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BangShift Question Of The Day: Which Car Fought You The Hardest?


BangShift Question Of The Day: Which Car Fought You The Hardest?

My first car was a second-generation Camaro, a 1975 if my memory is as good as I hope it is. My stepfather had asked me what I wanted for a first car and at the time, I didn’t want anything else…I still pined for the 1977 Camaro Type LT that had been the spark that lit the forest fire that is my automotive obsession. When I turned the corner to the final bit of dirt road that lead to the yard and saw the tail end of a shovelnose Camaro, sitting on wide slot mags in the rear, I just about went through the ceiling. I ran. I think I sat in that car for four hours after getting home…hell with the homework, I just got a car!During the Camaro’s short time in my life, however, things didn’t go well. We knew that the quarters were bad, but we were not anticipating the entire car to have the structural integrity of a table cracker. Pulling the seats required a breaker bar to provide enough leverage and there wasn’t much to bolt the taillights to when I pulled them out. And we don’t need to talk about the 200-pound doors and the hinges, now do we?

Working on cars requires patience. Every now and then you will encounter something that will test your patience and will leave you swearing that the car, an inanimate machine, is actually fighting you at every last possible turn. I’ve got a list of items that have earned my ire: gauge clusters that inexplicably never work, plastic trim that breaks the second you try to loosen the first screw, U-joint clips that spring off and embed themselves into the skin, and electrical maladies by the mile. Exhaust manifold bolts that break off into the head, radiator hoses that seem to have chemically become a physical part of the engine, and of all things, that one bolt or nut that only allows a 1/16th of a turn before you run out of wrench travel and have to reset will leave you cursing everything in sight. Promise. As far as a car that fought back the worst…well now…I’ll just say the last three Mopars are in a bit of a tie in my world.

We’ve all been at the breaking point, haven’t we? I’m sure you’ve got your personal moment cued up. So, as you watch Marty from MCM get to work on a rusty Toyota MR2 project, we want to hear your story of frustration. What car was it and what job kicked your ass the hardest?


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5 thoughts on “BangShift Question Of The Day: Which Car Fought You The Hardest?

  1. Lakewood

    A 72 International Scout II. Body RUST, lack of replacement parts, almost every nut and bolt was frozen with rust and either broke off or had to be cut off.

  2. Jess A Suter

    1990 Ford E-350. The LAST professional job I completed. A simple water pump. But no. Short version after removing everything off the front of the engine to access the water pump, the bolts that hold said pump in place are long enough to reach the transmission! More tear down blah blah blah. Paid like 2.3 took 5.0

  3. DanStokes

    Easily my ’64 MGB. It came out pretty well but was a PITA. Also had a /6 Duster that fought me a bit – somehow it bent pushrods after a rebuild…….

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