What was the hardest thing to repair / install on your car?

Ah shit, I read "What IS", not "What was"

Lift kit. Rusted sleeves and bolts gave me a shit time

Entire assembly but main bulbs too cause Ive got the model where they're enclosed and covered up so you'd have to take them out anyways to change two bulbs.

i had pretty good luck with a cold chisel and hammer, use a drill to remove as much of the rubber bushing as possible, punch out the core then start at the eye of the spring and split the sleeve with the chisel.

air tools make it a breeze

my most difficult repair was replacing the rear end and springs in my flatdeck, trying to wrestle with a 500lb axle is even less fun when theres another 350lbs of springs and wheels attached.

bulb of front right position light
To do it, I have to remove the indicator (which is a seperate part) so I can reach it. There's a guide for that in the manual. Too bad that guide is missing a step. There's a damn clip on the indicator that won't allow to take it out after undoing the bolt. At least not without breaking the clip. To get the indicator out, I needed a screwdriver as a lever to compress the clip. Which was a problem because the thing holing the hoop up got in the way.

Either that or the left headlight bulb. There you either need tiny hands to do it as you should or take out the battery. Taking out the battery is simple, but getting the thing holding it in place back in is hell.

Thats what we ended up doing. Would've just cut straight through if I had been smart enough to just get new bolts aswell

>cut off leaf spring with plasma cutter
>burn/cut off rubber
>air belt sander until the bolt was visible on two sides
>crack open sleeve with a screwdriver and get bolt out

Its fucking astounding just how much force you'd need to free it. We tried with a massive 4 ton hydraulic jack designed for bending out dents in solid steel, but it just wouldn't budge

Also didn't have access to an induction heater. If so it would've been easy going

your shit looks pretty clean too, i had a little more cancer to deal with

Those are the new ones

The old ones were, eh.... not so good

I hate leaf springs.

Always sagging, always snapping.

So far on my current project
>rebuilding drum brakes due to those damn springs
Or
>opening my wallet to buy parts

Im not looking forward to doing shocks and ball joints.

A.c. compressor on an 99 f150, it's not the one that's on top of the engine. Its on the bottom by the subframe. I had to take it to my shop - alot easier to access on a lift

tfw no gf

body work

The thing that breaks the most often, apex seals

Installing an upgraded transmission kit was a legendary pain in the ass, also replacing my oil pan gasket was a big fuck-around since I had to hoist my engine to get at it.

Oh god i just had to replace one on my car.

Ended up just removing it all together and disabling the outside handle

Fuck that shit

Volvo 240: heater core/blower motor
Miata: pulling the damn engine for any reason, that shit sucks

What do you find difficult about pulling a miata engine? Its dirt simple

Getting the spindle pine out of a 280z 12inches of rusted glory. Love how the manual shows him removing it by hand what a sick joke

transmission

It's a lot harder than any other cars desu, having to deal with the PPF, the exhaust and the drive shaft, desu pulling it isn't the hard part, getting it back in is.
You have to align the PPF, exhaust flange and drive shaft all at the same time while aiming the two motor mount bolts into the subframe, and keeping the ac compressor from getting in the way of all that.
It's just not fun.
I've done a lot of engine swaps and the Miata is the hardest one to fuck with by far.

I have a 928,
The clutch was fucking dead easy. And I've got the twin disc.
It's a lot easier to take the bell housing cover off than dropping a fucking transmission.
Well it would have been dead easy if it wasn't a load of shit.
Sliding the torque tube coupler back was a nightmare, and getting the pilot shaft out was a nightmare. And I had to buy a snowflake pilot bearing puller because no room to slide hammer it out.

But other than that great, don't need an alignment tool because your pilot shaft is your alignment tool.
Adjusting the fucking drag was stupid, no one on the internet explained what the fuck to do, so I just jammed a screw drive in three places and pryed backwards, the car hardly grabbed at all until I put it in reverse, then it self adjusted.

Protip: dont drop it in with the tranny bolted on.

There are two ways to get it in, with or without tranny attached, with is the standard method that everyone on Miata.net uses and agrees is the better method.
I couldn't imagine trying to get to the bellhousing bolts with the trans in the car, i could barely even fix the coolant leak on the back of my head.(stupid rubber nipple rotted and sprayed coolant out)

Ive found it easier to do it with them seperate. Its way easier to line up the motor mounts

youtube.com/watch?v=ywlOIbxsMxU

My alternator issue, took me a year to fix
>buy car
>after a week of ownership discover electrical gremlins like slow wipers, auto-unlocking doors and faulty interior lights
>my alternator wasnt charging the battery properly while it was driving so it would die within 20 minutes of operation.
>this was fine cuz i worked/went to school 10 minutes away
>eventually ended up replacing it with a higher output alternator and it worked for 6 months
>even went on a few round-trips to visit my family a few states over.
>eventually my battery light starts giving me a single blink at random
>chalk it up to old shitbox problems and ignore it

>getting hektic one day
>ring it out to redline
>battery and ebrake light come on and stay on permanently
>oops
>end up replacing the alternator 3 times and the battery twice over the course of the next week, including one time when they sold me the wrong alternator
>during one install the alternator was literally covered in soot when i pulled it out of the car
>during the course of the same week i was essentially driving to and from work with just a battery
>one day driving home, car dies literally a block away from home
>say fuck it, ill try one last thing
>pull back the harness on the alternator, discover my leads are soldered backwards
>fix them
>rejoice, as all is well for a little bit
>come out to my car a few weeks later and its dead again
>get it jumped
>dies again a week later, eventually starts dying over night
>pick up a multimeter, run a basic diagnostic and check all my fuses
>narrow it down to the alternator stator circuit draining 4 amps when the car is off
>gotyounowbitch
>take a blank switch panel from my dash and add a manual switch to the circuit so it stops draining the battery
>shit works mint now, just gotta remember to flip the switch every time

Sprinkle some instances of me visiting shops and them wasting my time and money, that happened too

what the fuck, I thought the meme was that american cars are "ez 2 werk on"? I can change the headlight bulb in my VAGshit hatchback in a minute flat and all I have to do is turn the socket base counterclockwise

That's simply because it's a modern car.
Look up a video about doing the headlight bulbs on an intrigue.
We truely are moving backwards.

is that a transmission for ants

Ball joints aren’t fun, especially without power/air tools

Not that it's that hard but the distributor on my car takes a couple hours to change.

this

BAM BAM BAM, torch and 5lb sledge

>heater core blew on my v70 a few years back and pissed coolant fucking everywhere driving home from college
>knew what this job entailed and decided that even if I could afford the parts, I'd never have time to fix it because of school so I had to junk the car and my parents floated me some money for a new car

I still feel horrid about it to this day.

>Break the ear off your $3,500 axle putting in $60 ball joints incorrectly
Dank. If there's one thing I like to do, it's make my life worse.
Why not just rent or *gasp* buy a ball joint press!

Putting them in is easy, getting them out is the hard part.
Anything with an interference fit I just freeze it in my freezer for while and heat up whatever it goes into, 99% of the time it just drops right in without any hammering or anything.
Works great for harmonic balancers they just slide right the fuck on when warmed up.

oh holy shit, i think it took me about 2 weekends to get one out of my 240z.

installing a bucket seat into a miata

It's a tossup between the alternator and the clutch, t. 1991 Pajero diesel. Both were inconvenient cunts.

>1500x843
>image for ants

Why not just loop the heater hoses in the engine bay and go without heat for a while?

Oil filter. Audi TT. You have to get under the car and stick you hand in with only 2.5 inches on clearance. You cannot see the filter and you cannot use tools either because it's offset and nothing fits. If it's stuck you're fucked cause you have to pull the engine out or hammer a bent piece of rebar into the filter and hope you don't hit any of the 50,000 plastic pieces VAG puts in their cars.

I hate it when manufactures do dumb shit like this. Before I buy a car anymore, I look up what the routine maintenance looks like: if it sucks ass, it goes into the trash.

I bought all the tools in the book to remove oil filters and they only help so much.

Snap ring on overdrive unit

2000 dodge dakota

Replacing the air glitter on a 1992 Ford Tempo.

WHY THE FUCK IS THE TOP SO FUCKING HARD TO REMOVE JESUS! I had to pry that bitch open with a crowbar. Also one of the snap clamps were being blocked from opening all the way by the strut tower. Dafuq Ford???

Glitter
*fliter
Godammit auto correct

Go without heat? I'm not a savage.

I dropped 2 greasy aluminum washers down a spark plug tube on my b18. I ended up taking the fucking head off and turning it upside down and shaking it. Magnet couldn't get it and I couldn't use glue because they were greasy. I literally tried EVERYTHING at my disposal.

damn. i almost dropped one of those plastic tubes you put on spray cans like wd40 down into the bottom of my engine. was shitting myself for 30 minutes trying to find it. not sure how much damage plastic would do to an engine but it couldn't be good.

Yeah I love when instructions say: remove part and continue to next step, and then you spend three days trying to remove said part.

Basically everything I've done so far was extremely hard. it's all because I have the strength of a twig and shits all rusted together.

>replacing tie rod ends
>can't for the life of me get the castle nut loose
>realize after almost an hour that I was turning the wrench the wrong way

>replacing blown coolant hose
>can't get it on one end all the way because too weak
>got it on halfway and paid a shop $5 to get it on all the way

the other day I tried to get the nuts on the wheels cracked and couldn't get it

I need to lift or something

Not the image, the transmission. Is is a 2 speed?

it's a c4

Turning wrenches the wrong way, stripping every nut and bolt, dropping every nut and bolt into the abyss and them spending 30 minutes fishing it out just to drop it again, busting my knuckles, skinning my hands, ruining my clothes, spilling oil all over the garage, leaning over engine bay and then realizing my pant button was scratching the shit out of my fender.

Jack fails and slams the brake rotors on the ground. Buy new rotors. Spend three weekends replacing them. Lose the set screw, strip the allen key brake adjustment, and now my brakes squeal. Do it all over again and make everything worse.

W-were all g-gonna make it, bros.

anything on a subaru.

So you did have the multimeter set up wrong. In your thread it was showing 4 mA, not 4 amps.

You couldn't just use a fucking hook? The washer even has a hole in it already for easy extracting.

interesting, I've only had trouble whenever I've had to work on nissans

Steering rack and pinion assembly on a 1993 Dodge Grand Caravan.
What an absolute bitch nightmare to replace, that was.

It's mounted on the TOP side of the undercarriage K frame, has a shroud over it, and is all wedged in under the exhaust manifold.

I had to drop nearly the entire front end system AND cut a notch in the wheel well body to get the old fucker out and the reman fucker in.

2, 8 hour DAYS of work.

On the plus side I'm no longer going through a quart of steering fluid every week and leaving puddles everywhere I park.

On the negative side I cheaped out with a reman rack and it has a "dead spot" where I can turn the wheel 11 o'clock to the left and 1 o'clock to the right and NOTHING happens in the steer.

For hoses, get some rubber grease and smear it around the pipe before putting the hose on. It won't mess with the rubber and will make it slide on really easily. It's also a good thing to have for lubing up stuff like driveshaft or camshaft seals.

I swapped out the whole engine from my old lancer cause I managed to basically disintegrate the exhaust valve in a cylinder and it wouldn't hold pressure.

I replaced the four o-rings in the oil filter pedestal. it required some extreme nigger-rigging with 2 flex bits, three extensions, and a lot of profanity to get to the bolts that were hidden underneath the beehive.

I've turned the wrench the wrong way a few times.

Downpipe removal on my Mazdaspeed 6. Fucking horrible. Never again. I'd rather change the head gasket on my Grand Prix supercharged.

>Jack fails and slams the brake rotors on the ground

Removing 300x pic related to get plastic covers off.

Honorable mention: the plastic fan shroud.

I don't really mind these but fuck the kind where the center is a plastic thread philips screw, the fucking threads never work right and they don't fucking unscrew

its awesome when half break because of dirt

and when there are more than one type used to hold a single cover