“I wish I knew that before I did what I did”….. just like it sounds. So I was changing the carrier barring bracket for the passenger side drive shaft with the engine in the car. I located and removed three bolts but the bracket was still holding solid. If you look at the picture below you will see a bolt head in the middle of the bracket that “I thought” I needed to remove. Now here is where the “I wish I knew that before I did what I did” comes into play. That bolt for the record has nothing to do with the carrier baring bracket, that bolt is the plug to the engine coolant. Now remember where I was laying when I pulled that bolt and the coolant from the car came splattering down on me like a fat cow pissing on a flat rock……… Now among alot of the other things that I said at the time I do remember saying “ I wish I knew that before I did what I did”. Now if you just laughed at me or even chuckled a little bit reading this then you are obligated to share with me something that you “wished you knew before you did what you did". Let’s fill this thread with things you wish you knew so maybe some people can learn from our mistakes and others can just laugh at our blunders.

carrier barring bracket by dadswieser, on Flickr
carrier barring bracket2 by dadswieser, on Flickr

 

lol. Hope you had ur mouth closed. Mine were usually, "@#%*! Why in the hell did I just do that?"

 

When I was a noob, I pulled out the ECTS after I had drove the car. Hot coolant shot up at my face and almost hit me in my left eye but I moved in time and got shot in the forehead, then moved and it hit under the hood making a nice waterfall effect. Good times.

 

I can't stop laughing at that. You live and you learn. Good luck next time.

 

Total newb at the time. Trying to help my buddy put an intake on his 2001 protege. Has a maf similar to the one on a 4th gen max. I figured, you dont need that. And couldnt figure for the life of us why the car wouldnt run when the intake was installed :P

I've since learned and learned again. Ahaha

 

I hope it wasn't hot coolant cause that might cause a little burn.

 

the engineer that made the injector plug the same as the tranny plug...a big FU to you buddy. took me months to figure that issue out.

 

Lets just say I'm known to snap bolts

One story though, I was doing the struts on my max and decided to tighten the 3 bolts that hold the strut to the car with my dewalt electric impact thats rated 345 lb-ft stripped the crap out of them. good thing I had extra top hats from a set of used struts I had purchased.

Another story, I was replacing the fuel filter on my mkv vw. I ran the car without the fuel pump fuse till it wouldn't run. Anyone who has a vw knows they have the dumbest hoses connected to this thing. Basically the hose has a built in "button" that goes and clips over a ridge on the fuel filter inlets/outlets. 3 hoses that won't budge for **** and if you **** it up you'll have to replace the whole line. Mind you this is under the passenger side of the car at the very edge in the most uncomfortable to reach place.



SO I finally get it off and I get soaked with fuel, it had to be half a gallon, no gloves or anything sucked *** especially when my hands started to feel funny . thinking hey at least I didn't break anything, I go to plug the line into the new filter outlet and it just won't go in. Turns out I broke the metal inlet off in the hose Luckily I have a variety of really small screwdrivers I was able to use to remove the broken piece out and actually didn't break the "button" located at the end of the hose.

I'm not going to lie I was scared especially since I had seen the horror stories on the vw forums of the hose's getting damaged and the car having to be towed to the dealer for new parts and costing a bankroll!

 

DanNY I have seen this issue on the fourm a few times... which is probably the ONLY reason I havent done it myself. Ive done around 12 tranny swaps or so by now.

Another note on pulling an auto trans from a 3rd gen, drop it out the bottom and NOT pull the engine and transmission as a unit like the book says. And be sure to keep the tourqe converter with the tranny, as in remove the four 12mm bolts that hold the tourqe converter and flywheel together. You have to rotate the crank/flywheel to get to all 4 bolts but this will save you a lot of time and a big mess.

 

Back when I was a complete noob on electronics, I got my first lesson about LEDs and 12V on the 3rd gen. I got a set of different colored LEDs and wanted to sort them on their color as they were mixed. I got one LED, holding the bulb with my thumb and index finger and connected it to the harness connector of the cigarrete lighter illumination light. I turned on the illumination switch, first second I saw the LED glow, but not the right kind of glow... The next second, it completely popped while still holding it. For two days after that happened I could still smell the burning and could feel the irritation on my fingers from it.

 

Here is another one to know before you go there. Anytime you loose antifreeze from your block, (changing thermastat, water pump, lower radiator hose ect.) you need to burp the air from the block. Raise the front of the car as high as you SAFELY can, remove the 10mm bolt from the top of the air intake next to the PCV valve, fill the radiator SLOWLY untill it comes out of the bolt hole. Sometimes this hole can get plugged too, I have had to CAREFULY poke it out with a stiff wire to clear out the gunk.



burp plug by dadswieser, on Flickr