My labor rate is cheaper than your free time and stress.
Just sayin 
totally feeling your pain. What should have been a simple engine mount swap turned into four weeks of battling swapping said engine mount, followed by fighting wheel studs that would not seat into the hub, followed by an axle swap that didnt want to catch the retaining ring inside the trans, to OK now the FUCKING SOB WONT START WTF!
sadly, i still love wrenching lol.
Great story i feel your pain
Last saturday at 10:00am i figure out that i really have nothing to do today. The weather’s nice so i decide to replace the right side exhaust manifold (did the left a few weeks ago) on my 98 F150. I know its gonna suck but figured there probally isnt a whole lot of great weather left so why not. well 3 hours later (after using a sazall to cut the manifold apart to get to the lower bolts since its 4wd and all the driveline stuff is in the way) i’m finished and not toatally pissed off since it was a pain but didnt go too bad. Get in the truck, start it (nice and quiet), and go to back it out of the garage. Start backing it out and Bang- i catch the left side exterior mirrior on the garage door track and take the fucking thing right off the truck. grrrrrrrrr
lots of fail
NAPA is a waste of a store as u said, they are either never open bec their hours are worst than banker’s hrs or they don’t have the part or the give u the wrong part
I got to pull up in the 240 and ask for Pulsar parts to fit the engine. :picard:
At least you know its done right.
I don’t know why, but man this made me laugh. I went to Autozone because they were open and I really didn’t feel like carpooling with the wife today since we both had errands to run during the day. Napa parts counter @ wherle has been by far the most knowledgable staff I’ve seen and I shopped for a ton of different parts when I had that Fiero. Lately I haven’t been getting any parts local. Rockauto > *.local parts shops if you can afford to wait 2-3 days for delivery.
End of the day if it’s a job I can do, I’ll do it. More than anything I just wanted to post the story because I knew a bunch of gearheads could relate. Judging from the responses I was right. Pauly’s was the best so far though.
Not sure why the tie rod went so soon. Anyone that’s ridden with me knows I beat the piss out of that car on the street, at autocross, and at the one track day it’s seen so I’m sure that was part of it.
oddly enough, the tierod end on the passengers side of my GTO is going again. Just replaced both of them (last time, the drivers side was shot) not even 6 months ago :tdown:
hope it’s not a common issue on these cars
If you guys need dealer parts call me I will. Give you guys my discount
nice, thanks Joe :tup:
ya GTO are weird, even have different front and rear wheel studs. Never had a problem with the wheelstuds, changed some for arps. Not gona help you but I think there stock ones at the shop. Did that tierod set you got from Kollar have a plug to add a grease fitting?
That sucks.
Side note I wasn’t a fan of the DBA 4000s i had on my car. They warped after one light track day. Best part was when i bought them the vendor insisted they were made in Australia. When the box came it had designed in Australia in big bold letters plastered all over it but couldn’t find made in anywhere. China crap masquerading as Aussie quality.
The ones from Kollar did not have a place to add a grease fitting either.
did you re-set the toe after the install or are you gonna get it aligned?
probably not as bad as when i pull up in a k car and ask for parts from a caravan, shelby daytona, lebaron GTC and some random part that isnt going to get used for anything close to its intended use. 
Brian
Yeah I do all my work in a parking lot… Which means once I start I have to see it through to the end… which usually means when I am about to the end I fuck something simple up… Like not tightening lug nuts after dropping the car off the jack… or tightening a wiper arm nut until it pops off… It always seems to be the last step I do something goes wrong…but when you are racing the sun going down… shit happens.
Still love working on my own car. Just wish I had a garage so I could walk away and come back to it every once in a while.
I own two VWs.
Honestly.
Every time I work on one it is a god damn train wreck.
anything else I work on is smooth.
I agree with this 100%…
My DD’s no matter how “easy”; 90% of the time turn into a PROJECT instead of a quick fix.
Hell, last time I did my brakes it took me HOURS split over 2 days because the store closed about 10 minutes after I realized I needed new caliper pad clips; and my Fiance was at school so I didn’t have any way to get there anyways GRR… then the new caliper I was putting on had threads so goobered up I couldn’t even get a tap to thread in it without basically cutting new threads… took going to 2 different Autozones, and 2 hours of fucking around to get another one…
Then I go to do an oil change on her car… of course the oil-change place that did it last time cranked the filter on so tight that the only way to get it off was to use a screwdriver and hammer to turn the flange… (after using both styles of filter wrenches, and a screwdriver through the side; none of which budged it!!!)… and doing this on a '00 Focus is really fun… fuckers…
I measured it out and set it the same as the old one I took off.
One of the front tires was worn a little uneven though so I’m going to take it in for an alignment soon anyway.
lol i started to change my springs on my car saturday and it turned into a rear disc swap and a few others … and the car is still up in the air …:gotme:
WHen I was at Watkins Glen tracking my 06 I overtightened one of the lug nuts and snapped the stud. Luckily I was able to get it out without removing anything other then the wheel, take it to the local Napa, and they matched one up. I know all to well the 1 hour job that turns into an all day affair. And BTW, there were people with 5K on their GTO’s that has shot tie rod ends :bloated: Oh god, how I miss my GTO
Edit-didn’t even see that you also got a cross referenced stud from Napa, nice.