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What is the Worst Mechanic Job

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pat sublett

Well-known Member
I just finished the worst mechanic job I ever did. Maybe partly because I am 80 plus years old but; I just replaced the oil cooler lines on my grandson's 84 Mercedes deisel and it is absolutly the worst job I ever got into. What is your worst job?
 
Rear a/c line replacement on Ford Expedition . Most any late model heater or evap core that requires dash removal . Engine R&R on ford Expedition . Oh the list I have , on and on and on .
 
Welding a leak in a burner pipe inside a heat treat oven standing on my head using a mirror to weld the bottom and back side of it.

And the weld held.

I was only 38 at the time. Couldn't do it now. My head would explode.

Gary
 
Changing the water pump on a 87 Cadillac Fleetwood fwd. Small V-8. You either have to pull the engine or cut the wheel well out and weld it back in.
 
Adjusting the clutch on a Topkick.
No matter what you do you end up with the fine black powder in your eyes.
By the time you try to rub it out of your eyes you end up with black streaks across your eyes that make you look like a two bit lady of the evening with too much mascara on.
You spend the rest of the day trying to explain to your customers that you are not shall we say special and you are not getting ready for a costume party, though it would be easier to explain if you were.
 

I have had so many I will have to think about it...

One that stands out. I worked in a shop that did work for a processing co. (left over dead animal parts) The blood truck blew a wheel cylinder on the right rear wheel I was sent out to plug the line so it could be drove back to the shop. When I was getting up from the ground I saw a 2" pipe plug hanging down so grabbed it to pull myself up the plug came off rotten arse blood covered me head to toe...
 
My buddy is a heavy truck mechanic at a dealership. He said the worst job is putting a clutch or trans in a fully loaded garbage truck in the
summer. One guy uses the steam jenny to blow the maggots off while he ducks under to take bolts off. Ick
 
welding the broken bed frame on a loaded wet chicken house cleaner, it's been 30 years and I still remember that burning smell
 
My sister had a 95 Camaro. Head bolt broke and gasket started leaking water into oil (Torque-to-yield bolts and one finally did yield!).
Finally managed to pull the oil pan for cleaning and discovered thrust bearing on crank was also wiped out.

Had to pull the motor. It was half under the cowl and the rubber nose made it too long to reach with the engine hoist. I managed to get it pulled from above; on the assembly line they bolted the engine to the subframe and then bolted that assembly in from underneath! Had to modify the engine hoist with a longer piece of tubing and add counterweights to the back.

Very hard to work on. You need child sized hands to reach anything on the back half of the engine.
 
At work the idiots broke something. You have your little garbage disposal in the sink. Now how big of a unit is installed next to a commercial dish machine? It is called a SOMAT machine. It was in the Lunch place that closed for three days. Now this is a TWO Horse Power grinder. Best thing of all,, They left it full and it was summer. Snapped a 1 1/8 inch shaft. Filled right to the top with water and I cannot describe the rest. Guess who worked on it???
 
Depends on the criteria.

For difficulty of the job, the time I chose to remove a perfectly good factory exhaust manifold from my 1972 Toyota LandCruiser FJ 40 and replace it with a header that did not fit in any sense of the word. Not just the back-breaking, knuckle-busting frustration, but knowing there was no good reason to have done so...

For the ICK factor, it's a tie between the litter of kittens in the fan shroud, or the bucket of minnows dumped from the back seat of a pickup. I have learned to make better use of the power of the maggots in removing rotting flesh.
 
Replacing valve cover gaskets on a 2003 Mitsubishi Montero with the V-6 engine. Took over 6 hours and nothing wanted to fit back where it came from.
 
(quoted from post at 19:42:42 02/23/16)
I have had so many I will have to think about it...

One that stands out. I worked in a shop that did work for a processing co. (left over dead animal parts) The blood truck blew a wheel cylinder on the right rear wheel I was sent out to plug the line so it could be drove back to the shop. When I was getting up from the ground I saw a 2" pipe plug hanging down so grabbed it to pull myself up the plug came off rotten arse blood covered me head to toe...
Click to expand...
Had an engineer that worked for me, great hand, got his degree when he was thirty, knew how to work. Told me he was a welder, got sent out to repair a broken tail gate in a garbage truck. Got to the dump and a coworker was there with his rig. Dead dog stuck halfway under the broken door. Stinking. Other guy wouldn't mess with it. My guy said he climbed in with the dog, did the job, and decided to go to college. Great college prep course he had. Great engineer.
 
There was an outdoor furnace sales place in town that sold a bunch of furnaces withna flaw in the design that causedbthe fire box to crack in the upper rear corner. The crack was too far back to reach from outside, so I had to crawl inside and sit in the box to grind them clean and weld on a patch. This was a warranty claim and I charged $500.00 to do each one which is the only reason I would do it. No chance I could get in those boxes now.

No where near as bad as pulling the plug on a gut wahon tho.
 
On a dairy farm when the gutter cleaner chain slipped off the worn drive sprocket and the chain fell into the slurry spreader, my dad and I had to stand in the 1/2 full slurry spreader on the beater to pull it out and re-string it. That smell didn't wear off for a while. Needless to say, the sprocket got replaced very quickly.

But, I did work on a machine at chicken farms one summer in Maryland. Mechanics there are saints. That isn't for the weak of stomach.
 
Worst smelling the final drive on a D7 that had been working in a dairy barn. The combination of 90W gear oil, and cow #1 and #2 made for quite an odor on a 90 degree plus day.

The cleanest, and best smelling was repairing a laundry machine in an area hospital. I had to fabricate a shaft, and a mount, and mount it all on the machine. This was to replace one that had originally been mounted into a machined place on a cast iron frame, after it spun, due to lack of grease, and damaged the frame beyond economical repair.

Tightest place to work, was inside a hydraulic, telescoping boom on a truck crane. I had just enough room to lay back over the winch, and slide in under the extension cylinder. Once in place I could rotate my body just enough to work with one hand and get the hydraulic line back on the 'monkey' that carried it inside the boom. Only took me two days.....

The highest places have been was a job helping mount an antenna 230 feet up on a water tower, and a line boring job about 100 feet up on a portal crane.

The lowest would be around 300 feet plus down in a quarry working on a crane being used to dropball oversized rocks.

The worst I just did. It was going behind someone who had no clue what he was doing to get the hydraulic system he screwed up right again. It's the first time I have ever gotten completely frustrated doing a job and just had to quit, several times, to keep myself 'sane'.

The wide variety of places and jobs is one of the things I love about my job.
 
Hey K
I laughed when I read yours, in 1975 put headers on a 1971 Landcruiser on my parents front lawn what a PITA!!

Peat
Click to expand...

Yeah, what a waste of time and money. The motor did not run any better or sound any better, for that matter. Eventually, my Dad took pity on me and took it to a muffler shop to get the header bent and piping bent to replace the header muffler I had bolted on. I am sure there was no way to align more than two manifold bolts at any given time, no matter how much you ground the collars down, or egged out the holes, or put in "studs", nothing would get all the holes to line up. I can't remember for sure, but I may have broken the original manifold taking it out, as well.
 
The worst smell!!! Was helping get a manure pit pump back out of a half full pit of hog manure when the three point mounting hitch snapped off dropping the actual pump into six foot of hog manure. This was in July as they were pumping on wheat stubble. It was my second oldest son's first "real" job taking care of the hog barns. He and I got in the pit to hook chains to lift the pump. We had to "dive" down to put the chains under the pump laying on the bottom of the pit floor. That was 20 years ago and I can still remember smelling like hog manure for WEEKS when you would sweat.

The worst design and most frustrated??? Any of the 6.0 and newer Ford diesel trucks. You just about have to raise the cab to work on anything involving the motor. Friend has several and we USED to try and fix them. He sold them so someone else can have all that fun.
 
A photo of me with the FJ when my Uncle owned it while stationed at Kaneohe Bay, HI. Please ignore the Speedo...



33252.jpg
 
Well I can't even come close to any old the stories I have already read here but I do have a few of my own. Working on hot combines all day long in 110+ degree temps getting dizzy and woozy in the sun even though I am drinking gallons of water. A wrench left in the sun will burn your hand.

Crawling down inside the mixer tank of a grinder mixer to weld patches to the mixing auger tube. I am dripping with sweat everything around me is shiny steel so I get buzzed every time I put a new welding rod in the stinger.
 
One of my dads customer was a rendering company, we had to work on those trucks, took days to get smell out of my nose.
 
Working near the engine of a recently running combine on a 90 degree day. Actually, even working on a cold combine near the engine in the back corner of a shop on even a moderate summer day. There is NO air movement back there. Drink what seems like 10 gallons of water, only to immediately sweat it all out again.
 
We had a contractor spreading sewage sludge in our area and I caught some of the repair work. Probably the worst repair was changing out a bearing on one of their conveyors.
The smell of this "product" defies description. And it had staying power too. My wife drove in behind me when I got home that night and could smell me before she got out of the car. My work clothes stayed out of the house for several days to be hosed down before they were allowed to go to the washer. Never before or since did I ever have my tools stink.
 
I think I would have left the pump behind! How much could a stupid pump cost? Man pig poo is worst than human stink!
 
I worked at a Bobcat dealer for a few years and I would say a bad job was anything that involved a skid loader at a slaughter plant, garbage dump, or waist treatment facility. I got sent to repair a mini excavator that broke down in the middle of exhuming a grave at the cemetary (that was a little creepy). On the less nasty side there was repairs on snowplows at 2 in the morning in sub zero temps. Most of our livestock customers would at least give their machines a good wash before sending them in. If they didn't we cleaned them at $75 per hour. We dealt with the public so having the whole building smell like a hog farm wasn't an option. I went on one call where somebody ran a machine into a manure lagoon, burying it up to the cab roof. I told them recovering it was beyond my ability.
 
Not mechanical, but one of the worst jobs I ever did was going down into the east cell house at the then Joliet Prison after a sewage pipe broke and over a period of time flooded it with about a million gallons of raw sewage, which is why all of the phones went dead. The open cable got flooded and shorted out. I went out there, knew about the splice down under the cell house. They opened the hatch to the basement, and there was raw sewage almost completely up to the floor, and the basement was 10 feet deep. I'm guessing the length of about 300' and a width of about 100' by 10' deep. That's a lot of raw sewage and I told them no way, pump it and clean it out. I came back the next day, they had it pumped out, but not cleaned. I suited up in boots, rain gear, rubber gloves and went down into the biggest septic tank I can imagine, found the splice, cleaned and redid it as best I could, got the phones working. Lots and lots of mosquitoes down there. I figured I'd come down with hepatitis or AIDS if one of them had bitten on of the infected inmates before biting me. All in all, was one crappy job.

Mark
 
No way. That was very dangerous. A more immediate concern is being overcome by fumes, methane, CO2, etc. No way you should have been in an area like that without a respirator.
 
Working under coal dozers and flying crusher parts out of a building with a crane in freezing rain on a third story roof on the shores of Lake Huron, while wearing 2 pairs of wet Carhartt's for 20 hour stretches.

Ross
 
(quoted from post at 21:51:09 02/23/16) No way. That was very dangerous. A more immediate concern is being overcome by fumes, methane, CO2, etc. No way you should have been in an area like that without a respirator.
Click to expand...
...or a proxy! :shock:
 
Jeff the pump would have been worth several thousand dollars. The trouble was it fell across the pit/sump opening. We could not put another pump in the pit. This was a smaller/older building with only one opening. The newer buildings have 4-6 openings so you can move to another one and pump the pit down.
 
Worst mechanic job for a 6'2" guy was replacing a heater core on a Datsun 280-Z 12 hours flatrate and inappropriately sized human components.
Worst dirty nasty was greasing a SP125 IH combine. 120 fittings plus chains. 4 hours and worst after soybeans.
nasty was a Chicken room in a barn that had not seen a pitch fork in 12 years. It was 3.5 feet deep in the far corner, and 2' thick at the door. Can you Smell AMMONIA. It came up in solid patties of condensed organic matter. Jim
 
Well, if I had to do it all over again, probably wouldn't have. But, they had the plumbers down there with me, and inmates that they had helping clean it up, shoveling with scoop shovels and squeegeeing the concrete floor after they pumped it out. I was down there again sometime after that after they had it all cleaned up. Just as bad was working on the phone cable in the tunnels between the cells. Just like in the movies, the sinks and toilets are at the backs of the cells, and the galleries can be four stories high, so nothing like being in the tunnels between the backs of the cells working on the wiring and have an inmate flush the toilet in his cell above you, and the pipes leak. There truly are some crappy jobs out there.

Mark
 
Parents went to the beach in middle of summer. Turned off the air conditioner in their house. Checked their house after about 3 days and it was about 100 degrees inside. Soon as I walked in the door, I could smell something. Opened the upright freezer. all melted and "juices" from the meat packages had leaked out on the floor and soaked up the wall. Opened a window and shoveled and threw stuff into a trailer. YUCK.
Richard in NW SC
 
Great! 20 years out of the mechanic business (of 25+ years) and you had to bring back all these horror stories. Strangely, one of the main reasons I got out (besides getting too old) was I couldn't stand dealing with the customers anymore.
 
Changing the starter on a '82 Diesel Chevette. Dad had two of those cars and they had Isuzu diesel engines in them. The GM starters were not strong enough to keep turning the diesel engines sop they got replace pretty regular. Did get pretty good at changing them, but was glad to see both of them leave when he sold them.
 
Working at a hospital, the chiller plant cooling tower lost one of two fan motors. Replaced it standing on a board above the cooling water. It was a big motor. IT was a hot summer day. The other fan was running. It's a wonder I'm still alive.
 
Hi, some comments surely were more difficult than mine but comes to my mind is when I was changing the starter on my Toyota 4 cyl diesel. Had to find it first. Near firewall. Had to remove all air intake stuff, even the hyd clutch stuff then stand on my head with things poking my belly. Then bolts so close to firewall with 1/2" to spare and work by feel as you couldn't see it! YIKES!!! Ed Will
 
Was working at a sheet metal shop one summer during high school. I got the job of painting the 50 x 100' 2 story shop, it was mostly T-111 siding. Was using a spray outfit that was rented so it had to be done quick as possible. Only thing standing between me and finishing the job was ... BEES. I looked up at the eaves of that building and there dozens of huge wasp nests!! I had never seen so many. It was Saturday afternoon and the spray outfit had to be back Monday morning. I said the h3ll with it and just started spraying. It wasn't long before I was using more paint killing bees that I was getting on the siding! After a few hours the wasps had me surrounded all of a sudden. I dropped the spray gun and made a run for my truck. Jumped in the truck and just watched a cloud of bees swarming all around the spray outfit, could hardly see it. Came back Monday morning and they were still there, couldn't get near the sprayer. Boy did I catch holy heck, because the paint had all dried inside the sprayer!
 
Worst mechanic job? Removing/adding shims behind the bearing housing on the centre two rows of a Gleaner black frame corn head while its still on the combine. Can you bend like a pretzel?

Undertaker had to remove a body from a trailer home where the poor fellow died on the toilet 3 months before anyone noticed...

Makes my worst job look like a walk in the park!

Ben
 
(quoted from post at 09:55:43 02/24/16)
Undertaker had to remove a body from a trailer home where the poor fellow died on the toilet 3 months before anyone noticed...
Ben
Click to expand...
That would be a bad day at work for sure.
 
Changing the Cabin Master Pressure Regulator on the first B-47 jet bomber I was crew chief on..S/N 51-2338 back in 1956. This unit is "buried" in a compartment below the floor level in the cockpit behind the co-pilot's seat. You have to lay on your stomach curled around the seat and work through an access hole about 12 X 14 inches and 16 inches deep. The regulator unit is secured to the pressure bulkhead by a dozen Phillips head capscrews in a circular pattern about 10 inches in diameter. You have to use a magnetic tool to remove and replace these capscrews because you cannot reach them at all with your hands. You loosen and tighten them with a socket Phillips screwdriver, 12 inch long 1/4inch drive extension and ratchet. Of course you have a gasket to replace and keep in position aligned with the holes perfectly too as you do this "little detail". Thank God I was young and kinda skinny in those days, I doubt if I could do it now..(weigh about 60 lbs. more and can't see without glasses).
 
Working on any European built vehicle. Especially Volkswagen and BMW, you can keep your German engineering, I am not impressed. Also, try changing the right side exhaust manifold , complete with broken off bolts , on a 2010 or so F150.
 
centash:

"Undertaker had to remove a body from a trailer home where the poor fellow died on the toilet 3 months before anyone noticed..."

That's what HAZ-MAT suits & Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus are for. As a Coroner, I've done similar. The ones that I really dislike are the "Crispy Critters" - structure fires where a human body was inside during the fire. Normally, the only thing you find left is a Skull and bloated Torso, the extremities have burned away. Not only do you have to contend with going into the smouldering remains of the structure with it's sharp, jagged pieces of metal that can penetrate your suit; but you also have to remove the remains of the body. Then the real problems begin, you have to identify the body, and then determine HOW they died. Did they die BECAUSE OF the fire or were they dead PRIOR TO the fire. A lot of things to be done in a Post-mortem Examination.

Doc :>(
 
K Effective:

That looks to be about a '69 or '70 Toyota Landcruiser.
Great vehicles, I had a 1967 FJ-40 Toyota Landcruiser that I bought right off the Dealers Showroom floor.
Mine was a Red with White Hardtop model, with an 8000 lb. pull PTO Winch behind the front bumper.
Traded it off in 1975 for a 1971 Chevy K-10 4x4 P/U with a full Utility Bed (which I still have).
A couple of months before the trade, I was caught in the middle of a two-way traffic accident,
I got nailed from BOTH directions. Surprisingly, the FJ-40 was the ONLY vehicle to drive away
from the scene under it's own power, all the other vehicles had to be flat-bedded away from the accident site.
Wish I still had it!

Doc
 
I spent 20 years in the USAF as a aircraft crew chief on B52's and B-1's. I work on my own vehicles, except exhaust systems. I work on tractors as a hobby. I am a small engine mechanic at a mower dealership. The worst mechanic job I have run across is the customer that thinks they are first even though they unloaded their mower right next to the 15 that are already waiting.

Rodney 8)
 
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