Stories of stupid mechanical stuff you have been told by clueless people.

was at tech yesterday and the teacher was telling us about how he worked for the NRMA road side services people. some lady called and said her car has just stopped dead on the highway and smells of something burning. teacher got there and from about 50m away could smell it was a fried motor. got to her and asked her if any warning lights had come on or anything strange n she she replied, "well there was this one red light coming on it looked like something to do with the oil or fuel an it was just really annoying shining in my face so i just put a band aid over it and kept driving"

 

Some guy tried to tell me his "walkinshaw tuned" NA Alloytec190 with a "hsv chip" made 205rwkw today. I laughed.

So true. One day i was at supercheap, a V6 Commodore manged past outside and one of the checkout chicks goes to the other "that was a nice v8". I almost coughed up a lung.

Not true. I6 and V6 both fire every 120º so their exhaust sound is identical.

All you have to do is make the extractors longer on 2 of the cylinders and it'll have a "v8 sound". The problem is that on either engine the amount you have to lengthen it is neither physically practical or particularly good for engine performance...

 

this bloke i used to know back in the day, had a vk. he decided it wasn't running to its "true" potential and decided to play around with the distributor to "advance the timing" . After a bit of mucking around his EST light came on, on the dash. He drove it like this for weeks and made a point of telling everyone that EST means quickest, fastest bestest. Which he claims he looked up in a dictionary
He also took an angle grinder to the wheel arches to cut the fold out that kept rubbing on his wheels. He insisted that wheels off a HQ were fine.
Took his air cleaner off for "more performance"
Just a few of his antics. We used to piss our selves laughing at this clown lol

 

lol even though the stud pattern is different :hmmm:

 

no the stud pattern is the same the offset is different which is why they were rubbing on the guards

 

fail........

 

lol!!!!!!!!!

 

well after a bit of research, i have found the stud pattern is different (slightly). I always just thought it was the off set. but they were on old mates car. Obviously not safe though

 

Almost. Compared with an I6...
A 60 degree V6 will sound the same.
A 90 degree V6 with an even-fire crank e.g. Commodore will sound the same.
A 90 degree V6 with an odd-fire crank will sound different because the exhaust pulses are unevenly spaced.

V6 engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

and the retarded topic spreads like a disease to yet another thread.

 

I was wrecking a car and a guy called up for a price on a motor. The car was still mostly together so I had him come out and hear it running. I explained to him that I would remove the motor from the car that afternoon and he could come back the next morning to pick it up. So he arrives to find the motor ready for him and then queries "where's the gearbox" to which I replied that he had said he wanted the complete motor only minus the transmission and bolt ons. He immediately started to tell me that transmission was the diff which he didn't need and that the gearbox should have been included because a gearbox is uniquely synchronized to a motor and you can't use a different gearbox on a motor and if you try to use a different gearbox you will blow the motor.

In the end he drove away with the motor as I had prepared it for him after a long earful about how he was a moron.

 

Here's one you hear over and over on car forums...

Someone has overheating problems and so they take the thermostat out. Someone else [correctly] points out that this is a bad idea. They then go on to say that the water flows through the radiator so quick it doesn't have a chance to cool down so overheating will be worse. The thing is, if say the water flows twice as fast it will only spend half as long per trip through the radiator, sure, but it makes twice as many trips so that should equal out. What's more, if the water spends less time in the radiator giving up it's heat then it spends correspondingly less time in the engine picking up heat in the first place so why should the speed of circulation be an issue in relation to overheating? Maybe if the flow rate was causing pump cavitation or steam pockets in the head somewhere that might affect things, but simply the higher rate of water flow I can't imagine is going to do anything bad.

 

I had often heard it said that when using a shifting spanner, always make sure the movable jaw is on the left when doing up and on the right when undoing, that is to say, always on the side that the handle is moving toward. The idea is that there is supposedly less strain on the relatively fragile movable jaw. Have a close look though at the position of the contact point between the hex head and the jaw and you can see the this advice is exactly opposite to the right way. The contact point will be further out toward the tip and so has greater leverage on the jaw. Best to have the movable jaw away from the direction of the handle so the contact point is closer in and less likely to push things out of shape.

 

Lol, if anything i'd be more worried about stripping a nut rather then breaking or wearing out the shifter. Solution to that is easy though - don't use a shifter on high torque nuts

So we agree that for all intents and purposes, any V6 made in the last 4 decades should sound the exactly the same. Cool. I'm sure that was very informative for the owner of the 1950's V6.

 

A long time ago, I unfortunately owned a F**d. Bought it because my wife could not manage the manual transmission in the early model Commodores.

Within the 12 month warranty period, I started to worry about the paint. Signs of "crows feet" were appearing on the rear mudguards. I had access to the best paint guages (aviation) and checked the paint thicknesses - fine on the bonnet, boot lid and roof, appallingly thin on the side panels. Complained to the dealer, who told me there was no trouble. When I would not accept that, he booked me in to see the factory paint expert.

The "expert" starts by telling me the specification thickness for the paint, then produces an unbalanced elco meter to measure it. I questioned his use of this meter when held horizontally, and fortuitously had a copy of the instructions for the use on both balanced and unbalanced elco meters. Even though the instructions stated that the unbalanced meter should only be used held vertical, he said that it didn't matter. I tried to explain that the effect of gravity on the magnet in the meter, to which he replied, "The magnet is inside the meter. Gravity does not apply".

Nevertheless, I still lost really, though I did get a written guarantee from Ford that they would accept extended liability for the paint integrity.

 

Recently I read that it is incorrect to jack a car up on the diff...................Fail

 

Clever dick, aren't you. I was asking what others did because I have read a warning not to do this. It was IRS suspension I was referring to, not a rigid rear axle, so get your facts straight.

I wasn't telling people not to, I was asking whether others did it or not. I got the message that most do it without a worry.

If that's a fail, big deal.

 

I wasn't taking anything you said as advice.

 

I gathered that. I wasn't giving advice.

 

Nor should you be.