A Little Thing Turned Big!

Anyone ever have a small task that spiraled out of control, or a small repair that should have taken about 4 hours take 2 days?

If you have please share, so I'm not alone!

If this was related to one of my projects I would have put it in those thresad, or even if there was a thread it applied to.. but my 2001 V-6 Camaro doesn't fit any catagory I've seen on here....

Anyway... I got the car for a great deal last year, because it was leaking transmission fluid, turns out the pan bolts were loose, tighten those up and the leak stopped

Then I noticed that the passanger side wheel was really greasy... Ended up replacing the axel beaing and seals, on both sides, since I had to tear intothe rear end, I figured I would just fix it right..... so far that's still good

My most recent adventure is the Y-pipe.... I found one at a local junk yard, same year car...

Get it home, go to drop the old y-pipe out tthat was cracked in an unweldable area.... Break two bolts off in the driver side manifold... this was after soaking the bolts in PB BLASTER and NUT OFF and WD-40 ... then the passager saide cae right off [S... so I then drop the pipe down and realize... hmmm[S these look the same but one is taller.... in which case my car is supposed to have the taller and not the shorter one... at leat I thought...

So I have to temove the EGR tube from the driver side exhauset the bolt holding it in broke .... So off it come from the motor... Oh wait.. no it desn't bceaues the heat sheild wants to wrap around the bolt.... so I ende up cutting it with a screw drive and a hammer because none of the 15 saws or 2 grinder or any other 100 tools would fit in the small space...

After a hour of drilling and taping the exhaust manifold was finnaly ready to go back on..... so on it goes and then onto the y-pipe issues... so I measure and shorten and reweld te y-pipe.. and go water test it for leaks.. and it pours like a fountain, so I grind it down and fill holes.. and it leaks like a fountain again, so back to the grinder... and I go to weld up some more holes and low and behold run out of wire at 10:45 PM

After church hte next day I picked up some wire and headed back to the garage... I ended up cutting the y-ipi again to make one more adjustment welded it up, grinded it down... this time set my pants on fire!!!

So anyways.... about an hour before dusk I go the car fired up and it was nice and quiet up front!

Quite a bit of a headache, but the result was good in the end!

Not car related.

I was going to drain the pool at work on Saturday morning. Back washed the filters 5 minutes, then started the dump. Went on the deck and set up a couple hoses to rinse the sides as it drains. About 10 minutes later went back in the pump room and noticed there was some water on the floor. Out of curiosity I look in to the crawl space to see if it is seeping in there at all and see a huge gush of water shooting. Quickly turn the pump off and get in the crawl space to investigate further, a 50 year old cast drain pipe has a 10 foot long split.

After a bunch of calls it was determined the plumber will have a very bad Monday fixing that issue. Glad it's my day off.

If i ever had a day like that i made my self forget it. Glad you got it done and your in one piece have a better day [cl

I don't care to remember those days either lol. Glad ya won and not the exhaust lol.

I wanted roadster pipes on the 27
Hmmm
Sounds easy enough
Install them and realize I can't open the doors
So I raise the cab and then realize the steering arm is in the way
So fabricate new body mounts for cab and bed
Buy and install completely different steering box
Etc....

Tried to install a tilt column from an 85 S-10 into my '82 S-10. An hour or two job, right? No, the intermediate shaft doesn't fit, the wiring doesn't work without modification, and the mounting is slightly different. 7 hours later it was like factory. Thankfully that's been working great for 11 years now but it was a headache at the time.

BTW I like the look of the car with those late model Camaro wheels.

billy said:

I wanted roadster pipes on the 27
Hmmm
Sounds easy enough
Install them and realize I can't open the doors
So I raise the cab and then realize the steering arm is in the way
So fabricate new body mounts for cab and bed
Buy and install completely different steering box
Etc....

Click to expand...

WOW! That is a SERIOUS endevor!

05snopro440 said:

Tried to install a tilt column from an 85 S-10 into my '82 S-10. An hour or two job, right? No, the intermediate shaft doesn't fit, the wiring doesn't work without modification, and the mounting is slightly different. 7 hours later it was like factory. Thankfully that's been working great for 11 years now but it was a headache at the time.

Click to expand...

I had an 82 S-10... I though about swapping the column, I'm glad I sold it before that became reality!



Thanks for teh comment on the camaro 'Camilla'... I actually bought it just like it is pictured...

A lot of my own projects seem to snowball into much larger ones than I imagine.

Thats the way it goes sometime.

Fact: any job the word manifold in it snowballs.

Sam you are correct on the manifolds .. I hate to deal with manifolds .....


I put a chevy engine in a ford ,,, the engine swap went very , very well ,, I rebuilt the engine and I had another man soak and rebuild he carb ,, well after a few months of this tinkering off and on , the truck is ready to start up .. Well it run for about 3 or 4 min, then quits , well after scratching my head for a day or so , I got a new distributor . now it will start up. but dont run smooth , kind of ruff or almost a skip .. . after (re) adjusting the valves for the 3rd time . I have come to the conclusion its the carb....it will idle real nice for about 30 seconds then kind of just stalls out .. you can keep it running just by playing with the gas .. a new Holley is around $350 , maybe should have got this to start with ... got to save more $$$ The hard part of this job went very smooth (Ford to Chevy swap).. the easy part (making a chevy engine run) turned in to the snow balling .. fix one thing , then another , then another , then another .. Oh and my engine is smoking , yea the one I just rebuilt

Most of my experience dealing with house plumbing turns out that way. You go to remove one connection, break another farther down the line, then break another trying to get that one off. End up replacing 20 foot of pipe and a dozen connectors just to replace one dripping faucet......

Old houses, every time I went to do something simple like replace the commode, it ended up with a whole new floor and complete remodel.

AAAAAAAh the things we do to amuse ourselves !

Willowbilly3 said:

Old houses, every time I went to do something simple like replace the commode, it ended up with a whole new floor and complete remodel.

Click to expand...

That's how I discovered termites one time. Had a soft floor by toilet. When to redo flooring and toilet seal. Ended up with a new bathroom including a $700 tub, floor joices, and one new exterior wall.

christcrusader13 said:

I had an 82 S-10... I though about swapping the column, I'm glad I sold it before that became reality!



Thanks for teh comment on the camaro 'Camilla'... I actually bought it just like it is pictured...

Click to expand...

I won't ever sell my S-10. It was my first vehicle and I have lots of time in on it with my dad, it's a custom colour with a V8 and is a lot of fun and has made a lot of great memories!

That's awesome the wheels came with the car. That's one way to make those doorstops pretty [ddd[cl

Sam_Fear said:

Fact: any job the word manifold in it snowballs.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm still dealing with exhaust leaks from when I changed my heads. Plus most of the bolts broke off on the old heads (which was anticipated and the plan), so I've still got giant scars from that and it was quite a hassle.

At IT AGAIN!!!!!!

I was not planning on adding anything to this thread... but since I was working on the same vehicle that the last issues showed up on I figured a few of you might get a kick out of this....

2001 camaro ... Camilla... I have had an issue with the driver side window sliding on the track, so I wentot the bone yard to pick up parts for that... that story will go down this weekend....

As for last night..... I got back from the bone yard and my new brakes showed up ... so I was like sweet... 4 new rotors and new pads... no problem... the toughest thing I have to do is replave a torn boot on a the driver side caliper...

I pull wheel, caliper etc... and wedge soemthing in hte piston I didnt' want to move and pump the brake pedal... the piston starts peeing everywhere.. I turn the caliper up side right... and remove the piston... and teh old boot clean it up and atempt to put it back together again... 45 minutes later after removing the caliper because after geting the boot and piston back in.... the pistons would not compress back into the caliper... I get that one done.. the back it no probel getto passanger rear and realize... the directional rotors aer going the wrong way, so yank them back off and swap them, the get the driver side done done and then move to hte pass side...

back no problem.... get to the front pop off.. go to get back on a the upper caliper pin won't budge... PB/WD-40/NutsOFF... nothing.... so I take the bracket off thinking I'm going to have to go back to the bone yard for another one.... I decide it's a no loss to take a BIG 14 pound sledge to it....

LOW AND BEHOLD.... the pin started to move in... then vice grips and a lot of tired muscle... it was 10:00 PM in the drive way at this point.... the pin finally came out so I cleaned everything up and put it all back together... [cl

Toatl time should have been 45 mins.... total time was 4.5 hrs... hahahahaha gotta love it

Oh and I can stop

Murphy's Law.....

if something you touch doesn't break trying to get it off....then what you thought was going to be ok will leak when you put it back together....or something to that affect....never fails.....think we've all been there and done that....
Example....replaced a leaky pressure relief valve on my boiler....of course had to drain off water...full water boiler system...went to refill and bleed....can't seem to get all the air out....so I open the auto fill valve with the lever.....get the air out and close the valve only to find it won't stop filling the boiler....shut off the water, drain the boiler and replace the stuck auto fill valve....re-fill, bleed air...and done....15 minute job to change pressure relief valve turned into a 8 hour run all over town looking for the fill valve fiasco.....and so it goes.....