Saw a guy at a local car meet swap an entire engine in 45 minutes and it made me rethink my whole approach

Back in 2019 at the Cars and Coffee in Charlotte, this older dude pulled up in a beat up Foxbody and swapped his intake manifold in like 10 minutes flat. No swearing, no dropping bolts, nothing. I spent the next year buying every cheap tool from Harbor Freight thinking it was the gear making me slow. Turns out he just had a system for organizing his sockets by size before he started. Has anyone else had a random stranger totally upend their workflow like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryanh777d ago

Hang on, I gotta push back a little. That guy had probably been doing that exact swap for years and had every single bolt memorized. It's not about being fast or having some magic system. He probably stripped or cracked something and just didn't care because it was a beater. You watching a pro do a routine job doesn't mean the rest of us should ditch our tools or feel bad. Slow and steady still wins, especially when you're learning a car you've never touched before.

christophermorgan2d ago

Two weeks ago I watched a neighbor spend an hour trying to learn a new lawnmower, @ryanh77, and that slow pace saved him from wrecking it.