Why are previous owners all idiots???

While driving to work today, noticed the clutch had more and more travel.

Managed to get home (by this time I had no clutch!) and on examining the car it appears the gearbox is separating from the engine at the front  8O

Bolts missing everywhere! The most major of which is the one on the bottom of the starter motor and one of the ones on the top that holds the gearbox to the engine.

Looks like a job and a half is going to be involved finding some bolts. Not to mention potential damage done to the clutch/flywheel/ input shaft bearings from it running out of alignment.

I know the car had a new engine before I got it, but what was wrong with putting all the flippin' bolts back in!

Clowns    

Christ one saving grace at least you aint a bird who would of drove it as normal for about another 1000 miles and completely wrecked it.
When i bought my car (rivage) it was a bit of a wreck and the guy i bought it off said 'it dosen't run properly i think the engine is wrecked but i am no mechanic!' with one look at the engine i noticed he had the ignition leads going to completely the wrong spark plugs they where strecthed and almost pulling dizzy cap off!! I went to see the car with my bro (in the clipper) we agreed a price the car a bargain (as engine was wrecked lol) nipped to local VW garage bought new ignition leads popped em on and drove the 2minuets away to my house car has been perfect since!! so sometime crappy previouse owners are a god send!!

not good there then mate…
Crazyquiff could probably sort you out with some bolts

I know what you mean tho about previous owners tho, had a few bodges in past, one was main engine bolts shoved into holes with silicone instead of nuts on other side 8O  8O

Helping a mate with a 1972 SIII Landrover hes recently bought. It's been rebuilt by PO on a galv chassis and lots of other bits are brand new, it must have took hundreds of hours and ?thouands. But who ever did the restoration bodged things like using thin tin and duck tape to 'plate' over holes in the passenger footwell :dontknow:

and why the hell does every previous owner insist on using those flippin scotch lock things on every flippin circuit in the car?!?!?!?!

must have pulled hundreds of the things out the car by now!!

had them on every classic Ive ever had! why not just fix it properly?!

^ Tell me about it!
Miles of badly wired spaghetti is my other pet hate! And why does nobody use long enough wires? They always have to cut them  2 inches too short and stretch them!

Anyway, in other news;
After dodging torrential downpours; searching around in the shed and garage and raiding the spares London Taxi; I managed to find enough bolts to get the box back with the car again.

It seems it was held on by 1 bolt in the top of the starter motor and one bolt on the top of the gearbox! How it never came apart before I'll never know. The bottom starter motor bolt is also goes into an engine mount so that explains the judder that used to occur if you set off too quick in first.

Just tested it and it drives fine and no judder. Half the bits of clutch cable mounting were also missing so I took the opportunity to fabricate a rubber mounting from a Ranger rover shock absorber bush and a small piece of tube.
Hooray for all those odd bits and pieces I keep in various drawers/ ice cream tubs
 
 :mrgreen:

^^ ahh a man after my own heart - after working in the kit car industry for a while I love a good creative "bodge/quick fix" that actually works!!

hahaha "bodge/quick fix" that actually works!! you sound surprised!!
the one thing u can never bodge/quik fix is an exhaust always has some way to brake ur temp fix!!

ha ha you mock but just got through my MOT last week with a full tin of gun gum holding the tail pipe hanging on - only about 10mm of weld left at top of pipe!

i think my car has had a few of those in its time.. looking down through the engine bay at the front panel, in front of the drivers arch (where the chin spoiler bolts on) and theres a steel plate jutting out 8O where its been 'repaired'

and the heatshield for the exhaust manifolfd appears to be a 5mm sheet of steel also… great :roll:

theres plenty more i know, but they slip my mind why wont people fix stuff properly :evil:

I heard a nice "technical" term for these home made fixes the other day, by a home-brewer who converted a fridge into an ale pump, (with a proper handle and everything, it was freakin' awesome, ale wernt bad either)

BODGENEERING.  :wink:

BODGENEERING - I tell you what that is going on my CV

'expert and skills trademan in BODGENEERING'

X said

  why wont people fix stuff properly :evil:

It sometimes amazes me, the lengths people will go to in order to not do a job properly!

There was a reply to a post on the Bedford CF forum, where I was talking about welding on my van, and someone actually said they'd repaired their chassis with bits of cereal packet and some Chemical Metal.8O  "passed the MOT, much cheaper and easier than welding and just as good" was the advice. Until it crashes it and snaps in half…….
    :roll:

i know the feeling every time i go to do a job on mine i find a new thing the owner has bodged or left….. when i got it it had a piece of sheet metal as a scuttle cover on removing this to replace with an original i found an oil soaked piece of 2 by 4 and an empty vernier caliper box? the seats have home made brackets on bottom whic make the seats sit at an angle. the handbrake frame was welded back on very poorly hence why it came off in my hand and was also wonky…… all this from a 'mechanic'!

I can add to this one! My cars previous owner was apparently an 'enthusiast'. So when he told me he used to have electric windows, and then water started p1ssing in from inside the doors the week I got it I was naturally intrigued…. took the door cards off on saturday and lo and behold, no door skin on the passenger side, NOTHING! So the drivers side… took door car off, the door skin was there, well, the top half, the bottom looked like it had been ripped off by hand! Don't people realise these things are there for a reason?!?! Also the half a tonne of unnecessary mastic gumming up my roof handles took hours to remove. GRRRRRr  

grrr, previous owner syndrome. the one i just bought has obviously, in some departments, been very well looked after, the interior for instance is spot on, and the exterior, apart from being de chromed is pretty good to, but the engine is a different story…

in the 3(almost 4) weeks i've owned it, the car has developed 2 fuel leaks, spurts splutters and dribbles its coolant everywhere as soon as its at a good temperature, there are bolts missing all over the show and the bolts that are there are invariably the wrong ones(rocker cover was held on with a carraige nut(the square ones used for wooden fencing!)), oh and the choke does'nt work and i think the cylinder head is knackered and the block has a nasty scratch inside cylinder no.4…

The list is sadly still growing, but, even with all that, if the previous owner had told me what was wrong with it i probably would have still bought it, because of the aforementioned good bits, it just would have been nice to know what he had tried as regards fixing the engine as its had work done recently. my family say sell it, my neighbours say sell it, my friends say sell it, my head says sell it, my heart says otherwise…. :roll:

lol i love these kind of stories previouse owners are hilariouse. I viewed a cabrio once..........you will never believe this!! and the geezer had a massive sound system in his boot fair enough but he has drilled 2 holes for speakers in the rear cross member (the big RSJ in the boot) and they wher 6"x 4" holes in the support beams!!!! i walked away swiftly lol

Crusty sill lips due to people not jacking the car sensibly is the one that bugs me most. My mk2 developed quite a nasty hole in the sill which eventually killed it, and I never once jacked it there in the 5 years I had it. My mk1 has corrosion here too, luckily it looks cosmetic - the lip is fooked but the sill is fine. I want to get this repaired at some point to both preserve the car's looks and to ensure it doesn't eat away any further. But why can't people just take a bit more care with where and how they jack?

i can add to this myself. a couple years ago my caddy got side swiped by a big F-Series pickup. folded the bedside over. so that owner (2 prior to me) CUT that section of the bed off instead of fixing it. the previous owner to me had a problem wiht the steering. so he replaced the rack BUT took his air hammer to the openings where teh rack goes through the body to pull the rack. well that wasn't the problem. he found out that he was missing the sinch bolt for the upper U-joint in the steering column. so he WELDED it to keep it in place. that wasn't the whole problem. the upper u-joint was bad. thank god i ahd a spare steering column with u-joint assembly. also it had a MASSIVE vacuum leak and no vac advance. why you ask??? well the port for the advance was disconnected at the throttle body and the vac pot on the dizzy was connected straight to another vac pot that ran part of the emissions control. no vacuum there. he also PAINTED the carpet, door panels, most of teh inside of the cab and the console black. without cleaning anything of course. so it looked like crap. he also decided < once again in a drunken stupor, to paint HALF the truck FLAT WHITE right over the factory slate gray mettalic paint AND the sportruck logo on the hood.

previous owners suck. sometimes you get one that has taken good care of their cars. like the PO of my Caprice Wagon. no problems with it at all.