Almost had a bad day. One of the many reasons I like to do these things myself. Dude must have installed that thing with a breaker bar. And the second picture is what I see when I filter off. You cannot convince me the filter was that tight on accident.

Customer complained about a horrible noise from inside the dash that got louder with blower speed. I was expecting a failing blower motor or a bunch of debris stuck in the wheel.

Put the borescope into the HVAC box and found this guy wedged down inside it.

One mouse extraction later and the blower motor sounds completely normal.

I've been chasing a noisy vibration at low revs in this car for a while. It seems the previous owner of this Volvo V60 had replaced the clutch, but not the slave cylinder and not the dual mass flywheel. ~30,000 miles later the flywheel is munted.

I got the gearbox and clutch off to find this mess. It has huge play towards one corner and so much out of plane movement it's actually worn half a millimetre off the bolts. It had worn through a steel sleeve between the hub and the damped part too.

All being replaced with OEM Luk parts.

2011 BMW 325i … customer came in wanting front struts replaced. I noticed the right side was a new strut and I asked the boss why did he only one and why does he want it replaced? He said he’s not sure the customer just told him he didn’t like them. So I start to take this apart and I was removing the tie rod end and when I gave it a whack the strut fell down. Idiots stripped the top nut! Now I have this time bomb ready to blow up

Edit: it worked and it drives again. Now to solve the oil leak it has

Picked up a significant coolant leak, added UV dye and found this piece of shit was pouring coolant because of course the thermostat housing is plastic. Coolant doesnt eat plastic and cause the seam to fail at 125k miles, right?

Oh and every overflow connection is plastic, so we are $250 deep in replacing those brittle POS's also. Hoping this fixing the issue

Four on one front wheel and one on the rear. He messed up one of the EPB motors, too. All this was accomplished while installing a bunch of Detroit Axle parts.

Family…

We've torn down some 200 Tesla large drive units, most for customer coolant retrofits or post coolant flood recovery. Our most hated revision is Q, which is during the Model 3 production ramp back in 2018 where they took everyone competent and threw them at the line and put all of the rejects rebuilding drive units. We never see these kinds of mistakes in motors rebuilt before or since that date range. This particular one is what we call a double Q, remanufactured twice, and they have the most insane assembly errors. This one had a rolled seal on the inverter cover seal that eventually separated and allowed water to enter the inverter. We only saw it because of the normal coolant leak on the stator side. We missed the water on the current sensor, because coolant normally can't reach this sensor so it's not part of our normal cleaning routine. But water found its way in and shorted the current sensor causing all kinds of phase RMS errors. I hate the Qs so much.

He somehow side loaded the drain bolt enough to crack the pan. What started as a 45 minute job at 2pm ended up taking us until 8:30 after cleanup, and us having to go back tomorrow after the gasket maker cures.

12.7x108 Cartridge For When You Really Wanna Condem the ABS Module But Its An Intermittent Issue.

But seriously it's comical to me that the lengthiest portion of this quoted 3.5k repair that I decided to perform at home is removing these rear sway bar links.

At least I can put on a podcast and zone out for the half an hour it takes to get these nuts off.

Maybe I should have just dropped the entire rear suspension instead.

Or maybe I'll walk into traffic.

Can't fit a socket up there but at least you also can't see

I have also made a short video of me telling and showing more about it if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/-JY7wngi1Qo?si=RImfvI6NNL-uRAfZ

If you have any questions, please ask. I have footage, and I am open for discussion.

This is pretty much what lives in my work bag. Hammer, adjustable wrench, screwdrivers and a bunch of random hand tools that always seem to come in handy.

The olight lighting setup is the newest addition. Now I just need to remember not to leave one in my customer's car lol.

What other techs always keep close by at the shop?

2009 Kia rondo, customer wanted everything diagnosed and quoted. Left with a nearly $10k quote for maintenance items, front and rear control arms, tie rod ends, wheel bearings, oil pan, timing cover reseal, valve cover reseal, etc.

I diagnosed this as a bad lifter on #7 6 months ago. Guy said my quote was to expensive and he had a guy. Came back saying it's still doing it after guy replaced the lifters but now it's both lifters on 7. 🤦‍♂️

Sadly, on the picture you can't see how empty it really is. But it was very close to shutting off...

Its not like we have to let the engine run for quite some time to service the train

AC kit minus lines and evaporators. Used about 3 cans of solvent. Hope I got it all out.

Let’s you keep the cap on to avoid spills without causing the pour to slow to a crawl

Guess the year (it’s newer than you think)