Russia!
This story comes from ‘old busted hotness’ on the opposite lock forum:
Not my direct experience, but I used to work at a shop that hired a Russian immigrant as a mechanic. This was in the early 90’s. That guy was the worst hack I’d ever seen.
We thought we’d start him out on oil changes, how hard can that be, right? Soon learned that we had to keep Heli-Coils in stock for all the oil pans he stripped out.
Soon he left to start his own used car lot, with his brother. I stopped in there one day and he showed me a V6 Camry they had up on the lift. Bought at auction, rod knocking.
Now you’d think a hack repair for that would be to put a new bearing shell in and maybe hit the journal with an emery cloth or something, right? Ha. This guy cut the rod in half with a torch, hose-clamped the bearing shell to the crank and siliconed the piston in the bore, then cut off the fuel injector lead. “Runs goot. Maybe leetle shake.”