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So, we've been working on other cars, and the International tranny job has ground to a halt. We got the driveshaft unhooked and the interior tore apart, but not much else. Meanwhile, this '95 Dodge Ram 1500 came in because the drivers door would not shut. It belongs to a company in our building that cleans out foreclosed homes. The owner of that company is some kind of dodge nut and his entire fleet of foreclosure clean out trucks are lovely old Dodges (some of them cummins diesel, but this particular example is V8 gas) that have been through at least one war. We dutifully keep them on the road, he's got about 5 or 6 of them now, all of them enormous pieces of poo poo. We found the bushings in the top door hinge were blown out and the hinge needed replacement. A relatively simple repair compared to the lengths we usually go to for this specific customer. I always get a sense of awe/fear when I see him walking up the drive into my office. He really brings us the biggest pieces of poo poo and spends way too much money to keep them running, not that I'm complaining.  You can sort of kind of see what I'm talking about in this picture of the old hinge.  There ought to be a bushing there, you see.  I wasn't able to snap a picture of the new hinge till after it got installed, but there it is in all its stainless glory.  A new customer arrived with a 2001 Honda Civic this morning, complaints include oil leak, drivers window inoperable, and ABS light on.  We degreased the engine, but were unable to find any leaks. When it came in it was saturated from the top to bottom with oil, we suspect perhaps someone spilled oil on top of the engine during an oil change.  The ABS light was caused by a damaged speed sensor. We removed it, as the customer was not receptive to our quote to fix it. The drivers window needed a new regulator in order to function again, and that repair was also declined. We placed a block of wood under the window, inside the door, to hold it in place.  An '06 BMW 330i showed up on the back of a tow truck with a coolant leak. It blew a hose and dumped a bunch of coolant. I like the way these cars look and drive, but holy poo poo when they brake, they brake in the best ways. Superior German Engineering™ has seen fit to equip these with an electric water pump, which burns itself out when ran in the absence of coolant.   The Waterpump Of Tomorrow, right there. Automakers are preparing for the eventuality of electric engines driving cars down the road, and are slowly converting accessories to electric versions of questionable reliability to replace their antiquated and dead reliable mechanical belt driven versions. All of this, of course, means the part is nowhere near affordable. The biggest irony of this is an electrical water pump could be placed anywhere on the vehicle, and yet BMW in their infinite wisdom decided to bury it in some god awful hole requiring 3 hours of labor to replace. I have very strong opinions on this and could go on.  The thermostat assembly is also getting replaced, just because it's a BMW and we had to remove it to get at the water pump, so a new part will be going back on.  New parts, waterpump and t-stat.     It's going together now, and this is quite literally the most expensive water pump job we've ever done. I think everyone ought to own one of these vehicles. Continuing on the Superior German Engineering™ trend, we were so blessed to have a 2002 Mercedes Benz CL500 arrive with complaints of running bad and crazy electrical things happening when running the windshield washers.   This fuse box and computer control module housing is missing it's cover, and was standing full of windshield washer fluid. It's right beneath the windshield at the top right of the engine compartment.  The customer had just purchased this vehicle from a used car lot. Our official recommendation is return to the car lot and demand a refund. No charge on this one. I could probably charge a half hour of diagnosis, but I expect this will buy me a lot more referrals and good will from this customer in the future. DrPain fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 01:07
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DrPain posted:
Holy poo poo. Talk about a loving crooked used car salesman. I don't even want to think about how much that repair would be.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:55
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DrPain posted:BMW water pump job Have you seen what the old title of the BMW thread here was? Blown water pumps and cracked expansion tanks are pretty much the most common failures on any BMW since the dawn of time. If it makes you feel better, the previous generation of 330 (normal mechanically driven pump), the water pump is cheaper than half the cars on the road (a pump for a newer GM V6 is more expensive from napa than what specialty Internet BMW parts stores sell them for), and is a ~45 minute job for an experienced tech, so they're not all as bad as that car.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:03
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HotCanadianChick posted:Have you seen what the old title of the BMW thread here was? In case someone missed it, it was "This is a BMW Thread. GOD drat COOLING SYSTEM".
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Apr 23, 2014 02:15
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I put 3 expansion tanks/sets of coolant hoses on my old E46 330Ci, which were all made of HARD BRITTLE TEMPERATURE SENSITIVE plastic. What a loving nightmare the cooling system was on the car. The thermostat was also this massive piece and not just a little dongle like on most real cars. I loved the drat thing but holy poo poo, every repair was a whole new experience.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:58
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DrPain posted:An '06 BMW 330i showed up on the back of a tow truck with a coolant leak. It blew a hose and dumped a bunch of coolant. I like the way these cars look and drive, but holy poo poo when they brake, they brake in the best ways. This is what I have to deal with  I write these up very often as you would imagine, across all models. Also common is expansion tank leaks, coolant lines to turbos leaking, radiator leaks... yeah. In non coolant problems, the ignition coils break so often I feel like I am writing them up on every claim that comes across my desk. Oil filter housings are another common one too
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Apr 23, 2014 03:21
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I'll stick to a mechanical water pump, thank you.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:55
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Same, I think my water pump is like $30 and probably 4 on the shelf in literally any parts store in the country. And a goon who shall remain nameless has accidentally experimentally verified that these engines will run with no coolant in them for at least 70 miles before shutting off, then another 20 miles to my house, then 150+ miles home... oh and it's still running just as well as it ever did, probably 500 miles later.  I'll stick with mechanical water pumps and bulletproof engines. Coolant optional.
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Apr 23, 2014 04:24
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Nodoze posted:This is what I have to deal with Yeeeeah gently caress those ignition coils and gently caress whoever designed the E90. Having to pull off the entire cowl and the strut brace just to get an ignition coil out simply Is Not Cricket.
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Apr 23, 2014 04:27
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The VW/Audi coils fail as well but I was pleasantly surprised to find out they cost around $20
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Apr 23, 2014 05:44
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I've been thinking about putting an electric water pump on my car while I'm upgrading everything, but I don't know if I'll bother if they're that unreliable. Or is that just a BMW thing? I could see that being the case... Also, Internationals are kind of pieces of poo poo, but they're also usually really easy to work on. One of my former employers had a massive fleet of them, and I frequently had to operate on them in hotel parking lots with a handful of cheap tools and bodged parts. Necessarily lovely repairs, but they generally stayed fixed, which was a lot more than could be said about the few Fords in the fleet...which is funny, since Ford and International collaborated for most of the model years that I was dealing with, haha
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Apr 23, 2014 06:02
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MA-Horus posted:Holy poo poo. Talk about a loving crooked used car salesman. I don't even want to think about how much that repair would be. A similar thing happened to my Skyline about a year and a half back (the difference was it was rain water collecting due to a clogged drain under the battery tray). While I'm sure it's all going to go horribly wrong eventually it hasn't played up at all since I cleared the drain and dried everything out.
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Apr 23, 2014 10:02
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DrPain posted:
Ah yes the good old W215 such a sweet car when in it works. just for shits and grins I looked up what MSRP from Benz is on the stuff in that box (front SAM, ABC control unit etc)total 2122.00 that could have been avoided for a 55.00 (still pricey for piece of plastic)cover.
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Apr 23, 2014 21:26
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I'm entirely convinced that I'll only own a German car under warranty (maybe a Spec E46). It can be chalked up as fanboyism or whatever, but the Germans really manage to gently caress poo poo up in the worst way imaginable. Cars like the E36 M3 sound fantastic on paper (and in warranty), but the poo poo that goes wrong with them is mind boggling.
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Apr 23, 2014 21:35
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Gunbus posted:Ah yes the good old W215 such a sweet car when in it works. just for shits and grins I looked up what MSRP from Benz is on the stuff in that box (front SAM, ABC control unit etc)total 2122.00 that could have been avoided for a 55.00 (still pricey for piece of plastic)cover. If it's just reasonably clean water and washer fluid there is a chance that blasting it out with compressed air and some rubbing alcohol and allowing it to dry fully will fix the problem. If salt water (haha, not in that area of the country!) and/or muddy dirty nasty water are involved... good luck.
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Apr 23, 2014 21:44
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Even as I start to get tired of BMWs (I've had 4 or 5 now) they realllllllly aren't that bad in general, but if you get one that someone deferred all the maintenance then you're looking at a lovely time. For the most part they're reasonably easy to wrench on too.
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Apr 23, 2014 21:50
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BraveUlysses posted:For the most part they're reasonably easy to wrench on too. Until you find fun things like water-cooled alternators. Oh, yeah, I guess I needed to do a coolant flush too while I was at it. Thanks for the reminder BMW!
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Apr 23, 2014 22:02
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kastein posted:If it's just reasonably clean water and washer fluid there is a chance that blasting it out with compressed air and some rubbing alcohol and allowing it to dry fully will fix the problem. True but if its been sitting in any moisture for any amount of time its probably hosed. At least that's always been my experience with MB water logged parts. Again I live in the salty mid west so maybe the guy will luck out being somewhere not buried in salt for most of the year. BraveUlysses posted:Even as I start to get tired of BMWs (I've had 4 or 5 now) they realllllllly aren't that bad in general, but if you get one that someone deferred all the maintenance then you're looking at a lovely time. For the most part they're reasonably easy to wrench on too. This is so true for any car but doubly so for German cars. I can't count how many times I have someone who just got a "great" deal on a old S600 that just has a few "small" problems come to me wanting to price parts out. Half hour later I have totaled his car 3 times over in parts alone. These cars are fantastic if you have the pocket book to keep them on the road. Kill-9 posted:Until you find fun things like water-cooled alternators. Oh, yeah, I guess I needed to do a coolant flush too while I was at it. Thanks for the reminder BMW!
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Apr 23, 2014 22:10
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BraveUlysses posted:Even as I start to get tired of BMWs (I've had 4 or 5 now) they realllllllly aren't that bad in general, but if you get one that someone deferred all the maintenance then you're looking at a lovely time. For the most part they're reasonably easy to wrench on too. I'm not denying that they're competent cars when they're working, but just some of the poo poo that breaks on them is ridiculous and is usually due to Superior German Engineering: (this is mostly related to E36 M3s) - Money shifting - LCA failures - Rear subframe/chassis cracking - Cooling system (now featuring superior German plastics) Then throw in that it's struts on all 4 corners, the US didn't get the hot engine, etc, and it somewhat turns the E36 into a car that has some Stockholm Syndrome going on with the owners. Every car has its faults, but with some of the German marquees it seems like it's catastrophic and comes with a lot of zeroes attached.
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Apr 23, 2014 22:16
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Money shifting is a user error. LCA's are not a failure point, but what car doesn't wear bushings and balljoints? No excuses for the subframe mounting failures which stretched from E36 to Z3's to E46s. Shameful design and even worse corporate support for their own failures. Coolant systems are a joke, agreed. E30, E36 and E46 all have struts up front and shocks in the back.
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Apr 23, 2014 22:31
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kastein posted:If it's just reasonably clean water and washer fluid there is a chance that blasting it out with compressed air and some rubbing alcohol and allowing it to dry fully will fix the problem. Once we got the water drained out it actually ran half way decent, but seeing as the customer just bought it, there's no reason to attempt to fix it if they can go jump down somebodies throat and get a full refund. Late yesterday afternoon this '97 Ford Econoline E150 showed up with complaints of overheating. The customers are a band of musicians out of Canada who are on some manner of tour of the states. The band van broke down in Las Vegas, and the valet at their casino was kind enough to recommend our expert service for immediate repair.  We traced the problem to a bad radiator, and replaced it this morning.   I didn't catch the name of their band, but they looked like some kind of CCW tribute or something. Also arriving late yesterday was this troublesome '01 Nissan Sentra, also overheating. 'Tis the season, after all.  I always get nervous when this car shows up, because the kid who drives it is a known idiot and this car has caused me a ton of grief in the past just simply trying to get an accurate description of the problem out of the idiot driver. This time around it's got a bad headgasket though, and we shall see how intent his mother is on keeping this car around. I would be ok if she declined this repair and finally sent this poor abused Nissan to meet the crusher.  This is what the shop looked like at the end of yesterday. Not the most cars we've packed inside for the evening, but still close. The international taking up half the shop makes it feel a lot more full than it really is. I suppose I also ought to mention we took in a '99 Chevy Tahoe with a bad transmission, and I doubt that is getting fixed as well. It's in the back left there. Work today is all hands on deck to make some progress on the International, but it's slow going. I got to drive the '06 BMW water pump job nearly across town to pick up it's owner who could not secure a ride down to the shop to pick up and pay for their vehicle, so I added a half hour of time for curbside delivery service and zipped around in traffic during our slow morning. It drives really well, and I enjoyed getting paid to drive a BMW. DrPain fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 22:42
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I'm looking at an E150 or F150 to tow the Miata with, I take it that I should get the F150 just because it's less of a pain in the rear end to work on?BraveUlysses posted:Money shifting is a user error. Money shifting is a user error, but way too common due to shift linkages in a RWD car.  I should have specified, rear lower control arms fail. If you race with BMWCCA they require receipts that you've replaced the LCAs every 2 years. I've seen 1 LCA failure at a track day, and another at an autocross. Insta 50 degrees of camber. OK, I'm done drinking BMW haterade.
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Apr 24, 2014 03:01
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What in the name of all that is sweet and holy does RWD have to do with money shifting? You can money shift like a jackass just as easily in a Kia Rio as easily as you can on a BMW, which wheels are driven has nada to do with it.
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Apr 24, 2014 03:32
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He's wrong about it being about RWD, he's right about shift linkages. BMW's shift linkage is very cartilaginous. This plus hurr durr gears are funny (translation: I can't drive) means people are constantly overshooting the 'gate'. I've had half a dozen manual BMW's and never had any difficulty with accidentally snagging the wrong gear, except for the one car that had a completely flogged shifter cup arm thingy.
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Apr 24, 2014 04:09
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Actually there is a very specific issue with the ZF320 gearbox in the e36. A design fault in the shift pin detents can cause difficulty shifting into gear and leaning of the gearshift towards the fifth gear. This combined with someone who hasn't looked into replace motor or trans mounts in 20 years, as well as bushing wear in the shift linkage assembly, leaves a very sloppy shifter that is easy to money shift. The repair is pretty simple though and will run you about $100 and you'll never have an issue again. The ZF box can take a ton of power too. I would never own a bimmer if I couldn't wrench on it myself. If you can, they are not that bad. Not as bad as Audi anyway!  e: Also that water pump DOES do some cool things, like continuing to cool the turbos after you shut the car down!
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Apr 24, 2014 04:21
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Party Alarm posted:..... A design fault...... Not in a German car!! Seriously though. Holy poo poo. I thought Rovers were bad about fuckery. Looks like BMW saved some of the tricks for their selves.
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Apr 24, 2014 04:28
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HotCanadianChick posted:What in the name of all that is sweet and holy does RWD have to do with money shifting? You can money shift like a jackass just as easily in a Kia Rio as easily as you can on a BMW, which wheels are driven has nada to do with it. Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWUbgGarhdc
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Apr 24, 2014 04:30
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Slavvy posted:He's wrong about it being about RWD, he's right about shift linkages. BMW's shift linkage is very cartilaginous. This plus hurr durr gears are funny (translation: I can't drive) means people are constantly overshooting the 'gate'. I've had half a dozen manual BMW's and never had any difficulty with accidentally snagging the wrong gear, except for the one car that had a completely flogged shifter cup arm thingy. I dunno, compared to a 25 year old MR2 with dying shifter cables, my E46's shifter feels pretty drat tight. Sounds like 'old car without proper maintenance, owned by young poor guy in college' (see also: most E30s and E36s these days) issues than any mark specifically against BMWs.
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Apr 24, 2014 05:05
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Depends on what you're comparing it to - try an MX5 or S2000 or even a G35/Skyline a similar age to that E46 and you'll get a different impression.
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Apr 24, 2014 05:18
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dissss posted:Depends on what you're comparing it to - try an MX5 or S2000 or even a G35/Skyline a similar age to that E46 and you'll get a different impression. Those are some of the best manual gearboxes ever made, something of a high standard I think.
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Apr 24, 2014 06:55
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I moneyshifted a miata at a track day and basically took out the engine and trans. Good thing is that that's only a ~$500 mistake.
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Apr 24, 2014 12:05
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Sinestro posted:Those are some of the best manual gearboxes ever made, something of a high standard I think. And yet, also the same trans as used in the B2000/B2200/MPV (for the NA/NB). It's a decent box, but seeing as I learned to drive stick on a 300k mile Datsun pickup with pretty much nonexistent shifter bushings and a throw of about a foot between each gear, I've never had much of a problem getting pretty much any trans into the right gear every time. I've driven every single one of the cars disss listed (or a sibling that shares the same chassis/trans). The gearbox in the 350z/G35 feels like more of a truck trans than most trucks I've driven, not impressed - too heavy, too chunky. The Aisin box in the newer NCs (and RX-8) is nice and smooth, but not appreciably more so than my current car's (which mostly only feels clunky when the engine is still warming up, generally a sign the gear oil needs to be flushed and refilled). Once it's warm, the gears snick into place pretty nicely - a friend just came by last weekend with das volk's former 330ci and was showing off his fancy new short shifter kit and poly shifter bushings and it felt about the same as a Miata box, a little tighter than mine.
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Apr 24, 2014 12:24
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The shifter on my E34 was super vague and needed bushings badly but I kind of miss it. The complete lack of any sort of gating made gear changes really fast. I just threw the shifter in the vague direction of the gear I wanted and it would pop in place with a satisfying little bump.
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Apr 24, 2014 14:29
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I've gone third -> 2nd instead of 3rd -> 4th in the miata as I was coming out of a corner on the track. I probably just need to replace motor / transmission mounts though, as watching the video I can see the transmission had shifted a bit and I was certainly aiming for 4th. I also slow down my shifts a bit as a result now. Thankfully I realized very quickly and got the clutch in quickly enough that I didn't blow anything up, but uh 2nd gear at 70 mph sounds interesting. The tach needle is one I don't really want to bury.8ender posted:The shifter on my E34 was super vague and needed bushings badly but I kind of miss it. The complete lack of any sort of gating made gear changes really fast. I just threw the shifter in the vague direction of the gear I wanted and it would pop in place with a satisfying little bump. This is how my Subaru shifts and it's actually quite fun. Not as bad as the sunfire I had for a while, which was so shot that you never knew if you were getting 3rd or 5th. TrueChaos fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 14:33
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Larrymer posted:I moneyshifted a miata at a track day and basically took out the engine and trans. Good thing is that that's only a ~$500 mistake. Did that with a camaro once. Tach rode up past 11 or something. 350 didn't care, kept on trucking. 
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Apr 24, 2014 14:49
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My incoherent post earlier was trying to wrap my head around why a front engine, rear wheel drive car would have shift linkages. The Miata, S2000, Corvettes (and everything else with a T-56), etc all have the shifter that mounts directly into the transmission.
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Apr 24, 2014 16:10
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 Well, well, well. Look whose back! It's our favorite '03 F350 Diesel painter truck, the one who declined our quote a month ago to remove and replace their high pressure oil pump and associated parts. The customer now states "We replaced all those parts you told us were bad, but it still won't run!"  The supposedly new parts are now putting out less oil pressure to fire the fuel injectors than before. To start the engine requires something around 1300 lbs of pressure, and a month ago it was only putting out about 600 lbs. Now that they've monkeyed around with it, the injector control pressure is only reading about 350 lbs. The customer claims the hpop, pressure regulator, pressure sensor, and updated tube were replaced with OEM parts from Ford, and was very insistent that "I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, OK". I'd like to believe him, but he's an idiot, and if he knew what he was doing the problem would be fixed. It's very likely that he bungled an o-ring, bought defective/otherwise lovely parts, has the wrong viscosity of oil in it, all of the above, or something else entirely, but all we can tell from the outside is that he made the problem worse. His price to repair this problem just went up $500 and gently caress re-using his probably junkyard salvage parts. I have no sympathy for morons who squeal at our more than reasonable quote and cheap out on the work then come crying to me that they made their problem worse. He didn't do what we told him to do, because step one was let us do the work, so gently caress him. There's no way to tell exactly how hosed the truck is now without major disassembly, and I know he isn't paying for it. I gave him the new price to fix his fuckups and then fix the problem, to which he said "What am I supposed to do, park my truck and save up? And what am I supposed to do with all those new parts?". Yes, that is your best choice now, and gently caress your parts.  He probably could have bought a fleet of Rangers or S10s which would more than suit his painting purposes for what he's wasted on this stupid loving bro diesel at this point, and that to me is the most delicious irony. 
DrPain fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 17:00
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schadenfreude. Thats all I have to say.
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Apr 24, 2014 17:11
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cursedshitbox posted:schadenfreude. I enjoy my morning coffee with a side of schadenfreude.
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Apr 24, 2014 17:13
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DrPain posted:
Why the gently caress does he need a monster diesel crewcab duallie for PAINTING? Oh wait, he probably doesn't. Penny smart, pound foolish and all that.
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Apr 24, 2014 17:18
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