Okay.. I have a new one for you guys..
This one is partly my fault, partly the instructor's.
here goes:
My 1994 Taurus had a major gas leak. It normally is supposed to get 20 MPG average, and then one week it was all-of-a-sudden getting 10 MPG. I smelled gas fumes too. Pretty obvious that I had a fuel leak somewhere.
So anyways.. I get it on the lift and see that the entire tank is wet from gas. I drop the tank and did a smoke machine leak test, sealing all the other lines. The smoke was seeping out of the top of the fuel tank at the actual fuel pump assembly (sending unit, etc), where the metal lines first came out and attached to the rubber lines.
So, anyways, I new I had to eat the cost of a new fuel pump, or get half the millage. Not much of a choice, right?
This car has 223,000 miles on it, so I thought why waste money on an OEM fuel pump that costs me 300 bucks, when I could go get an airtex for 120?
So anyway.. My teacher INSISTED that he install the new fuel pump himself because "he wanted to make sure it was done right". I can understand that.
Only problem is, 3 months later, today I went out to smoke a cigarette and I smelled GAS. I was 30 fucking feet away from the damn car! There was also a very large dark puddle under the car. I go over there, lay on the ground, look under the car, and the damn thing is gushing out gas like you wouldn't believe. Since I don't have a lift at home, I can only guess that the damn 0-ring for the fuel pump isn't seated properly.
So tomorrow I will take the risk of driving the damn thing 5 miles (IF I don't run out of gas) to school, and cuss out my teacher for being a moron and putting me at risk.
The thing is, I didn't actually FILL the tank until this time after the new fuel pump installation, and as soon as I did, BAM gas smell. First my GF noticed a gas smell last night, then I noticed it today.
So I guess even someone with 25 years experience and someone who claims to "know it all", can seriously fuck something up sometimes. Lesson learned: I should have just looked it up on alldata.com for the "exact" procedure (even though I pretty much knew what to do).
Never trust a single individual over the collective information of thousands of technicians. AllDATA.com can be wrong sometimes, but I've come to realize I can trust it WAY more than my teacher.
Sad thing is, I'm starting to think my teacher isn't as good as he claims to be.
So yeah, me and him are going to have HOT words tomorrow.
