I'll take brake fluid over gear oil, wheel bearing grease, and anti-seize any day of the week! At least brake fluid cleans up relatively easily...anti-seize and wheel bearing grease have this nasty habit of getting anywhere and everywhere and making a difficult-to-clean-up mess of everything, and if you even get a drop of gear oil on your clothes, it's going to take 4 or 5 wash cycles to even hope of getting the smell out!
Actually, IIRC nearly all engines with timing belts use the water pump as a tensioner gear. According to a few reputable sources, that's actually intentional...it essentially forces you to change the water pump out every time you do a timing belt job, which in theory minimizes the risk of a water pump failure. Clearly, this theory didn't work in your case, though
yikes!!!As for my most miserable vehicle "repair" (and quite a learning experience for me!!)...this may not have been the most difficult repair I've ever done, but it's easily the most frustrating, and also had much more of a long-term consequence than anything else I've done. My second vehicle (and last g@$oline-powered car) was a '65 Chevy Chevelle with a 230ci inline-6. I was 17, had been playing with diesels on a weekly basis for the last 4 years or so to date, but didn't know much about g@$$ers and was too broke to take the car to a shop. The engine had an intermittent miss...it didn't seem to be isolated to one cylinder, and would happen at any engine RPM or accelerator position. Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone who was well-versed in gasoline engines other than my auto shop teacher, and he didn't have any idea either in spite of being an old-school Chevy guy, and I was very wary of repair shops (not to mention broke
), so I was at a point where I was throwing parts at the engine hoping something would stick. I had replaced the spark plugs, wires, distributor car and rotor, contact points, and ignition condenser at least twice, and finally thought to try changing out the fuel filter. I'll never forget the day...it was the day before New Year's Eve 1998/99. The fuel filter was one of those solid elements that looked like a shaped porous rock, and went into a chamber in the carburetor that the fuel feed line attached to. In the process of removing the fuel feed line, I damaged the line beyond repair. So, I had to run to the auto parts store to get another solid line. Only problem was, there was no other vehicle, and the nearest auto parts store was about 3 miles away. I had a bicycle, but I (stupidly) hadn't touched it in the 7 or 8 months since I had gotten my driver's license...but it's okay; the tires are holding air, I've been bending my back over a hood for the last couple of hours, why not?6 mile round trip later, I'm back with the replacement fuel line...the guy at the auto parts store had recommended that I also buy a bending tool to keep from kinking the line, but I was young and dumb and broke and decided that I didn't need it as badly as I needed the $5 or so. After getting back to the car, it took me maybe 10 minutes to kink the line...so, back on the auto parts store. 6 more miles later, I get back with another line and a bending tool. Fortunately, the line wasn't all that expensive, but still...I learned my first lesson about being penny-wise and pound-foolish. I got the line bent, after a few hours of again bending over into the engine compartment. Then, I realized that the fitting on the fuel pump side was different, and I needed to adapt it...back onto my bike and back to the auto parts store! I couldn't find something that looked like it would work, so I went back home empty-handed...had ridden 18 miles at this point. I found a different auto parts store, which was of course 3 miles away in the other direction, and off I went...it was starting to get dark by now, and I was starting to feel pain in my legs and hips, but I kept on going. The second auto parts store had what I needed, so I got the adapters, rode back, and got everything put back together. Drove the car around the block...it seemed better but not perfect, and I figured the car was good to go to make an appointment to get the tires replaced the next day.
First, the bad news (and why "repair" was in quotes above)...while driving to that tire appointment, the engine decided to die altogether when I was halfway there. I ended up calling a towtruck, towing it to the shop that was doing the tires, and asked them if they could do anything with the engine. They said they'd repair the engine...they ended up tightening the bolts holding the intake/exhaust manifold on and making some adjustments to the carburetor. That didn't fix the problem, and the shop refused to honor their 90 day repair warranty and wouldn't look at it without charging another $100 inspection fee that I couldn't dream of affording (I was already way past broke with this)...I ended up giving up and selling the car. To this day, I don't have a clue what the problem was...shame there wasn't an OB for Chevelle owners in the late '90's; OTOH I bought my Scout and first diesel after selling the Chevelle, and have been spark-free ever since
Now, for the worse news, which is why this is the most miserable repair I've ever done and why I stressed those auto parts store runs in my story. I had spent half of that day bending over into the engine compartment of a car that was fairly low to the ground, and the other half riding 24 miles on a bicycle without having stretched or warmed up my muscles or anything like that. The first day afterwards, I felt what seemed like muscle pain in my legs, hips, and back, and I figured that was normal for what I had done. However, the next day, I was in absolute agony...I felt like someone had stabbed me deep in the right hip
and I almost couldn't walk. I still thought that this was just a delayed muscle reaction and just toughed it out...but, when it hadn't gone away in two months, I realized that it was something else. 14 years, six doctors, and seven opinions later, I still don't have a firm diagnosis (that story's a PITA unto itself 
), but the best I've been able to come up with is two herniated discs putting pressure on the sciatic nerve. I'm pretty sure that it was a cumulative effect (I spent my teenage years thinking that "lift with your legs, not your back" didn't apply to me, while hauling on lines and wrenching on 2-stroke Detroits on a boat), but that day was certainly the straw that broke the camel's back, almost literally in this case Ibuprofen keeps the pain mostly under control (to the tune of a minimum of 800mg per day ), but even now, there are some times when I need crutches to walk. I'm almost 32 now; I don't want to think about how bad things'll be when I'm 60...Object lessons learned:
1) Blindly throwing parts at something is bad for your wallet.
2) Spend the extra money for the right tool the first time around!
3) Spark plugs are the spawn of Satan
4) Take care of your back...no one is invincible, and back pain is a whole new level of misery.
