Rant: Hack mechanics (and possible lesson?)

[cstreit]

Originally posted by PBH
Oops, I have hylomar on my valve cover gaskets. But I knew I was a hack.

Actually when I said hylomar I was pissed and not thinking. It's non-hardening and therefore "okay" in my book. I love Hylomar HPF when applied sparingly and judiciously...

Originally posted by john_colasante
While I agree with most of what you say, and you certainly seem to have a reputation for a guy who takes pride in his work, the sentiment above is a bit over-rated.

John_c... You make a good point and each person should use their own good judgement when selecting a shop. ... so maybe "specialize in Porsche" isn't a hard and fast rule, but be sure you at least know that they know the peculiarities of the marque.


OKAY NOW... this was a perfectly good "pissed-off-from-spending-an-hour-cleaning-up-valve-cover-gasket-surfaces-because-of-some-numbnuts-and-I-need-to-vent" thread and now you guys are getting thought provoking.. Sheesh!

[Porsche_monkey]

Originally posted by cstreit
Actually when I said hylomar I was pissed and not thinking. It's non-hardening and therefore "okay" in my book. I love Hylomar HPF when applied sparingly and judiciously...

I wondered about that because I just wipe it off with brake cleaner, but I worried that that was a hack also.

As an aside Permatex seems to have lost the rights to sell hylomar, but NAPA sells it now.

Anyway, I can still think of another 20 reasons why I'm a hack...although I did resist the temptation to re-use a lot of tranny parts on my rebuild.

[dtw]

I could not for the life of me find a fitting I needed to connect my CIS fuel distributor return line (which bolts to a standoff behind the #3 intake runner), and continuing return line from the tunnel. I finally figured out that I had the right males & females but without compression fittings on the correct ends. The ends I needed to mate had flat fittings designed for use with crush rings.

Though I'm ashamed to admit - I noticed that a fuel filter would go in between the fittings perfectly and essentially serve as the fitting I needed - so in it went. That's right, a filter downstream of the fuel injection system. Yes, I'm in my shame spiral. It was just in there a week so I could get the engine online - since then I've found the correct fitting and installed it.

Man, I am glad to get that off my chest.

[cstreit]

Now we've turned into Mechanics ShortCuts Anonymous!

[sww914]

OK, so my hack of the year deserves mention. I just laid bondo 1/2" thick on a Porsche. Not only that, it's a special Porsche, one of about 40 ever made. It makes me feel sick, but the car really needs a complete restoration, I'm just trying to patch it back together until the owner wants to invest the time & money to do it right. In my defense, however, the bondo was over an inch thick before I started, so it's only half as bad as it was.
Is that adequate justification?
Oh well, at least I've honored my marriage vows for 15 years without incident.

[cstreit]

Originally posted by sww914
Oh well, at least I've honored my marriage vows for 15 years without incident.

I'm not sure I believe you, sir, after reading that story above.

...anyone else have a confession?

[Porsche_monkey]

I am willing to admit that I never strayed in my first 15 years.

[wastintime]

I'll make this confession, since it's not really my confession...

First shop I worked at, while I was an undergrad in college was a purely Porsche Race/Service shop, nothing else came through the doors. I liked my boss, but he truly was a self-reightous ********* at times. I had an early 911 I think it was a '72 T with a 3.2 motor in it on a lift for something. I have my own strict set of procedures so I never forget certain things. The absolute last thing I do to a car is torque the lugnuts as I lower it off the lift. Well, I get the wheels on the car, and decide i need to go to the bathroom before lowering the car... come out and the car is gone... I'm freaking out going WTF...

like 10 minutes later my boss comes in screaming at me because he took the car for a test drive and a wheel almost fell off. So I asked him how stupid was he if he took a car off a lift and drove it without asking if it was finished... what if it didn't have any oil in it, etc... and why was he taking a car I was working on out anyway.

That time, the time he got pissed and threw a hammer across the shop and it bounced into his own car, and the time he left a tensioning tool in a 930 (interestingly enough it didn't fail for about 6k miles) motor are forever priceless. Or the nights we used to stay up before races changing mixture settings he'd made on cars with an ancient afr gauge that he readily admitted was broken, but whenever you'd compare it to my LM-1 he'd just go "it's digital, can't be right"

And not that he was really a bad mechanic, he's one of the most knowledgable Porshce mechs I've ever met, and he did a lot of high level race prep, etc... he was just getting old and making mistakes, and getting crankier and harder to deal with to boot... god I'm glad I don't work there anymore.

[fty]

I like my car cause its not perfect and take a lot of pride in "properly" fixing what has been mis-installed or not installed at all, its a learning experience for me and having fun doing it.

[fixnprsh]

I once pulled a 930 motor for oil leaks, it had been out at another shop 6 months prior for a reseal, it was puken' oil fron the base gasket on cyl. #3 so I pulled the motor, found they put JB weld all around the nose bearing to stop the leak up there, Doh! So I sold the customer a complete tear down, found missing lock tabs on the oil pump nuts, and RTV on the chain housings and cylinder bases and just about everything else, and the bearings for the inter. shaft were paper thin. We decided it was in best interests of all of us to redo the motor.

Sad part is these hacks usually get away with this stuff forever, they never change. Where I work now we have plenty of them. Unfortunately seems to be getting harder to find good wrenches. Usually the customer is the one to pay the price