Anybody else feel like they suck at cars sometimes

I had a 06 malibu for 6 years that had a clunk from the rear of the car the whole time I owned it. Never found the source of the noise and it irritated me the entire time I had the car.

I don't suck, and I know it. That said, I certainly make mistakes and sure as heck don't know it all, and can't do it all.

So getting fooled or being unable to figure something out on my own is nothing new. And never will be. Nor will inabilities to fix some things on my own.

So yea, sometimes I feel the fool, especially when I string a series of mistakes back to back. But overall, no, I don't feel like I suck at cars.

All the time. But then again, I feel like I've accomplished something if I do the brakes or the oil myself. I practically felt like a god when I replaced a radiator.

Current fleet of 4 all need something. Some need minor stuff, some more major. About 90% of the issues are things that can be solved with a more liberal application of money.

The gremlin in the electrical system of the Ranger is the one that bugs me the most however. While "modern" (1994!) electrics help in so many ways, when they go wrong they suck in so many ways as well.

If you aren't humbled from time to time, you risk becoming overconfident. That would be much worse. I enjoy trying automotive things I haven't done before with a realistic expectation that I may (and will eventually) fail.

This is exactly why I don't have a project car...well, that and time/money/space/tools to do it correctly.

I can do most mechanical E36 M3. But trying to make electrons go where you want them to is like black magic. I am a master at bleeding the smoke out of the wires though.

Mechanical stuff usually goes alright, although I've had a few times where I've taken something apart, beat my head against a wall a few times and put it back together un-fixed, only to fix it just fine when I tried again a few days later. Electrical stuff... I can make it work well and safely. But screw making it pretty, that's just annoying.

Along those same lines, I just don't have the patience to do body work. I don't have the eye for it either. Interior stuff is do-able, but I avoid it as much as possible.

I had thought that the many times I've had Alfa brakes apart and back together meant I knew something. Heck, I even learned on one of those that you have to be careful with new seals- or the pistons work badly.

But that didn't help on the rear Miata brakes. I broke one side before figuring out there's a screw to back the pistons out. Given the other side was broken already- the Mazda tech didn't know, too. Good thing rebuilts are reasonable.

Most electrical I am good at. But holy hell can I not bleed brakes sometimes. And no matter how many times I look at it, I still can't find the screech from hell in the rear brakes on my AW11

Need a Car Support Group app that invites friends over to commiserate while you bust your knuckles on something.

I just built my heads with the wrong valvesprings. I bought a new set of valvesprings that can handle the lift of the new cam. They have this fancy flat-wire damper inside the ID. After compressing and installing all 16, I realize the valve guide boss is too large to fit inside the damper, the damper doesn't fully seat, and will probably bind and break on start-up.

I'm just glad I caught it before I broke them. The forumz say I can just remove the damper and all will be good, as long as I don't rev too high.

Almost every time that I work on a car I'm reminded at how ignorant I am. WTF do those electrical thingies do? What critical bit may be failing because I'm too lazy or inexperienced to maintain it properly? Am I a moron for taking on a project of this size?

It's worthwhile for me to keep doing it for several reasons: I like cheap performance, Getting me away from the couch is almost always a good thing, car guys are great to hang out with, and figuring things out can be very emotionally rewarding.

Nick (LUCAS) Comstock wrote: One time I got stumped on why I couldn't get the rear brake circuit to bleed on a truck I once owned. After a week of failed attempts I took it to a shop. Turns out I missed a pretty obvious issue, some yahoo had plugged the rear circuit in the master cylinder with an eight penny nail instead of fixing the leaky rear lines.

I couldn't get the 2-piston front calipers bled on my MR2 after a couple of nights of scratching my head, I realized I had them swapped L-R. The only difference is the height of the bleeder screw.

Bought an E28 that was cursed. Went to look at it on CL (had been sitting,) spotted a loose main ground and asked if I could try to jump it off. Owner laughed and then to their amazement it fired right up and I drove it up on my trailer. Drove it 2 days and it ran like a dream, then just died. Tried EVERYTHING to get it running. Sold it to the owner of a BMW repair shop -- tried to warn him I wasn't a CL yahoo and he shouldn't buy the car. He threw all of the same stuff as it I did. Got it running and sold it, it promptly died again. CURSED.

Don't even get me started talking about things I have screwed up working on cars. And you would think I would learn.

Tyler H wrote: I couldn't get the 2-piston front calipers bled on my MR2 after a couple of nights of scratching my head, I realized I had them swapped L-R. The only difference is the height of the bleeder screw.

I did the same thing on my G20, bought new front calipers and couldn't get them to bleed, then I noticed I installed the caliper with R cast in it on the Left side. Now I'm chasing a fuel issue, have replaced the pump twice, dropped and cleaned out the fuel tank, swapped regulators with a spare I had and put in new injectors. Still have a fuel pressure drop under load, press the loud pedal and it just bogs down and dies. And it spit out a valve shim after I installed the new injectors so now it rattles something awful just off idle.

I do okay as long as there isn't a tight deadline that it looks like I won't meet, and then I start getting stressed which isn't good for doing things well or correctly.

Bigger thing for me is sometimes I just want to not have to work on something. Doing it by choice is fine, but there was a period of time when I was in the garage literally every night from when I got home until 11:00 pm or so for about 2 months. And then I get on CL and see all these solid, simple, boring cars for less money than what I have into my old stuff trying to make them reliable. That's when I think I'm doing it wrong, and I should just buy something that already works, already handles okay, and already has enough horsepower instead of repeatedly shooting myself in the foot with projects.

Well, I've successfully changed an AWD gearbox in my driveway on jackstands in under 3 hours, but I am on week 3 in the job of replacing the radiator in our motorhome, so um yes I am familiar with this feeling... I remember doing a valve lash adjustment on my 510 that turned into a cylinder head replacement. Adjust lash, notice a crack in the cam gear journal. Crap. Remove cam gear without letting the busted part of cam journal go down into the sump, yay, I'm a genius. Remove cam towers. Loosen cam tower bolts, spec tightened in inchpounds. pop break a bolt on its way out. All attempts to remove the stump fail. Pay someone else to remove it, which solves nothing, and buy a new head as a result. I've been wrenching on cars and such for 30 years and what I have to show for it is that sometimes, every now and then, I don't suck; I guess that's as good as it gets.

gearheadE30 wrote: I do okay as long as there isn't a tight deadline that it looks like I won't meet, and then I start getting stressed which isn't good for doing things well or correctly. Bigger thing for me is sometimes I just want to not *have* to work on something. Doing it by choice is fine, but there was a period of time when I was in the garage literally every night from when I got home until 11:00 pm or so for about 2 months. And then I get on CL and see all these solid, simple, boring cars for less money than what I have into my old stuff trying to make them reliable. That's when I think I'm doing it wrong, and I should just buy something that already works, already handles okay, and already has enough horsepower instead of repeatedly shooting myself in the foot with projects.

That perfectly describes where I am right now. Through a few more bucks, blood, sweat and tears at the turd in my driveway or cut my losses and go buy something else. At least I have something else to drive so the only stress is what I put on myself.

It's weird sometimes how the simple jobs end up biting you in the end. Swap cylinder heads on the Jeep and beat on it for a few hundred miles 12 hours after first startup? No problem. Goes perfectly and not a single issue afterwards. Change a ball joint? Endless smashing things with a sledgehammer, cursing, etc.

Tyler H wrote: Bought an E28 that was cursed. Went to look at it on CL (had been sitting,) spotted a loose main ground and asked if I could try to jump it off. Owner laughed and then to their amazement it fired right up and I drove it up on my trailer. Drove it 2 days and it ran like a dream, then just died. Tried EVERYTHING to get it running. Sold it to the owner of a BMW repair shop -- tried to warn him I wasn't a CL yahoo and he shouldn't buy the car. He threw all of the same stuff as it I did. Got it running and sold it, it promptly died again. CURSED.

I owned this same car; but it was a 944 and during one of those why won't it start cranking expeditions the timing belt jumped and bent the valves. It was fun...

Nope. I suck at cars ALL the time. But it hasn't stopped me. It is sometimes maddening. Sometimes frustrating. And while working on something I've even given our Lord and Savior a middle name which will surely land me in Hades.

But somehow it's still therapeutic and enjoyable.

Unless I'm doing it to get to work the next morning, then it sucks.

The 8 hours to replace a thermostat on my Impala, which ended with me realizing I had cut a heater hose really made me think it was time to put down the wrenches. The week of evenings changing the front rotors on my Civic (ending with me cutting off the wheel studs) didn't help either. But then replacing the diff and subframe in my E36 (without removing the exhaust or rear hubs/trailing arms) in 8 hours made me feel really good about my wrenching.

So tl;dr, it comes and goes, but yeah. I feel that way.

Spoolpigeon wrote: I had a 06 malibu for 6 years that had a clunk from the rear of the car the whole time I owned it. Never found the source of the noise and it irritated me the entire time I had the car.

We found that clunk... in the rear swaybar bushings... which requires dropping the subframe to access.

If it were mine, I'd just live with the clunk!

This thread makes me feel better about myself. I'm pretty decent at wrench turning. I did have to bleed the brakes on an E28 3 times before I got all the air out this month. The pedal is already soft again. Also I've lost a lot of sleep trying to fix things that I probably should have fixed well in advance. And I'm awful at diagnosing electrical faults.

Maybe I do kinda suck at cars sometimes.