funny stories

Back when I designed light towers and Generator sets, we got a Kubota diesel powered unit in for warranty work that had a seized motor. The owner was pissed because this "POS" wasn't going to be available, and he had a crew already lined up for overtime, blah blah blah. We loaned him another tower, brand new, and wheeled his into the shop. Our head mechanic opens the door to the unit, and pulls out a dry dipstick. We note it has 1800 hrs on it (oil change interval is 100 hrs for this unit). A closer look reveals the factory blue painted oil filter with a factory decal on it mentioning oil weight, etc. IOW, original oil filter. Pull the pan. It's tar. Turning the pan over left the 3 inches of goo undisturbed. The oil pressure switch in series with the start/stop solenoid was bypassed, as was the water switch. The next morning, the customer comes in and is told by his sales rep that the warranty was void. He pitches a fit, calls us thieves and all kinds of names, and then tells us he is keeping the light tower we loaned him. He left with our trailer still on his bumper. The humor ends there with police involvement.

1972, BMW shop, Hippie customer comes in with a bmw 2002, gas pedal keeps poping off it's hinge point which is two balls located into hard rubber. Something behind the pedal, a piece of grungy material. Pull it out, scrape it off. About 2 ounces of Afghani black hash :) (true story)

bmw 530i cust. complains "engine is missing around 65 mph" Take it out, speed up to 65, open the hood, sure enough the engine was gone! (ok that's an old one)

My mother had one of the first Vlokswagon beetles in the area back in the early 60s. Cop pulls her over, stands in front and says "pop the hood" she does so. "Where's the engine" the cop says. "It's in the back" my mum says. Cop replys sternly "get it in the front right away"

b

snip

Heh, pretty good one there. All have been funny. A hovercraft........

Chip

customer calls says he parked his Blazer, got out, when he got back in it wouldn't move, forward or backward

had it towed over here

reach for the door handle, tow truck dude says 'It's broke, you have to go in thru passengers side

(Doc and Ian probably see this coming)

He kicked the transfer case into Neutral climbing over the center console..................

LOL!!!

-Bret

Customer drives a 55 Chevy in. Her son replaced the brakes and now it won't stop. We damn near wreck it pulling it in to the shop. It has no brakes! One has to ask how the hell she drove it there. We pull the right front drum and it's full of Lubriplate Her son packed the brakes with what he thought was, and the can says it right on the front, "Brake Lube!"

We get a call and I go out with the wrecker to get a stranded woman. Her car ran out of gas and she walked to a gas station to get some. The attendant told her to pour a little into the carb so it would start easier. A little to her was half the can. It was an old six cylinder Chevy. I took out the plugs, cranked it a while, and it started right up. I told her to have the oil changed where she bought the gas while she was returning the can.

One of our customers had a VW Beetle with a automatic stick shift. She calls and tells us the generator light was on and wanted to know if it was OK to drive it in. My young mechanic told her to look and see if the belt was on the generator, and if it was and the generator was spinning she could drive it. She drives it in and leaves it. My guy starts it and tells me the battery is about dead, it would just barely crank. I walk by and notice a strange burnt smell. To make a long story short, the idiot light that was on was blue. It was the oil light! She let her brother drive it and he backed into another car so hard he knocked the driver's side valve cover off. Anyone who ever drove an automatic stick shift VW can attest to the vicious reverse:) She drove it 30 miles with no oil. The battery wasn't dead, the engine was seizing up. BTW: We put oil in it and it was toast. We had to rebuild it. But she drove it about a month while she saved up the money to have it rebuilt.

Another shop down the street had a Studebaker in. To get the axle nut off, the mechanic puts a pipe wrench on the nut, stands on the handle and has his helper let out the clutch. Except it was in reverse. Tossed the guy about 10 feet and broke his arm. The garage had a sign out front that said, "Your interior greased free." I just remembered that:)

Al

This is a true story as well, when in high school I worked at an auto parts store on week ends and in the summer. One day this guy is pulling into the parking lot in front of the store (the store is right off a state highway) and crashes right through one of the giant panes of glass in the front of the building. He was driving a beat up white Mercury of some kind. So after all of the excitement and talking to the store manager (we knew his dad as he was a good customer) he goes to the counter because he was coming to pick up a master cylinder for that car!

nospam

As an apprentice in a BMW shop (1972) I was doing the brake job on my Dad's Bmw Bavaria. I forgot to pump up the brakes after pushing the pistons back. When I started it and went to back out over the hoist hump the auto choke came on and I went shooting out of the shop right into the boss's new Saab as I pumped furiously at the pedal. The pedal came up one pump after hitting the Saab :( B

LOL I can believe that, I bet everyone in their youth (whether they admit it or not) has taken off with a car they just put pads on and forgot to pump the pedal to get the pads back to the rotor. I know I have, but was "lucky" enough to get it stopped.

nospam

The boss made me explain it to my ol'man, so I had to deal with both of them, heh. Actually when ever I made a mistake on a customer's car (rare but a couple of times) the boss made me explain to the customer what I did while he stood by. Smart boss to be sure. B

I agree, it puts you in the position of taking lumps for your actions. I also had that type of business experiences. It gives you good work ethics.

nospam

Customer comes in with a rough looking BMW 2002Ti (mechanical fuel injection) complaining it's pulling right when braking. Raise it a foot on the hoist and hold the brake down but the front left wheel still spins. Remove the wheel. Caliper pistons must have seized (4 piston fixed caliper). The pads had worn down to metal, then angled in at the front and literally lathed off the disk at the hub. Caliper and disk were welded together and the hub spun freely. The disk was rasor sharp where it was finally pinched off the hub. The disk ring and caliper hung above my bench for some time. B

An interesting note, the BMW 2002Tii (two i's) had two twin choke solex, (almost identical to twin choke webbers) and a nice tube header manifold. I got out my books and became the only one in the shop to be able to fully tune these carbs, still just a 6 month apprentice. The German techs grumbled about that, heh. Then came Bosch L & K Jetronic fuel injection and we never looked back. B

OK Here's one I did...

I was 16 and had a 72' Buick Skylark. I scored some P245/60R14's for the front and P275/60R15's for the back. So obviously I needed bigger springs so they wouldn't rub.

At Gary's U Pull It I got rear springs from an ElCamino or something like that; And for the front I got a pair from an old Buick Century that had a 455 in it. I also got the sway bar from my Dad's old Buick Estate Wagon (also w/ a 455). When I put it all together the top of the front tires leaned in about 3" at the tops (a few degrees of negative Camber).

So I took it to Wards because they had a "deluxe alignment" that came with 1 free realignment (that I figured I might need w/ such big tires). The guy there took out all of the shims but it still had about a 2" inward leaning at the front wheel tire tops. They laughed at me and told me my tires wouldn't last and that I should get something that fit. I said I would be back after some adjustments ;).

Soooooooo I took it home and cut slots into the upper control arms with my torch, bent them outward (straightened them), and welded back across the gap (so it came out with a couple degrees of positive camber). Then I went back for my free re-alignment, and the guy doing the job cursed at it for a couple hours. He finally bought an air hammer to get it apart and put the shims back in (about

4 or 5 shims for each of the 4 shim positions - a normal amount). So that was it. I drove that car through high school and most of college (about 7 years, and about 80,000 miles). The suspension was very nice in that car too, and the tires lasted great (1 replacement set I think sometime in college).

I guess we all laughed about it. I imagine the guys who were at Wards that day are still laughing about it to this day. You shoulda seen them all gathering round to look at the welded control arms.

Elliott

Battleax wrote:

Elliot,

They make offset upper control arm shafts for cars that need to have more camber adjustment. I'm surprised the alignment shop didn't suggest them.

nospam

I had one of those off a 78 t-bird, I kept it for a little while too. Great conversation piece.

I don't miss carbs a bit either. If I could only put fuel injection on my Honda ATC.....

Chip

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I got to work one day as the super tech was just getting ready to hang a new ECM computer brain on a 1988 Ford. He said he followed every step outlined in the Ford Diagnostics manual, cursing electronics every step of the way. I began asking questions about the 'step by step' block diagrams in the manual. We started over and at each block, he had a pat answer to the questions in the block - like yes, it's got voltage, it cranks! The block said to measure the voltage! So we did, and went to the next block, and so on. When we got to the one that said 'check distributor rotation' he said - hell they all turn when you crank the engine! I explain to him literally check it for rotating while cranking. He grumbles about having to fight the cap and wires just to check something he KNOWS is happening. The thing is, it wasn't. Fords famous wrong direction threaded camshaft gear retaining bolt on the 4.9L 6 banger staring right atcha! Funny, after that he checked them all before going to the extreme expense to buy an ECM.

Case closed. Fifteen minutes of troubleshooting to find what he had been hunting for 8 hours!

And he made $6 an hour more than me. Not for long though......passed him up easily 10 years ago.