Mechanical work you've done that was a complete pain in the a?

[Dsg-shaker]

Clutch on a 08 freightliner c120, also had to replace the flywheel housing and rear seal.

Front corner post, top rails, panels and roof on a Hyundai container

Subframe and tandem replacement on a wabash van trailer

 

[FiveOhJoe]

-oil pan on my 1999 grand cherokee 4.7. It isn't so bad if you remove the exhaust system but that wasn't going to happen on a car that spend 14 years on salt roads, so I did it the hard way. It also has one of those stupid windage tray/gasket combos and you have to unbolt the oil pick-up to get to it, which is hard to do blind with only 3" of room between the pan and the windage tray.

-Removing the IRS and installing the FRBR kit was a long process, but not too bad. Lots and lots of elbow grease required.

-The hardest has to be doing a carbon cleaning on a 2007 Audi S6 with the 5.2 V10. I'm no stranger to german cars but this one was a nightmare. The high pressure fuel system is in the way, everything is steep bolts into aluminum so some of them just snap right away. It was probably a 15 hour long project.

-Removing the valve covers on my old 2005 S4 was a bitch. 4.2 V8 crammed into the home of a 1.8 4 banger makes things pretty tight.

-Helped a friend do head gaskets on his 98 LT1 camaro. What a nightmare that was. What were they thinking cramming the motor under the cowl?

 

[5.0Flareside]

Head gaskets and water pump 93 Taurus 3.8, kill me.. Talk about knuckles being jacked up after the back cyl head.. Kill me..

 

[James Snover]

The biggest pain in the ass I ever had to contend with wasn't anything mechanical. It w as the automatic exposure calibration for a mammography x-ray machine. It took about 12 hours, and usually two hundred sheets of film. Once you got it set up, everything was fine, until the hospital decided to change to another type of film. Or another type of chemistry. Or another type of film processor.

Mechanically: changing x-ray tubes is a lot of fun. They're big eighty-pound chunks of lead, very expensive, difficult to handle, and the gantry they mount to is counter-wieghted, so as soon as you pull off that 80-pound tube, the gantry flies up and hits you in the face. When I say they weigh eighty pounds? That's for a normal x-ray tube. CT-tubes are ridiculous, weighing 250-300 pound, or more! And they come with integral heat exchangers, and you have to mount it without pulling any hoses, poking holes in the oh-so-delicate heat exchanger. And they spin, some in excess of 120 rpm, so _everything_ has to be tied down, because if a cable comes loose, it tears up one item, which then tears up several other items, which then tear up a whole bunch of other items and now you'r looking at a pile of very expensive twisted metal and torn wiring and wondering how you're going to explain that. CT tubes cost between $85,000.00 - $185,000.00. You really don't want to mess up one of those.

And one last item with x-ray tubes: you have two high voltage cables that go the tube: anode and cathode. Guess what? The design of these cables goes back about 70 years, the cables are interchangeable. If you cross the cables, you just ruined your brand new expensive x-ray tube. Been there, done that. Now before I even touch them I mark them. And when I hook them back up, I check them probably five or eight times to be SURE I didn't screw that up again.

And after all that, then you check the calibration and output of the tube. The x-ray tube can't put out too much radiation, but even worse, it can't put out too little an amount of radiation. If there is too much radiation, you still get a usable image. If there is not enough radiation, you get an image that cannot be used, and you have to go and re-shoot the patient again, who has now had two exposures of radiation. Even worse, the tube has to put out the right type of radiation. X-rays typically come in two classes: soft x-ray and hard x-ray. Soft x-ray is bad because you don't get a usable image, and the body absorbs it. Hard radiation is better, because it does give you a usable image, and the body absorbs less of it because most of it just goes right through you. All this stuff gets tested all the time, by me, by medical physicists, by daily quality control tests, and even by the machines themselves: they monitor their voltage and current, and if they're too far out of spec, it won't make a shot.

X-ray repair is a blast. If you can handle doctors yelling at you, trying to work unobtrusively on a machine with a patient on the table and a doctor yelling at you, and department heads yelling at you because their room is down, and if you can handle your bosses yelling at you because you're spending so much on parts ... there's lots of yelling in the hurly-burly world of x-ray repair.

 

[deadpres]

i would have to say the hardest thing Ive done to this day was change the transmission out on my car in my buddies drive way on jack stands( it was dire and we didn't have access to a lift) took us 9 hours

^This. I remember placing the trans on my chest/stomach and somehow I managed to roll out from underneath it. Never again.

A lot of people end up leaving it off.

+65,000

 

[jbs$]

Heater core on a 63 Corvette, you damn near have to take the car apart.

 

[Svtkidd23]

Heater core fox body
Heater core 98 s10
Bleed clutch in f body

 

[thomas91169]

-Removing the IRS and installing the FRBR kit was a long process, but not too bad. Lots and lots of elbow grease required.

Yeah I was going to go with something similar, I did the full prothane bushing kit on my 98 Eclipse Spyder. Required removal of factory bushings and sleeve, front and rear suspension. I think almost 50-60 bushings total.

It took the effort as expected. I got a benchtop press from harbor freight that came in handy a few times, but I learned quickly that the best way to remove the old bushings was to just light them up with a torch, let them melt out, sawzall the sleeve and tap it out with an air chizel.

Im still going with midpipe on my GT as the worst as for something so simple, it took the most effort to complete. Ive done turbo swaps on rust buckets and never had so much issues with 2 bolts as I did with that.

 

[Teal Terminator]

I've been aggravated all to hell many a times when working on cars, lol, but one of the worst that comes to mind was trying to get my transmission reinstalled and clutch disks aligned when putting the McLeod twin disk in my Terminator. The car was on jack stands and I couldn't get my floor jack to hold the damn thing right and I just ended up trying to bench press that bitch in there. I must have put it up and taken it back down 5 times trying to get everything to align. I think I lost my voice that night from all the yelling, lol. I vowed never to pull another trans without the car on a lift.

 

[BLOWN PONY]

Spark plugs on a 97' F-150 is up there on my list..

Ahh yes... The rear two plugs on my 99 F-150 almost killed me. I was like 17, home alone for Christmas break and never worked on cars before. Naturally, I decided the truck needed new plugs...

I think I started crying at one point.



Oh, and changing the fuel filter for the first time. (Right after driving it) Didn't take long to figure out how much gas is in the line, and what it feels like to wash your face with it.

I ended up doubled over screaming in the driveway while puking from the pain. All the while thinking I had just melted my contacts to my eyes and blinded myself.

 

[vettez062002]

Getting the starter off my Mustang seemed like the most ridicules thing I've ever had trouble with. The top bolt was terrible! I ended up just leaving it off when I re-installed it.

trick to that is using a 1/4 in looooong extension (around 3 foot) with a 13mm swivel head socket and slide it all the way through the top of the pass. motor mount with on hand and us ur other hand to guide it onto the bolt. do it about 50 times and ull be a pro. :beer:

I have all kinds of tricks for modular stuff, like getting the power steering pump off a modular. the bolt that is right infront of the hard line, thats the last bolt you take out, use a 10mm quick wrench, and just leave the wrench with the bolt and it comes out, when it goes back together, thats the first bolt u put back in to get your tool back.

whenever something starts becoming overwhelming. I usually take a step back and just chill for about 10 minutes... or just leave all together and while im taking a poo or something totally not related to the project, the idea pops into my head.

 

[BLOWN PONY]

trick to that is using a 1/4 in looooong extension (around 3 foot) with a 13mm swivel head socket and slide it all the way through the top of the pass. motor mount with on hand and us ur other hand to guide it onto the bolt. do it about 50 times and ull be a pro. :beer:

I have all kinds of tricks for modular stuff, like getting the power steering pump off a modular. the bolt that is right infront of the hard line, thats the last bolt you take out, use a 10mm quick wrench, and just leave the wrench with the bolt and it comes out, when it goes back together, thats the first bolt u put back in to get your tool back.

whenever something starts becoming overwhelming. I usually take a step back and just chill for about 10 minutes... or just leave all together and while im taking a poo or something totally not related to the project, the idea pops into my head.

Yep. After some googling I figured it out. :beer:

 

[65fastback2+2]

im not the best mechanic...but some of these jobs you all have listed as a pain really arent that bad.

 

[zerocool]

Plugs on a 305 88 Caprice Classic. First 6 went in 35 minutes, the last 2 took 3 hours because they were were mounted 2 inches from the firewall and under the damn front edge of the hood even though I could have crawled in the front of the engine bay and taken a nap. Never again.

 

[UncleAnt]

Clutch jobs on gallardos or 30k service on a f430


Both suck

 

[testorossa1989]

Two words.. Mecedes Benz

 

[98BlackSVT]

A recent job I did that really isn't so fun. Not necessarily the hardest but a PITA non the less. That's the glass roof on a newer Hyundai azera.

 

[roy_1031]

Exhaust donuts and turbo o-rings on a 7.3 powerstoke without pulling the trans. Doing in in a parking lot of course. It sucked.

I did the turbo o-rings and rebuilt the turbo while it was out and then upgraded the turbo up pipes to the international ceramic coated bellows style. The bolts and the v band flange on the back of the turbo near the firewall was horrible to do!

 

[heypal]

anyone have to work on a 300zx...yeah

 

[chrisheltra]

Timing chain tentioner replacement while the engine was still in the L.

Header install on the L.

Starter removal and reinstall on the L.