[Guest]

sherlock9c1 suggested that we start a post to report strange, weird, unusual, and just plain pathetic things we found when we bought our previously owned municipal vehicles (as a firefighter for over 20 years I have seen some odd fixes come out of our maintenance shop!) Just recently I found out that the State of New York R&R'd my AIR pump at some point and bolted the mounting bracket over the top of a spark plug wire almost cutting it in half. I also have a wiring gremlin I can't figure out. Maybe you can help me out with that one...I'll post a picture later. Any other interesting finds out there?? I know Ruphrax has some stories!!

 

[Guest]

My favorite was a 32k mile Brooklyn '94 Caprice wagon (looked like 332k) that had had a water pump put on. Ran for crap, hard starting, weak spark, good coil spark and took forever to find the small crack at the coil wire port in the Opti. Had to replace an Opti for a bad water pump install. Now I check for it, and have found the same problem on other cars, too, and not just from state maintenance departments.

 

[Guest]

My 9C1 had had the window sliders (not rollers, guess they didn't know) replaced on most of the doors, and the guys never put that plastic weather barrier back on properly. They kluged it with some crappy tape that didn't work.

And all it takes is a few seconds with the heat gun to make the OEM glue nice and sticky again!

 

[Guest]

The right rear window didn't go up or down when I got the 9c1. When I removed the door panel, I found that someone had left the power window switch disconnected!

 

[Guest]

When they took the wigwags out of my headlight wiring before auction, they just twisted the wires back together. No crimping, no soldering, not even a wirenut. It didn't take me long to figure out why one of my headlights would blink over bumps...

 

[Guest]

my car was civilian owned but when I installed the system I discover someone had grinded up the alternater braket to put on a 1980 somthing gm 65 amp alternator it fryed after 1 weekof banging and I replaced it with the propper 100 120 amp (I think) alternator

 

[Guest]

Having owned a bunch of ex-law enforcement vehicles, I've found a few things. Nothing of any real value, but I've found some live ammo, road flares, etc. I did get this out of a fed Caprice: