Who else hates being meticulous?

I've got a transmission disassembled in my garage for an LSD install and some other things; I was trying to save a few bucks by reusing the diff bearings, but I don't have a press. I was being real careful with a socket and mallet, but on the last whack the socket slipped and I ended up jacking up one of the bearings. Now the diff is at a shop with some new OEM bearings getting installed the right way. When I get it back, I have more BS to look forward to with the diff shims. I hate feeler gauges. Any time I'm required to break them out, I know I'm past the point of having any fun. Who's with me? Crowbars and mallets, that's where it's at.

Go / No-Go is the only tolerable way to do feeler gauges.

I go through phases. Some days I can sit on my work stool at the bench for hours doing careful dis/reassembly, and be totally happy with it.

Other days, I would much rather go at a car with a sawzall, a sledgehammer and a devilish grin.

Depends on what I am working on. If it is say,a Turbo 350 trans, I could rebuild it with a tape measure in a sand storm and it will work for many miles. But if I have a 4T60 instead, I better double check everything or it won't make it back out the door without Flintstone power.

Anything that requires more than a best guesstimate pisses me off. Sure, a micrometer can be calibrated to the hundred thousands of a millimeter, but I can't!

I'm the other side of this coin. When starting a huge project w/ a rigid "drop-deadline" I have to loosen my personal tolerances and standards for preparation to make time.

When I'm in the machine shop I routinely try to hold a thousandth as a general practice, and if there's any time at all I'll TIG rather than MIG.

And don't get me started on paint prep.

I hate this.

Is there a difference between meticulous and precise? I won't bolt a part back onto a car unless I've cleaned it, and maybe painted it. I set up little jigs to which bolts go where, use lots of plastic baggies, take notes and photos and I pause frequently to restore organization to my tools and parts. Maybe that's better labeled OCD but I could never work in a production shop because I just take too long. I don't hate this - I enjoy it and find it theraputic.

That much confessed, I'm lost when it comes to precision - beyond a simple valve adjustment or something.

Only with certain things, for example, I recently shaped bondo on the Yugo with a whizzy wheel and nothing else. But I'll be dammed if I let a spec of dirt fall into an already loose lawn mower engine doing a valve adjustment.

I'm the opposite. I always try and get more disciplined during disassembly but always end up scrounging around a giant box full of bolts for the right one, and later finding out I need that bolt somewhere else and redoing stuff.

I like being as meticulous as possible, no matter what I'm doing. I usually don't have to do the same repair twice.

Right now it's been raining asphalt shingle aggregate in my shop for months. I'm looking forward to finishing the garage build and doing things precisely and tidily in a clean shop.

I would also like to improve my cabinetry and shelving so that I can stop using the filing system my girlfriend refers to as I threw it on the ground.

I'm with you......usually I end up going for the hammer.

I get bit by being too precise. I'll add up all the numbers and determine that a hole should be 0.374" in order to fit perfect. So I make it 0.374", and things don't fit. It took years to realize that while I can spend hours reasoning with myself why it should have fit, it still doesn't and I can either spend more hours figuring it out, or just drill the hole larger and get on with things...

But above all else, I hate haveing to do something twice. It takes far more than twice the time since however it was done the first time has to be removed, cut off, ground down, etc, then use up more stock doing it all over again. All while insulting myself because there's no one else to blame...