CD player installs, speaker installs, complete system installs, intakes, custom neon lighting, full interior including carpet and headliner, custom gauges, just about everything I have done to cars thus far has gone smoothly ;p My time will come! Soon I am getting suspension work on my car, but me and my friend have air tools and a breaker bar and what not, but somewhere in the future we are going to do an auto/manual swap... hehe, this will be the grueling task that kills me ;p

 

i remember my first DIY. my dad owned his own buisness as a carpenter and had this old van. no rear windows, just the driv, pass, and windshield. that old. the stereo did not work so he went and got this cheap ass deck from the auto parts store that came with 2 speakers. the van had one speaker in the dash so i was like shit i will cut some holes in the doors and run some wire. no big deal. i use a saw zall since the doors have no panels and are solid metal and cut the holes. wired it up and screwed it in. Sounded ok for how litle was spend. I turned he ignition off and close the door to see the damage. The blade was too long and you could see where the blade tip hit the outside of the door. there was an outlince of 6 inch circles on the outside of the door. i show my dad and he nearly pissed himself. he told me to screw up once i will learn my lesson to plan it out and use caution to have my projects turn out great. I learned my lesson.

 

My real first DIY was putting stock tail lights on, but that was easy

My hardest DIY so far has been shocks and springs. Ran into so many problems, took about 20 hours to do in all. But its all good now.

 

When doing my timing belt, Everything went smooth until i got to the crankshaft pulley bolt.
Crankshaft pulley bolt, Man i have tried everything.

1. 8' breaker bar with 4 inch pipe extention.
2. 1/2 impact gun 230ftlbs torque
3. using the starter to bleep the bolt loose.
4. bolt drenched in Pb blaster, Wd40, liquid wrench.

I've broked two sockets, 1 great neak, 1 craftsmen. right now i've got an impact socket holding up.
Yea, i finally got it off w/ the oem pulley holder, 1/2 breaker bar w/ a long long shop jack handle (if you spread your arms out it's about 3/4 that distance). i eventually created 515ft lbs of torque.

Took me.. 16hours, 8 hours of it was just trying to get that bolt off. I finished and it runs like a champ.

 

My first DIY was my first car. When I was 16 I had $100 burning a hole in my pocket and the guy next door had an 84 mustang lx 2.3L 4-cyl. So I talked him into selling it to me. It had huge problems from the start. The tranny slipped (auto), it ran rough, rich, etc...

So first thing I did was, well, dis-assemble everything! I very nearly rebuilt the whole engine (head gasket, intake gasket, valve job, oil pan gasket, air pump, alternator), replaced the tranny fluid and filter, tune-up sh!t, some new(er) tires and replaced the exhaust. All told, about 3 weeks of work.

Once I'd finally finished and started the car up, it still ran like shit. After fiddling with the carb and getting it to idle correctly, I decided it was time for a test drive. It bucked and rocked ( :irock: ) like a bull. I, for the life of me, couldn't figure out WTF was wrong. I drove it like this for 4 months, I had no other car and I wasn't about to take the bus. When I couldn't take it any more, I took off the air cleaner and found....I had completely forgotten to torque the carb down. :exnbp: Dammit, I felt like such a moron. Because I had left it for so long the rocking of the carb chewed up the gasket, and I had to buy a new one. This time I torqued it Lesson learned :slap:

That car lasted until the Ontario Govt. decided to start smog testing. No matter what I did this car wouldn't pass smog . So I did the next best thing... I sold it to a demolition derby racer, and bought a new(er) car!

 

one of my first diy jobs was replacing a halfshaft on my 95 accord. bought a remanufactured halfshaft from a local shop and borrowed a spindle nut socket from autozone, and the nightmare begins. the car had about 100k miles and the spindle nut was so rusted it wouldn't budge. i only had my good ol' craftsman torque wrench to do this job so i had my uncle hold the wrench in place and i just jumped and jumped on it, but still won't budge. i hammered it a bit, sprayed some dw40 a few times. after 45 mins of trying it finally came off. so i drained my transaxle and proceeded to remove the old halfshaft. the cv boots were really torn apart so when i pryed it out of the transaxle, it just fell apart and i got grease all over myself. getting the new halfshaft into the rusted wheel hub didnt go smoothly either. did a lot of greasing and hammering. so i finally installed it after about an hour, refilled my transaxle, put my wheel/tire back on, and unjacked the car. that's when i realized i hadn't torqued my tie rod ball joint, and sure enough its treads got stripped. i was already pissed at this point so i just hammered it until i can torque it. time for the test drive. i was 3 blocks away from my house and the halfshaft popped out of my transaxle. tranny fluid was leaking all over the place and my car was stuck in the middle of an intersection. i'd hate to call a towtruck to take my car 2 blocks, so i called my cousin who lived a few blocks away to help me push the car back home. we were a block away from home and my battery choked...no more power steering, tranny fluid leaking, alarm was going off, and my cousin pushing the car....it wasnt a pretty sight. after finally getting the car home, i took the halfshaft off (going through the same ordeal as when i started) and returned it to the shop. they told me they gave me the wrong part so i finally went to carquest, which is a bit farther, to get the halfshaft from them. and finally everything went smoothly.

 

As far as DIY projects go, the swap that I'm doing right now was going well until we tried to pull the crank pulley off to replace it with the CTR N1. Apparently the bolt is ceased. So that's being a bitch. Other DIY's that went wrong were of course the painting of interior parts (I really can't paint that well, brush, can, or otherwise). However, one of the projects that is going real well is my center console. I'm fiber glassing it to accept a DIN radio, turbo timer, and a couple of guages. At first, it was a little messed up, but with a little cutting and re-glassing is coming out better than I expected it to. I have managed to get the lines down to a T. The contour is almost 100% like stock. It still has alot of glassing to go, but it should turn out awesome.

 

I almost cut the floor open on my 92 civic while cutting off the old exhaust system with a grinder! and i banged my head alot

 

I think most people on these forums remember how bad my first DIY project went, at least the people who have been here a while. If you want to find out, look at my past posts, under "sexy tails", and you'll know what I'm talking about.
At least the was many years ago. I have since lost my taste for rice

 

I was tried to wire my radar detector through the paneling and to a switched power source so it wouldn't take up the cigarette lighter. I hooked it up to the wrong wire, and now my radar detector only goes on when i turn the headlights on...