Whats your most frustrating car related job?

[Grin-a-lot]

For me it's exhaust wrapping: fiddly, itchy, hard to reach, hard to do neatly and generally annoying.  Now I've got that off my chest what is your favourite worst job.

One primary left to wrap...

[YZFMINI]

Havng to take the engine out again, as you know it's not a quick fix and it'll be off the road for a bit....

yzf

[David H]

changing a diff to a fancy pants one on my Westy

test driving said diff and driving for a few miles without the diff oil filler plug (unknowingly)

Hearing the whine and going round the block a few more times to make sure I wasn't hearing things

Diff wrecked

Got diff rebuilt

Changed diff again only to find I hated it

Changed diff back to the original with my tail between my legs.

Very expensive mistake.

[Iainl]

My worst job was fitting the rear arches on my Aries Locoblade.

Looked perfected until I fixed them and now the does not look central 

But who will notice?

[stupott901]

Putting a speedo cable o a classic mini god knows how i got my hands in that small gap took hours

stu

[Hairy Santa]

My worst job was fitting the rear arches on my Aries Locoblade.

Looked perfected until I fixed them and now the does not look central 

But who will notice?

dont know whether you noticed but your wheel arches ain't central, just thought I'd mention it in case you didn't know 

[David H]

My worst job was fitting the rear arches on my Aries Locoblade.

Looked perfected until I fixed them and now the does not look central 

But who will notice?

dont know whether you noticed but your wheel arches ain't central, just thought I'd mention it in case you didn't know 

Behave!

['The Gaffer']

Diff related too. Thought my old diff was sounding a bit slack and clunky, removed it, had it rebuilt, put back on the car and same noise was still there Took it back too reputable rebuilder who exchanged it, I put it on only to find out it too was making the same noise

Rebuild company, to be fair, came out to investigate and after a lot of head scratching and spanner work it was decided that the clunking and clanging noise was simply the backlash sound in the blade gearbox being transfered down the prop and into the diff.

Turned out the diff was fine after all so I decided to have a custom prop made with a rubber inner sleeve - This absorbed a lot of the noise.

A very stressful and expensive week in which I learnt that BEC transmissions are not as smooth as car ones. In hindsight, if I had known what was causing the noise I would have simply left it alone

Here is the offending noise at source..

[paintman]

I would have done the same......sounds like a bag of spanners rattling!!

[fullpint]

  New clutch cable on the wife's Seicento Sporting.. Fiat say 'REMOVE THE WHOLE DASH'... Sod that, it can be done with out that but you should have been the states of my knuckles!!! Passanger seat had to come out the car so you can then lay on your back and then try to remove a split pin (blind) using your little finger tips (ideal job for a new born) to remove the old cable..
WHAT A PAIN IN THE BUTT.. Thats just one nasty job I've done..

[paintman]

Worst job i ever did was to replace the hand brake cable on a Alfasud 1500Ti.   Said in the manuel "First take out the engine"!!!      (it had inboard discs with the cable running to the caliper.)

F*** that i thought......took me 2 days and three pairs of hands in the end to do it!!!   

Three months later, the other cable went!!!!!!!!    

[Krazyken]

Seems to be a thing with Italian cars.  My wife once owned a 1985 Fiat Panda and the clutch cable went, she broke down outside Patchway Autoparts and the AA man said buy a new one from there and I will fit it for you.  I bet he still traumatised to this day.  According to my wife he skinned all his knuckles, crushed one hand and bruised the other, all because of the ridiculous cable path when the car was conveted from LHD to RHD for the UK market at the factory.

Because he was representing the company he didn't swear once, bet he did when he got home though!