from the "you cant make this stuff up" files .... automotive edition

Plant.One

Plant.One

Well-known member
so i've been chasing a small oil leak in my truck. not like leaving puddles on the ground leak.. but enough to get a whif of oil off the exhaust here and there kind of leak. lost almost half a quart in about 3000 miles type of thing. eventually narrowed it down to my oil dipstick tube. the weld for the mount bracket failing and took out the integrity of the tube in the process.

the oil mark on the left blue tape is the drip down.
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so now comes the real fun part.

come to find out....there are two model numbers for possible dipsticks for my engine. i thought i got it wrong both times and low and behold the first try was the right one.. but my OE dipstick had been modified to mount in a different location.

dorman 917-303 (mount between plug #4 and #6) is what i needed, and ordered the first time. [beeep] thing of course when i tried to replace it between #2 and #4 where the OE was... [beeep] near broke the tip off in the pan. thankfully it all came out in 1 peice.

ordered a 917-433 (mounts between #2 and #4) - since 917-303 was "wrong" and i needed to match mine - turns out is a completely different bracket/mount than my motor uses and of course is an inch shorter than my existing dipstick tube anyway.

had to go back a 3rd attempt and get another 917-303 and when we routed it to its proper bracket location between #4 and #6 she slipped right in and mounted up perfectly as expected.

and also probably explains why the weld started failing at the tube and caused my leak. *grrrr*

guessing that when my motor was being re-assembled after the rebuild, as they went to install the tube and the tech "knew" it was supposed to mount between 2&4 (as it does on SOME 5.3's) and just got the break line benders out and tweaked it until she was "right". not realizing there's two different models and two different mount locations. also explains the bit of RTV at the shoulder that was on there.

this is the modified "OE" (left) vs the correct 917-303 replacement (right)

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at least its back to 100% now. could have done without that failure though. *grumbles*
 
A fellow bought a new ford car some years ago. It was nice except it had a clunk noise back toward the back end somewhere. He had it to the dealer several times and could never find the clunk. It didn't do it all the time but still often enough that that it was a nuisance.
Finally he just gave up looking for the clunk and just lived with it.
Some time passed and he was involved in a small wreck. When they took the fender lose they found a soft drink bottle inside the finder. It had a note in it from the auto worker that put the fender on at the plant. Something about enjoy the clunk.
The dealer told his Ford rep about it and he told his boss and so on till it made it back to the plant. The management at the plant took it up and traced the numbers on the car. They found out when the car was made and who was putting the fenders on that day. The guy still worked there. They confronted the guy and he admitted putting the bottle in the fender. They fired him.

I bet a lot of strange things gets put in autos.
 
I used to be a car tech in the 70's.

Working for a Dodge dealer, we had a brand new, top-of-the-line Royal Monaco coupe, being driven as a Demo by the dealership owner.

He tells us about a bearing rolling across the headliner whenever he makes a turn.

One of my fellow techs drops the headliner to look, and says the ball bearing is inside a crossmember, and the repair was to cut into the crossmember, but then they would have to weld the cut and repaint the roof, etc.

The owner decides to not repair it at the moment, and drives it for another couple weeks. He ended up selling the car to a deaf couple.

The 1970's era domestic cars were assembled in a very sloppy fashion, large, uneven gaps between doors and fenders, hose clamps not tight, screws loose, etc.

I credit the Japanese car companies with improving the American made cars quality.
 
Another one: by 1980, I was selling cars (my tools were stolen and I did not have insurance to cover them, so I transitioned), Buicks and Saab's.

Many of you remember the gas shortage of the late '70's. The shortage started very quickly, and caught the Big 3 automakers off guard. They had lot's of big gas guzzlers for sale, and they did not sell well.

So, GM, takes an Oldsmobile gas engine block (5.7L), and stuffs diesel parts into it, and sells lots of them.

Not to many miles down the road, and camshafts wore out, fuel injector pumps were damaged (GM did not add a water/fuel separator, so water could damage the pump), and head gaskets blew, primarily because the heads needed more, and deeper, head bolts.

So, fast forward to 1982-1982, and I am attending a new Model Year sales seminar, being given by a female Buick employee, named Terry. When we walked, she asked us to put our name in a bowl, and she would pull names through out her presentation, and ask the guy a product knowledge question. Get it right, and you got a $10 bill.

Terry pulls my name and ask's if the 1981 5/7L diesel engine has been changed. I stand up and said, 'no, not really, it's still and Old's gas engine with diesel parts'.

She waives her arms in the air and say's 'noooo, it's a completely new engine!'. She did this 3 times, each after I told her what GM did to the engine,(they changed the camshaft and fuel system a bit, but left everything else the same).

Long story shorter, GM lied to her, she comes to us, front line sales people, and lies (unknowingly) to us, and many of my fellow sales people would then lie (unknowingly) to the customer.

[beeep] me off to this day that GM would do that to us!
 
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