What black magic? I'm pretty sure my skill is just being too stubborn to quit. I spent like three hours on that one part, failing the same way over and over.

Wow, that's a great story from @thea_carter. I read a forum post a while back about a guy with a high-mileage diesel. His magnetic plug caught a surprising amount of fine, gritty metal that normal draining would have missed. It made him check the oil cooler, which was the source and starting to fail.

Honestly, I used to think thermal paste didn't matter much. But seeing a friend's PC crash from a bad job proved me wrong. Now I'm super careful with that stuff.