Keep it to cars only, I'll start, lol.

I only really have 1, I think, I might remember more tomorrow. About a week ago I was working on my '86 with the overheating problems. One of my "fixes" was a new thermostat cap and radiator cap. Now, with the old thermo cap, you could turn it around once and you'd hear the "hiss" as it let out pressure. Let it relieve itself, even when hot, and you could open up the system. I start the car up with the new caps on to test it out. 5 minutes and its overheating, damn! I have a feeling that I didn't bleed it all the way and there might be air back by the thermostat, its late and I'm impatient, so, ignoring the warning on the cap, I turn ever so slowly for about 5 minutes, waiting for the "hiss". Turns out the new cap doesn't relieve pressure at all, until its completely open and you get a nice blast of hot steamy coolant. I don't think I've ever ran that fast in my life, it was a huge geiser. Got burned on my hand, but could've been a LOT worse. I'll never do that again !

Anyone else just go brain-dead while working on a car, and make a stupid mistake?

just recently i installed a set of brake pads, in a hurry. i put one in backwards. doh!

Pulled the coil plug from the distributor while a v8 Camaro was running. Don't really know why, was mildly shocking...

Once, after an engine install, I took the car for a test drive with the bolts for the rear lugnuts/entire rear suspension handtight. I wondered why the car was flopping around like that... lol!

Steve

15 years old.Decided to help my brother out with an old banger he had parked up in our garden.Did a service..changed the oil and filter..forgot to put the drainplug back...filled the garden with oil !! After two gallons, decided it must be full now.Went away to see a friend..brother went down to fiddle with the car..started it up.. funny rattling noise...dead car!! Ummmm....never tried to help on HIS car again!!! ( it was an old sidevalve, 1946 Rover...)
When it WAS running, he went to Cornwall with a friend for a week. The roads and lanes in Cornwall are VERY narrow He came face to face with a large lorry, which was backed up behind by a line of cars So he had no alternative but to back up. Couldn't find reverse gear (it was selected by a little chrome button on top of the gearstick He thought it was just a pretty adornment..HAHAHAHA!!) His friend had to get out, and push the car backwards for about 200 yards!! Wish I could find the old photo my brother took soon after..his friend nearly collapsed!! Only weighed about 115lbs, and the car? I guess about 1.7 tons!!
Nick

[This message has been edited by fierofetish (edited 10-15-2006).]

I had an old 60 something Ford Falcon that really sagged in the ass-end becouse of worn out springs.
I propped a 2x4 between the axle and the frame on both sides.
How bad could it be, right?

HOLY MOSES, WHAT A BACK-BREAKER!!!!!
Made it about 2 blocks before I 'bout killed myself!
Although it did corner like a dream!

Put a 350 out of a pick-up in a Monte Carlo. Forgot to change the fan out. Got finished, installed the new fiberglass cowel induction hood, lined everything up, started the car, cheked fluids, closed the hood with the engine running. Shredded the hood.

Decided one day to rebuild the carb on my old Toyota ( cause somebody told me it was easy ) I took everything apart, had it cleaned, and put it back together. I kinda noticed I had a few extra parts, thought eh, if they were important it won't start and I'll do it again. Put the carb in, started the truck, and had flames shooting 6 feet in the air And they wouldnt stop! I ended up having to get a new carb.

Put a new fuel pump on my BMW. Forgot to tighten one of the leads down to the post on it. Needless to say there was a spark, excess fuel. Car burned to the ground in about 10 minutes. Fire department arrived from 2 blocks away in 20.

These are just samples of why I dont do mechanical work on cars

Brad

The worst thing that I can think about happened to an old Nova that I used to have. (But not to me.)
I bought it as a daily driver so that I could sell a truck that I had.
The Nova proved to be too temparamental to be a reliable driver. It needed a whole bunch of little things that I didn't have the money to do at the time.
The heart of the problem is that it had a built up 350 with a Holley carburetor the size of a trash can, that used to foul out spark plugs in just a couple of hundred miles, sitting on a single-plane high rise intake. It finally got so troublesome that I stuck an old Quadrajet carb on it that I had laying around. It didn't run as good, but at least it stayed running.
I finally sold it to a friend of mine who was a mechanic. I warned him about the Holley's appetite for plugs, but since he was also a hot rodder, he wanted the Holley. I swapped the carbs and away he went.

After a couple of weeks, he got tired of cleaning/replacing plugs, so he asked if he could trade the Holley for the Q-Jet.
I told him "no problem", and he came and got it.
Several weeks later, he told me that the Nova's engine had locked up. I was like WTF?!
Remember that single plane intake? It seems that Q-Jets have a screw that goes in to the middle of the throttle body baseplate. That screw had fallen out of the bottom of the Q-Jet, and gotten eaten by the engine.

I felt bad about it, but we both agreed that it wasn't my fault. He had been a mechanic for several years, and if anyone should have anticipated that, it would have been him.
I did end up helping him work on it quite a few times, though.

Hey Nick, been there done that.

At 18 or 19 years old I changed the oil in my mothers car in my yard, living with my first wife.

The yard had a slight angle to it, drained all the old oil, and forgot to put the drain plug in. Luckily when I was putting the second quart of oil in the oil started to run down under the front of the car so I noticed it before we lost all the oil.

Never done it since, now before I put oil in I check the drain plug, no matter what. Good thing it was before synthetics, could have been real expensive to replace the 2 quarts I lost.

------------------
technology is great when it works
and one big pain in the ass when it doesn't.
Detroit iron rules all the rest are just toys.

The bit with forgetting to put the oil drain plug in, that's like a rite of passage for backyard mechanics. I too have done that.

There was a time when I was bleeding the brakes on my then-new-to-me '85 notchback, and I went to check the pedal pressure, but forgot to put the lid on the master cylinder. The brake fluid didn't quite hit the ceiling but the resulting geyser was nonetheless impressive....

I got shocked while trying to find which cylinder on my Mom's 1979 Malibu was the dead one. I don't think the plug wires ever got changed in that car, and one of them had had its insulation worn away...zap ZAP ZAP ZAP YEECH!!!

I drove my Escort off a set of ramps. Well, more correctly, the right-side wheel SPIT OUT the ramp under the car, behind the front wheel, while I was trying to get the thing up on the ramps. The left side stayed on its ramp. Stupid open differential.

Oh! And while getting my $400 red Escort back into drivable condition, I snapped the return line bung right off the power steering pump while I was trying to remove it. I had to take parts from BOTH power steering pumps to make one good one. (Long story but I had a parts car, you see....)

I put the battery into my Dad's MGB backwards, thus frying the alternator. (I was able to replace the diode pack, instead of paying $120 for a new alternator, but it still sucked.) The negative cable is red and the positive cable is black. Damn it!!!

Ed

I installed the lug nuts, but forgot to tighten them....

Wheel fell off going down the road.

Now I check them even if I didn't work on the wheels.

quote Originally posted by edhering: ...I drove my Escort off a set of ramps. Well, more correctly, the right-side wheel SPIT OUT the ramp under the car, behind the front wheel, while I was trying to get the thing up on the ramps. The left side stayed on its ramp. Stupid open differential.

Heck... I did that a couple of months ago with my coupe, trying to back up onto the ramps.
Didn't hurt anything other than making a hell of a noise and freaking me out just a bit.

Was doing a transmission swap on a 65 mustang from a 3spd manual to a 4 speed. Got it all done, and fired it up... ran great ... for about 15 seconds ... then died. Would crank fine, just wouldn't fire. Took about an hour to find the problem. The main wire loom from the firewall to the engine (which was 3 or 4 wires included the coil power feed) had dropped down between the back of the block and the bellhousing during the swap. When it was bolted all back together a portion of it was stuck between the two. Even though things were torqued down it didn't cut through the wires (it started up at first) but enough was hanging down that the rotating flywheel/pressure plate/clutch hooked onto it and tore the wires apart. So we had to break things loose again, get the wires out, repair the harness, etc. I was 20 at the time, and working on the car at the auto hobby shop at NTC Orlando. Ever since then guess how paranoid I am about where everything is when I'm bolting ANYTHING together? I definitely learned my lesson the first time on that one.

Rich

edited to correct fat fingered typing errors

[This message has been edited by Richjk21 (edited 10-15-2006).]

I drove my Fiero onto a lift to work on the A/C hoses and the compressor. The hose assy was really close to the starter, so I was prying and pushing on it to see where I could bend it to fit. Suddenly the car's starter engaged... and it was in first gear with the parking brake off!

The car lurched forward, and continued moving forward with each revolution of the starter. The hose was jammed stuck against the solenoid. I was under the car imagining it rolling off the lift and onto me. I had two options.
1. Get from uder teh car pronto and let it drive off the lift, or
2. Get the d@mned hose off the solenoid.

I chose the latter. I pulled and pulled and just when the front end of the car dropped off the lift, the hose came off and the starter stopped. The car dangled off the end of the lift with the front wheels hanging off, and the rear wheels still on the lift.

Fortunately there was a heavy steel work bench next to the car. I used a pallet jack and moved the heavy steel table under the front wheels, lowered the lift until the front wheels were even with the lift then backed the car off the table and onto the lift.

Talk about a sphincter pucker moment!

I was lucky. I did not get hurt, and there was no damage to the car.

Wow, reading this makes me feel good about myself im just joking. Ive never done the drain plug thing, never missed a ramp (Close though) I do spill alot of fluids though, the makers of oil dry love me. I Think the dumbest thing ive done in quite a while is after getting my engine back in my eclipse and having no compression, not even thinking of using a peice of wire and compress/bleed the lifters.....I guess ive been lucky, 10+ yrs working on cars, and ive never really seriously broken anything, or blown anything up. eh, boring

I have another story.
It didn't happen to me, but to I guy I knew while I was in high school.
He had a mid 60s Olds sedan. Delta 88 or some such.
He decided that it was time to change the oil.
He drained out all the oil, put the plug in, then replaced the filter.

Then he filled the engine with oil. "Filled" being the operative word. (Apparently he never grasped the concept of dipsticks.)
Four gallons of oil later it was full to the oil fill.

It actually cranked and started.
Blew every seal out of the engine.

[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 10-15-2006).]

I did a head gasket replacement on a Pontiac 301 from back in the late 70's. The gaskets are not symetrical.....they do have a 'up' side. I somehow screwed up the passenger side and after reassembling everything, refilled the coolant. Well, tried to. The coolant was draining out the rear of the head gasket where the gasket was upside down and opened a water jacket to the outside. Oops......

Hey....it was the middle of winter, 10 degrees below zero, and I was 17. Lesson learned.....buy a heater ( which I did ).....

How about dumbest.
Living in the frozen north I've forgotten how many jump starts I've given..
Last year reversed the cables on the dead car and popped the ignition module on it.
Cheap fix but felt like a dumbass for days over it.

Rebuilt a Corvair engine one time. Got the heads on and torqued down. Looked on the work bench, and saw the pushrod tubes sitting there. DOH!

[This message has been edited by Mike Marden (edited 10-15-2006).]

Oh this is so easy right now. My worse f-up is not getting my truck running like the kitten it used to be. It used to purr. My 96 F150 refuses to start and the more new stuff I put on it the worse it is. Went from running for 20 minutes before bucking like a wild horse and then running when it cooled down to not starting at all now. You name it short of pulling the distributer and it has been replaced. 4.9 FI 5 spd. I am thinking it is time to cut the catalytic off because the last time it only ran for 5 minutes and died. The cat went straight to the red glow. Since then it doesn't run at all and short of shooting it....
Lets see...
ECM tested good
replaced fuel filter, ignition module, egr sensor, MAP, plugs, wires, rotor, cap, vacuum hoses, crank position sensor (last part) coil, and probably some other stuff. ***** won't start at all now and the only thing different is that I did tap (ever so gently) the cat when it was hot.
I almost hate this truck, but I am not going to let the PIA win, no matter what money I have to throw at it!
I did take it to a mechanic back when it ran and I had determined it wasn't or at least couldn't be dual fuel pump failer (the test out at 60lbs) or bad gas in both tanks.
This is about the worst short of a grenaded engine I have ever ran into. Alas it is just a truck and a good one when it runs, but over a month now and I am missing it! ( I need to get it running so I can cart a few Fiero engines around)

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Wudman - www.fierodriver.com
www.StLouisMojo.Com - RadioFreeMojo.Com

Last year I bought my 72 Chevy truck and I had been working on the inside and my friend came over and I started it up to show him how it sounds well turns out I had moved the shifter into drive and the truck doesnt have a neutral safety switch so it starts up and runs into the back of our John deere wrecking the inner and outer grille. Needless to say I was enraged by my own stupidity.

dropped a 1200 goldwing off the lift while changine the rear tire.
of course a press was next to the lift so the fairing was completely destroyed.
and
of course the reason the owner was having the tire changed was he had a road trip planned for that weekend.

Last year I was adding coolant to my 99 Grand Prix due to a low coolant lite. Grabbed the silver bottle of Dex Cool (evil Stuff) and proceeded to pour into the overflow tank....DOH....My synthetic Mobil One is in the same silver type bottle. After some serious syphoning I went down and got a flush and fill (got rid of the Dex Cool while I was at it), Mechanic said if anything I have a well lubricated water pump. Haven't had much in the way of problems from my gaff so I can say I've learned to read all bottles before I start pouring.

Dan

I just sold my '86GT to a guy, and was helping him get her on a trailor...a tilt trailer. I was in front, and he and another buddy of mine were in back pushing( I was keeping her from rollojng back), and when the center of gravity shifted forward, I had to scramble over the car to keep from getting jammed under the trailers tire rack. A bit later, we were trying to get the cables off and the portable winch out from under the front of her, when I had the bright idea to push the car backa bit on the trailor. I hopped up on the front, parking my butt just below the windshield(so I thought), braced a foot against the front of the trailer and shoved with everything I had. The only thing that gave was the left front corner of the windshield...oops. Luckily for me, Bill is a gentleman and didn't harbor any ill feelings...
I had an old Astro van at one time, and had to replace the water pump and a blown main seal. To do this, the oil pan has to come off...not an easy job. I eventually got the pan back on, but the phantom tapping that had been there forever it seemed got worse, so I had a mechanic friend over to listen to it. He suggested we drive it up on ramps, as soon as the van tilted up, the oil pan dumped out the backside...Dang 4piece seals!!!!!

Reaching through the open door of a S-10 blazer parked in front of my shop, wiggling the shifter to make sure it's in neutral, putting just my foot in to push in on the clutch and hitting the key to warm up the truck so I could check it's emissions.

Carb took on a way fast idle, my foot came off the clutch and it was NOT in neutral (just worn out shifter bushings), tires lit up in my gravel drive and launched the truck and me through my closed shop door almost killing me as the door to the truck met the frame to my shop door and tried closing with my head being the wedge stopping it. The window frame on the truck bent around my face opening up about a 1" gash over my lip on through into my mouth as the truck used my head as a pivot point before slamming into a wall inside the shop with the tires still spinning before I could get the key shut off. I know what the walnut feels like...

Completely my own fault, broke my own safety rules of 20+ years since I was 'just going to start it and let it warm up' and I'd wiggled the shifter etc... I used to occassionally teach driver safety in the army, and would demo exactly why you don't hit a starter when you are not fully in control of the vehicle, amazing how far a Deuce or 5 Ton will jump when you hit the starter in gear. I was in Baumholder,Germany on a training exercise and we were all lined up waiting to convoy back to base when someone did exactly that and damaged three vehicles in front of him just from the impact of the starter throwing his Duece and a 1/2 into the vehicles in front of him. If anyone had been in between any of those vehicles they would most likely have been killed.

Experience is what you gain when you screw something up, and we've got years and years of experience Learn from your own or preferably learn from others.

About 25 years ago I was living on South Padre Island in Texas. A visiting friend from Kansas City was rebuilding the carb of his 72' Ford V8 Pickup. After he had finished putting the carb back on the manifold he wanted some gas to wash-up with. He held a small bowl under the fuel line. At some point during the repair he had pulled the coil wire from the distributor cap so the engine would not start. As someone cranked the engine the mechanical pump put spurts of gas into the bowl. If you haven't guessed by now, the coil wire sparked and ignited the gas. He jumped back, throwing the burning gas onto his face.

This story could have had a very sad ending except my friend had had severe acne most of his life. It just so happened that there was a convention of plastic surgeons in Houston at that time. Through the local hospital they became aware of his accident. He was flown to Huston and one of the best surgeons did a skin graft on his face as a demonstration for other surgeons (all at no cost to him). I am not sure where they removed the skin for the graft from, but he now has no more acne. In fact you could say his face is as smooth as a babies behind...

Back in high school when I had the 84SE, I had low voltage issues... so I spliced into the signal wire running between the alternator and battery, and installed a pot on the dash so I could 'adjust' the system voltage manually. I'm pretty sure the original problem was a ground strap or fusible link... Trimming the voltage up till the gage read 12V inside was putting a lot more than that to the battery. After a couple weeks the battery exploded. It sounded like a grenade back there when it went off.

Proves the old addage; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

quote Originally posted by DanFiero: Last year I was adding coolant to my 99 Grand Prix due to a low coolant lite. Grabbed the silver bottle of Dex Cool (evil Stuff) and proceeded to pour into the overflow tank....DOH....My synthetic Mobil One is in the same silver type bottle. After some serious syphoning I went down and got a flush and fill (got rid of the Dex Cool while I was at it), Mechanic said if anything I have a well lubricated water pump. Haven't had much in the way of problems from my gaff so I can say I've learned to read all bottles before I start pouring. Dan

I did one worse than that. I was helping my friend do a tune-up on one of his customers cars and I was in charge of the OLF, Oil, Filter and Lube. While refilling with oil I pored in the oil treatment, funny thing was it was green, yup coolant flush.

A friend of mine had bought a Shelby Charger and the battery kept on going dead so he bought a new battery and put it in the car. It was a little bigger than the original but it seemed to fit just fine until he slammed the hood shut. I watched as two small round spots in the hood turned red hot and then began to shoot out sparks. He opened the hood up as quick as he could but not before melting holes in it. Poor car...

A couple years ago I put a clutch disk on backwards. Needless to say the clutch didnt grab very well and I had to pull the cradle agian and get a new clutch and resurface the flywheel agian. I hope i dont ever do that agian.

I painted my entire Corvair using paint + thinner from an unlabeled can my brother gave me. Mixed the thinner with the paint in a dark area of the garage, poured into paint gun, and shot the whole car. This was in the wee hours. Tired, I cleaned up, took shower, hit the bad, fell right to sleep.

Next day got up (late), went out to garage, and there's my beautiful Corvair, all orange and shiny! What fantastic gloss - the car still looked wet !! Err - it was still wet... turns out the "thinner" was motor oil ....

BTW - I am sure my brother didn't do it on purpose. I also even more sure it took my stupidity not to check out what I was mixing - like somewhere where I could see it!!

[This message has been edited by StuGood (edited 10-16-2006).]

This one should be a shoe-in.



"FIERO67 = POR15 explosion"

At least it wasn't me!
But I have had my share of... mistakes.
A little too much water, a little low on antifreeze, a really REALY cold day. My 3.4 DOHC project car was toast.

Once I forgot to pump the brakes after a brake job.....

My garage wall was never the same.

I had just gotten my drivers license and needed to drive to Atlanta from NC about 100 miles to see a Ear, nose and throat doc, dad was working out of town and told me to change the oil in the car before I went on my first trip out of town by myself. So I get the oil and filter, drain the oil , change the filter , replace the plug and put the 5 qts of oil into the engine, I figured I didn't need to ck the oil since I had just put in 5 qts and off to Atl. I went.
Ok, everyting good but I did notice that the car was not quite right, it didn't want to go from stop lights to well until the rpms climbed, AT tranny, made it home, all good. Well dad comes home gets in the car and it wil hardly pull out of the driveway so he asks if I changed the oil and all, yep sure did, so he procedes to ck the oil, its 5 qts over full, the tranny is empty, he immeadiately takes the car (74 Nova) and trades it for a 72 Lincoln, he was wanting to get a bigger car anyway.

I did something right out of a Three Stooges movie...

A hundred years ago when I was about 17, a friend and I were working on some old Mazda. We suspected it had a blown head gasket because the coolant level would drop quickly and steam would pour out of the tailpipe when the engine was running. We had removed all of the spark plugs and I told my buddy to crank the engine over as I looked closely to see if any coolant might be in any of the cylinders. Yep, there was a bit of water in one cylinder... I just happened to have my eye a few inches from the spark plug hole of the cylinder that must’ve had about a pint of water in there. I couldn’t believe the force with which that water came blasting out of the spark plug hole when my buddy turned the key... directly into my eye!

That was the day I learned the basics of how a pressure washer works.

i just had a deja-vu moment.
i dont' remember writing the first post but i guess i did.
i was on a road trip from michigan thru the colorado rockies in my rebuilt '86gt.
first mountain pass i overheated. put gloves on, took the cap off and RAN!!! cap and thermostat flew probably 20 feet.
a tow truck happened to pass by as i was running.
loaded on back of flatbed, towed about 60 miles and got a refill.
forgot to put thermostat back in, next mtn. pass started to overheat.
pull over, put gloves on and only loosen the cap to let pressure off. no pressure, hose was soft so turn it the last quarter turn.
cap popped off and i RAN again!!! twice in 2 hours!!! DOH!!

i guess if tinton was dumb then i'm doubly dumb?!?!!?

LOL

My wife used to have a Datsun B210 when we got married. 1400cc of raw power I kid you not. It developed a head gasket leak after 120K or so miles but we drove it anyway. It got to the point if you parked it for too long it would cool and draw water into they #2 cylinder. No big deal, pull the plug out and spin it over, put the plug back in and you're good to go.

I had it in town on main street and was in a store longer than I had planned and longer than the little Datsun wished to accomodate. Went out, bumped the key, yep, hydrolocked. Popped the hood and pulled the plug. Got back in and cranked it over. Now main street in Russell, KS, has diagonal parking, cars lined up side by side for about a block. I shot a stream of this crappy anti-freeze carbon black colored........stuff.........over the 5 cars sitting to the left of me before I could even say OH $$$$!!!. I put that plug in and got the heck out of town as fast as those 1400cc's would take me................

Stupid mechanic tricks?? I could write a book.

Built a race engine for a boat one time and had the freshly blueprinted block back from the machine shop. Assembled the motor and got it installed (and if you've never installed an engine in the bay of a drag boat you don't know how lucky you are. Like a car, but you can't get to ANYTHING from the bottom). Got ready to prime the oil system with my air drill and shot a stream of oil halfway across the 75' wide shop. The machine shop hadn't replaced the pipe threaded plug that sits half under the head on the right bank of the small block chevy and is drilled into the oil galley........and I didn't check it. Then I had to pull the head off to screw in one little pipe plug.

We had an old wheat truck with a wooden floor in the bed. A smaller truck with 13 1/2' bed. The floor had rotted out after 25 years in spots and dad bought some 3/16" plate to cover all the wood and weld over the floor to make a steel floor. I had cut the plate to fit and was welding on it on a hot summer morning. I was sitting on the plate, welding around the perimeter and the steel was pretty hot which, naturally, made the body part I was sitting on it with sweat quite a bit. Dad came home for lunch and walked over to the shed I was working in to see how things were coming along. I didn't hear him come over and when I flipped the helmet up, THERE he was, if you know what I mean. That startled me and I accidentally touched the electrode to my bare arm. With the welder still on, and my sweating butt making a pretty decent ground connection, I had the 130 amps give me a rather startling wake up call which caused me to jump straight up. This, in itself, would have been the end of the story except I had the truck parked half in and half out of the shed with the 8' doorway directly over me and being the truck was about 3' high and I'm 6', that leaves a deficit of 1' that I could, and did, slam my head into, falling back down onto the bed, electrode still hot, which got me on my stomach before I threw it off the bed.

Dad just stood there for a minute as I got off the truck and said "If you're done messing around here, mom's probably got lunch ready." and turned around walking to the house. To his credit, he never laughed but for the life of me I don't know how he didn't. I would have.

John Stricker

quote Originally posted by Patrick: I did something right out of a Three Stooges movie... A hundred years ago when I was about 17, a friend and I were working on some old Mazda. We suspected it had a blown head gasket because the coolant level would drop quickly and steam would pour out of the tailpipe when the engine was running. We had removed all of the spark plugs and I told my buddy to crank the engine over as I looked closely to see if any coolant might be in any of the cylinders. Yep, there was a bit of water in one cylinder... I just happened to have my eye a few inches from the spark plug hole of the cylinder that must’ve had about a pint of water in there. I couldn’t believe the force with which that water came blasting out of the spark plug hole when my buddy turned the key... directly into my eye! That was the day I learned the basics of how a pressure washer works.

hee hee. what a great thread. (well not so great if ya got hurt).

leason one. ALWAYS set the e-brake! leason two. have somebody around you can blame the damage on. (or take you to the ER).

my 1st f'up. i was 6 or 8. dad told me to check the oil in the car. he thought it was low and we were gettin ready to go. hey oil is low! lets see...this big tank here is empty..must be where the oil goes!

doh! that's coolant resvioir! mom was PISSED when my dad used her turkey baster to get the oil out.

my 2nd f'up. had an 84 chevy straight six pu trk. my first "car". what a POS. over heated all the time. i'm sure it had a clog somewhere. my dad told me to just turn the heat on to blow the heat off the engine. needless to say i cooked it. when i got home it was blowing water out the tail pipe.

my 3rd f'up. got a "new" chevy trk. changed the oil. pulled it out from the garage, dad comes out waiving his arms! i'm like what? i put the filter one, the plug, added oil, didn't back over anyone, what did i do!!

then i see the oil trail that i'm leaving. two oil O rings on the filter. blows oil everywhere. i ALWAYS check the o rings now. i actually have gotten a little anal about it. i match the old and new filter together. one to make sure they are the right size and two to make sure the old ring comes off.

tearing down my totaled probe gt for parts to sell
we cut into the ac coolant line and it spewed EVERYWHERE looked like those ricers with nos purges
it took about 15 min for it to stop spraying we had to clean all of my tools and the parts we pulled
ahg i still miss that car....

prior to that i had to replace my battery i got a generic big coil battery completly forgetting probe wires are backwards compared to most batterys i ended up blowing a LOT of fuses

[This message has been edited by antinull.com (edited 10-18-2006).]

Not mine but the worst screw up I've ever seen.
An older guy pulled up in front of the muffler shop that I was managing and left his old Ford Maverick running in the parking lot with the hood open. He was mumbling something about the radiator and asked me to take a look at it. We walked out to his car and before I could stop him, he stuck his hand right in the fan blades trying to point at something on the radiator. Needless to say, fingers went flying. I still cringe when I see a car with an open cooling fan (no shroud). I had to throw my shirt away because I couldn't get rid of the blood stains.

Same job....I was on the phone looking out the front window when a customer pulled up in a Chevy Monza. As he got out of the car a tire from a semi on the freeway in front of the shop landed on the trunk of his car and smashed it like a fly swatter.It took the door handle right out of his hand. If he would have been 5 seconds earlier it wouold have landed right on him. The tire knocked a hole big enough to walk through in the cinder block building next door. Those tires weigh about 200lbs and can really do some damage at 60mph. I'd hate to be the guy who torqued those lug nuts.

Don

[This message has been edited by SKIDMARK (edited 10-18-2006).]

This is TRUE!!
I used to work as Manager for a small filling station, which had a seperate mechanic's shop out back.Well, we had an old gentleman, who came in every saturday morning, to put 1 gallon of petrol n his 1934 Ford Popular. He had had it since new, and it was a lovely old car. Just used to use it to take his wife shopping on Saturday morning!! He was 76 years old when this happened
One saturday, he came onto the forecourt, looking a little upset. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me a policeman had stopped him in town, and wanted to see the papers for the car.When asked for the test certificate, he looked blankly at the policeman..who then very kindly informed the gentleman that his car had to be tested every year for mechanical condition.He had never had it done!! I explained to him that the mechanic at the back of the filling station would be able to do the test for him, and we booked him in for wednesday pm. He turned up, and parked the car on the forecourt, and we told him to return that evening. Well, when Brian the mechanic tested the car, he found that the steering box, which was the old circulating worm and ball type, had about 3/4 of a turn of the steering wheel before it actually moved the front wheels!! He found a good replacement unit, and fitted it on the car. After doing some more odds and ends, he pronounced the car to be safe, and passed the test on it. We phoned the old gentleman, and told him his car was ready if he would like to come and pick it up. Brian parked it in the street outside the fillng station. Well, the old man came, and Brian charged him a very nominal fee, almost nothing, in fact, because he was such a sweet old guy. He payed his bill, collected the keys,and we all came out to wave him goodbye.He started the car, put it in gear, and set off down the road.His house was just 250 yards down the road, and as we watched, our faces turned to horror, as he turned the steering wheel to enter his driveway...about 3 seconds before he should have. Drove straight into his nextdoor neighbour's wall. we ran down the road, and helped him out of the car. He fixed Brian with a baleful glare, and said 'WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY STEERING???!!!!' We realised that, as the steering became more and more worn, over a long period of time, he just automatically, without realising, adjusted his driving habits to suit!! Of course, with the steering as it was before , he started to turn the wheel earlier and earlier, to make turns..and so, with the steering back to normal, he still started to turn early....and drove straight into the wall, about 30 feet before his driveway!! Thankfully, he didn't drive very fast anyway,and wasn't hurt. We replaced the headlight, wing and bumper for free, and then let him practice his steering on the parking lot till he got used to it again.
I will never forget the look on his face as we helped him out of the car, or the look on Brian's face as he watched it all happen!!! Lucky there were no pedestrians on the pavement..could have been a lot worse
Nick

[This message has been edited by fierofetish (edited 10-18-2006).]