One for sorrow... (disaster tale of woe)

[akku]

My mate Steve pointed out there was a lone Magpie perched atop my garage this afternoon. Ah, the portent...

Picked up the Buick from my mate's garage this morning about 9:30 with a fresh MOT in hand. Its idling a little better (ie its idling a little) and I drive home. As I get down the A610 in heavyish traffic I become aware of smoke. Lots of smoke. Coming out of the driver side wheel arch mostly and the grill and the vent in front of the windscreen too. Gosh and darn it. A sniff test reveals it to be burning oil.

So I carry on until I can find somewhere to pull over. Check it and the driver side exhaust manifold is drenched in oil which is boiling off. So I carry on home, geting stuck in every red light, every learner, milk float etc and the car running sicker and sicker.

Get home, diagnose smoke fault as being oil pushing past the crank case breather / oil cap. So pull that off its all gummy so I rinse it out in thinners (no petrol available but thinners will do) and decide to compression test it incase a head gasket is out and pressurising the crank case. Compression test is OK. I clean the plugs and regap them and decide to address the poor running, Iknow the points are quite old...

Put the new points in, refit the plugs and it won't start. Amusingly electic shock myslef with the feeler gauges rechecking the points gap with the ignition on (duh). So theres power there at least... Checked and got a spark at the plug.

Still no start, and its acting like its 180 degress out as its spinning and then kicking back. Most odd. So check the firing order, all seems OK. Check the rotor arms in right and it is. Am just at the point where I think we need to set the static timing fron scratch and wondering how the hell it could have moved, when I decide to spin it one more time with the cap off because the rotor arm seems to be in the same position every time I've lifted the cap - it is turning, right?

So turn the key and just get a horrible grinding noise and the motor doesn't turn over. Whack hell out of the starter and still the same. Knowing my luck I've done a dentist and taken a few teeth off the flex plate, not had chance to get the starter off and look yet.

So I have a freshly MOT'd Buick which now doesn't start and looks like needing money. Still dunno if the rotor arm is turning so I could have a sheared distributor shaft or anything. Or its siezed the motor.



So once again I have no transport.

[bazza2541]

Ok, good one, here's mine.
When I bought my car it was a little smoky ands a little hard to get into gear, so I left it at a local mechanics to get checked over, he said it needed a headgasket and that one or two of the selector forks were bent, so £1300 later I was back in business.

A little over 12 months ago I noticed my Lotus starting to get a little smoky again, then a lot smoky, fearing a repeat of the previous raping, I went to another mechanic who has done lots of work for me before, he whipped the heads off to find a hole the size of a pound coin in the number 1 piston, fine I had a spare engine to rob parts off.

So I left the whole lot with him in good hands or so I thought. A while back I went off to Spain for a couple of weeks work and on my return, My car was parked out the back of my house, with both engines in bits sitting beside it (two weeks of typical Irish rain) and from the looks of it the shell has been left outside too and now needs a total restoration.

I am so f*cked off I cannot bear to even touch it. Its cost me a fortune and now looks like its gonna need another to put it right. I hate every mechanic on the face of the planet right now. GRRRRrrrrr!!!!

[Samage]

bazza2541 said:

Ok, good one, here's mine.
When I bought my car it was a little smoky ands a little hard to get into gear, so I left it at a local mechanics to get checked over, he said it needed a headgasket and that one or two of the selector forks were bent, so £1300 later I was back in business.

A little over 12 months ago I noticed my Lotus starting to get a little smoky again, then a lot smoky, fearing a repeat of the previous raping, I went to another mechanic who has done lots of work for me before, he whipped the heads off to find a hole the size of a pound coin in the number 1 piston, fine I had a spare engine to rob parts off.

So I left the whole lot with him in good hands or so I thought. A while back I went off to Spain for a couple of weeks work and on my return, My car was parked out the back of my house, with both engines in bits sitting beside it (two weeks of typical Irish rain) and from the looks of it the shell has been left outside too and now needs a total restoration.

I am so f*cked off I cannot bear to even touch it. Its cost me a fortune and now looks like its gonna need another to put it right. I hate every mechanic on the face of the planet right now. GRRRRrrrrr!!!!

I'd get onto your solicitors, quickly!

[akku]

Joseph H Chrysler, I though I'd met some cowboys! Dude that sucks. A guy I know has had a part stripped Lotus dumped outside his garage for years (non-paying customer).

[Deleted]

My first car (100E) decided to break down on my first ever day driving when I passed my test. I got about 250 yards from the house and it conked out completely and wouldn't start. A sign of things to come...

[bazza2541]

I'd post the pics if I knew how and then we could all be depressed together.

[akku]

turns OK on a bar on the bottom pulley. Doesn't free off the starter when you do this. Can;t get the starter off wihout jacking up the car, and its tuck on the gravel drive where I can't jack it up.

But I did get plenty of gardening done

[DutyFreeSaviour]

I don't think any of us who love these old knackers have avoided at least one of these....... mine:

Bought an MG BGT ( I was 18 ) from a local 'specialist' (worked in Norfolk) and promptly drove 300+ miles to Sunderland ( my home town ) - by the time I got there it was purely revving and pulling like an invalid carriage on diazepam. As I was leaving 3days later I had no time - so handed it to another 'specialist'.
Week later I had a bill for £450 as it had a new clutch (yeah right! ) and other sundries I 'was lucky he'd spotted'...... Being in another country I paid up and returned 2weeks later. Noticing 2000miles more on the odo I queried it but was fobbed off - my poor memory. I had an MOT certificate from 3weeks earlier to prove him wrong but got nowhere.
I drove back to Norfolk - cara not quite right, but made it. Next morning off to Grt. Yarmouth - on the way back out the engine let go big style...... turns out the tensioner hadn't been fitted properly and had let go..... no.3 piston in more pieces than an orchestral manoeuvre.
Took out engine, found a charred clutch - a mechanic friend informed me the clutch had had the oil 'burnt off it' - so was scrap - and the rest of the 'work' was non-existant too.
This was due to the original specialist leaving the MG standing out back for an eon - then tarting it up for muggins here to buy. Rope seal on crank disintagrated on start-up and caused all the hassle. Needless to say both garages had closed and done a Reggie by the time I worked all this out. Now the car can stay put until I do it myself - safer!

John

[phatphord]

alistairk..what buick do you have?

[reanimation]

sad you didn't make it, wondered what the Massive empty gap was for! ;D

seriously i hope you get it sorted, we'll have another meet soon anyways somewhere.

[Nathan]

Why do garages try to rape MG owners lol. tried it with me but did not wash.

[akku]

MG owners (rightly or wrongly) have a rep of being wealthy enough to be worth ripping off and not having much of a clue about the mechanical side of things. A mate just got a '70 GT with wait for it £22000 (yes, twenty two thousand pounds!) in reciepts from a local specialist. Car is "not so bad, about average, worth the £1500 I gave for it and no more though"

phatphord - '66 LeSabre Custom 400.



Thats got to be my favourite pic of it, taken by a chap with a fancy camera & lens.

So tonight I'm going to have to find some way of getting it raised safely on gravel to get the starter out and see whats crack with that. A mate in the trade is going to come look at the electrical side of it (which it sparks but does not fire) but I need to get the starter sorted first. Pigwilly as my dad says.

I'm on a training course this week (which gives out like 2 hours homework a night) so I'm short of time and will be bussing it through one of Nottingham's worst areas wednesday if its not running by then... One of the girls on the course had to be rescued by the cops from some crazies when she nipped out to the shop at lunch break, brought her back in the car as they reckon its not safe to walk about that area. Looking forward to standing round at a bus stop there then...

Always trivial things which become a big PITA. I mean, you change the points and then it all goes pete tong. Not like I'd even done anything much too it. Most odd. But thats old cars.

[akku]

bum, spent a while underneath it, not easy on a gravel drive, face pressed up against the underside, finally wressled the starter off it and guess what, the ring gear on the flex plate is stripped. Nice. Amazingly to actually get the starter out looks like an engine out job so all good fun to deal with on this one. Not.

[TwincamGTi]

Posted by alistairk on Today at 13:19
MG owners (rightly or wrongly) have a rep of being wealthy enough to be worth ripping off and not having much of a clue about the mechanical side of things.

[akku]

Used to be VW Beetle owners were the favourites of unscrupulous garages.

I think a lot of them have a 6th sense for someone they can screw though, regardless of what you drive.

[TwincamGTi]

^You have a very good point,

In fact I did nearly get ‘ripped off’ by a garage when they did some welding on my MGB GT …

…they didn’t cover the seats and burnt some of the interior!!!

Initially they shrugged they shoulders and said “sometimes these things happen!”

Needless to say they were made to reimburse me (What was the real shame was that I offered to strip out most of the car before it was presented to them but they said no need they would do it if needed …but obviously didn’t).

On an amusing side note I recited this story on the ‘Car Mechanics Magazine’ Forum when someone put up a post up about welding.
However what I didn’t realise was a lot of posters on that forum are actual car mechanics (or think they are !?), so in fact I got a real telling off for saying “nasty things about the motor trade”. I thought I’d get a ‘ban’ but moderators kindly let me stay; which made me wonder if the moderators themselves were sick of these ‘so-called’ mechanics (after reading a few posts these ‘mechanics’ ability seemed to be ‘messing about with mediocre-under ten year old-bland wagons’ i.e. get into a discussion about changing the head gasket on a Vauxhall Vectra …please spare me!).

I suppose the moral of this post is if you get someone who you don’t know/not used before to do work for you (car repairs, building work and so on) then make everything absolutely clear with them (but remain polite), if they get offended with you ‘dotting the ‘I’s and crossing the ‘T’s’ then don’t bother with them …there’s plenty of others to take there place.

Having said all the above I fully respect that the majority of tradesman are superb.
Infact from my own experience I know of more good car mechanics than bad ones.