The Bummers of Vehicle Repair

[sjents]

No questions or anything here.......Just posting a story.

91 GT Liftback........I noticed a couple of months ago that I was losing some pressure in my brakes. "No big deal", I thought, "I'll just band-aid it and keep adding brake fluid when I need to". Well, that got me through a couple of months. Thursday, on the drive home from work.......Pedal to the floorboard, no brakes. Yikes. I took a quick gander under the hood. Fluid leaking right underneath the master cylinder. No biggie, right? I dropped into AutoZone and got a reman'd master cylinder ($60). After E-Braking and generally slamming my foot into the floorboard all day Friday, I decided it could wait no longer. The master cylinder took about 15 minutes to replace, and another 5 to bench bleed. I went back into the Celica, pressed on the brakes.................

Nothing. Straight to the floorboard. Awesome.

After abuot 10 minutes of trying to get a grip on myself, my dad (an absolute DIY car repair pro) says "What's that leaking sound?"......................

The rear right wheel cylinder was shot, which was obviously the problem to start with. What a burn. Fortunately, I replaced it without too much trouble (although the brake lines were pretty much rusted on, which will require the touch of a surgeon to loosen).

Also, I had a 91 Corolla that I spent my 21st B-Day replacing a clutch kit in a few years ago only to find out........It was a bad slave cylinder. Ho Ho Ho. So I could have saved about 2 days time and a couple hundred bucks by just checking stuff out. That time was bad, this time it was just wrong. The Master cylinder most likely needed to be replaced anyway, so it's not horrible or anything.

Bottom Line: Use this post to tell everyone about a "Bummer" repair story such as this one. I'm sure there's plenty of people who replaced a battery and starter before they realized it was an alternator, etc.

Give us your best shot.

[Luckynumber5]

I bought my 93 Celica ST last January and the little shady place I bought it off of said the timing belt was broken and it needed a new radiator and a fan. Ok great, I paid $600 for the car and they even towed it to my house for free. Well one new radiator, new set of plugs, thorough cleaning, a timing belt and distributor cap later I turn the key only to hear the starter motor turn and nothing...
Ok so the starter is stuck, well i hit it with a hammer a few times while it was turning hoping to break it loose... nothing... Ok time to have it towed to a shop, well they call later and say they think the crank pulley key is broken, $200 for them to pull it apart and see if thats it... nope not it pulley is fine. Then they decide to look at the starter, during this process they discover the flywheel it busted in half...
One $30 flywheel and a $250 install later (at a friends transmission shop) it runs! It runs so well in fact I guess the transmission decided it doesnt need all that transmission fluid, so it starts to pump all the fluid out of the main pump seal... yeah the torque converter sagged and ate the pump and seal.... wow I fealt great seeing it leak like that, well for a birthday present my dad asked the shop to rebuild it, so now I have a nice 93 stx coupe with an engine that has 145k miles and a new transmission

Did I mention its been sitting in the garage with no oilpan as I have yet to put the turbo oil return on yet LoL, yeah its a 4a-fte now

[thousand_five]

My lucky number is 5. hahahahaha