Wittsend, you really need to come to the Focus website and help me out, LOL. I play that recording at least five times a day. Nothing against Russ at all (hear me Russ?) and always willing to help but it just appears to me the art of true DIYing is dying the death of a dirty dog. They constantly inundate you with 'important, my car is down NOW!' requests like the exact bolt size, thread count, grade markings (if smart enough, usually not) of practically any bolt that can be pulled in two seconds to have a perfect example in their itty-bitty hands. Or they want all the measurements of wonky one off OEM only parts they think they are going to pick up easily at the parts store and good luck with that one. Countless numbers I turned away at the parts store with 'forget that, you will only find it at the dealership' and they'd go cussing you out all the way out the door (to the next part store, they missed the message entirely).
I'm thinking of all the 500 different say snap-in retainers that hold various parts on cars commonly now, I've dug them up commonly to only have customer say 'that won't work it's the wrong color', and then I say well, here it's $1.99 package of 3 and OEM is $6.50 each, they then hit the door to go get them. The young kids now cannot think abstractly for spit. All they can lock on to is it don't look right. Whether it can work has no place in that brain at all.
And they are not happy if YOU don't do all the research and give them the EXACT part number, what store and the price at that time, I've been ripped time and time over it. They want YOU to do all the work and then they pop in a part in 2 seconds and brag to friends how they fixed something. Pretty d-mn funny.
Most of the thrill of DIY to me is working out the solution when none existed before, just being able to at last snap in this or screw that in when you realize it'll work has no meaning to me at all. The brain working to get there was the best part, the measuring, the comparing of like parts, the ultimate risk, will it work or no? Currently reworking an early Focus fuel module to take the later pump which is the only one available, it does NOT FIT the early module but we'll see about that. Already got the logistics of it worked out and a bit of plastic grinding and the easiest $100 bill I ever made. I ain't paying $100 more (potentially MUCH more, OEM is $459!!) for $15 worth of newly shaped plastic just because they decided to change the shape. Or, pump repair total of maybe $60, as compared to a common $600-$800 repair. Yeah, that's MUCH more like it............ .............a nd done on so many things that under the hood the two Foci I have have so many non-stock parts it's not funny. Same with all the cars before, it's not worth doing unless I can save WAY more than part is from the normal channels of replacement, I do not go OEM virtually at all, usually the most wasteful way to fix something. Saved a solid $100 bill on each car simply going to bulk hose instead of the formed oddball end size hoses commonly sold over the counter.
Thank goodness there is a much higher level of APPLIED intelligence here at this site.......... .....