What Your Horrific Car Repair Story?
Discussion
Hi All,
I am interested in peoples stories who have bought a weekend car, or maybe a car which was a potentially "risky" purchase that turned out to be a horrific money pit....
No doubt I will hear from M5, M6 and TVR owners - and maybe a few supercharged Jags.....plus ????
Mine is spending around £7,000 on a 205gti for repairs - although it was mainly for track use and stuff I broke and or needed to fix..
I'm sure there are others on here would easily out do that...
Cheers
Rob
I am interested in peoples stories who have bought a weekend car, or maybe a car which was a potentially "risky" purchase that turned out to be a horrific money pit....
No doubt I will hear from M5, M6 and TVR owners - and maybe a few supercharged Jags.....plus ????
Mine is spending around £7,000 on a 205gti for repairs - although it was mainly for track use and stuff I broke and or needed to fix..
I'm sure there are others on here would easily out do that...
Cheers
Rob
Audi S2... i won't even say what i've spent on it for fear of the epic ridiculing i'll receive, but to sum up a few highlights:
2 new sets of suspension gone wrong, currently on the 4th suspension set-up which seems to be going well.
More for performance reasons but i'm now on the 6th brake set-up.
The first engine rebuild lunched itself when some sand used to blast the inlet manifold remained in the inlet and slowly turned the oil abrasive rather than a lubricant - that one was not fun and resulted in a far more costly rebuild 2nd time around.
Not long after buying the car the gearbox wouldn't change into 2nd so i had to have the box out and the synchro's replaced. A few weeks ago the same happened, so the box has now had to come out again to replace the same synchros.
And the one i've just found out to day whilst the car is in for the gearbox work - the Southbend clutch i replaced with the engine rebuild 5k miles ago has lunched itself and trashed the clutch plate, pressure plate and flywheel along with it. I certainly was not expecting that one!
The car seems to have a theme where it basically gets lovely new parts, and then destroys them quickly and efficiently
2 new sets of suspension gone wrong, currently on the 4th suspension set-up which seems to be going well.
More for performance reasons but i'm now on the 6th brake set-up.
The first engine rebuild lunched itself when some sand used to blast the inlet manifold remained in the inlet and slowly turned the oil abrasive rather than a lubricant - that one was not fun and resulted in a far more costly rebuild 2nd time around.
Not long after buying the car the gearbox wouldn't change into 2nd so i had to have the box out and the synchro's replaced. A few weeks ago the same happened, so the box has now had to come out again to replace the same synchros.
And the one i've just found out to day whilst the car is in for the gearbox work - the Southbend clutch i replaced with the engine rebuild 5k miles ago has lunched itself and trashed the clutch plate, pressure plate and flywheel along with it. I certainly was not expecting that one!
The car seems to have a theme where it basically gets lovely new parts, and then destroys them quickly and efficiently
Things is, there are plenty of really good cars that with some half decent maintenance just work. But you get a load of what can only be described at morons on here telling people not to buy a half decent nearly new Japanese hatch back for £X,000 when for half the money they could get some shagged M series BMW that then proceeds to financially rape them every time the put the key in the door ('cos the remote central locking stopped working).
Sonic said:
Audi S2... i won't even say what i've spent on it for fear of the epic ridiculing i'll receive, but to sum up a few highlights:
2 new sets of suspension gone wrong, currently on the 4th suspension set-up which seems to be going well.
More for performance reasons but i'm now on the 6th brake set-up.
The first engine rebuild lunched itself when some sand used to blast the inlet manifold remained in the inlet and slowly turned the oil abrasive rather than a lubricant - that one was not fun and resulted in a far more costly rebuild 2nd time around.
Not long after buying the car the gearbox wouldn't change into 2nd so i had to have the box out and the synchro's replaced. A few weeks ago the same happened, so the box has now had to come out again to replace the same synchros.
And the one i've just found out to day whilst the car is in for the gearbox work - the Southbend clutch i replaced with the engine rebuild 5k miles ago has lunched itself and trashed the clutch plate, pressure plate and flywheel along with it. I certainly was not expecting that one!
The car seems to have a theme where it basically gets lovely new parts, and then destroys them quickly and efficiently
I say this with the greatest respect but shouldn't you be asking questions about the people working on the car rather than of the car? A new part fitted which fails soon after replacement is either horrendous bad luck (unlikely), poor installation or the root cause of failure hasn't been attended to...2 new sets of suspension gone wrong, currently on the 4th suspension set-up which seems to be going well.
More for performance reasons but i'm now on the 6th brake set-up.
The first engine rebuild lunched itself when some sand used to blast the inlet manifold remained in the inlet and slowly turned the oil abrasive rather than a lubricant - that one was not fun and resulted in a far more costly rebuild 2nd time around.
Not long after buying the car the gearbox wouldn't change into 2nd so i had to have the box out and the synchro's replaced. A few weeks ago the same happened, so the box has now had to come out again to replace the same synchros.
And the one i've just found out to day whilst the car is in for the gearbox work - the Southbend clutch i replaced with the engine rebuild 5k miles ago has lunched itself and trashed the clutch plate, pressure plate and flywheel along with it. I certainly was not expecting that one!
The car seems to have a theme where it basically gets lovely new parts, and then destroys them quickly and efficiently
itcaptainslow said:
Sonic said:
Audi S2... i won't even say what i've spent on it for fear of the epic ridiculing i'll receive, but to sum up a few highlights:
2 new sets of suspension gone wrong, currently on the 4th suspension set-up which seems to be going well.
More for performance reasons but i'm now on the 6th brake set-up.
The first engine rebuild lunched itself when some sand used to blast the inlet manifold remained in the inlet and slowly turned the oil abrasive rather than a lubricant - that one was not fun and resulted in a far more costly rebuild 2nd time around.
Not long after buying the car the gearbox wouldn't change into 2nd so i had to have the box out and the synchro's replaced. A few weeks ago the same happened, so the box has now had to come out again to replace the same synchros.
And the one i've just found out to day whilst the car is in for the gearbox work - the Southbend clutch i replaced with the engine rebuild 5k miles ago has lunched itself and trashed the clutch plate, pressure plate and flywheel along with it. I certainly was not expecting that one!
The car seems to have a theme where it basically gets lovely new parts, and then destroys them quickly and efficiently
I say this with the greatest respect but shouldn't you be asking questions about the people working on the car rather than of the car? A new part fitted which fails soon after replacement is either horrendous bad luck (unlikely), poor installation or the root cause of failure hasn't been attended to...2 new sets of suspension gone wrong, currently on the 4th suspension set-up which seems to be going well.
More for performance reasons but i'm now on the 6th brake set-up.
The first engine rebuild lunched itself when some sand used to blast the inlet manifold remained in the inlet and slowly turned the oil abrasive rather than a lubricant - that one was not fun and resulted in a far more costly rebuild 2nd time around.
Not long after buying the car the gearbox wouldn't change into 2nd so i had to have the box out and the synchro's replaced. A few weeks ago the same happened, so the box has now had to come out again to replace the same synchros.
And the one i've just found out to day whilst the car is in for the gearbox work - the Southbend clutch i replaced with the engine rebuild 5k miles ago has lunched itself and trashed the clutch plate, pressure plate and flywheel along with it. I certainly was not expecting that one!
The car seems to have a theme where it basically gets lovely new parts, and then destroys them quickly and efficiently
I seem to have had extremely bad luck, but i believe the problem comes with modified vehicles. Simply whenever the car is driven it's driven hard on track or on fun drives - it doesn't have an easy life, and up till recently has lived outdoors which has just increased the stress and wear on the car.
Suspension - stock springs snapped, put bilsteins + H&R. The bilstein dampers gave way after 3 years so i went to koni. The springs gave way so i went to stock springs + koni, and then the koni dampers wore out after another few years so i've now gone KW V3 coilovers with full adjustment for track/road use and flexibility - none of the failures could be attributes to the people doing the work.
Brakes... stock brakes are shocking, so they were replaced with an early brembo setup. This was better, but still not up to track use so i upgraded the fronts to 996 monoblock 323mm and following that the rears to a urS4 setup. This was much much better, but still didn't hold up for consecutive laps at the ring and as the power increased bit-by-bit so did the requirements for better brakes. The fronts are now the 365mm 8-pot RS4/6's, but still i seem to periodically suffer with front braking issues, and as a result will rear will soon be a porsche upgrade with seperate handbrake caliper to balance it out. So not really failures, but loads of incremental steps up along with the power and any failures seemingly related to underspecified brakes to match the weight of the car and the speeds it can carry.
Gearbox, that was bad-luck when i bought it and a known problem with a weaker first-gear and synchro's. This was about 7-8 years ago though, and as mentioned above, it's had a hard life since so i can forgive them needing to be replaced again. Likely my fault for driving it to enthusiastically anyway and slipping the odd gear change
The clutch... this is extremely annoying as it was only recently replaced. I'm not yet entirely sure whats happened, i need to look at it when its out of the car, but it sounds like part of it has worn away unevenly which has caused uneven wear on the flywheel and clutch surface. I was planning to replace the flywheel with a single-mass or lightened because the OEM dual-mass is overkill for the power and torque the car now produces, but i'd be expecting the Southbend Stage 4 to take 40k of 450ft/lb not 4k.
The first engine rebuild... yes something seriously cocked up here. The rebuild was a major engine-out, rods replaced, new cams, complete head port/polish, new valves, guides etc plus a new turbo and inlet system to seriously upgrade the car. 500 miles later and the block was trashed with all bores scored to s
t. The car was misfiring like a bh and i couldn't work it out until the head came out, and then the damage was plain to see. The head-work that had been completed was pointless, all trashed. Every valve was severely worn away, and the guides, cam lobes, bearings for everything, the crank was scored to st and needed a re-grind. The oil-pump, turbo etc all brand-new before the rebuild were trashed and needed replacing... so rebuild mk2 was rebuild mk 1 all over again plus block rebore, new pistons, new bearings, head, valves, tappets, cams, crank-regrind, oil pump and turbo, and probably some more stuff i've forgotten... and all because somebody left a bit of shot in the inlet.Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff