If your car breaks down, bring it to the CTE center for the cheapest fix in town.

Students bring in their own projects all the time at the CTE center. Follow this first-hand account of one student who brought their car into the CTE center shop and started to get to work.

The student came into the shop thinking he had a bad engine, but shop leader Mr. Dustin said, “I think its your timing chain.” They got right to work on trying to fix the timing chain and everything went well until they had to take the chain out. They had to take out more things then they thought they had to.

Once they got the chain out, they realized it was the wrong one, so back to the store they went.  After they got the chain on, things seemed fine until they started the car: knock knock knock was all they heard.

They thought they know what wrong,n so they took the oil pan off and to look at the connecting rods. When they were taking off the oil pan they forgot one bolt and broke it. They looked at the 1st piston and saw it had bad rod bearings.

The bad rod bearings could have caused other problems but they decided just to fix the one rod. The one big problem they had was that the crankshaft had worn down by .040 of an inch which is just on the edge of fixable.

They are having problems finding the undersized rod bearings but this is about how far they have got with the car.

“There is still a lot more that we have to do but we will get it done,” said Levi Baumgaurd. They hope that the undersized bearings will work because they don’t know how much the connecting rod has worn.

The car has been in the shop for about a month now. They need the lifts so they have been pushing the car around the shop to get room for other cars.