A customer in my shop last week asked me to fix his 'loud engine' and handed me a bag of loose bolts from his trunk.
He said he found them rolling around after his friend 'helped' with a timing belt job, and now I'm wondering what's the weirdest collection of parts someone has ever brought you for a diagnosis.
Oh man, totally! I had a coffee can full of "GM connectors" from my old project car. Spent an hour trying to match a square four-pin for the headlights. Finally got it plugged in and nothing worked... because it was actually from a Chevy alternator, circa 1992. The shapes are so close sometimes, it's maddening. You just have to laugh or you'll cry.
Classic garage logic... someone pulls every plug they see and dumps it all together. Next thing you know, you're trying to fit a trailer light connector into a fuel injector socket. It's a special kind of frustration, sorting through a pile of mismatched plastic and metal. You find three identical ones that look perfect, and of course none of them are the right pin count.