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As we all know, the Brickboard is a fabulous resource for precise information on specific Volvo problems. The other day, though, I got to thinking..... A while back, one of the private pilots magazines--I think it was "Flying"--had a column titled "I learned about flying from that." People would write in about experiences they had had which had made them better fliers.
I got to thinking that that might make an interesting thread here--experiences we have had that taught us something important about working on cars.
I have one incident that sticks in my mind. Two cars ago, I had a '76 Ford Capri II "S" type (blackout, no chrome, gold trim), V-6, 4 speed. Neat piece. Anyway, at one point, I did the front brake pads and also repacked the front wheel bearings. Several days later, I took off for a trip of several hundred miles. On the way back, I started getting a heavy shuddering in the front end. I first thought that I hadn't gotten the lug nuts tight. Nope--they were OK. Must be the wheel bearings. When I got home, I pulled the wheels, everything looked OK, repacked and retorqued the bearings. Still shuddered. It wasn't until later, after a lot of poking around, that I found that the ball joint had failed on the driver's side.
Anyway, my point (and I do have one) is that this taught me that coincidences do occur with cars. I had not been working in the immediate vicinity of the ball joint, nor had I done anything to disturb it. It just failed at almost exactly the same time. I realized that I should be more open to non-obvious causes in my own "wrenching", and this also has made me a bit more sympathetic to professional mechanics when they haven't been able to fix my car.
Any other stories? (I'm sure some will cover Volvos, so mandatory Volvo content hopefully guaranteed).
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