Working on your own car has a very strong coorelation to the idea of not asking questions you don't want answers to, like "what is causing that new/weird noise"? Every time you look under the hood, you should
expect entertaining and unexpected gifts. If you don't find any, you're probably not looking hard enough or they are about to jump out and suprise you a few hours after closing the hood, usually as soon as you think you fixed the issue and you let your guard down, take a long drive, or worse, let your significant other drive your car unsupervised. Conversely, if you don't look under the hood for a while, your car will feel needy and act out in weird ways so it gets more attention from you.
I have a pile of entertaining stories that are fun to tell years after they happened, but they sucked at the time I had to work through them until I learned how much Murphy loves to mess with me. A few of them confounded experts with statements such as "that is not physically possible" being uttered more than once. Even seen a cylinder head shrink along it's long dimension (front to back) so it won't fit over the dowels anymore? I have. Yeah, that was fun. At some point I've just had to start finding the humor in them as they happen, because the hits just keep on coming, so I might as well stop stressing and enjoy the ride. I find that it's a very similar state of mind to "deadlines amuse me". That said, I have often joked that if I ever find Murphy in person, I'm straight up kneecapping him for all the stuff of mine he's broken at the worst possible times and places.
Apologies to anyone with the unfortunate situation of having the last name Murphy, though I have found from long ago friend that it makes Murphy's Law a good deal more amusing when it happens to them...
