What was your first car repair?....and story/background behind it...?

[H.G.P.]

With the expertise and astute posts on the board, I'm interested in knowing something of everyone's first experience in hands-on auto repair (not necessarily your P car). (Simple or complex)

My first experience was with my Karman Ghia, which I knew absolutely nothing about, but enjoyed the "down-in" experience behind the wheel of that car. I was about to go on Fall semester break, and had to drive over 9 1/2 hours from New York to home. All excited and ready to leave, jumped in the car with a friend I was giving a lift home to, and the car turned and turned over, but would not start. My friend, MIT engineering accepted, who had decided to become a missionary, surprised me by stating that maybe it was a thing (a "thing" to me that is), called the distributor cap and rotor.
We opened the rear, popped the distributor cap in the dark under a campus street light, and he showed me my first "carbon" all over the distributor contacts and rotor. (I never had changed either. or even knew what they were). So we proceeded to clean the contacts with (I believe) with what we had available at the moment (a crude pocket knife) (scrape, scrape).....and it started right up. Off we went.
That car gave me 3 more years of pleasure and learning in all kinds of driving conditions (the snows in New York and Penn, all the way to La, etc.,) ...(and many miles to the following owner)...and my appreciation for German engineered automobiles.

[pwd72s]

Repairing the front drive shaft U joint on a 1950 Ford. Transmission soon to follow....

[Bobboloo]

Tune-up on my first car. A 66' VW Beetle.

Since then. Numerous top-end jobs, only two complete rebuilds, suspensions, all of the other stuff, you name it.

Bodywork, even painting,although I'm not very good at it. I do good prep but just haven't gotten the hang of the timing and spray control + pressure thing.

I've still got a long way to go. But this is a hobby for me so any mistake I make is alright because it means I just learned something.

What I've never done.
A tranny rebuild.

Bobby

[dickster]

there's been so many i don't remember the first

[True Brit]

Not the first, but probably the most embarrassing was a minor front-end rebuild on an MGC I had a number of years back.

I had just taken various bits out to be blasted and powder-coated, including the brake/clutch master cylinder brackets and cover, so the brake and clutch pedals were basically just hanging loose in the car. As the car was on a sloping driveway, I was pondering how to get it back into the garage for the evening (not enough room to work in it, you see). So I thought, "I know, I'll turn it over on the starter motor and crank it back in". Except I forgot to disconnect the coil lead....so you can guess what happened. It was on the choke, so it started almost straight away, in gear, went barrelling off into the garage with me hauling on the handbrake trying to stop it (don't know why I just didn't switch it off again!), and half-way out the other side as well.

Oops. Had to see the funny side of it. Fortunately the garage was built of wood.

[911nut]

Dropping the engine on my '71 VW Super Beetle to replace the heat exchangers. The Super Beetle was my college car; purchased for $500 in '76, had 96k miles on it. My used to pretend it was a 911.

[Paul T]

When I was about 12 or 13, I threw a rod in my go-cart, B&S 10HP single cylinder. I had taken the governer off so it was running waaaay past redline (ah, youth). Blew a hole in the side of the case about the size of my fist. Tore the motor apart and with some help from my father, patched the hole in the case with a piece of sheet steel, lots of permatex and literally 30 or 40 rivets. New piston, rod and put it all together and I got some more life out of it....shoorty after that I got my first car, a 68 Bug that may have actually been worth less than the go-cart....really, really bad shape, no floorboards, but a load of fun.

[1Gunner]

My first repair/tuneup was on my very first car.
A 1970 Firebird.
I flipped the intake breather cap, to increase air flow..........!!!!
Only thing, it was a straight 6 and in retrospect it sounded like a sick truck.
But at 17 I had a HOTROD

[Adam]

My first repairs were done to my first car, an '82 Volvo 244.

I installed powersteering (easy!)
I changed the springs/shocks
I installed great stereo gear
I changed my own oil etc.
I replaced tailshaft bushes
I replaced panhard/castor/swaybar bushes.

I miss my old brick!

[jabb]

First car I ever owned bought a 62 Chevy Belair Wagon for $75
I was 16..... When I finally got it one the road it made this really bad noise...... To to the nieghbor who was a mechanic told me I needed new rear axle bearing's. Hve no money he told me what I needed to do to fix this and off I went pulled both axels new bearings and back on the road. Have not looked back since.

[78silversc]

First was a tuneup on my 72 Volkswagen Beetle perfomed with the help of my dad ( I was in Highschool)
The first "real" mechanical work came when I shortly thereafter, completely rebuilt the motor of my 2 stroke Suzuki GT380, all by myself....it ran after I was done too!

[Jdub]

A Norton Commando motorcycle with a bad layshaft bearing. The technical notes from the USNOA said of the Mk2a layshaft bearing "...will be labeled 'Made in Portugal'; fine for wine but not for critical gearbox parts."

Stripped it down in the sink, used the oven/frig. combo. to get the fresh bearing in, and put the gearbox back in. Very satisfying work!

Next was the bad rubber front brake hoses on a '69 MGB that caused the rotors to glow at night. Took me some time to figure out what that was since the hoses looked so good from the outside.

John

[ChrisBennet]

If changing brake pads isn't a "repair" than my first repair was replacing the clutch and adjusting the valves in my 911.
When I got the motor in I noticed I'd forgotten to attach the little bracket that holds some wires near the head temp sensor on the back of the engine. I found I could _just_ squeeze my arm and head into the left wheel well. Getting my head out was a different story. Got my head stuck in the wheelwell for a bit that time..
-Chris

[Sarah]

Tying my bumper back up on my Toyota Tercel after a Mercedes rear-ended me at a stop light....that is what I get for skipping my last class at the UofMN.

[Tim Polzin]

REAR u-joint of a 51 Ford, soon to follow with the transmission.

Tim

[L Sjoberg]

First real repair was dropping the engine in a '67 911 after we blew a hole in a piston while driving up North. It was my first P-car - boy, did I pick a dog to start with. Took a buddy and me just about 12 hours to get the engine out, which actually wasn't too bad considering I'd never even changed the oil before, and we were operating with just the Haynes manual. It sure would have helped to have had Pelican and this board back then! Then some 200 hours (over about 8 months) later of pulling out the interior, cleaning, overhauling the Webers, sandblasting, wire wheeling, painting, hauling the engine to the shop to fix what I couldn't, then fixing the stuff we did wrong the first time, and adding a Borla exhaust to replace the swiss cheese exchangers and muffler, the engine and tranny went back in. I ended up going through the whole d*mn car and it was still a marginal driver at the end, but at least we'd made enough progress to find someone to buy it

Since then it's been pretty much oil changes, routine maintenance and ticky-tack stuff. I've really got no desire to have a tranny and assorted parts parked in my living room for 8 months any longer, so the SC better keep running for another 100k miles!

[john walker's workshop]

i bought a 53 olds 2dr post from a friend in high school for $35. two payments . this was in '64, and i was 15 and no license yet. whatever, the cops were lax back then. it ran pretty well, but it only had a 303 engine, and another friend had a 324 in a '56. well hell, bigger's better right? so i set about doing my first engine swap. first off i gashed my wrist getting off the 56 hood, a scar i still sport to this day. after about a month, the 324 was running in the 53, and it ran ok, but sure smoked a lot more than the 303. shoulda checked it out better. bulk oil in the glass bottles @ 25 cents a qt kept it going. drove it around that summer, lost the brakes once coming up to a light and detoured over the curb and into a supermarket parking lot where i took out an abandoned cart and eventually managed to slow down by coasting in circles. later that summer, me and a couple of friends found a pile of radiators outside a local wrecking yard, appropriated them, and cashed them in at the local junk buyer for gas money, and on the way back home, at a yellow light, took a left in front of a chevy pickup and that was it for the olds. i thought he was stopping for the light, because the truck sat on a rake. apparently most pickups sit that way. karma maybe, but lessons learned? funny, just last weekend, i bought a 63 bug convertible (the bugster) 150 miles out of town and thought i'd drive it back to seattle. lost the brakes coming up to a stop and with about 2 seconds to react, swerved to the right and got 2 wheels up on the sidewalk and bypassed the line of cars at the light and managed to get into a 7/11 lot and did circles until it stopped. deja vu? gonna swap that engine too. 911 power now. some things never change. hopefully, i won't wreck it too.

[Superman]

Hard to recall what was first, but this was memorable: In or around 1978 I was riding a motorcycle from Moscow Idaho to San Francisco California when the engine died. Turned out the fiberglass peg on the points that runs against the crank lobe (dual points) broke off, but I didn't figure it out until just after the Honda store closed (Pasco, Washington). I resumed my trip the next morning, but the new points blew a hole in my budget. That was so long ago it seems like it was somebody else.

The Oregon coast is breathtakingly beautiful and I recommend seeing the morning surf from a sleeping bag, but watch out for slugs. HUGE ones. Those memories are some of my most cherished posessions.

[David Bahr]

Geez, lots of Beetles here (I'll include the Ghia in that group).

76 Beetle coupe with a 74 engine and a single solex carb. Bought it for $1,000, sold it for $1,000. Drove it 1,500 miles each way to college. First time I changed the oil two of the six studs that hold the drain plate on the crankcase backed out and two others stripped. I did figure out the two-nut method for inserting and backing out studs.

Shortly thereafter I rebuilt the solex, 'cause, well, it sounded like a good idea. Did it with the instructions in the rebuild kit, didn't even have a Haynes or a Compleat Idiot book. Ran great.

What a great car. Good body, minimal rust. Fixed more things for <$20; try that on any other car! Sold it before I knew how to soup it up. Dang, with what [little] I know now I could have given it some neat tweaks.

[pbs911]

My first repair was to my 69 440 Roadrunner. One week after I bought it I burnt the clutch. With the help of a Haynes manuel I undertook the job. Complete tranny, clutch and flywheel removal. Stupid me I did this using a bumper jack to support the car and my chest to raise and lower the tranny.

I remember that my parent and neighbors thought I would never get that car rrunning again. Needless to say, after a week of work the car fired up, and to the amazement of everyone, I drove down the street with a new clutch.

This car burned clutches like nothing. After all these were the days of straight line drag racing. After about three clutches in a year time, I was able to get my total R&R of the tranny, and clutch down to about 3 1/2 hours.