Repairing Someone's Previous Repair: What's Your Story?

[TFOGGER]

I've got this FXR in need of some work.....

***sound of timbers creaking, pre-cave in***

Gimme a call...

[ray1970]

Another funny one was a Mitsubishi Eclipse with a dead cylinder. It was running fine so I told them I didn't see anything wrong and shipped it out. It came back the next day with the same complaint. Anyhow, long story short, the customer had installed an aftermarket radio themselves and however they manage to wire it up it would kill the #3 injector any time the radio was turned on. When I first looked at it the radio was off and it ran just fine. It was funny. Radio off... normal. Turn the radio on and dead hole on #3. Radio off... fine.

[ray1970]

I also burned the interior out of a Ford Probe once on the alignment rack. Car came in for an alignment, I pulled it on the rack, got out, closed the driver's door, and interior started filling up with smoke and flame.

Turns out someone had installed some stereo garbage and ran the main power wire for the amp straight off the battery and to the back of the car with no circuit protection and when I shut the door the wire had been run poorly through the door jamb area and got pinched and shorted out.

And that wasn't the first customers car that burned in my stall. I'm fuzzy on the details but I had to put out a Cadillac that was on fire once. Before I could get it out the trim on the outside of the car was melting off the sides.

[mtnhigh]

I also burned the interior out of a Ford Probe once on the alignment rack. Car came in for an alignment, I pulled it on the rack, got out, closed the driver's door, and interior started filling up with smoke and flame.

Turns out someone had installed some stereo garbage and ran the main power wire for the amp straight off the battery and to the back of the car with no circuit protection and when I shut the door the wire had been run poorly through the door jamb area and got pinched and shorted out.

And that wasn't the first customers car that burned in my stall. I'm fuzzy on the details but I had to put out a Cadillac that was on fire once. Before I could get it out the trim on the outside of the car was melting off the sides.

This reminds me of a time i was driving a hand me down beater mustang my brother had driven. He wired an aftermarket stereo in the same manner. No fuse, and ran the wire direct from the battery along the edge of the hood. At practice, one afternoon, a buddy sat on the hood. Huge amounts of smoke began pouring out. WTF!!?? We lift the hood, and find a burned trail of wire. It melted through a 1/3rd of the battery. Probably lucky it didn't go up in flames. That was an expensive lesson!