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

[ray1970]

Years ago had a guy bring a brand new Duramax into the dealer with rear end noise. Put it on the rack to tear into it to,see what was wrong. Started draining the rear diff and it smelled like diesel. Not only did it smell wrong, but it kept coming out long after it should have been drained. It just kept coming out. Further investigation found the truck had an auxiliary fuel tank in the bed. GM was good about running the rear differential vent hose up along the fuel filler hose and when they tied in the tank they assumed that piec of hose went to the fuel tank. Basically they had about a fifty gallon fuel tank feeding diesel to the rear differential. Once we showed him what was going on and explained it he started making phone calls. Apparently they had a fleet of these trucks and all of them had these tanks installed at the same place and he was urging everyone to to pull over before they all trashed their rear diffs.

[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.

[SideShow Bob]

Several yeas ago, had a tech rewire a traffic signal after standing a replacement pole & arm. I was the on call that day and about 1730 hrs. I got a call from dispatch that Federal Heights PD complained that the WB signals at that intersection would only turn green intermittently and when it did it would malfunction.
After I fought traffic to get up there from Aurora and troubleshot the problem,.
Come to find out that the tech wired the WB green vehicle signal to the WB pedestrian walk and the red WB vehicle signal to the WB don?t walk signal.
When someone pushed the WB pedestrian call button the WB vehicle green would turn on for the programmed walk signal time then go out and the WB red vehicle signal would flash red for the programmed flashing don't walk time then go solid red until someone would push the pedestrian call button again.
Always check your work before leaving a job site.

[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!

[Gman]

Years ago had a guy bring a brand new Duramax into the dealer with rear end noise. Put it on the rack to tear into it to,see what was wrong. Started draining the rear diff and it smelled like diesel. Not only did it smell wrong, but it kept coming out long after it should have been drained. It just kept coming out. Further investigation found the truck had an auxiliary fuel tank in the bed. GM was good about running the rear differential vent hose up along the fuel filler hose and when they tied in the tank they assumed that piec of hose went to the fuel tank. Basically they had about a fifty gallon fuel tank feeding diesel to the rear differential. Once we showed him what was going on and explained it he started making phone calls. Apparently they had a fleet of these trucks and all of them had these tanks installed at the same place and he was urging everyone to to pull over before they all trashed their rear diffs.

Wow. Impressive/Expensive level of stupid there.

[babarsac]

Years ago had a guy bring a brand new Duramax into the dealer with rear end noise. Put it on the rack to tear into it to,see what was wrong. Started draining the rear diff and it smelled like diesel. Not only did it smell wrong, but it kept coming out long after it should have been drained. It just kept coming out. Further investigation found the truck had an auxiliary fuel tank in the bed. GM was good about running the rear differential vent hose up along the fuel filler hose and when they tied in the tank they assumed that piec of hose went to the fuel tank. Basically they had about a fifty gallon fuel tank feeding diesel to the rear differential. Once we showed him what was going on and explained it he started making phone calls. Apparently they had a fleet of these trucks and all of them had these tanks installed at the same place and he was urging everyone to to pull over before they all trashed their rear diffs.

Oh dear God... and I thought fixing the previous owners wiring job title my house was bad.