It's the little things...

My 2006 F150 wouldn't go into 4wd. After reading all the doom and gloom about the stupid vacuum actuated hubs, I smacked the transfer case motor with a hammer. Viola! 4WD.

I bought my neighbor's 1993 Mustang GT from him for a song because it had a "blown engine". One $60 starter later and it fired right up. He was ashamed. I drove it for 2 years then sold it back to him.

90 5.0 Mustang, 200 miles from home, stop for lunch, attempt to start car. nothing, open hood, turn key, smoke comes out of small ground wire connected to battery, no tools, call AAA, tow to Ford garage, explain problem, 15 minutes young tech tells me I need starter, I tell him to remove ground bolt from engine block, clean and replace, 5 minutes, I hear rumble of 5.0. Service manager offers me a job.

GTwannaB wrote:

ScreaminE wrote: That seem to provide the most satisfaction when working on a project car. I've been doing some serious maintenance on my 2002 Focus SVT. One of the things I noticed when driving the car is that the wipers won't "park." Basically when you turn off the wipers, they stay where they are and do not go back down. $10 relay, removed a few dash pieces and bam. Wipers park. Something so annoying had such an easy fix. The car has 200k miles and I'm betting it's been like this for a long time. What's your favorite "easy" fix?

That just happened to my SVT, then it fixed itself. I suspect I will have to replace that wiper relay at some point. How tricky was it getting behind the fusebox? To answer you question, my best repair was last week getting a new passenger motor mount on the SVT. My god this car is so quiet now at startup I wish I had done it a year ago. Who would have thought a worn but not broken motor mount would affect noise levels so much?

It was stupid easy. I got the relay from NAPA. Used this writeup from Focus Fanatics: Clickity

Funny you mention the motor mount. I'm doing the same thing. I've replaced all three though. My car sounded like a rattle trap on startup. Hope replacing these will have the same result for myself.

Replaced the broken visor clips. 3 minutes and now the visors stay in place like they should.

Shifter bushings! I tend to buy a lot of old worn Fords and Mazdas and replacing the shifter bushings which makes the car feel 100% better.

Bruce

I had been to annual flight training on the Mitsubishi MU-2 in Smyrna TN. I had taken some tools with me to get some Nissan parts from a scrapyard near the airport. On the flight back I am in the co-pilot seat and the sun visor keeps falling in my face. The visor had done this for years. Several maintainence shops had told us that we needed to replace the assembly, as it could not be fixed. I have tools with me so I decide to remove the visor and see if I can fix it. Two phillips head screws hold the visor to the headliner. I remove them and the asssembly pulls out. There is a ball joint with a spring that puts pressure on the joint so that it does not flop around in turbulence. There is a castle nut to adjust the spring pressure. I pull the pin, tighten the castle nut 1 turn and install the visor. It worked perfect. The other pilot and I traded seats, I do the same to the other visor and 5 years later they are in perfect operating condition.

Bought a car for 400 bucks the lady owed the garage because after carb change it wouldn't shift right. 2 cheap bolts and a bug deflector bracket to extend the tv linkage and I drove it home. Used the same linkage and bolts when the car later got a performer rpm/holley carb combo