Your worst P38 job - ever??

Our P38's have a reputation of giving us things to do, some of these despite lots of guidance in various places on the interweb (thank you) aren't straight forward arm chair ride type jobs.

Bucking the trend (and I know I'm tempting fate here) mine has been pretty reliable and the maintenance and renewals have been within the capability of the average handy person. Worst job so far was an auto gearbox oil change, not through technical complexity - but doing it on my own with a pumped up garden spray pot I ended up with ATF all over the place. It seems trivial but getting those fir tree trim clips out is always a struggle for me not wanting to rive them out so they can be reused.

You may have one of the horror jobs in your past, particularly hard or things breaking half way through or finding irreversably halfway through you haven't got the right tool. Alternatively having to fix it, late for something, in the middle of the night, miles from home, no tools, ****ing down with rain?

What's your horror story - have a Christmas get it off your chest rant!

Head gaskets and Camshaft, followers and timing gear....on my 1995 4.6

The worst job for me would be unable to fix said item .
It's not happened yet , only Cost comes to mind from my point of view as has been with most of my cars .
Well almost some I have owned,I've enjoyed so much I might of overspent a wee little to much

Changing heater matrix

stewie said:

Changing heater matrix

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2nd that. I've started it twice and both times ive lost the will to live and give up.

Nothing, all a piece of pee.

Selling the heap of ****, without losing an arm and a leg- once was enough

I've only changed a manual gearbox

I've been lucky apart from breaking my two fingers whilst changing a sensor !

Worst job is yet to come for me, changing the auto box.

I've been lucky(so far)no major problems,but one thing I can add to this thread is having owned several Portuguese vehicles now they have all been much easier to work on,no seized bolts and no rot,after so many years of working on British rot boxes it REALLY does make a big difference

Landy lance said:

I've been lucky(so far)no major problems,but one thing I can add to this thread is having owned several Portuguese vehicles now they have all been much easier to work on,no seized bolts and no rot,after so many years of working on British rot boxes it REALLY does make a big difference

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You don't get a lot of road salt instigated corrosion in Portugal and that's a fact.

Most frustrating was removing the bolts on the bottom of the radiator! Only because it was my first ever job.

Well I have had the engine out and replaced auto box out then heads off and heater matrix replaced but the worst job is the last on I did which is the off side exhaust manifold gasket because if it had been the nearside a piece of pee but the offside is a mare I would rather do head gasket - effort and reward and all that

Well I've replaced the o rings which was a pain. However retrimming the headlining was by far the worst job!

Steering box... PITA

My worst job was changing the transfer box, I thought it would take a couple of hours or so..... 7 hours later........