These Are The Most Annoying Problems The Jalopnik Audience Has Caused By Working On Their Own Cars

Earlier this week I asked you, our adoring audience, to own your humanity and share the most annoying problems you have caused by working on your own cars, and you all did not disappoint. There were lots of great answers, but this is just a roundup of a handful of my favorite answers, so feel free to go back and read through the other responses if you're looking to learn from other people's mistakes! Or if you want to help your fellow readers avoid a mistake you made, drop it in the comments section at the end of this blog.

My answer was the unbearable squeaking that I caused when I swapped out my Mini's stock rear sway bar for a thicker one, but failed to apply enough silicone lubricant to the rubber stabilizer bracket. Friction can be a friend or a foe in this world, and as much as I love it between my tires and the road, sometimes you just need more lube. Anyway, here are some of the annoying problems y'all have caused by working on your own cars. 

50 years ago the temperature gauge on my Triumph Spitfire was telling me the engine was overheating. I replaced the thermostat, the water pump, and I forget what else now. Nothing helped. Somewhere in that process I must have introduced a coolant leak, because I had to continually add antifreeze. Once when I didn't top it up soon enough the engine really did overheat and warped the head. Now coolant was getting into the cylinders and the oil was turning to a chocolate milk shake. I was just living with that until I could have the head ground. But I had to leave home for two weeks on business. When I got back the engine was seized solid. If I tried to push start the car it left rubber on the road. I sold it for peanuts and bought a Scirocco, which was a disappointment all the time I owned it. I eventually realized that the temperature sensor (Lucas, of course) was the culprit, and the engine was fine until I started messing with it.

Submitted by: Arthur Pewty

I broke a spark plug while installing it. I started the threading by hand then tightened it with a torque wrench. I thought it was weird how long it was taking to get the plug fully tightened when all of a sudden the wrench turned freely. I had the wrench set incorrectly. Had to have the car towed to get the plug's threaded barrel removed. I thought for sure there was going to be some metal shaving that dropped down into the cylinder but I got lucky and everything looked fine and no damage was done. This was on an AP1 S2000.

Also, with a different vehicle, dropped about 4 quarts of oil on my garage floor because I didn't tighten the drain plug.

Submitted by: Mr. Whatsittoya

I tried replacing the valve cover on the wife's Cruze and ended up causing it to have an even larger oil leak than it had with the old valve cover.

Those 1.4 turbos had gaskets built into the valve cover so when (not 'if') they start to leak you have to replace the whole cover.

Submitted by: Anonymous II: The Sequel

Probably 1987 I bought a 1977 Subaru DL for $50 to use as a winter beater. I knew from the get go that I needed to replace a front fender and fix the floor because of rust. I rebuilt the carb,replaced the fender,and put a set of used snow tires on it and started on the floor. When I was finished I went to start it and nothing. I checked the battery and fuse box but they were good. I pulled the carpet back up and realized that I had cut through the wiring harness. My dad just laughed at me. He wound up calling a neighbor that was good at fixing other people's messes. About 60 minutes,a case of beer,and $25 was all it took to fix. He still makes fun of me about it when I see him.

Submitted by: Bruno

The most annoying problem I caused by working on my car(s) is my friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members asking/growing to expect I would want to work on theirs as well. For some unknown reason, they seem to think I would enjoy working on their rattle trap for 'free'. I would work on my car(s) to save money, to keep up with vehicle conditions, and yes, sometimes I did enjoy the sense of accomplishment. However, I am not running an automotive repair charity. I have a right to my 'free' time. Offer to show them how to do it themselves? They suddenly find to money to pay a mechanic.

Submitted by: Old_SLAAB_Guy

Definitely the rear sway bar on my 2004 Mazda 3. It was my car in college and after the warranty lapsed I started building it out for the AutoX I was racing at the time. I put on these massive Hotchkis sway bars with adjustable AWR Endlinks. It absolutely transformed the handling of the car, but it also was a never-ending nightmare.

I broke 4 different end links over the first 24 months it was installed, often leaving me under the car using safety wire to hold the swaybar up off the ground so I could make it home (including on the 250 mile trip back up to college.) And even when they weren't broken, the loud clunk from the rear which would randomly happen was incredibly disconcerting.

Submitted by: SantaCruzin

It was a motorcycle, I finished rebuilding the engine on a honda cbx1000 (inline 6 motorcycle engine, one of the best sounding bike engines of all time – seriously check youtube). After the rebuild was all done and I was about to test fire for the first time I was cleaning up my workbench and found one of the piston wrist pin retaining clips. Was it an extra? Did I forget to install one? I had to stop in the middle of the rebuild when a family member was injured and went into the hostpital, a couple days turned into a couple months. Now, I was pretty good at documenting everything and where i stopped each day so I could resume smoothly... but this had been an emergency and didn't have time to make notes, and I wasn't about to test fire without knowing for sure. Cue pulling things back apart....

It was a spare.

Submitted by: Hank_Kill

I took my perfectly good driving Explorer, with 75k miles on it, in for an oil change. The mechanic told me the fontend was shot and it would be $3,500 to fix. I doubted the advice, but swapped out the entire fontend suspension on my own anyway using aftermarket parts. Within 6 months I did the entire job again, this time using Ford parts. I should have never touched it. I still think there was nothing wrong with it in the first place.

Submitted by: C M

I slowly modded a very nice C5 corvette into a miserable-to-drive penalty box. Harder bushings, stiffer shocks, bigger tires, stiffer sway bars, more finicky electronics, lousy HID headlights, an ultimately more annoying stereo, etc. Was happy to get rid of it once I was "done".

Submitted by: BuddyS

While replacing the hood release cables on my BMW 335i, I exhaled near one of the plastic coolant lines that ran over the top of the radiator.

Naturally the line exploded and sprayed hot coolant everywhere. I blame myself for being so careless.

Submitted by: GrannyShifter