Technicians: what's the strangest/worst repair or problem you've seen?

[TakeitApart]

I got a good one this morning. Customer states fuel tank punctured.

I lifted the Prius up and found someone's hood support rod punched right into the fuel tank! What's more odd? It's an OEM Toyota hood support!

 

[wnelax04sr5]

i don't have a picture of it but when i used to work on Bobcats some guy was using a rental one in a warehouse and was concerned about fumes so he decided to stuff a 4 pack of knee high socks into the exhaust to act as a filter. once they melted a little and burned to the side of the pipe, it was quite difficult to fix that one

 

[JBurt]

I had a buddy who took his Saturn in because it was running poorly. Turns out he never looked under the hood and a rock chuck decided to move into in his engine compartment and chew up some wires. The mechanics argued about who would have to kill it. I wish they'd taken pictures.

 

[02SE]

I found some bananas in a tail pipe once.

I think someone was an Eddie Murphy fan.

 

[SV_Dude]

I used to be a chinook helicopter door gunner for a few years. We had a landing overseas in a rough and tight spot (like most landings overseas). Out customers on the ground blew down some trees to make a landing zone for us. They didn't make it big enough (chinook rotor span is about 100 ft) and when we landed we took about 4 feet off of one tree with the forward rotor system. Doing so we took considerable damage to all 3 forward rotor blades. So... What's the fix? A roll of duct tape on each rotor blade to give them a little more structure and aerodynamics. The rotor system had. Funny sound to it when we spun the blades back up but it got us home safe.

Sorry... No pics.

 

[Supraformance]

A friend hit me up one day and asked how to install aftermarket injectors in the stock lower runners of a Supra. I told him to get some injector seats and seal them in with RTV. A few days later he sends me a pic of the injector nozzles totally covered and sealed with RTV, asking "is this right?"

 

[SV_Dude]

A friend hit me up one day and asked how to install aftermarket injectors in the stock lower runners of a Supra. I told him to get some injector seats and seal them in with RTV. A few days later he sends me a pic of the injector nozzles totally covered and sealed with RTV, asking "is this right?"

Why not use a proper sized bushing to seal the injectors instead of RTV? Either way, that's why you don't do sh!t on a vehicle unless you know what you're doing or have a book.

 

[Supraformance]

An O-ring is used to seal the injector itself but the seats are made to hold the actual injector in and keep it from moving. The holes in the stock runners are significantly larger than aftermarket injectors. Simply sealing with the o-ring will not be sufficient.

 

[541joseph]

I don't have a picture but will try and get one tomorrow but rear end in a dodge 1500 LSD completely in pieces. Pinon bearing completely gone race is in pieces inside the pumpkin so many different pieces we couldn't place where half of them went. Most surprising part is that it drove in. Pretty interesting. Oh and a Chevy Colorado inline 5 exhaust manifold broken into 3 pieces and there's a core charge on a brand new manifold.