That time your project went BETTER than expected...

[2Gjunkie]

Title says it. Car work rarely goes 100% by the book. Stuff happens, we get frustrated.

Write up about a time when your project went better than you expected, and restored your faith in your wrenching abilities. DSM or not.


Mine:
Upgrading the fuel pump on the GST. Everyone said to be prepared to cut the sheet
metal under the seat, because the upper line flare nut always got stuck, and cutting the metal was the only way to remove the pump assembly with the line attached. I put off the project for weeks because I hated the idea of cutting into pristine metal.

Finally got a new set of flare wrenches, got my tin snips ready, and *miraculously*, the upper flare nut breaks loose. No idea why I got lucky. It was pretty tight, but bracing the non-moving wrench against the body (so it wouldn’t twist the fixed line) allowed me to crank down on the moving wrench pretty hard and pop it loose.

 

[randman2011]

The turbo blew on my van. Rebuilding the turbo itself was kind of a disaster, but once I got the last parts that I needed, I was pretty worried about the final turbo assembly and reinstallation. It had taken me a very long time to get things apart due to packaging and everything being cast iron with no flexibility to get pipes out of the way and the fact that I am completely unfamiliar with this engine bay, so I took an entire day off of work to see how far I'd get into reassembly. 30 minutes into the job I already had the turbo assembled and bolted to the manifold and I took less than two hours start to finish. There was a coolant leak when I was done, but it turned out that I forgot to reinstall the plastic washer for the bleeder screw and that was an equally easy 30 second task.

Because I'm irresponsible and didn't feel like waiting to make sure everything was good to go before hitting the road, the first thing I did was drive it two hours to Bloomington and back. No problems whatsoever. The van performed flawlessly. And my first ever turbo rebuild was a resounding success once I stopped breaking parts.

I really haven't had many of these situations now that I think about it.

 

[97egl]

Originally from Northern Minnesota so when I moved to Indianapolis and found out that cars 10+ years old still have bleeder valves on the calipers and not just a rusty nub I was ecstatic. Needless to say the first time I had to replace a brake line the job went way better than expected.

 

[Bock]

When i tore down all my suspension arm/subframe/brake on my 1g and everything was coated with antiseize. Thanks god last owner was a mechanic teacher in a school.
Not even a broken bolt!! (did the same thing on my 2g and i broke so much seized bolt -_-)

 

[ThunderChild]

Slamming together a 91 eclipse from bent valves to completely rebuilt engine in 6 days working on it after my normal job, as well as brakes, wheel bearings, suspension, batt drop etc etc...
Fired up on the first try and sounded amazing, better than my talon did when first run.

I have a strange mis-balance of projects going well vs. bad, but now that I said that I'll be cursed, guaranteed.

 

[Dericsh]

I just put some fog lights on my new (to me) truck. Everything went perfect, including finding A cross referenced part from A different vehicle that was half the price of the vehicle specific one. I had them installed and working with a (used) factory combo switch before my five year old got tired of riding around the yard in her power wheels.