72 Chevy truck...ignition wire to the coil was pinched and grounded under the valve cover. Free fix!
1965 Mustang...Reported to have a broken crank. Bought it for $100 and my silly brother runs home while I pay the man and brings back a distributor and a battery. He drives it home!! This was the day we learned to NOT fix the car in front of the previous owner.
84 Mustang 5.0..tightened the upper bolt on the starter properly.
98 Aurora..sandpapered the resistor on the key.
$5.00 shifter part on a Ranger truck. Of course I had to pull the trans to get to the part and you don't pull a transmission on a 20 year old car without changing the clutch.
Free plastic part on an Escort that allowed it to begin shifting again.
Bad cable to the starter.
Reconnected tube from the MAF to the throttle body.
Reset the fuel cutoff switch on a Thunderbird.
B6T engine swap into an Aspire fixed by moving a ground wire to a spot that had actual ground. This one took me about 3 months to find and I now have a nice set of 17 by 36 schematics for this engine.
P71 with an overheating problem that I cleaned the plug to the radiator fan!
Brother bought a Cub Cadet Zero turn mower with a fresh tune up..filters, oil change, plugs, fuel tank cleaned out....pulled the acorn out of the throttle linkage that allowed the choke to turn off and it runs great!
Older Honda had a leaf that had blocked a vent hole on a carburetor..that took a while to figure out.
Once bought a Le Baron convertible at auction for $200 because I arrived early as the guy was running around with his jumpstarter thing to have the cars warm up and charge the batteries. The Le Baron ran out of gas after running for about 2 minutes. I had enough time to check the air conditioning and the transmission before it quit.
Currently working on a car I got for free.....NO brakes, no clutch and ran like crap! Put some brake fluid in it and a set of plugs.....Gonna get it inspected today!
I live for these deals!
As said earlier, these are often the one item has the previous owner tearing their hair and just wanting to get rid of the car.
Even the 98 Aurora that needed only the security key fix still required a new headlight, 14 other bulbs, 6 hours of interior cleaning (leather is a wonderful thing unless it has never been cleaned properly), a front wheel sensor and a variety of interior plastic parts to get it back to a nice car.
Bruce