ocasionally people who "know' about cars will ask me whats wrong with my engine.
so heres how it usually goes:
Person: hey man whats wrong with your engine? it sounds like somethings wrong.
Me: yea i know i looked in my exhaust and found pieces of a cam shaft
Person: no ****?
Me: yea i just glued it back together, it will hold
(and then i just drive away)

 

the other day i was showing a co-worker who claims to be a "car guy" my newly installed supercharger. he replied with: "which one is the timing belt?"

 

 

lmao i found out how to get my car to shoot out flames just cant wait for those questions lol

 

That's gotta have more than 5 liters right... nope, 1.3!
I get that one alot with my 12A too.
Oh whats that got 4,6,8 cyl? I don't have cylinders

 

a little background here, my parents hate my car. 2 reasons. its foreign and its not brand new. So my mom and i get into a heated discussion about my "pos" to which she says "You better join AAA because when that thing breaks down in the middle of the night and your an hour away I am not coming to get you!" to which i reply back "IF that thing breaks down in the middle of the night its going to be because it caught fire and will go up in flames so i don't need AAA!!" yea she didnt like that too much.


another little story. this past summer i spent about 4 months of working on my car and jacked it up and threw it on some cement blocks in the driveway. so everyone would ask me "whats wrong with it now?" "does it run yet"(it always ran) and "i see your car is still on blocks"

i guess theres a couple boys at my local high school who reference my car as a sweet porsche?

i work with a kid who seems to think a honda prelude with a vtech can produce 500hp and totally beat me all day long. when i told him my stock TT made about 186HP he changed his tune and was like 'o.. maybe its like 300hp then"


I've also gotten the "how many pistons" but i like to reply with the number 2 as there are 2 pistons in the E-brake system in the rear

this thread makes me laugh. great job guys

 

I've got the, "Sounds like your timing belt is off a few teeth." I just said thanks and smiled.

 

great job yourself, lol!

 

oh and one more i get a lot is "what does Luv 1500 mean?" (my liscense plate says 1uv1500 because its a 10ae) the dmv wouldnt let me do 1of1500 because you need alteast 2 letters and o isnt an option because it resembles a 0, and it seems most people forget letters on liscense plates are all capitals i guess so they think the 1 is and lower case l.

 

there is a kid that i used to go to meets with, that worked at a local performance shop in corona... i came over to his shop 1 day to look at seats, and i desided to be a smart *** and ask him if he could look up a timing belt for me and some valve retainers. so the kid actually called his boss to see where he could find them and then he proceded to call a couple other places to see if he good get them elsewhere... meanwhile, a couple of his friends and i sat by the counter laughing at him for 10-15 min. i guess that's what happens when ur a dsm'er

 

I also have pulled the "Can you tell me how much a new timing bet would be?"

 

i love it when i get rebuild kits and the parts person looks at it and goes wheres the valve cover gasket? than throws one in

 

I was pulling up to school one morning shortly after getting my car, which had a horrible exhaust leak. I was going 20 in 2nd, and one of my classmates shouts at me as he's walking across the street. "SHIFT!!!"

 

i had a guy tell me that rotary's are HUGE torque monsters. i told him they aren't but he told me to trust him because he's an expert.

 

Those experts will get'cha!

 

While at the register at pepboys, the cashier tried selling me techron fuel injector cleaner.

C: "It'll help clean up your lifters and intake valves"
Me: "I dont have intake valves"
C: "I know you dont, but your car does"
Me: "Uh, no it doesnt"
C: "Yes it does, It'll also help clean your upper cylinders"
Me: "Nah, I'm ok. I dont have upper cylinders... or lower cylinders" haha
C: "Damn, what do you drive? A lawnmower?" looking at my 2-stroke oil. lol

 

I was at the auto parts store late summer getting the price on some TII brake parts. When I got to the counter I made the mistake of saying "I need to get the price on some brake parts for my RX-7". It seems that the kid thought he knew a little about RX-7s, so the conversation went something like this.

Me: I need to get the price on some brake parts for my RX-7.
Kid: OK. What year?
Me: '86. But I would like you to look up the calipers and rotors for an '87-'88 turbo model. I'm going to use those instead.
Kid: Those won't fit your car. You need to swap the hubs as well.

(He saw me pull up through the large front window, and hey, he does seem to know a little about RX-7s...)

Kid: I used to own an '86 so I know they won't fit.
Me: That's fine, but I'm planning to adapt them so I can keep my 4 lug wheels.
Kid: That's really hard. It won't work.
Me: I'm familiar with fabrication and have plenty of experience, so I'm not worried.
Kid: I don't think it will work. The NA cars are 4 lug, the turbo cars are 4 lug. Everything is different. I'll get you the price for the hub too.
Me: I have no intention of using a different hub as I like the wheels that I have on the car, and they would be impossible and expensive to get in 5 lug.
Kid: You need the hubs or the brakes won't fit.
Me: I can deal with the brackets and make any modifications necessary to make them work. I just need the prices on a set of front calipers and rotors for a '86-'88 RX-7 Turbo II.
Kid: They are special order and you can't take them back when they don't fit.
Me (starting to get a little frustrated): I will make them fit. I've done a lot of fabrication on the car and I won't have an issue making them work.
Kid: You need the hubs as well. I'll get you the price on those.
Me (how long can this go on?): If you look at the car, you'll see that it will be fine.

So we walk out to the parking lot, all the while the kid is telling me how much experience he has with RX-7s and how he knows that the brake parts will never fit and can't be made to work. When we get to the car, he starts in again as I walk over, reach into the window and pop the hood.

Kid: See, there's no scoop so this car isn't turbo. The turbo brakes won't fit because....

And then as I raise the hood, he stops mid-sentence and there's dead silence for around 10 seconds.

I turn to look at him and say:

Me: Now, will you be a nice little parts monkey and go back behind your counter to get the information the customer is requesting without wasting his time?

The price of the calipers is $178 after core, the rotors rotors are $98 each.

 

 

and the award for funniest longest randomest story about an FC goes to...AARON CAKE! Good job man, you put that punk in his place. I like how he **** himself after you popped the hood.

I find it funny that car part stores usually have at least one kid working that thinks he knows about/has heard of rotary's. I was at pepboys getting break pads and the guy that was looking for them said "I love those things, you could push like 30 pounds of boost and they redline at around 10k, but they are really expensive. The lowest I saw one for was 20000 and thats without the twin turbo or anything!" He then asked me if I had the turbo or N/A version. I said I have an 88 GTU, its pretty much an N/A in full turbo trim. He just stood there like he didnt know what to do and asked me again..."so its non turbo?" I said yes but look up the pads for the turbo. He said those wont work for a non turbo. This went back and forth until he finally gave in and got me my damn break pads. These places should learn how to give good customer service AND NOT ARGUE WITH THE CUSTOMERS.

 

LOL. I had the same **** happen to my when I was looking for body panels for my S14. I had a zenki(95) and told the guy to look for 95-98 models, and he proceeded to tell me that the 97-98 was a "completely different car" and the parts wouldn't fit. I told him that if you switch all of them it'll fit just fine, and that it was essentially the same car, and he argued with me for like 5 minutes, and even turned his computer monitor around and nearly screamed, "look, the computer says it's a different car, the parts won't work!" and in the end, they had no 240s at all, haha.

I've had kids tell me my car has a twin turbo V6, or that their friend had one just like it, only the twin turbo model, lol.

 

just about every part in my car had been mod'd some way or another. I go to the local Checker, and there are two guys there that usually chat me up...

The one is a DSM'r. He is always spouting off some BS about his car, but I can't understand half of what he's saying.

The other guy says my 7 is one of the cleanest he's ever seen, praises me for keeping it so clean, blah blah blah...

Guys, my car is is not in that great of shape, exterior-wise. It may pass as a clean body FC for the most part, but here is a list of the obvious exterior issues:

Chip on rear spoiler
Broken front bumper
crappy paint job with obvious swirls in the sun light
scratch on passenger side fender

Now under the hood, it's pretty clean, and the interior is a clean S5 blk swap.
But this guy hasn't seen under the hood... ??!!?

I always go in there asking for parts different than what their computer says, but they are pretty cool about it for the most part. Every now-and-then, they say... "Just tell my what year" and I have to let em know that it's been mod'd.

 

Another I had was a while back where I was trying to rig up some sort of intake with a cone filter, trying to make homemade tubing. I was talking to a friend about a clearance problem I was having with the tubing and he asked to have a look and see if he could help.

I popped the hood and he just kinda stood there confused. "Sooo, this is a v8 right??". I said no, it's a rotary and then he said, "so a v6 then?". I explained to him that I don't have pistons, but rather I have triangles. He was even more confused, and has never really talked about my car since.

 

But damn I haven't had a run in with an argumentative auto parts guy yet, just dumb ones that try to get me to break my car. Not sure which one I would be more angered at. lol

 

The world is, and always will be full of people that don't know everything. Sometimes I feel that we're a little critical of people just because they aren't familiar with an uncommon car or engine. However, I always get a chuckle whenever my grandpa calls the engine in my car a rotisserie.

 

i get the porsche comment alot

also had a guy in my engine repair classes argue with me for a good solid 10 minutes about how "every car has to have a cam shaft and a crank shaft"

no one in the class other than me understood anything about rotarys and e-shafts and no cams

also had a few people tell me "yeah i remember one of my friends having a V6 one of these"

sheesh people just don't learn