shop stills smells funny on really hot days. Poor kitty...RIP... and remember to HONK before you start in the cold mornings! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kastle Posted March 5, 2006 Report Share Posted March 5, 2006 Okay, I got some good service stories ... I had this 2001 Eurovan not the camper just the van... van looks like shit alright... customer complaint 'customer states was driving down road and vehicle suddenly died and would not restart.' it was a tow in. so i go outside and go to start it... doesn't start right check battery - bad battery. replaced battery car starts then dies... i checked the oil through the dipstick... had some stupid problems with oil that day... oil looks pretty shitty... kinda like diesel oil... on a VR6 (2.8L V6) motor.. not good right... so I recommend an oil change... the car would die because of the drive by wire not being adapted... but anyway i get this car into my bay and go to do this oil change... get the drain plug out... nothing... but i can see black shit in there... i poke my screwdriver in there... and there it comes... looks like black cottage cheese... it literally took 45 min. to an hour for me to get all this 'oil' out of the pan... and thats just what came out willingly through the drain plug... so i goto replace the filter... it's not your normal filter... it looks kinda like a air cone filter you'd find in a honda with acura emblems and it has its own casing around it to hold in there.. so i get this filter out and it has literally collapsed in on itself... imagine that air cone and tighten a hose clamp down around the middle... then cover it with black cottage cheese... looks kinda like that... the oil filter... amazing. so at this point i'm thinking wtf did this guy do... check the repair history... the customer hadn't changed the oil in 30000 miles... wow... but that's prolly not shit... think about this ... its a Eurovan... how many people drive these things daily... its more like a 'hey lets drive to the grand canyon' kind of car... oil hadn't been changed in well over 3 years... it was more like 3.5.... wow. so like the good technician i was... i sold him an bottom end inspection... tore that oil pan off... looked like a jello mold around everything... oil pickup was fucked... and sludge everywhere just oozing down the rods and dripping off shit... cleaned it all out... added new synthetic oil and filter... motor started right up and sounded great... no problems... i will give VW credit.. they made solid motors. BUT... here's a good VW story... so in our cars we have coolant level sensors... these sensors are basically two rods that go so far into the coolant and use the coolant to actually complete the circuit and if it catches low coolant... open circuit... light comes on in the dash... cool right... well to do this you have terminals that go through the coolant reservoir. the reservoir is made of some plastic and you have a connector on the outside that plugs into these terminals... great right... well here's a unique issue... car comes in... like maybe 2001 Jetta... 1.8T... 2.0L doesn't matter same reservoir... customer complaint is literally pages long... just all kinds of strange electrical problems... all across the board... tail light out... instrument cluster flickers... car hesitates... just all kinds of stuff... i see a very small amount of water in the casing for the tail light so... know what that is ... well these new models of VW have almost everything electronically controlled... hell the brand new VWs have electromechanical steering... we don't use power steering pumps anymore... its all electric aid. very cool... anyway.. so car comes inside get to looking at it trying to figure out what the hell is going on... i see the coolant is low... so i figure well hell.. lets find this out real quick... can't find the leak... checked all the normal leak places... you get to know them all... so i check the reservoir itself... take the connector for the coolant level sensor off... the terminals on the connector are wet... and there is coolant in the terminal ends on the reservoir... wtf... my coolant is leaking through these terminals... wow... so ah well... new reservoir... check out the tail light bulb... and good god... the light liquid in the casing isn't water... its coolant... wtf?! so i'm scratching my head here... someone's fucking with me... turns out the coolant i found in the terminals of the reservoir had been leaking for quite a while... the coolant actually ran down the cores of the wires... inside the insulation... and had gotten literally all over the car... i'm talking corrosion from coolant on the instrument cluster... ECM... all over the place... hell it got to the f'n tailight... needless to say this is what was causing the customers' complaint... i think they got into a thing with VW over this... its a very slow slow leak.. but think about it... it will go all over the car... all it does is follow the wires... wild eh. I wasn't actually the tech that worked on this car... he works next to me and this car was insane hahahah... i always check those damn reservoirs now... and whenever a customer doesn't want to fix it... i give a little giggle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Posted March 5, 2006 Report Share Posted March 5, 2006 christ on a crutch, I tried to read that but couldn't with all the ... not to be a grammar nazi, but geesh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBussman1647545507 Posted March 5, 2006 Report Share Posted March 5, 2006 on 3:00 on a day in december, a guy comes in with a 96' blazer, the front right wheel is glowing red and the tires are smoking, the valve stem is just a blob of plstic, if you look at the fron tof the the car the wheel is at about a 120 degree angle with the bottem of the car VS. the correct 90degree angle. the steering rack snaped in half. custemer says that we was driving down 270 and he hit a litle bump in the road and it broke, but he didn't have enough money for a tow. dumbass, so he drives the half hour to get to our shop just compeltly beating te shit out off all the componts behind that wheel, they're all destroied. he could've paid the $100 Tow and saved bunches, i mean the enire wheel was shoved into the wheel well, just a grinding away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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