Thread 28449106

"God dammit that PREVIOUS OWNER" thread.

FFS man. I ordered another electrical harness because the last dumbshit cut off HALF OF THE HARNESS to cobble up a fucking Chinese made race ignition with ROMEX wire nuts. That shit is for house electrical, asshat.

I had my dose of getting pissed off today as I replace the wiring. Any stories from you?

I think the previous owner of my car was extremely rich. Didn't want to meet me at his house, but provided a location for an extremely nice massively wealthy suburb that literally had limos cruising around.
After he sold the car he walked home so I know he lived there.
Anyway the car has no problems. Its been very good. He did mechanical work on it himself but all he did was renew old mountings and such.
Sucks to suck ig, lel.

A couple months ago, my exhaust broke going into the muffler. I've never done exhaust work before and am no mechanic, though I can usually manage.

After taking the old exhaust off from the cat converter back, I started putting the new one on. When I went to bolt the new pipe to the cat converter, one of the bolts wouldn't go on right. I took it off and put it back on two or three times until I finally figured out what had happened.

Whoever had the car before me had CUT OFF THE FUCKING FLANGE from the cat converter and welded on a different one. Except the new one didn't have the holes 180° apart, so they just... welded on another tab in a spot that was close enough. The material of the weld got in the way of the nut and made the bolt go in at a fucked up angle.

>>28449205
You can see the cut marks from the angle grinder in the heat shield on both sides.

it has some curb rash on one wheel, thats a little bit annoying ig

>previous owner put new ball joints
>didn't get greaseable ones
What a retard.

>>28449106 (OP)
>Any stories from you?
Previous owner of my 2002 Diamante replaced the cabin fan motor, opting for the cheap shit made-in-China VDO replacement with flying leads. When I went to sort the problems with the HVAC system under the dash I discovered wire nuts and electrical tape.
Also discovered the fucked up the plastic cage fan when transferring it onto the new replacement motor so there's a huge glob of fucking 5-minute epoxy holding it on.
Currently have an entire replacement motor & fan from a very low mileage RX-8 sitting here in a box waiting to go in, as they're completely compatible, along with a replacement plug to go onto the harness.

>>28449240
Oh boy, the RockAuto orange font category!

>>28449205
>>28449209
This was done in a bright yellow shop while Tejano was playing.

>>28449247
My car is much too rusted to have spent any amount of time far enough south for that.

I've had a few PO bullshit adventures, but only one PO mystery:

One of my cars is 30 years old and was repainted (original color) at some point. The previous owner was the second owner, who owned it for 28 years, barely drove it, garage kept, and had *all* of the paperwork for the last 28 years. I found the repaint evidence (a little bit of overspray on the oil cooler, and some peeling paint on the pinch weld revealing paint that is the same color beneath) months after buying from him so he had no motivation to lie, and he said he had no idea it had been repainted. So the car was painted at some point in its first couple of years, and it wasn't reported on the vehicle history reports. I think it was repainted by the original dealership when it was new due to damage at the dealership or in transit or something. Maybe even as a warranty claim by the original owner if something was wrong with the original paint. I pulled interior panels and have looked over the car very thoroughly now and there's no evidence of repaired crash damage such as dents that are visible from the inside but covered by body filler. I didn't pull the headliner though so I don't know if it was hail damage that did it, because I know that a vehicle damaged by hail on the dealer lot is often repaired and sold as if nothing happened. A real mystery.

>>28449106 (OP)
>buying a modified car
>especially one with wiring mods
shiggy diggy

>>28449106 (OP)
where's laseranon, this thread is right up your alley with the party bus you've got and the absolute methhead wiring with fucking cat5 ethernet cable.
previous owner of my car, or the shop he took it to (who knows) seems to have hand bent the brake lines running from the master to the prop valve, on a friday afternoon about an hour before knock off time. It worked but goddamn was it messy, I should've taken a pic. Unfucked it all and bent it so it actually looks quite neat now, although the straight section running along the firewall isn't as straight as I'd like it to be.
>>28449245
you mean orange background?

>>28449106 (OP)
I'm replacing my engine because of a stupid ass intake valve receding. How the fuck does that even happen

My P.O. out on a fake exhaust tip held on with a clamp and a bolt. 5 years later I still have it on there.
I once got a car with bubbling purple stick on window tint. I spent a good 3-4 hours scraping it off and all the residue. Now that pissed me off, but it was a $1500 manual eclipse so eh not a big deal.
>>28449209
That's wild, but if it works it works.

>>28449106 (OP)
Good thread, here's my experience;
One of the previous owners of my car smoked quite a lot. I tried to get most of it out using carpet cleaners, hvac system cleaners and an ozone generator. It's gotten much better than it was, but if my car sits in the sun on a hot day you can really smell it.
When I went to change the brakes, I discovered the wheel bolts were tightened to 1 gazillion nm and the calipers were so tight I snapped a breaker bar and rounded the caliper bolts... Same thing with the oil filter housing, I had to take a pipe wrench to that thing. What is with shitty mechanics and overtightening?
The worst part however is the transmission. From what I've pieced together, a previous owner took the car to a mentally disabled mechanic to change the output flange seals. The drivers side was fine, no problems, but the passenger side looks like he forgot to tighten the axle flange, which ended up destroying the seal, the sleeve, the mating surface on the tranny, the diff bearing, the axle flange, the entire cv axle, and a plastic shield... FUCK mechanics, this is exactly why I wrench on my own cars. Now my car has an eternal tranny oil leak because JB weld isn't enough to seal a completely chewed mating surface on a diff.

>>28449475
Sounds like goyota things

>>28449537
incorrect

>po parked car in thorny vines
>engine bay and underneath has spikes on it
>also the brush caught on fire

Just about every vehicle or piece of equipment I buy is a hot pile of shit. I basically just start ripping off any modified wiring and extra hoses, shit like that to get back to the factory basics, and then figure out what actually needs fixing from there.

>>28449245
I don't get it. Are greaseable parts bad?

>>28449733
Depends, greaseable parts are usually weaker than non-greaseable parts because they have to have channels to the zerk fitting to distribute the grease. You have to balance that with use-case. Greaseable joints might be preferable if you drive through water and mud often since you can force out the crud, extending the life of the joint longer than a sealed joint as long as you're on top of re-greasing everything. If you're not regularly doing that kind of shit though I'd stick with sealed parts.

>>28449355
Yeah, sounds like it. Shitty that the fucking dealerships can get away with that. Especially if it's a Japanese or German car where the level of paint/body workmanship being done by Colton and Juan on dealership pay never, ever matches the quality of work and skill being done at the factory.
I hope you're still happy with your car, anon; it's not its fault.

>>28449429
>you mean orange background?
Yes, thank you. Was late. All I could remember was orange...

>>28449475
Don't tell me: first generation Honda CR-V with the B20b.

>>28449429
>where's laseranon
In jail in Anchorage on two counts of murder.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2023/09/26/man-accused-of-killing-2-in-dillingham-faces-federal-charges-for-online-antisemitic-threats/

>>28449881
not a honder either

>>28449887
the fuck? ok maybe it's a different laseranon then. there was an anon a month or two back going by the same trip who bought some sort of RV bus thing and was slowly restoring it. it had an absolute methhead nigger rigging plumbing and the wiring was done with fucken cat5 cable, he had pics but i didnt save them

>>28449733
Grease on greaseable parts is good.

Grease on exhaust systems is bad.

Grease that is missing is also bad in parts that need it like an axle I had to clean out and rebuild. Some yahoo dumbass took a Jeep I got on Pismo beach and practically filled half the axle with sand because the cheap fuck couldn't replace one goddamn seal. Thanks bud.

>>28449360
Aaaah shit, fucked 'er bud.

>>28451326
RIP Lahey, you drunk bastard.

He's mowing the air in heaven.

>>28449429
>>28450080
Kek, yeah I've got plenty of bitching to do about the crackhead that lived in my bus. Though, by now, most of his ""work"" has been torn out now.
It's a '67 Flxible that had been converted to an RV in the late 70s by a professional company and was done decently well. But in the early 90's, some crackhead lived in it for a bit and decided to "fix" it with immaculate work like pic related. This was the 12v cabin lighting wiring. I'll post some more crazy shit that I found because it's pretty amusing. It got sold to another guy who let it sit for a while before I bought it.
>>28449887
That was Alaska laseranon. Dude was fucking crazy. He'd brag in /diy/ laser threads about how he'd tie down and blind animals for fun. Nobody was surprised when he got booked for murder. I'm midwest laseranon, even though I don't really build lasers much anymore.

>>28452324
I recently tore out the freshwater tanks, which were just 55 gallon drums laid on their side in the bays. This was stamped very apparently on them lol. He had actively used these for god knows how long. Needless to say, they were cut up and are getting replaced with something that wont leach hazardous chemicals into my water. I just plumbed a tankless setup for now.

>>28452334
The generator setup was a VW diesel with a shaft welded directly to the crank mated to a pulley system to run a fuckoff huge AC motor. The pvc were the coolant lines run to a radiator that was completely sealed in the front spare tire bay with no airflow. Apparently it had overheated and locked up.

>>28452338
This is my last post since I don't want to flood the thread, but this was the light switch for the main living area lights.
None of his wiring is left, I spent a few weeks straight completely stripping and rewiring the whole RV side of the bus properly. But a lot of his plumbing is still there and I have to get all that knocked out. And then I'll finally be at the point where I've unfucked most of it and can start focusing more on restoring the bus itself, since it needs a lot of help too.

>>28449106 (OP)
>lesbaru factory memegaskets finally failing at 166k, as they do
>decide to do timing belt water pump etc while i'm up to my tits in its guts and a bunch of shit has to come out anyway
>thank fuck i did; find out it's still using the factory original timing belt
>with a 90k service interval
>in an interference engine
huehuehue
>passenger dash covered in scratches pic maybe related
PO presumably a woman, but the fact it hadn't already gone nuclear from neglected maintenance suggests maybe she was married to someone with half a clue and somewhat kept up on the easy maintenance at least. 195k now and might yet live to see 200k.

>>28449533
total smoker death

>>28452324
>'67 Flxible
like a flexible bus that articulates in the middle? I gotta see pics.

>>28449106 (OP)
>"God dammit that PREVIOUS OWNER" thread.
Often time the previous owner fucks up from the factory
Like why the fuck did they order the car in yellow or lime green and not something normal... Perfect in every other way

found one of these being used as the control arm ball joint pinch bolt

>>28454396
Let me guess you were looking for a clean and cheap car and unsurprisingly the only ones that met that criteria were the ones that looked like shit.

>>28449106 (OP)
Hard to show how fucked it was with an image but it looks like the car had a rust hole at one point. I start sanding and I see nothing but bondo. About 3/4 of an inch of bondo in this area. Previous owner brazed in a patch with brass and warped the shit out of the panel in the process I ended up managing to make a decent patch panel and butt welding it in. I would have been more fine with fiberglass and bondo

>>28449106 (OP)
thanks for sharing OP, makes me feel a little better about the retard moment i had today
>recently got myself an 01 civic project to mess around with
>previous owner (neighbor) was using the car as a storage shed and planned on parting it out/sending it to the junkyard
>he fucking bent the radiator support moving it around with a tractor, and bent both upper radiator brackets, both hood hinges and both fenders pulling the engine
>go to the junkyard to pull a hood and fenders and hood latch mechanism
>find a perfect rust free pair
>notice the car is a few years newer but it looks close enough
>immediately start pulling them off a car without checking if they're compatible like a mouth breathing FOOL
>luckily the based boomer at the counter gives me a decent price
>get home all excited to put them on
>ohshit.jpg
>realize the fenders and hood are for the facelifted 04-05 version, i have the 01-03
>could go back and get a set of headlights and a bumper to swap it to the facelift version or make a custom one but the facelift headlights and bumper looks uglier
oh well. got everything mostly straightened out now. previous owner also straight piped it but i'm not necessarily considering that a downside kek. atleast the parts are all there, the wiring and everything else is intact save for a bit of rust, and the hardest part (tearing the motor out) was already done for me. probably just gonna focus on getting it running for now before i spend any more money on cosmetics.
>>28449355
i've ran into something similar, realized the entire car was repainted after i bought it which just seemed weird for an economy car with no dents or anything. even weirder is that anything that i sanded down, or peeled off, the original paint seemed perfect underneath. the worst part though is they didn't even use the same color code so i ended up having to pull my mirror and find someone with a paint camera just to get a color match.

>>28452334
>>28452338
>>28452344
man. fucken methheads

>>28452344
Post more anon

>>28454501
a bud of mine ran a true dual exhaust with an x pipe. Custom made the header but otherwise off the shelf part. Sounded NASTY at high RPM. Then some lardass totalled his car, he was fine.

We still talk about doing that again with another car

Installing a train horn: yea or nay?

I really want one, but I have a Juke so room is limited.

Second question: if I figure out where to cram everything, I've thought about wiring a switch in so I can still use the regular horn, or I can switch to the train horn to make a point.

>>28454946
That Asshole With A Train Horn used to run a Scion xB and i think he had the horns mounted under the passenger side at about the midpoint, pointed towards the sidewalk.

>>28454959
The ones I looked at are something like 8" tall, 17" long, and 16" wide if I remember right. If I do that, I'll have like no ground clearance. Plus, I live in PA so the entire underside of my car is nothing but fucking rust. I've thought about on the roof, but that would probably deafen me.

Any input on the switch idea?

>>28452338
It's amazing that someone would have the skill and gumption to put something like that together, and even consider the cooling aspect, but to bungle it on so basic a concept as airflow.

>>28454959
I thought he had a Volvo. There was a guy who was big into horns and had a scion box though, he had a youtube channel. May have been fat mike or big mike or something.

>>28449106 (OP)
Was planning on replacing the rear camera mounted by the previous owner until I noticed it was minted by WOOD SCREWS into a extremely hard to replace piece of plastic

>>28454378
No, Flxible is just the brand name, it's a 40ft transit bus. Been living in it myself for a month or so, and slowly fixing it up over the summer. It sat for a couple decades before I resuscitated it and drove it a very sketchy 700 miles. It's been a hell of a project.
>>28455026
There was a lot of stuff like that in this bus. I didn't take any pics, but the original 120v inverter was home made with a microwave transformer and some industrial contact relays and resistors that had clearly been trash picked. He was somehow able to figure out how to build his own inverter, but still tied bare wires in overhand knots to join them with no protection. Really strange stuff.
>>28454857
I'll see if I have some more pics, but I don't want to blogpost the whole thread.

>>28454857
Here's what the shore power panel looked like before, kek

No pic, but I fitted a new set of wipers for a lady, and noticed some coolant on her wiper cowl. I asked her to open the bonnet to make sure a hose hadn't exploded or something, and the mechanic she had just been to for a service had filled her washer reservoir with coolant. I told her to take it back to them. Mechanic owned it for an hour and was still retarded.

>>28455744
Why in the sweet flying fuck is there a wire going between the terminals on the 40 amp breaker?

>>28455838
The jumper is there to turn it into a single phase panel. The panel he used was originally meant for 2 phase like any normal 240v box would see in residential uses. But since shore power out of the wall for an RV is only one phase (unless using a 50amp hookup), he used the jumper to tie both busses of the box together through the breakers so those 30 amp breakers could both be on the same phase.

>>28449106 (OP)
Previous owner did a coolant flush and didn't put the thermostat back in. No wonder the car took so long to get to temp and ran so rich.

>>28455979
how do you even manage to forget the thermostat?

>>28451326
>>28452295
unironically lived 15 minutes from where they used to film tpb, they got everything about Nova Scotia right

>>28452509
Every Volvo I looked at, the owner neglected to do the timing belt job. Ended up buying the cheapest piece of shit that was 18 years on its original timing kit and did the job myself.
Supringly, the belt looked brand new after 18 years and I suspect the mechanics would have only looked at the condition of the belt and told the owners they had nothing to worry about. But the fucking tensioner and pulley started to ingest dirt and I could feel ever so slightly that they weren't spinning 100% anymore.
Still pretty crazy, 18 years is almost double of what's suggested by Volvo.

>>28455704
>but the original 120v inverter was home made with a microwave transformer and some industrial contact relays and resistors that had clearly been trash picked. He was somehow able to figure out how to build his own inverter, but still tied bare wires in overhand knots to join them with no protection.
Crackhead Einstein

>>28452324
>Dude was fucking crazy. He'd brag in /diy/ laser threads about how he'd tie down and blind animals for fun.
He'd also brag about how he'd be able to permanently disable people in /pol/ as well. Not too surprised to have seen his mugshot back then.

>>28449106 (OP)
>Babbies first used car
>Bought a MK4 Golf diesel with a good bunch of kilometers to get into wrenching
>Owner promised me the thing had been taken good care of and I naively believed him
>Turns out to be the most abused, neglected car on God's green Earth
>From dust boots NAILED to the remnants of bump stops to totally busted shocks
>From oil leaks to crusty tires that had bubbles
>From brake caliper brackets seized from the rust to perished, leaking fuel lines
>About the only good part on it was the engine, 260000 miles and ran like new, even though the check engine line had been defeated - fuck yeah 1.9 TDI PD
>After spending 6 months on the garage floor crawling through a mix of all of the flluids a car can leak I gave up when I saw the utter cunt of a previous owner was too cheap to replace the rigid brake lines running under the body
>from the ABS pump to the rear axle, the brake lines were pure rust
I learned a lot of wrenching on that piece of shit, but I gladly handed it over to a junkyard in the end.

>>28455704
sounds like a lot of engineers actually. they can think up some pretty damn impressive solutions to unusual problems, but then they don't realise that their engine oil is a consumable that needs to be changed regularly.

>Got 2012 Honda Accord from Previous Owner
>Previous owner was old man, ALWAYS got EVERYTHING done at the dealership
>Super concerned about me getting the timing belt+water pump replaced because it's at recommended mileage
>Fast forward a few years
>Previous owner calls me constantly about tech issues
>Somehow always changes pictures in his contacts to someone else
>Constantly fucking with settings, fucking other things up
>Calling me to help him
>Finally snap
>"Dad please stop fucking with the settings while I'm not here."

Love that old man, fr fr no cap.

>>28457569
>>28457783
Turns out I actually saved it, I thought I had thrown this away, but the transformer and the heat sink were two good parts I couldn't just chuck. Can't say the guy wasn't somewhat smart, but it's clear which parts of the wiring he did while smoking crack, kek.

>>28458593
>the widdle 30 amp fuse carrying the entire circuit

>>28449106 (OP)
I've mentioned this before, but the PO of my 350z made an airbox out of pie tins for his cold air intake. Even made holes for the bolts so it was properly mounted. Wasn't even mad.

>>28458593
so how does this inverter actually work? what's the sine wave look like? i'm genuinely interested in how this crackhead managed to build a functioning "inverter" out of so few components.

>>28455704
>>28458593
Looks like it *could* be an out-of-the-book circuit for a simple cross-coupled inverter but with SCRs instead of power transistors and it looks like it is missing components. It doesn't seem like it would work, but I suppose they might be some odd power transistor I'm not familiar with, not an SCR. Just doesn't look right.

>>28459303
>sine wave
>implying
There will be nothing sine about that wave.

>>28459303
>>28460196
probably more like a mexican wave

>>28460242
I'm on a mexican...wha-oh...radiooo...

Sounds like some wacky shit.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCEexG9xjw

>>28460196
There was a spot for another box beside it that was missing with cut wires, so I assumed that's where the other components were stashed when it was working. I'm not an electronics guy at all (the crackhead was apparently smarter than I am), but it seems like it's missing the transistors and resistors you would need to make your A/C off the transformer output.

>>28460254
The components on the two heat sinks are what I mean look like SCRs, or some old germanium transistors. They just don't look like they have enough terminals for that. The parts count for a simple inverter isn't that high, plenty of old books and websites have simple DIY inverter circuits, there are many ways to do it. Pic related.

>>28460282
Yeah, I was looking through some schematics to see if I could find anything that matched up with the components there, but didn't have any luck. Interesting peice of crackhead tech though. I'm definitely going to plug it in and mess with it next time I'm back at my garage.