Has anyone else got a car from a due-it-yourself Idiot repair Guy?
My car is not to bad for a full restore/project car, but I am finding more problems I have to fix from the last restore job than actual things wrong with the car.

One of the biggest problems that made me shake my head... I don't know why, but when I pulled the carpet up in the back seat, both side, entirely covered and holding down the carpet was orange Form-A-Gasket!
It didn't even really hold down the carpet, what the heck was going through this guys mind when he decided to glue down the carpet with a gasket making product? (and no, there were no leaking holes at all...)

The next one i finding metric bolts all over the place (with standard nuts!!!) body bolts on the motor, motor bolts on the body, etc.
I was almost convinced that a rattle coming from the engine at low idle speeds (gone at high).. was a internal broken part on the motor. Then one of the crappy wire crimpings (this guy did wiring too) snapped on the alternator.
Someone had switched from a generator to an alternator with a home-made wire harness... boy did it look like crap. I decided to re-do all the connections and shrink wrap them all to keep it from happening again. Taking the alternator off (not required), I noticed the swivel bolt felt loose. I yanked it and measured the mounting holes and the bolt. The bolt just bounced around in the alternator AND mount... Turned out the bolt was 3/8" and required a 7/16" thick bolt. I
I Hooked it up with the new bolt, started it.. the rattle was gone!
Under low belt tension at lower idle speeds, the smaller bolt was allowing the alternator to bounce and sort of swivel sideways on the mounts.. It wasn't visible, it was shaking side to side from the bottom mount... The sound had made me think something serious was broken.. and the vibration had helped break his crappy wire crimps.

I've already found a few twisted wire connections wrapped in electrical tape (a "no no" on a car) and have started replacing all screws with the correct ones if I remove something. I've only been at the restore for a couple months, so I am sure I will find more weird repairs.. How about anyone else? Got any weird repairs you have found while repairing your cars?

 

How about tools? I filled a toolbox with sockets, ratchets, screwdrivers, and wrenches when I dismantled my first Mustang. The previous owner sold it cheap because it "ran rough", I got it home, whipped out my ancient auto manual and...plugged in the spark plug wires correctly. It purred after that.

The second Mustang has some odd stuff, but it's completely torn apart. The previous owner cut all the wiring out because he had a short he couldn't find. So far one was the starter wire (rubbing on the engine) and the other was a whole set of cracked wiring leading to the solenoid. Both would have been easy and cheap to fix.

However, while I may jest about others, I must admit that my own learning curve included some stupidity with duct tape, silicone, and the improper use of correct rubber on the hoses that could have resulted in a conflagration. However the most absurd lesson was spending three days trying to figure out why my then 79 Mustang wouldn't start, and the mechanic neighbor (who took me under his wing, so's I wouldn't kill myself) asking me while sipping a beer, if I had yet checked the fuse box.

He spent a lot of time trying to idiot proof me. Thanks Larry, and you bet, I'll pull your Blazer off that rock you high centered on anytime!

 

My wife and I tease my 16YO son about being refrigerator blind (can't find anything in the fridge even if it's empty..). We also tease him when giving instruction (worse was driving lessons).."Your left or MY Left?"
Yesterday when draining the oil, he couldn't pull the drain plug, even with a 2 foot breaker bar. After about 10 minutes and not wanting to go under the car for something so simple, I asked him "Righty tighty, lefty loosey?"..
Yep!
"You sure you're turning it counter-clockwise?"
Yep
American Counter-Clockwise or Australian?
Dad, i am not an idio.... Oh Damn! never Mine, it just broke free...

I love that kid, but we are going to have to spend a lot more time working on this car and double checking his bolts.. hehe

 

Holy smoke! in another message I described the damage as someone denting it in and doing a half assed attempt to bang it back out. I was just now looking at my oil pan,thinking of how I was going to attack the dents.. Looking at the pattern of dents on the bottom section of the pan, it just hit me me upside the head what had caused it. just too assinine to have thought of initially!

The circular impressions on the very bottom of the oil pan would have been were they placed the floor jack in order to lift the motor or the entire car! Right under the oil pump and it had collapsed inward. I wondered how it could get that dent without hitting the front or rear of the pan. What an idiot! Hope he got the couple extra inches of clearance...
Now I need to double check the pump's pickup tube for kinks and damage.
Ow, Ow, Ow, my head hurts now Beat that one if you can!

 

Had a guy come by recently, complained he couldn't get the car to stop running unless he disconnected the battery. The previous week the local Ford dealer had replaced the solenoid. The solenoid was upside-down. This really scrambled the connections. The I connector was feeding back through the S connector, energizing the coil at all times.

 

The previous owners had quite the major idiot repairs concerning the body... horrible patches, some using wood scews, riveted beer cans, and other horrid things.





there was also a beer can piece used as the "pointer" for my shifter since it was a white can... I just cut a new one out of sheetmetal and painted it white to replace it, still not the best, but its better.

 

What goes through peoples mind? You gotta love that repair in front of the door. A metal plate with a few (looks like) wood screws. It doesn't even improve the function, unless it is holding the door together, and it does not look better than a hole. I've found a few wood screws holding the body part on, but nothing that matches those ones!
When I was a kid, my dad had bought a used ford pinto (don't know why) with tricked out shiny mags (a dozen sizes too big) and house paint finished interior (the steering wheel and dash were all painted as well, by brush!!). The previous owner was a tinkerer and had gone through the entire engine compartment and replaced every single outer engine bolt with meteric ones and re-routed all the wires and hoses so they all mounted together in one sticky glob of a taped up "snake" on one side of the engine with leads coming out here and there when they needed to. It was a combo of electrical and duct tape so the whole thing was a sticky mess when we tried to clean it up. We never had an idea what bolt we needed since the guy had used different sizes and stripped the mounts putting them in.. didn't even tap them, just made the new holes cranking down the hardened metric bolts.
I remember going to get a new part at the auto shop, the guy behind the counter told us the part wasn't for a Pinto, it was a Volkswagon part! My dad drove that "VolksPinto" for a good 5-6 years!
I love the patch-job photos though, that beats all my stories!

 

well see the problem with those patches is they did do a REALLY good job with bondo! my dad and I had no idea bout all these horrible patches on nearly every corner of the car untill we had it sand blasted. It was a nice surprise indeed, for some reason I can't find a picture of the worst patch though... the rivited beer can at the rear of the quarter panel. My car was just horrible

thats a funny story about that pinto though, why the hell would you go through the trouble of replacing all those bolts? lol and I'm all for cleaning up the wiring harnesses, but it sure seems he went about it the completely wrong way

 

You have to remember some of these repairs were made before these cars were classics. Back then you could get rust holes in 3 years on a new car. The car was only good for about 5 years anyway, so if you wanted it to look better you patched it up with what you had. Couldn't buy patch panels back then. I put plenty of beer can patches in lower quarters in the early 70s. They probably looked just fine when the cars went to the scrap yard.
Classic cars have to survive the period in their lives when they are just old cars...nothing special. Most of us have done something rigged up on an old car, like a 95 Chevy or a 92 Olds. Just an old car...doesn't matter.

 

Its a friends 3rd gen camaro his tranny mount was bad so he strapped it down and drove it like that for 2 years.