What Is Your Least Favorite Automotive Project?
“Bear in mind that it is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.”
– Marquis de Sade
The, ahem, highly controversial life of the Marquis de Sade created some noteworthy historical footnotes, not to mention a running gag at Car and Driver magazine that some of you may remember from the era of automotive content pre-internet. (They’d reference a Grand Marquis “De Sade edition” when lamenting the lack of yearly changes at the Mercury brand. This joke went on for years.)
The quote above is commonly associated with the Marquis de Sade and always seems to ring true to me when I’m working on a complex and undesirable automotive task. A personal hell, if you will.
And I am feeling the heat from the fact I still haven’t finished re-installing the wiring harness on my 1985 Ford Thunderbird, a project that I chronicled earlier this year. At this point, the harness has become an albatross around my neck. I got the car running again, as the massive wiring harness that includes the fuse box goes from the front of the car to all parts within the dashboard. Running, yes, but not even remotely functional inside the cabin.
Soon I will once again dig into the Thunderbird’s dashboard to complete my least favorite automotive project. I will leave the discussion there, and ask the question to you, dear member of the Hagerty Community:
What Is Your Least Favorite Automotive Project?
Anything on another person’s vehicle.
Definitely, anything regarding working on another person’s vehicle. I try to be nice and helpful, but sometimes I really dread this.
That’s so true. Picking up the phone and hearing the words, “could you just come over and…”.
Words that send a jolt up your back, now for electrical things I’ll go as far as standing by the ground cable and hold the fire extinguisher.
Crawling under my ’34 Ford to change the oil and grease it. I am getting too old to do it! It hurts to crawl on the creeper and slide under the car. Also clostorphobic (sp.?). I am a month shy of 85.
I agree Electrical is the bane of the auto repair or restoration process.
With mechanic bits you can often look and find a worn or broken part. It is clear when you find the problem as you hold the part or pieces of the problem.
With electrical you may have things like a broken wire if lucky but often it is a bad ground that looks good or is one ground of 10 in the car in various spots that can make things work or not work randomly.
Worse yet are the sealed units that you can ot see or find damage. The Service book will say replace with known good unit as the test to see if it was bad. In other words throw parts at it.
Black boxes… the worst part of electrical. A bunch of stuff goes in, a bunch of stuff goes out, but only a handful of people know what goes on inside.
Yes, anything electrical can be a challenge. Plus, trying to find good replacement parts for a 47-year-old Datsun can be next to impossible!
On those 47 y/o Datsuns, the oem parts weren’t very good when new!
Actually, I kinda like the challenge of electrical. Admittedly, OEM schematics makes the project much, much easier. The real anxiety comes into play when you decide that an expensive component needs to be replaced and you you really hope that your diagnosis is correct before spending money on a non-refundable purchase.
Another issue I don’t like is a non repeatable problem. You know the ones where you get a shake or rattle or other issue that you can not repeat when you try to find it to fix. But then you are driving to a car show and then the problem comes back and you have no time or tools to try to find it.
So many possible answers… maybe, any in-depth car maintenance/repair that takes me away from working on my project car. I just don’t care that the tire pressure sensor is bad in the daily, or etc.; but it keeps harassing me (more my wife) with really annoying alarms
Oh man, Sajeev, under-dash wiring is indeed a nightmare to me, too. I’m a fairly large person, and in most cases, I need to remove front seats to just get in there to begin with. That gets me there, but then there is a) little maneuvering room, b) difficulty seeing, and c) the need to climb back out to get the one thing I forgot to place within reach.
But as much as I hate the above, post-body-work-and-pre-paint-prep is worse for me. Specifically: SANDING. GAWD how I hate sanding. And it seems to be a never-ending process. Work the metal, apply some filler, sand, sand, and sand some more. Put on a little primer and feel the surface. Then sand, sand, sand some more. I’m not really a big fan of the “applied patina” look, but I’m tempted every time I need to sand some bodywork to prep it for painting!
Yes, this. I never knew I could experience claustrophobia until once time working under a dash in my twenties. I absolutely had to get outta there! LOL!
Yup, body work and paint prep are my least favorite………………..
I’m with DUB on dashes and post-metal bodywork
I’ll add doors and brake hydraulics
I don’t own a lift, I never have, so for me.it is exhaust, drive shaft. Clutch …. Anything that can involve significant time lying on the floor under the car on jackstands.
Brakes, suspension, steering. Etc typically can be done NEXT to the cat on jackstands rather than UNDER it.
Amen, Kevin. I’ve told this story before, but when I was about 16, a ’55 Chevy dropped on me and the lower A-arm – thock! – put a dent/cut in the area of my right eyebrow. Had it not been for the 14″ steelie rim I’d placed under the K-frame crossmember – well, Gallagher and his melon-smashing act comes to mind. Since then, I’ve never been totally comfortable lying under a vehicle – so I tend to over-support it with all sorts of “anti-dropping devices”! 🙄
My neighbor has a lift which I use frequently. Even with the lift available, I find there are certain jobs (anything that involves transmission removal) on the ground. Lifts are extremely dangerous if there is anything in contact with the car and ground other than the lift itself. Also you generally cannot get the car doors all the way open with cars on lifts, and any job that requires getting in and out of the car frequently are lift no-gos for me
Working behind the dashboard, and inscrutable computerized “black boxes” have been a personal Hell for me. I think the bane of many projects is parts support, with faulty replacement parts a close second.
Anything electrical
Rust.
Electrical/wiring doesn’t bother me having worked in telephone exchanges where cables filled with 22 gauge wires are seven feet deep and wiring diagrams are on dozens of 30″ x 36″ sheets and single circuits have 14 wires.
My least faves have changed as I’ve gotten older. Working under the dash of my ’63 Pontiac wasn’t a big deal at 18. I’d just position myself upside down, with my feet up on the seat and my head down on the floor, looking up. At 64, I can’t contort myself like that anymore. So, this kind of work has dropped from my “I don’t really mind” list to “oh, g-d, why me?” list.
Likewise, things which require more finger dexterity have fallen from the “that might not be so bad” list. I had carpal tunnel release surgery on both hands a few years ago. The pain relief was amazing, but so has been my loss of ability to pick up small things with my fingertips or manipulate small connectors in tight spaces (where I can’t resort to needle nose pliers).
In general, though, my least favorite thing to do is anything requiring some tool which I don’t have, forcing me to improvise. I don’t mind the improvisation itself; it’s the time and attention lost in the process, whereas having the right tool for the job in the first place just gets it done.
As long as I had access to electrical schematics diagnosing electrical issues were not an issue. Sealing electrical fixtures like headlights on truck and finding out OEM replacements were $1000+ versus replacing a bulb did give me a pain in back pocket. Integration of electronics and electrics are also a challenge now
Yeah, under dash wiring is the worst! Except maybe for trying to get the windows to work smoothly and seal properly on my ’65 Impala
Body work, I don’t want to touch it.
I used to like doing bodywork. Nowadays, some processes such as sanding or shaping is absolutely THE most boring job. 🙁
My brother and I have 5 VW Beetles and we have fought more with the carburetors than anything else except for figuring out the wiring that previous owners worked on.