What puts you into a tool-throwing rage the best?

Knuckles instantly slid across the radiator cooling fins with extreme force.

when those little plastic clips(appropriately aged) you've been trying remove for over half an hour without breaking finally crumble....

sometimes I "think" crazy stuff like a smashing a sledgehammer through a windshield.

I actually like the sound of a 1/2" wrench bouncing across my concrete garage floor........

Stuff under the creeper is HUGE... there must be a way to make those wheels so they wont get stuck on a dried up leaf stem.

Getting burned by a drop light. Pretty much eliminated by LEDs and flourescents... but I do have a naked bulb or two still attached to a clamp.

Climbing into a really tight spot with every tool except the 1st one I need. Roll cage rear supports come to mind... I've found myself in the spare well of the trunk of an E30 with one arm under a pipe, the other holding the mig gun... and reached for the wire cutter.... @#$#@@#@. That E36 M3 pisses me off even now.

TWO things and only two things get me hot in the garage:

1: Hydraulic hoses. I can not wait until our alien leaders create a completely electric system to replace all of the brake, transmission and power steering lines on a car. I have stripped , damaged and otherwise Mofoed a hydraulic line on nearly every car I have rebuilt.

2: The "Missing tool". You know, that one you know you bought for the job that has now disappeared only to reappear minutes after purchasing the new replacement tool but not before opening the new tools packaging rendering ir non-returnable...

Having to get in and out of the frikkin' car fifteen times to get a tool because each time I get the wrong thing.

The pliers pinch Per mentioned. Oh how I hate blood blisters.

Sending a set of axles to be shortened and resplined and redrilled after a couple of phone calls describing what I wanted done and receiving a call telling me that if I want the bolt circle I asked for (4x100, the single most common bolt circle on the planet) I have to pay to make the jig which they will then keep. THAT pissed me off. Also in the same phone call being told that the axles were worn beyond repair, paying shipping both ways then comparing them to an unmolested set and finding that both are at 1.177 OD. That REALLY pissed me off.

Putting a new motor into a Celica, only to find two things:

1) The original motor just needed a head gasket, head looked good, bottom end looked brand new.

2) The "new" motor has a cracked water jacket.

Ripped the "new" motor out and shot it with a Glock.

oh yea i forgot to mention my girlfriend

Nothing gets me as angry as quickly as cords. Cables, ropes, string of any sort but especially wires and cables. I swear they're alive and trying to reproduce when we're not looking. You coil something up nice and neat in a box and take it out the next day as a tangled freaking mess, how the hellzit do that!?!?

DirtyBird222 wrote: oh yea i forgot to mention my girlfriend

Yeah.... i have the same problem as whoever previously posted about the gf/wife and the fridge.

EXCEPT:

She complains about the money that i sink into the car, but then turns around and complains that she doesn't like how stock cars feel in twisties. She wants me to have a faster car, but expects me to do it for free.

"Why do you need a $1000 coilover setup? That's expensive."

"Well, that's actually pretty cheap, and will eliminate the need to replace a bunch of other components as well. It's cheaper than fixing it with stock parts. You were complaining about how unsettled the car felt last year on the Dragon, this will fix that."

"Oh... but it's still expensive, can't you find something cheaper?"

wtf?

Need a mention everything that she wants me to do to her DD? (The Escort in my sig).

I've figured out that she just wants me to spend the money on HER car, which she won't actually compete in.

HUH?

Doing a job on a car I'm unfamiliar with without having the manual around. There's always some procedure I skip that turns a two hour job into six. For some reason, this happens to me a lot with American cars.

I also have a strange tendency to install small parts backwards. Did it twice just yesterday while installing the aftermarket striker kit (the stock ones break) on my Corrado's door handles.

Per Schroeder wrote: Drilling out a broken bolt, only to break the drill bit in the hole. Only to be surpassed by breaking off an 'EZ Out' inside that same hole. I cried.

I've got a European exhaust header for my Spitfire on my workbench with two broken studs just like this waiting for me to have some kind of brain storm.

The worst for me is when I remove whatever it is I'm replacing (which is usually in pretty good shape) in order to "upgrade" with a part that it turns out doesn't fit, doesn't work, isn't threaded, etc. Bonus points for when I destroy the perfectly good OEM part in the course of its removal.

Fasteners that I can see easily, and from several angles, but cannot get a wrench on if my life depended on it. Stop teasing me.

The air hose. Nothing made my life better than a good cordless impact. The air impact is great, but having it hooked to that stupid hose ruins it. It's never in the right position,and when you get it in the right position you realize that you snagged it on something in the garage and now that something is upside down.

jg

Whenever I need to access a "blind" bolt, or thread a nut onto a bolt I can't see, I'll get to a point where I am right there......so close...., and then a piece of rust/ grime always finds my eye, or my open mouth.

This also happens whenever I'm under the car with fluid changing. For some reason the hot, sticky, fluid is magnetized to my eyes, mouth, and down the back of my neck.

and yes, I usually wear goggles, but when I do the grime / fluid / liquid finds my neck, mouth or face.

Spilling brake fluid on shiny painted surfaces and sitting it the driver's seat with a screwdriver in my back pocket.

Woody wrote: sitting it the driver's seat with a screwdriver in my back pocket.

Done that...

Jay_W wrote: Nothing gets me as angry as quickly as cords. Cables, ropes, string of any sort but especially wires and cables. I swear they're alive and trying to reproduce when we're not looking. You coil something up nice and neat in a box and take it out the next day as a tangled freaking mess, how the hellzit do that!?!?

Somehow or other when I'm working hoses, extension cords, power tools, fans etc all wind up in a snarled ball. I cannot figure out exactly how I do it but man it's a bitch to get it untangled. Add an assistant and it gets twice as bad. And of course during the work itself I will invariably need to get a good foothold and step on one of these hoses or wires with predictable comic results. Immediately followed by the air turning blue as I blow off steam.

Going to work on a car that I know is either all metric or all standard only realize after rounding a bolt head(opposite what expected) that the previous "mechanic" put it on at 100lbs over the torque specification. That is great fun. Both the toyota pickup and ford focus use metric/SAE bolts, I guess whichever was cheaper. The transmission plug for a japanese pickup is 13/16 or 15/16 but the oil drain plug for an american ford focus is 13mm. I love it! Don't even get me started on the buell made in wisconsin of various sized foreign parts.

Another thing is going to the junk yard(30 miles away) carrying half a tool box and finding the perfect part, but not having the correct wrench.

thatsnowinnebago wrote: What puts you into a tool-throwing rage the best?

Nothing.

I'm a Type B.

Hasn't happened in a while, but the thing that would really piss me off: go to the parts house and get everything I needed to do a particular job. get damn near finished and find out that 1) they gave me the wrong thing like when I got a standard rotation fan instead of reverse when I specifically said it was reverse 2) I forgot to get something and....

the damn parts place is closed.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

When my room mate throws my car into too much snow, and the truck pulling us out berkeleys up my allignment.

When having to remove some V-twin motorcycle engines from their frames. In some cases it seems the manufacturer built the frame around the engine.

When seemingly minor work is required (water pump replacement) and the first step in the service manual states to "remove engine." And especially on a V-twin.

oh...how about wriggling something into place only to not be able to get my hands out...stupid

...or, while under the car, on the floor, on my back, and holding something up with one arm and tightening with the other and out of nowhere BAM both arms so heavy and falling asleep....the suck!

Got a new one after doing some work today. Burnt the crap out of my forearm working on a RSX-S today taking off the oil filter, same goes for new Si oil filter location, and Prelude SH oil filter location. These are three occasions where I am 100% positive Honda had some Germans engineer some parts on the car.