Wrenching Confessions: What self inflicted idiocy have you achieved?

So I have 2 bad ones from my youth.

The first was on my 1985 5.0. I got the car out of being in storage for a couple of years and I just got done rebuilding the carb. I put it all back together and was taking it for a test drive. Well, I didn't tighten one of the fuel lines into the fuel filter tight enough. I stopped at a gas station and the car puddled gas into the intake and it caught on fire. Normally a bad enough thing but even worse that the car was parked right in front of the propane tank cage at the gas station.

The second was my 1989 Dodge Colt GT. The throw-out bearing froze and broke the clutch fork. After rounding up the parts, which took forever, I got to doing the clutch job. I did all of the work and got to putting the axles in. I thought I got them all clicked into place but the driver's side didn't fully engage. It was enough to get the car down the highway a bit and leak out all of the tranny oil. After watching my tranny bounce behind me on the interstate, I had to leave the car behind as I just got a new job in new orleans and had to get down there ASAP.

I was in a pretty bad car accident and after getting the car back as scrap and getting all the good bits out, I set out to cut it into chunks.

So it's a summer day, see, pretty hot, and I'm sitting in the now-empty engine compartment with the cutting torch, making a nice cut down the center of the firewall. Did I mention that it was warm. Man, it seemed downright roasting. I stopped to take a break and lifted the goggles, and was greated by a roaring fire in what used to be the front seats. Managed to get the garden hose on it before anyone noticed.

Grabbed the wrong rag, wiped down the windshield of my Starlet with Acetone.
Not the most awful thing, some streaks and a reminder of my own idiocy every time I drove after that.

Kids, don't work on cars if you're extremely hungover. Especially other people's cars, for money.
I went to work one morning, still in a questionable state from the night before, and grabbed the oil hose instead of the water hose (overhead hose reels, but they look nothing alike whatsoever)
I put a quart of oil in the washer reservoir. I don't recall doing it but I do recall looking down with the cap off the washer res and the oil gun in my hand and thinking "why the F did I just do that?!"
My bright idea was to pour water into the res to push the oil out.
Yeah, that didn't work too well. GIANT mess all over the floor.
Eventually lifted it, pulled the washer pump to drain it, ran brake cleaner through it four or five times, then water a couple times, then washer fluid.
Took over an hour all told for an oil change.
Not my proudest moment.

Also, I was reminded today while working on the mr2 that I do everything the hard way. lol

Forgot to put the drain bolt back into place while changing the oil. Not the worst, but a horrible feeling as the brand new clean oil goes right in one end and out the other (fortunately right into the drain pan).

SnowMongoose wrote: Grabbed the wrong rag, wiped down the windshield of my Starlet with Acetone.

My "grabbed the wrong rag" story:

We did a cheapskate's paint job on a Miata a couple years ago. I did all the prep, then took it to my dad's since he has years of experience shooting paint. He sprayed primer on it and I wet-sanded it. We put the car in the garage afterwards to shoot color. I grabbed a rag off his shelves to do the final wipe-down not knowing that he had used that rag last waxing one of his own cars. He starts laying down color on the hood and immediately it turns into a sea of fish-eyes. "UH OH" he says, but we're past the point of no return. He put down four coats and it came out OK (a solid ten-footer). Lesson learned.

Alway....always keep track of where you put the nuts and lock washers while removing that old Carter AFB from your trusty, starts every time 318 in the POS $100 '71 Duster that is your only transportation.

Amazingly, it continued to start and run for several weeks after that lock washer that was missing ended up in #4 cylinder and didn't play nice with the exhaust valve. The tin worm killed the car, the 'teen got yanked and lived on with a junkyard head.

1969 Dodge D100 - starter solenoid was wonky and sometimes you had to go under hood and jump it with a screwdriver. I was 17 or 18 at the time. I wiggled the floor shifter (truck was a three on the tree converted with a cheap Mr. Gasket kit) and thought it was in neutral. It was in Reverse. Lucky for me as I was standing in front of it. It took a sharp right turn and back itself into a tree.

1986? Trans Am - buddy's car. He was working on it after hours at his stepdad's shop with me and another guy. We got whatever we were doing done and he was backing the car out, when we noticed smoke. Someone forgot to tighten the fuel line going into the carb and it popped off and set the car on fire. Thank God for fire extinguishers.

1989 Chrysler Lebaron - this was abour 3 years ago. Bought the car for 550 from a used lot. Put a stereo in it. Week later someone says "hey you've got on tail lights." Then noticed the speakers would pop when I pulled the lights on. Through the process of troubleshooting ie. melting half the wiring harness, found out the wire I thought was a ground in the dash (PO had cut the factory harness off) was actually the illumination light for the factory radio.

1989 Dodge Caravan - My current project. Trying to tune it, I have the ECM setup to flash the CEL when the knock sensor pulls timing. Decided I was getting false knock, unplugged the sensor. 2 miles later, cracked number 3 piston. Few months later get it back together, drive it for a while. It starts smoking again so I think "crap I used cheap rings that didn't seat." Blew it up on the way to the garage and had to tow it. Pulled the old engine out, found out I melted a hole in number 4. Lesson learned, let someone else with more exp tune it.

Sunday 2 days ago: Now that it is colder the diesel truck has been a little slow to start. Wife bought some furniture and asked me to go pick it up in an hour. I thought sure! I will just plug in the block warmer and I will not have to wait to start the truck.

An hour later jumped in the truck and headed off to pick up the furniture. About 10 miles down the road I heard a noise and thought the transmission was coming apart, Nope? all is good, that sure is strange? Got home and had only 4 feet of a 200ft extension cord attached to the block warmer plug.

Oops,.... forgot to unplug it. Part of it is wrapped tight around a dually wheel, part around the driveshaft and the rest dragged off somewhere in Atlanta. Got to replace it before wife finds out her $$$ leaf blower extension cord has gone missing.

xflowgolf wrote: Go on, we won't laugh. Call them "learning experiences".

Promise?

Was working on welding in the extensive cage on a friends camaro project. It was a bit chilly, but nice out. So I decided to ride my moped over to the shop a few miles away where the car was.

Was welding in a cross brace to the through the firewall bar, crouched down in the wheelwell.

Its awfully warm all of a sudden.... I smell smoke... flip up the mask...

I had lit my crotch on fire.

After what I can only call "The Flaming Crotch Dance" of hopping around the shop smacking myself in the groin to put the fire out I was left with a softball sized hole in the crotch of my pants.

The ride home on the moped was quite a shaming experience...

In reply to Apexcarver:

I have done the lighting my crotch on fire thing before. That was at best unpleasant

Other then that the only really dumb thing I can think of is leaving the oil cap off after an oil change. I have done that twice. I have since started putting my oil cap somewhere were I can't closer the hood without putting the cap on.

Changing the clutch fan on my old chevy pickup. December/January, snowing, in a parking lot in Michigan. At dusk. I got it off easily enough, and was starting to get it back on. My hands started getting retarded from the cold, and I was having trouble starting the bottom two bolts on the pulley. So I decided to bump the starter. Never disconnected the coil. I spent the next few hours removing the fan from the radiator and trying my best to straighten the blades while bugging classmates for a ride to the parts store for a radiator and some coolant.

Changed the valve cover gasket on my mom's 96 corolla recently, was missing one skinny bolt when I put it back together. It was for a trim piece, so I started it up to see if it leaked.

The bolt had fallen into the timing belt since the top cover was missing. It lodged in the bottom, next to the crank pulley. Luckily it was only rubbing on the the belt instead of shearing all the sensor teeth, but it made a hell of a racket and created a nice cloud of burnt rubber. So then I got to do the timing belt instead of just the valve cover gasket.

So I start to pull the psg front wheel to start the process and one lugnut sticks. And then my impact gun explodes trying to break it loose. So I wail on it with a lug wrench. and break the lug off.

And then I went inside and had a drink.

I don't remember what i was actually doing to the car but I had my old 65 Galaxie's front end up on jack stands. I also had the shifter linkage disconnected. anyway, at the end of the job i started the car while the front was still on jackstands. it sat there and idled fine. I reached in the car and pressed down on the pedal to rev the engine a bit and it turns out when we took the shift linkage off i guess it knocked the trans from park to reverse. the car went flying off the jackstands and shooting down the driveway. I chased it down and jumped in just i time to hit the brakes before it crashed into the garage.

Wanted to impress my HS girlfriend, so I changed the oil on her Tercel. I put 4 quarts in it, because all cars take exactly 4 quarts, right? Started it up and smoked like hell...checked the dipstick and it was over. Went to drain a little out and dropped the drain bolt, didn't have enough oil left to get it full. Back to The Wal-Mart.

Helped a buddy change his brakes...discovered that impact drivers are made for Honda's. Then remembered that you shouldn't test the pedal when the rear drums are still off. Pop goes the wheel cylinder.

I can't count the stupid cases of welding myself to alternators and batteries when they get in the way of my vice grips or wrenches. Dropping oil drain plugs, which do their thing...plugging the drain pan as you race to fish it out before hot oil coats the floor. These are all rights of passage. But here's one of my prouder dumb moments:

Decided to do some maintenance on my Frontier pickup. I have 2 hours to spare before I had to meet my wife at the MIL's for dinner. Ran by the parts store and grabbed all the fluids and filters, start at the front of the truck. Flush/fill radiator, tune-up, oil, transmission fluid, transfer case, now on to the rear end. Drain the diff. Hmm...how am I going to get this thing filled back up? Surprisingly can't come up with the right combination of hose and funnels to to it from the top. I have 8" of 1/4" hose. I put it on the funnel tip mouth of a quart jug and get it as high as I can over the diff, but this is slow going. Got the bright idea to poke a hole in the bottom of the container to vent it. Faster. Then I decide a little forced induction is good, so I put the blowgun tip of my compressor in there and give a little squeeze. Now we're moving. On to quart #2. Do the same thing...man I'm smart. I try to stifle a sneeze and squeeze that handle a little too much. BOOM!! The jug explodes, I hit my head on the frame, the world goes dark, I can't hear out of either ear, I can't see.

Luckily my hearing came back and my vision was obscured by having a quart of vaporized 75w90 gear lube in my face. My hair was drenched in gear oil. That stuff is hard to wash out.

I was just recently working on my rx7.

I was checking for spark with a spare CAS hooked up. This way I could turn the little gear on the CAS and see if the spark plugs fired. This worked wonderfully.

However, I leaned over the trailing coil to reach another of the spark plug leads. I had the CAS in my left hand. I accidentally turned the gear a little bit.

It was at that point that my belt buckle was VERY close to the trailing coil. The spark decided it wanted to jump to my belt buckle / ME instead of the normal path.

That was VERY exciting. I will not lean over the coil anymore. I will not leave my spare CAS plugged in either.

Rob R.

Was pulling a brake caliper from the Miata apart for a rebuild but the piston was stuck. Decided pressurized air would be the ticket to push it out. I grabbed the blowgun and hit the caliper with 50 psi while holding on to the inside of it. Turns out you can make a stuck piston move pretty quick with that much pressure, and it slammed into my finger. Couldn't feel my finger for an hour and I'm calling myself lucky for not breaking it.

accordionfolder wrote: Forgot to put the drain bolt back into place while changing the oil. Not the worst, but a horrible feeling as the brand new clean oil goes right in one end and out the other (fortunately right into the drain pan).

Ha! I just did this recently changing the oil on my wife's Volvo.

Worst part was, I was so geeked that the big jug of Synthetic Mobil 1 I had bought was 5.1 quarts, and the T5 takes 6.1 quarts. One extra quart and I would have it perfect!

About 2/3 through dumping the big jug into the car I realized I had not put the drain plug back in.

Back to the store. Besides being pissed that I just dumped a gallon of new synthetic into the drain pan... the further insult was screwing up the nerd factor of being geeked at the 5.1 quart exactness which was now a randomly partial full container.

Done the oil drain plug. Done the battery/alternator welding.

I was using the creeper under my Jeep one time, lying on my belly. I was scooted pretty far forward on the creeper, so my head was just off the end. There's enough ground clearance that I was up on my thighs and elbows. When I rolled out (feet first), I shifted my weight off my elbows and onto my knees as the creeper was clearing the rear bumper. Unfortunately, my knees were on the tail end of the creeper, which skateboarded up, hitting me squarely on the chin. Wasn't painful, but did startle me and my head jerked back and up... into the bumper. Left a really nice road-rashed goose-egg behind my left ear. My wife about peed her pants laughing when I told her how I got it.

broke the #6 plug off just below the hex trying to change the spark plugs in my f150, luckily the dealer was able to get it out with an extractor instead of pulling the head.

i had a roommate that kept having the CV shaft nut come loose. he would re-tighten it, and a week or so later it would be loose again. until one day when he was pulling into the complex and "bang!" and no gears. he calls me to come look at it, everything looks ok, but every gear is neutral and the thing doesn't want to budge. finally i push it back to our place - down hill - with my truck, he pulls the wheel off and the whole thing comes apart. turns out the wheel bearing had seized and had cut its way through the cv halfshaft.

a girl i was dating in HS lived on some land with horses and such. one day her dad was welding on something under the truck and caught the interior on fire. total loss, but insurance replaced it.

dropped powertrain from my '64 corvair van, replaced clutch and pressure plate, put it all back together, jacked it up to pull the jackstands out, found throwout bearing.

built sweet 383 SBC for my '72 monte carlo. bolted torque converter to flexplate, then attempted to install TH350 with bang-screech shift kit. learned that it's really important to install the torque converter to the transmission first, spinning it to engage all the splines / ears for the pumps etc. sold my stratocaster to buy new transmission.

I was 17 and needed to put a new crankshaft in my racecar.

Pulled everything out, rebuilt the motor and put it all back together.

As I was cleaning up all the gasket boxes, etc, I found the pilot bushing I forgot to put in the end of the new crank. So, I got to pull the trany twice that day, Doh!

Installing a Raceland header on my Miata requires extending the wiring harness for the upstream O2 sensor. No problem. Get the car together after pretty much my entire weekend (talent) and it's running find, but has no instruments. Whatever, too tired to deal with it. Drive home.

Turns out if you forget to isolate all those bare wires before you tape up the harness, the resulting short will blow the fuse for a bunch of stuff...

The ever popular forgot to put in the pilot bearing in a new 351 for my SN95 Mustang.

Not so much as a wrenching mistake, but it sure lead to a lot of wrenching. At my road race drivers school I tried changing from 2nd to 3rd gear in my Fiesta the same as I did in my Miata. The difference being about an extra 2" of travel between the 1st/2nd and 3rd/4th plane, plus no spring centering. Hence I slotted it into first while doing about 6k rpm. Sheared all the flywheel bolts as it started to exit through the bell housing.

Shearing off a water pump bolt at around 10pm the night before a hillclimb lead to an epic bodge. The bolt sheared off about 1/4" underflush, so I turned up a tool in the lathe that located the center of the bolt nice and square, drilled a new pilot hole then tapped it for something like an M6 thread, turned up a centering tube for the hole through the water pump and put it back together. I never fixed it but sold it on like that.

Removed the carb on the Imp engine of my Davrian (Fiberglass kit car) and for some reason tried turning it over. 2' jet of flame straight up (It was a down draft Weber) that then sat burning. Thankfully for once I had a fire extinguisher on hand.

Not re-torqueing the head bolts on an alloy imp engine after a head gasket change then setting off on a 250mile drive to go on vacation. Made it 50 miles before the new gasket blew and I had to be hauled home.

Incorrectly torqueing the cam sprocket on a Triumph sprint 16V engine led to it falling off at 6krpm flat to the floor in 2nd exiting a roundabout.

Forgetting to bolt down the battery in my TR7 (same car as above) then going on a test drive. First hard braking event and the battery slides forward off its tray and lands on the header, melts through the case and starts pissing acid out. I realized what had happened as soon as the electrics died so jumped out, opened the bonnet and pulled it off. As I pulled it off, the melted plastic welded itself shut. Top up the fluid and the battery worked until I killed the engine with the above stunt.

Poo-poo-ing the idea that I needed to uprate the wheel studs on my Mustang when running 275 R comps on the track. Lucky to get away with that one!

I've never done anything monumentally stupid (except maybe deciding to race an MGA Twin Cam) but I did once get almost all the way through a head job on a Jag 6 and was replacing the timing chain with a new one, slowly rotating the engine to feed it in, when the clip fell off the master link and down into the nether regions of the engine, which had to come apart.

Helpers and friends have done some really dumb things. Honda Civic engine rebuild, forgot to tighten pulley boilts, fired it up and backed away to let it warm up in the garage, then the pulley came loose and went through the side of the garage.

Same guy had a top collar on a Koni strut conversion for the Civic and decided that drilling the collar for fixing screws would be easier if he put it on the shock first. Unfortunately failed to sense when the drill bit went through the collar and he went right into the brand new Koni - easy to tell as pressurized shock oil spurted a good way.

Another guy was refurbishing a Triumph TR-6 for a customer, and had to buy a core block from a wrecker. He was installing new pistons he'd fitted to the original rods and couldn't figure out when he rotated it (standing on the sump side) to put the second piston in place and it locked up solid. I solved that for him when I looked at the top block face. He'd been given a GT6 block, which uses the same bore, but a much shorter stroke, and the first piston he'd put in had popped the piston out the top of the block and a ring had expanded and trapped it there, unknown to him.

Same guy, hot summer day, sitting in a chair in shorts examining a Girling master cylinder with integral reservoir he'd just removed from a car, and turned it upside down to look at something and dumped a full reservoir full of brake fluid on his marriage tackle. Apparently (I have never experienced this first hand) this is not an advisable thing to do.....