Slightly OT from the OT, but I remember an ex-gf's car showing signs of a rather nasty water pump leak from the bearings - a crunching noise that was audible from inside the car was the subtle clue that had been increasing in loudness over the past month...
As we were poor young students at the time (and she was about to sell the car to buy a death-trap mini) I decided that I'd replace the water pump myself instead of paying somebody to do it. Bonus points with the gf can't hurt eh? And car bits aren't that different to Lego & Meccano right?
So it only had 4 bolts holding it in, and they were almost reachable too! Got the spanner on the first, mentally repeated the "righty tighty, lefty loosen" over and over and turned the spanner.
CRACK
As the first bolt sheared off. Bummer.
Move onto the next bolt, give it a veeeeery gentle turn and,
CRACK
OK. Still not too worried as there's got to be some redundancy in the number of bolts used versus the number required for a watertight seal right?
On to bolt number three and this time I was very very very super gentle. And the bugger loosened and came out. Wahay!
The last remaining bolt was diagonally opposite this one so I figured if I got the last out there'd be enough bolts to reattach the replacement pump.
Made a small sacrifice to the knuckle-skin gods whilst getting in place, twisted the spanner with the gentleness of Mother Teresa blessing a small orphan, applied the force of a new-born sparrow belching and
CRACKKKKKK
This one seemed to resonate around the garage for a good 2 minutes as I lay across the wing of the car thinking "WTF am I going to do? One bolt?
One f**king bolt?"
Never one to be overcome by adversity, I decided to drill out the stumps and somehow remove them. Fortunately for everyone's sake there wasn't enough room to get a drill in there (I'd not yet thought about how I'd re-tap the holes, or whether I'd go too far and drill into one of the cooling tunnels circulating the block). Nor was there anything I could remove to make more room, unless I was willing to remove the suspension and by this stage I was much more keen to put things back on than take more off. We did briefly discuss lifting the engine out, but scratched that as we didn't have a Haynes manual for the car, nor more importantly did we have a winch. Nor could we be arsed.
So then we tried bouncing the engine up and down on the rubber bushings (which showed that a couple of them appeared to be missing in action) to see if that left room for a drill, but fortunately for car lovers and road users everywhere this wasn't going to work.
So having half-assedly tried one attempt at making a good repair, I went into bodge-o-matic mode. I had the new water pump and gaskets and happened upon the drawer of adhesives! A quick sort through the drawer and problem solved; I had about 5 kilos of Araldite and hardener.
Further hunting around didn't turn up a clamp, but I had an idea forming. Bolts were used to grab the water pump tight against the block, so surely glue would grab it equally well? Of course!
So I fit the pump to the block, loosely inserted the sole remaining bolt and then mixed up a dining-plate sized pool of epoxy. I very carefully started daubing epoxy onto the face of the water pump, and then realised it might be an idea to remove the bits of old gasket that were suck to the block. Too late. And f**k it, she's selling it soon anyway.
So about 20 minutes later, working against the clock of the hardening epoxy (which seemed to be going off a bit slowly, almost as if I'd got the epoxy/hardener ratio wrong...) I'd managed to distribute about two kilos of epoxy resin all over the face of the water pump, bits of the block where there were significant lumps of old gasket, and everything directly below the area I was working. And also up to my armpits.
Now it was do or die time: time to fit the pump. Ex-gf held it in place as I started tightening the sole bolt. I was
really keen not to snap this one, so it didn't really go much more than finger tight. Which was lucky as she'd not realised the pump should meet up with the identically shaped face of the block ("You never said I had to make sure it didn't move!"), so the pump was rotated about 45 degrees. A bit of wrangling and eventually it sort of looks ok. So tighten the bolt a bit more and all the epoxy oozed out the gaps making what I was sure would be a lovely tight seal.
We both stood back to admire our handwork and noticed that the corner with the bolt was nice and tight, but you could almost get your finger in the opposite corner
. A few games of scissors, rock, paper later (always choose paper btw) and "we" decided I'd hold the pump in place whilst the epoxy set. And set it didn't. For hours. It seems my guesstimation of how much hardener was required was slightly off the mark.
Heating things with a hot air gun didn't help much (as I found out years later that Araldite melts around 90-100 degrees) so I just jammed some blocks of wood, bits of paper and passing strangers into the engine compartment to force the pump against the block. By this point it was getting a bit chilly so we retired inside.
An hour or three later this thought in my brain that had been trying to crystallise for some time finally made itself known - if epoxy was dribbling around the pump so much, what if it was dribbling inside? What if it was sticking to the impeller and/or shaft? The water pump wouldn't be much good if the impeller never turned.
sh*t! So back into the garage it was to finish off this "30 minute job".
When I opened the bonnet, it turned out the only single bit of intuition I'd had that was correct was that glue had slid down onto the impeller and set it solid
. Much hunting around for large heavy tools to hit it with and I finally managed to free up the impeller shaft, although it didn't exactly feel like a nice new set of bearings. Possibly due to the half kilo of epoxy which was probably now bonded to the sodding impeller and everything I had hit the bastard drive belt fitting with.
I can't remember how long I laid over the wing, turning the impeller shaft to make sure it didn't stick, but I'm sure the sun was coming up when I'd finished and any glue which was going to set had long since done so. Mainly on the floor under the car, or in the form of stalactites underneath the car.
The only way to rescue some dignity from this disaster was to refill the cooling system, fire up the engine and listen to the utter lack of "bearings mixed with grit" sound and enjoy with great satisfaction the engine temp indicator not going into the red.
I think it was less than 10 seconds between turning on the engine and the first fountain appearing.
By this point, the main topic of conversation for certain "mechanics" was the best place to take the car to set it on fire and make an insurance claim, except the ex-gf pointed out it was the middle of summer and it was awfully dry around and we might end up with a bigger fire than expected.
So drain the system, mark the areas of the pump/block join we saw water squirting from and then patch with more epoxy - hey, if it was good enough to hold the pump on, it's good enough to stop the water right? I also used bits of the new gasket (which had somehow removed itself from the pump as I was fitting it, ok?) to stuff in the holes and seal with more epoxy.
By the time we finished, it'd taken about 2 days, £20-30 for a water pump and about £300 in Araldite. And was only leaking a little bit. And the car was only nosing down a bit on the right due to the weight of all the glue.
She put on one of her tightest tops and the car was sold to some unfortunate fool lucky soul two days later. Caveat emptor.
The only other car stories I have that are beyond the statute of limitations are one involving rolling a Mk II Escort into an electricity substation[1] and another from a few weeks ago where I was using a plasma torch to cut out the back half of a Ford Pop and ended up eating a lump of white hot molten metal. I don't think it's safe to share the story of being chased between Leeds & Bradford in a blizzard by a series of coppers in Volvo T5s as we wanted to see how fast they could go. Best looking police car ever!
signed,
Mr X
[1] This one may be shared at Rob's meet assuming I get pissed, so buy me a glass of wine if you want to hear that one. It involves tales of hot girls, bunking off, clotting red stuff on the windscreen and under-age naughtiness (I was underage, not her!). And hiding some inexplicably broken fingers from a wide selection of parents. That f**ker rolled at least three time! Personal best
I think the thread should be retitled, "What amusing tales do you have of your cars".
