ever had to work on mates car?

[alloydave]

any of you guys had the pleasure of working on a mates car?
I have just had the pleasure of stripping the old 250 iron head crossflow out of a mates XY ute .We have put a runner alloyhead motor in to get it back on the road and he wanted me to have a look at his old one and report what was wrong .He told me it just made a strange noise which got worse then it run on 5 cylinders then stopped . Well first i took off the rocker cover 4 rockers are stitting side ways and the rest were finger tight .I ripped the head off and took a look inside ,each piston had 2
different numbers stamped on the top the guy who had rebuilt it before obviously wasnt to concerned with the correct piston for the bore it came out of as none of the numbers matched the hole they were in .The cam or what ressembled a cam was a mess with nice blue burnt looking lumps which i think were the lobes a one stage. The timing chain was still in there but had about 1" of play .The oil pickup was a furry looking thing with a large black mass of something hanging out of it .The bearings were all rooted to the extreme .The one good thing i found was the sump
had only a minor dent which is now fixed and is being bolted on to my engine as mine was a bit rugged after the wrecking yard i got my motor from dragged it with a forkhoist.So after a few beers the motor was totally in bits and i gave my mate the good news and told him at least it wont be as heavy to chuck in the back of the car and take it to the scrapper ,look likes we will do the alloyhead motor when that stops.
Anyway enough of stripping old shitters and time to put my new motor back in the hole.
cheers and a merry xmas
dave

 

[addo]

That sounds like the kind of "fun" I've had plenty of. Call me an imperious pr!ck, but I like to make the owner squirm in the process.

Bottom line is they spent their money on consumables, while I bought tools - so I figure there's some kind of right-to-insult conferred upon me. fixing the car is the lesser of the two evils. If it's broken longer-term, they'll chew my ear for a pastime. If I fix it, they're off, spending their rebuild money on anything but a rebuild... But at least they're not complaining to me, then.

The only really bad bit is when somebody feeds them a line and they swallow it, either disbelieving me (and I'm always right ), or wasting money on crappy used parts ("Oh, but he said it's fully recoed" - "Yeah, about 100 000 ago")...

Still, if I was all bad, I wouldn't do anything.

 

[Anonymous]

lol, feed them another line.. "It'll take you a coupl'a cartons of piss worth of labour to do blah blah blah..."

ah I dunno. working on mates cars is one thing, but it gets tiresome when they have a workshop manual to look through to get their own work done, and they still try and get you to do the work... RTFM people!

 

[addo]

it gets tiresome when they have a workshop manual to look through

Agreed. The #1 offender here has no less than THREE manuals.

 

[xctasy]

My best mate was/is a Holden man. Absolutely stark bonkers over them. He was single to his ealry 40's, and tne got married with a ready made family.

So hes out of the car thing at the moment.

Best thing about HQ to WB Holdens is that they are easier to work on than most Fords. No spring towers, front mounted streering boxes allow you to drop a power steering unit in 15 minutes, bullet proof Turbo Hydramatics. Quadra jets on most of them, and good HEI.Worst thing? Your always working on them. Everything. My mate trusts everyone, and practices no preventitive maintenance. Two HEI caps, two 350 THM's and one 400 transmission RIP'ed. Two power steering boxes.

Any project he works on makes me cringe. He always gets the car going, but its never quite right. Brakes, chassis, steering, everthing rattles worse than my rattle ridden Nippon Clipon XE. I've towed him a dozen times for simple things. But at least he isn't an elitist snob with a wood duck shoved up his rectum. Salt of the earth, and a laugh to hang with.

Working on other peoples rides. A learning education.

 

[Anonymous]

yeah i know all about it, 4 turbo projects and only one is mine!! :x

4 other n/a projects and only one of them are mine!!! :x

its gets annoying at times, but its worth while when the car's run the times and my mates are happy with it.

cheers.joe.