World's Toughest Fixes

Sean Riley joins a team of engineers and mechanics as they attempt to fix a damaged Boeing 767 jet. This is a crucial fix—taking a jet apart and putting it back together is a complex, three-week operation, and the smallest mistake could have huge consequences. As the new guy on the project, Riley is given an unpleasant task to prove his mettle—disconnecting a lavatory tube.

Sean Riley joins an elite corps of engineers who dangle from a helicopter and work with live power lines carrying a shocking 500,000 volts of electricity.

Sean Riley helps swap out a 38-ton engine on one of the largest ships in the Gulf of Mexico. The fix must be done in the middle of the gulf—and with swells, wind and rain, things can get complicated.

For this tough job, Sean Riley joins a team of engineers to move and clean a 27-foot, 23-ton, $15 million telescope mirror. Here, three telescopes are used together to form the largest combined telescope in the world.

Sean Riley puts on his radiation suit and heads into the radiation zone for his next tough fix, replacing a steam turbine in a nuclear power plant to boost its energy-producing capacity.

Sean Riley works to fix a faulty TV antenna nearly half a mile in the air. This extreme fix takes strength, teamwork and guts.

Sean Riley races the clock to help add a more than 200-ton engine in a luxury cruise liner, joining the crew as they rip out the ship's guts and insert the engine by cutting through the 3-inch steel hull.

Witness a high-stakes repair job as Sean Riley and a crew of 100 highly trained men and women shut down the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline—the only conduit to market for almost 15 percent of the US domestic oil production. This major fix calls for swapping out a 32-ton valve system, but the size of the job is the least of their problems. Crude oil is not just highly toxic—its explosive. Follow the crew as it races to complete the fix in just 36 hours.

In Utah, Sean Riley joins a crew of more than 300 engineers, contractors and laborers as they gamble on an innovative installation technique: demolishing a crumbling concrete bridge and installing a new throughway bridge in just four days. This fix involves huge remote-controlled trailers, enormous hydraulics, and a 4 million-pound, five-lane bridge that must be transported almost two miles before it is installed in one piece on Interstate 80.

Sean Riley heads to New Orleans to help clear out a massive barge that's become stuck onshore, and get it over to a nearby salvage yard. With a fix that revolves around three hundred tons of shifting metal, Riley has to help put this barge back in the water... without getting crushed in the process.