Previous Owner horror stories

My buddy lives in Ghana right now, he's a missionary. Anyway, he picked up a '99 Freelander (didn't ask me first or I'da told him not to) and was having some electrical issues. Through e-mail I've been trying to help him figure things out. Anyway, I tell him to look in the underhood fuse box to gather information for me. I said "go ahead and pull the suspect fuses out for a visual, even if everything seems ok. You might find corrosion or a spread terminal or something."
After pulling out one fuse he figured it'd be a good idea to replace them all. This is the picure he sends me.

The previous owner of my former car jimmy-rigged a lot of stuff. Sucked.

DrBoost wrote: My buddy lives in Ghana right now, he's a missionary. Anyway, he picked up a '99 Freelander (didn't ask me first or I'da told him not to) and was having some electrical issues. Through e-mail I've been trying to help him figure things out. Anyway, I tell him to look in the underhood fuse box to gather information for me. I said "go ahead and pull the suspect fuses out for a visual, even if everything seems ok. You might find corrosion or a spread terminal or something." After pulling out one fuse he figured it'd be a good idea to replace them all. This is the picure he sends me.

OMG. That's something I never would have expected.

So, I am unclear. Why are there copper strands around ALL fuses?
I especially like the burnt up pink on near the bottom.

The strands are the wires he used to (for some reason) jump the fuses. My buddy said there were 30 amp fuese where 5's were called for.

Fuses must be expensive over there. You might want to send him a box of them. If fuse replacement was delayed just imagine what other kind of neglected maint. there must have been.
I would highly recommend an oil change and fluid flush.

"Well there's your problem..."

Wow. That there is special.

My Trans Am was messed with in some pretty "interesting" ways by the former owner. I could write a book on all the facepalm-able offenses, so I'll leave this little tidbit:

There was a little toggle switch under the dash. I couldn't figure out what it did. I could flip it on and off, and all it did was shock me. I nicknamed it "The Tickle Switch", because it would zap your leg every once in a while when you were driving and your leg made contact with it.

Well, last time I had the car all apart for a motor swap, we were cleaning up the wiring harness, so we decided to figure out what that switch did. Essentially, we followed the lead on the switch, and it went straight to the positive battery terminal!!! No ground, no nothing, just a positive lead. I think the idiot PO was trying to install a kill switch, but the only thing it would kill was whoever touched the damn thing. I yanked it and threw it into the trash.

my two worst was the idiot who rewired my first fiat with purple wire... yes.. almost everything under the dash was the same colour purple.

And in my Ti, somebody cut HUGE holes in the doors and rear panels to mount speakers.. and my Ti has the rare all black interior :(

I've had several. The 89 Fullsize Chevy I purchased 8 years ago had a reman engine with 17k miles and a new clutch in it. The PO neglected to tell me that was ALL that had been replaced in 208k miles. All original parts that I had to replace: ujoints, ball joints, tierods, idler arm, pitman arm, shocks (no lie), fan clutch, egr valve, injectors, etc etc.... what was even better was they had not changed the oil since putting in the engine.... 17k miles before.

First swift, well it was a mess. 2 quarts of manual trans fluid under the dash, trashed head, hidden rust, crappy stereo wiring, hacked shifter etc. Second Swift had about 15 miles of wiring for a stereo and alarm that I removed and a wonderful engine mount with 5 lbs of weld.

The vette hasn't been bad, but they had run the pads into the rotors so they were all below specs, slapped new pads on and let it go. Diff, trans and OD fluids hadn't been changed in about 15 years, the cap/rotor and wires look at least 10 years and 3 owners old. THe plugs are half Bosch platinums and half autolite coppers. Bilstein shocks had been replaced with Monroe gas-matics and my favorite, instead of replacing the OD switch for the Doug Nash unit, they cut the wires and taped them together to make it "on" all the time..... with scotch tape.

Oh, so many... The first one that springs to mind was when I bought two BMW 2002s: One rusty car with a recently rebuilt engine (done by the current owner and his mechanical engineer dad), and one straighter car with no engine.

This was early days for me, and I was already freaked out about doing an engine swap. Then we got the "good" engine up on the hoist... and the crank had something like 3/32" of endplay... They'd machined the thrust surfaces on the crank, but not used oversized bearings. I decided to just do the whole thing over...

My 944 was a nightmare. The mechanic I took it to figured it had been in a bad front end collision, and the PO had rebuilt it using an earlier model year. For the most part it was ok, except I didn't have ABS when I thought I did. That was not a fun learning experience.

My favorite story, which may or may not have any validity, was the guy who bought a fully restored car that kept changing hands. Found out later that it was restored by a plumber and a ton of threads were switched over to pipe fitting threads.

I once bought a car with the master cylinder not attached to the firewall. It was bolted to a piece of 1/4 inch plate that was then held against the firewall by large washers at each corner. I nearly got in a really bad accident when, in a panic stop, I bent the top two washers far enough to pop the plate off of the firewall, thus, giving me NO brakes.

I shouldn't be alive...it was a TR-7. My parents still don't know. I wouldn't tell them because they told me not to buy the car as it wasn't safe.

My worst was finding acorn shells in my sho's oil pan.......lol

My dads friend bough a "restored" 64 vette convertible with both tops, frame ended up breaking, only to find out the idiot who had it before had just fiberglass patch and bondo'd the frame up to look good. After that he sent it off to get completely redone, there was alot more wrong than "restored" condition. 42k later, he has an almost new 64, but spent all his c7 savings......guess he'll have to live with the 64, 69 427 car, 03 zo6, and c6 grandsport......lol....must be hard

SilverFleet wrote: There was a little toggle switch under the dash. I couldn't figure out what it did. I could flip it on and off, and all it did was shock me. I nicknamed it "The Tickle Switch", because it would zap your leg every once in a while when you were driving and your leg made contact with it.

I had a "tickle switch" in my N/A FC that powered the front windshield wipers (lots of solder joints and relays go bad in the FC's electronics, esp. the early ones). It would get very hot if I left the wipers on for more than 30 minutes so I had that going for (against?) me too. Both of my FCs had doorbells connected to aftermarket horns because the stock horn relay came unsoldered. The wiring in my turbo FC is a nightmare, thanks to a half-assed stereo system and an unsafe battery relocation where the PO didn't even strap down the 60lb truck battery he installed! That summer electronics class I took during middle school sure comes in handy...

I'm not even sure if i can remember every horror i've found and eradicated out of my MX6. I'm STILL finding things, as Yamaha will attest to. (You liked that boost gauge wiring, right?)

I found a shoe sole in place of a transmission mount in my Jeep. It has at last 3 extra license plates in the floor pan, and it needed a "bottle cap" to fix the cooling system. The engine was a remanufactured unit, so I didn't expect it to be all that bad. The motor was clean, and I suspected normal Jeep corrosion back there.

I don't think the oil was changed at any point after the motor was swapped, and I don't think that engine had seen antifreeze since install. I'm still flushing gunk out of that motor.

My wife told me not to buy that Jeep, but if we didn't, we wouldn't have a second vehicle at all. Eventually, it will be a new Jeep.

my brother bought a 1964 SS Impala project for $1000 and got it running. The PO rewired most all things under the dash using the same color wire.

He started popping fuses and put a cotter pin in to replace a fuse. I always wondered why the car never burned to the ground. LOL

My son's LUV had NO fuse block when we got it. Gone.

Most recently I redid the waist harness mounts in the Radical. PO's race mechanic had crudely MIG welded Schroth harness backing plates to the frame tubes - UPSIDE DOWN - so that the 2 tack welds on each nut were all that would have kept the PO's waist strapped in in a major hit. Scary.

The car is built with welded-in bosses for harness ends too. I reckon the "race mechanic" noticed the belts were expired and didn't install them 'til an hour before he had to leave for the track, at which point he found the lap belt ends were latches, not eyes. Git out the MIG an' git r' dun!