Strange things you have seen

The other day I was thinking about something strange that happened to one of my vehicles. This made me wonder what sort of odd things you pros have come across. Here is my story...

1993 Geo Tracker (Suzuki Sidekick), 1.6L 4Cyl .

I had put 150K miles or so on the car and noticed a bit of weeping from the water pump. Picked up a water pump on my way home, and started working on it after dinner. After all it should be a quick and easy job, right? When I pulled the pump off I was shocked to see that a good sided chunk of the block which should have been behind the water pump was no longer there!

Looking at the pump it looked like the impeller was fixed in place by some sort of spacer/bushing that was pressed into the pump housing. This had come loose and when it tried to slip between the impeller and block the impeller smashed the bushing to tiny bits removing a large chunk of the block in the process.

A short block was too expensive, so the engine was pulled, stripped to a long block, taken to a local machine shop who did a weld build up on it and ground it back to the correct shape by hand (approximately correct based on new water pump). The owner of the shop apologized that the bill was about $150, I think it was the best deal I have ever been given.

A new set of gaskets later and the engine was back in (and valve lash set) and I put another 100K miles on it.

$150 sounds like a steal!

I won't even open the hood for anything less than $50! Hope you keep that guy's number.

I did most of the grunt work myself. I just dropped off the engine to him and he did the weld build up and grinding. But still, $150 was a steal. A new short block was about $1,500 as I recall.

I have seen similar issues with the water pump in the old Hillman/Chrysler Avenger (sold for a year as the Plymouth Cricket in the USA) on the that engine the back of the pump spiral volute was cast into the timing chain case. On a couple of those engines we used a metalised epoxy filler (Belzona Mollecular Metal) to build the missing metal on the volute scroll.

Belzona Product Website


So 1970

I also very successfully used Belzona to repair a large hole in the BW35 transmission case on an Austin 1800 "Landcrab" . On that model the automatic transmission version used a RWD Borg Warner model 35 sitting transversely in a casting that also formed the sump, the drive was transfered from crank to transmission by a Morse Hy-Vo chain (an inverted tooth chain as used as the timing chain on a classic small block Chevy), that repair lasted for at least another 90,000 miles.
Benzona was famously used to cure a major issue on the multifuel engines in 1970's era British Army Chieftain Tanks that suffered from cylinder liners moving in the cylinder block. After the liners were bonded in with Benzona the problem was solved.

Wow, I had never heard of the Plymouth Cricket. Looks like the first/second generation of the Dodge Colt which was a Mitsubishi. I guess a lot of cars looked like that back in the day. My favorite compact that made it was across the pond in that period was the Ford Capri which sold in the states as a Mercury Capri. A classmate in high school had one and I thought it was a sharp car.

That was a decent fix! Strange for sure. I ended up with a 71 Subaru 360 many years ago. It had a 360cc two stroke, oil injected, two cylinder engine. I had heard as a kid that using solid wires would cause a no start situation, but thought it was an old mechanic's tale. One of the boots had been arced so badly that the cylinder associated did not fire. I installed Packard 440 wires and tried to start the little beast. No joy! I recalled the old saw about resistance wires and found a screw on "Radio Resistor" in my junk drawer and screwed it into the coil wire going to the distributor. VROOM! She started right up. That was a bit strange, in my opinion. I ended up trading it for a '67 Camaro and that for a Honda 350. The Honda was the most fun.

I had an '88 5.0 about 15 years ago and when I took the water pump out, there were white worm things in the bolt holes. It was pretty gross and definitely weird. This was after a winter of sitting and I used a pocket screw driver to get them all out. They were alive.

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Worms? How weird and gross!

Tutti57 wrote: I had an '88 5.0 about 15 years ago and when I took the water pump out, there were white worm things in the bolt holes. It was pretty gross and definitely weird. This was after a winter of sitting and I used a pocket screw driver to get them all out. They were alive.

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That's disgusting man

Somebody really wanted to use this rear end in their Chevy truck

You guys seeing a lot of these?

Holy crap is that your wedding ring Noah?

Only on the 3.7 jeeps..

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That customer said his Hemi Ram was idling in the driveway, when all of a sudden it sounded like a bag full of hammers and stalled... Forever.

Had to be a Chrysler product ... there usually caused by overheating, the head expands more than the valve seat

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Noah wrote: You guys seeing a lot of these?

Anyone remember the sohc cvh motors in the mid 90's escorts and first Gen focus? Pretty much guaranteed to drop a valve seat!

I have seen that type of failure on a 1960's Lancia Fulvia, that was a really odd ball engine the classic narrow angle V4 layout that Lancia had been using since the 1920's --- V4 but both banks shared a single cylinder head ! and twin Weber 40DCOE carbs



From this web page
Link to web page

No longer have this car.
We had bought an 02 Taurus for $400, all it needed was a fuel pump, or so I thought.
Paid for it, my dad towed it to where I could replace the fuel pump, which got it running good.
But then the fun started.
The interior lights would only work with the ignition in the Run position. The radio would lose memory after every time the key was turned off.


Started digging into the problem and found a whole mess.

Found that the White/Red wire to the GEM (12V supply) had been chopped off.


The Black/White ware was patched into the white/red going into he GEM, causing the GEM to only have power with the ignition in the Run position.


This wire was running up to the only working 12V power port.



Some Misc burned up wiring.


I fixed all of this mess, and then found that the Radio would never power down, the ignition reminder would ding, and the door would unlock itself if you tried to lock it without the ignition in Run position, and weight in the seat.

Found the culprit, someone had also tapped an always hot wire in the hatch release harness for Wagon models, to the white/red harness to the headlight switch. This caused the GEM to always receive 12V power, and cause it to think the key was always in the ignition.As soon as I cut that circuit, everything worked like normal. I still cannot fathom why someone did all of that :woohoo:

Some guys really butcher electrics. When you see electrical tape over twisted together wires you know you are in trouble. They are the same guys that will cut the harness an inch from the ECM connector up under the dash.

If cars were the way everybody predicted in the 1950's

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