Wrenching Confessions: What self inflicted idiocy have you achieved?

corytate wrote:

Tyler H wrote: I did an oil change on my f150, went to check the oil 2000 miles later and discovered I had left the oil cap off. It was still there in the engine bay.

I did that on a saturn at work, found out when it came in for the next oil change a couple months later. lol

I've done the same thing on a Saturn DOHC- taken cap off to top off the oil (which is absolutely necessary on a 160k mile Saturn), fill it up, check level, close hood- leaving the cap sitting in the valley on top of the engine. Didn't notice it until I popped the hood a thousand miles down the road to check the fluids again.

I once did the same thing with the coolant bottle cap on the DeLorean, though THAT was not something that could just be ignoed. Worse, I did it 800 miles from home at a convention, and needed to drive it back to where work had me at the time the next night- and this being a weekend, I couldn't get DMC to just send me a new one. So I had to hit the local parts store and try and hunt down the right style and pressure cap to work on it.

Thankfully I've not done much that has resulted in serious bodily injury, though I've smashed fingers up but good on a few occasions.

Only thing that really comes to mind as to stupid facepalm mistakes were on the FC convertible's 13B engines (had two in it over the years). When I swapped in the parts car engine I used for a while as I slowly rebuilt its original engine, I could NOT get the thing to run right. It would idle just fine, but really dragged whenever I tried giving it much power. Had good compression, fuel pressure, no vacuum leaks- everything looked good otherwise. Finally was glaring at it one night when it struck me to double-check that the proper coil packs were hooked up to the Leading and Trailing plugs. Ooops. After that, it ran like I expected it should have.

The other problem came when I finally finished rebuilding the original engine and put it back in the car. The engine had been seized up when I'd gotten the car for reasons unknown- and that reason ended up being it had somehow ingested a rather large nut which had wedged between a magic triangle and a housing, destroying both (they're still in my garage, since it's pretty cool...). In addition to needing a new rotor and housing, one of the cooling seal ridges on the center iron was cracked, so I also picked up a new center iron. BUT- the center iron I picked up was an S5 iron and not a S4 iron- intentionally. The S5 dropped the EGR, so I didn't have to use an EGR blockoff plate, so it seemed like a worthwhile upgrade. What I didn't realize was that there is one exhaust port difference between the S4 and S5- and it took me FOREVER to track down the rather large exhaust leak that resulted, and a bit of creativity to come up with a way to block it off so my S4 manifold could be used.

Wasn't me (honest) but a guy at work used mechanic wire to tie an A/C compressor to the hood prop rod of a Subaru. He then dropped the jack fast, and as the car hit the ground, the compressor pulled the prop rod out of the hood. Still would have been ok, except his hand was over the hood latch on the radiator support. The EMT's had to unbolt his hand from the hood, and we had to run a new hood latch to the emergency room so they could see what they had to remove from his hand. Strange, that was his last day at work.

A plastic hub ring was left on the hub when changing over from winter(after market wheels) to summer(stock wheels) tires on our Dak. It resulted in a bevy of issues culminating in the wheel falling off the truck while driving, and a parts list including; rotor, pads, hub, caliper, fender, lug nuts. And that damn rotor won't come off, due to plastic hub ring being squished into everything.

first was my first solo major auto job... was on my wifes geo prizm... did it in my dads driveway so I could use his tools... was the CV joint... for whatever reason I couldn't get the joint to pull away from the transmission and in my trying I ripped the joint apart from the boot... I ended up trying to mate the old inner axle to the new outer... I also dropped a few of the bearings to the wheel bearing into the sand... no big I'd just replace them, our next door neighbor had a press... pulled steering knuckle and went to press it out with neighbors help... finally after lots of heat and cursing we got it... when all was done the car made all kinds of weird noises, ended up dropping the car off at a shop, they replaced the axle (lifetime warranty so I just picked up a new one and returned the old ripped up one), but they shop had to replace the knuckle, apparently it somehow got bent up with the press and heat lol...

a few years back I offered to help my soon to be step-brother the timing sensor on his FWD 3800 impala had died (something a shop had replaced just a few months earlier... apparently the cheap versions liked to fail)... I had my basic tool set in the car for the visit and picked up the gear puller at autozone... went to work and went to pull the timing pulley... for whatever reason my brain stopped working when I tried to pull the pulley I removed the pulley bolt and ended up sinking the puller center point into the pulley itself... ended up having to get a tap to drill and tap the piece and pull it out of the pulley... ended up just fine but I felt like an idiot... I should have known better.

last one of note was my fav... nissan altima with the 2.4L and a slushbox... went to do an oil change, pulled it up on ramps and drained all the oil out... filled it up with 4 qts of oil and went to back it down the ramps so I could check the oil lvl... the car didn't move... apparently I'd drained the transmission... so back up to drain the 8-9qts of oil from the engine and then fill it and THE transmission doh...

I bought an E30. My wrenching life has been berked ever since... What I'd give for one full week of driving without something breaking. Instead the POS can't go one effing day...

donalson wrote: first was my first solo major auto job... was on my wifes geo prizm... did it in my dads driveway so I could use his tools... was the CV joint... for whatever reason I couldn't get the joint to pull away from the transmission and in my trying I ripped the joint apart from the boot... I ended up trying to mate the old inner axle to the new outer... I also dropped a few of the bearings to the wheel bearing into the sand... no big I'd just replace them, our next door neighbor had a press... pulled steering knuckle and went to press it out with neighbors help... finally after lots of heat and cursing we got it... when all was done the car made all kinds of weird noises, ended up dropping the car off at a shop, they replaced the axle (lifetime warranty so I just picked up a new one and returned the old ripped up one), but they shop had to replace the knuckle, apparently it somehow got bent up with the press and heat lol... a few years back I offered to help my soon to be step-brother the timing sensor on his FWD 3800 impala had died (something a shop had replaced just a few months earlier... apparently the cheap versions liked to fail)... I had my basic tool set in the car for the visit and picked up the gear puller at autozone... went to work and went to pull the timing pulley... for whatever reason my brain stopped working when I tried to pull the pulley I removed the pulley bolt and ended up sinking the puller center point into the pulley itself... ended up having to get a tap to drill and tap the piece and pull it out of the pulley... ended up just fine but I felt like an idiot... I should have known better. last one of note was my fav... nissan altima with the 2.4L and a slushbox... went to do an oil change, pulled it up on ramps and drained all the oil out... filled it up with 4 qts of oil and went to back it down the ramps so I could check the oil lvl... the car didn't move... apparently I'd drained the transmission... so back up to drain the 8-9qts of oil from the engine and then fill it and THE transmission doh...

I did this with the first Subaru I ever worked on, when I first started at WalMart. I think it's especially ironic that I went to work at a Subaru Dealer about 9 months later.
I saw it happen a couple more times when I worked at the Wal (I only did it the once, this was other people screwing up thankfully), on hondas and mitsus that had the engine on the wrong side of the engine bay

I've been wracking my brain because I figure there have to have been a LOT of stupid moments over the length of time it took me to get the DeLorean fixed up and running, but I'm coming up with precious few that aren't just normal things that happen when working on a 30-year-old car like snapping lots of really rusty bolts or things that are known issues with the cars.

The stock, original electric cooling fans are MASSIVE power draws and in testing them I found one of mine was shot, so I decided to replace both fans with modern much more efficient models. This unfortunately requires dropping the radiator. The bottom of it is held in place by studs on the bottom of the rad that go through brackets that bolt to the frame. The nuts were really tight, but the studs were large so I was using mu air-powered impact gun to remove the nuts. My air impact is a nice little Craftsman, but it has one VERY annoying 'feature', and that is that the switch to go from 'loosen' to 'tighten' is on the top of the handle and is VERY easy to accidentally bump into the opposite position without realizing it- which is what happened apparently before I went to remove the second nut, because I hit it and after a few seconds of not moving the whole stud snapped off. After lots of swearing, I ended up drilling and tapping a smaller bolt hole to retain the bottom of the radiator so I didn't have to spend $300 on a new on (though I did end up replacing it anyway a year and a half later).

The one time inflicting moderately serious injury on myself with it came when I finally got it running and on the road but was still finishing up the interior. The inner door panels were some of the last things I installed since there was a lot that needed fixing (and now does again ) inside the doors. The doors are, as you would expect, nothing but stainless steel- and there are no 'edge guards' on any of the edges of it- and some of it is RAZOR sharp. I had for the first few days been just grabbing the door and pulling it shut (since the pull-handles are on the inner door panels...), but one day went to do so and sliced about halfway through my finger. The door panels got prioritized after that, and I'm still paranoid about working inside the doors.

But the most dangerous thing on that car has to be the doors themselves- I think I'm up to about 8 times of very nearly knocking myself out (and several times of ending up pretty bloodied) on one of the open doors because of just not thining abotu it being there and either walking or turning into the edge or corner of one of them at full speed. I eventually got some of the split foam pipe insulation that I put around the edge of the doors when I have it in the garage and have the doors open (it's considered better on the torsion bars that counterbalance the door weight to store the car with them unloaded- which means doors open- if the car is stored someplace where the environment/theft isn't a problem).

I lowered the kia yesterday with springs.
A coworker walks up to me today from the spring compressor with a rubber isolator that says "kia" on it and asks if I'm missing anything.
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu........
after several hours of trying to dislodge the spring from the upper mount it was resting on, finally got it fixed.
Now have a noise that kind of sounds like a clunk and kind of like a plastic panel getting rubbed on and then past, if that makes sense.
only happens near lock on flat surfaces, or anywhere else on cambered turns, on the side that toes out in the turn. It doesn't do it on off camber turns.
only at slow speed as well, or at least it's only noticeable at slow speed...
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand it only happens sometimes. not all the time.
On flat ground, I went through a sweep to full lock both way and felt some places where the tire was close, but nothing hitting. I heard it when my wife turned the wheel when it wasn't moving, also, but was unable to feel anything weird=/
who knows what I berkeleyed up now

My best friend and I bought a late 70's firebird that had an engine fire. We repaired the wiring and took off the burned front clip and replaced it with a clip from an early 70's firebird just because it looked better. We slapped the hood down but didn't bolt it down. We just intended to go out for a 5 mph drive around the block. Since we were young and stupid, we both got bored and so I yelled "Hit it!" and so my buddy did just that, he hit it. All I remember is getting up to about 40 mph before the hood blew straight up in the air.....as we pulled over we kept looking back waiting for it to drop but it was so high up in the air, it didn't come down for a while. All I remember is I ran back and got the hood and ran back to the car to put it back on. The corners were all bent up but nobody was hurt. So we drove back to his house....we kept it at 5mph this time the whole way....

aussiesmg wrote: I don't consider a car to be mine until I bleed on it.

In the spirit of this...

Last weekend I finally got the wiring on my new-to-me Neon sorted out. I'm looking for something to zip tie the oxygen sensor wiring to in order to keep it off the axle and steering rack (which was part of the problem in the first place), and I find a good spot next to the alternator. It's a hole with a little plastic plug in it that seems to serve no purpose. Jackpot.

The plug is stuck in there pretty tight. I grab some pliers and start tugging. It occurs to me then that I should just cut the plug out or maybe tug more gently or put on some gloves, as my hand was dangerously close to a razor sharp exhaust flange (foreshadowing). Like an idiot I disregard my own common sense and tug harder.

So after I slow the bleeding, wrap my finger with a paper towel and electrical tape, and curse and throw the pliers across the yard, I do what I should've done to begin with and just cut the stupid plastic plug. Problem solved... though it probably wouldn't hurt to re-up my tetanus booster...

My personal favorite is a bit of DSM math I did once. I was about 20 yrs old, and knew very little about "all-season" vs dedicated tires. So when it came time to order tires for the DSM, I hopped on ye olde Tire Rack and started reading reviews. I found a Michelin all season that looked like it got decent summer reviews, and ... thoroughly mediocre winter reviews. Solid 5/10 across the board. It was about that time, I noticed all the cars reviewing them were 2WD. Well lo and behold, my DSM in AWD, meaning all 4 wheels turn! My head instantly went... 5...+5.....=10, they're perfect! Yeah.. didn't work as well as I had expected.

I was 16-17 and doing putting in a new clutch in my 97 Saturn . got the clutch in, trans back on..wheels on. I decided I wanted to just take it for a test drive real quick to make sure things worked fine before throwing the Intake tubing/air box back on the car

I heard this rattling sound at part throttle....couldn't figure it out so I pulled the tranny off and unbolted the new clutch to inspect it. everything looked fine so I put everything back together. This time installing the Intake tube/airbox

Noise is gone......I then realized my stupidity, the rattling sound I had heard before was the linear EGR valve doing its thing. I Felt pretty dumb thats for sure

Figured the clunk out today: I positioned the upper strut mount incorrectly on the spring, or vice versa. So I guess I'll pull the strut again and redo it, hoping it comes apart right, unlike the other one which was jammed in and stuck good.=/

This was when I had my first real project car that sat in the garage. I was 18 and was still living at home with my parents and many brothers. I would start my project by grabbing the tools I needed to start tearing apart the engine. Because of school and exams, I only had time to work on the car about 2-3 hours or so every weekend. So I would decide that it would be okay to just leave the tools at that particular area so I can get to working at it again next week. Next week later when I came back to work on the car, I would search the tool chest for the tools I needed only to find that they were missing. Having that I have quite a few brothers, I assumed that they had loaned those tools out to their friends. So being in a rush to get started, I would go out and spend whatever money I had on the sockets and sets I could afford. This time I would use the tools to tackle a different part of the engine tear down, and again I would run out of time and decide to leave my tools there to work on it until the next week. Again the following week I did the same thing and searched the tool chest for the tools I needed only to find they were missing. This time I had gotten pissed at my brothers be cause I thought they loaned the tools and haven't gotten them back yet. So again in such a hurry to work on the car, I'd go out and buy another set. It wasn't until about 6 months into the project that I had found all my tools laying around all over the place. I must have bought at least 3 sets of tools and a ton of 10mm, 15mm, 17mm, 19mm sockets and rachets and extensions. Now a days I am very anal about putting my tools away in its proper place and get a little irritated when my brother-in-laws borrow my tools and don't put them away in the proper spots. It's good to stay organized.

I started to change the oil in my wife's Trailblazer today - I fumble the oil fill cap and it falls down and hits the frame..........3-1/2 hours later I still can't find it.......and now I feel like the flu is coming on.....barf.

I have a bad one. Don't like to talk about it often.

When I rebuilt the engine for the Celica, I media blasted the valve cover. Oh, I washed the crap out of it before I put it on. But a few weeks later the motor seized. Pulled it apart and took it to the machine shop. Yup, they said it was glass bead all over the place. There's a baffle in the valve cover, and even though I flushed it a lot, there was still glass bead in there. The machine shop told me they don't like to media blast much of anything. The new engine doesn't look as pretty, but hasn't eaten itself up yet either.

I was doing a lower intake manifold gasket on a 3.8L windstar van... I got everything apart not a problem, laid some rags down in the vally while I cleaned up the old gasket material before putting down new gaskets..

For what ever reason I got distracted, before pulling the rags out.. Needless to say I forgot the rags and bolted everything back together... 2 blocks away from the shop the oil pressure light came on.. I got it back to the shop, not a problem..

When I pulled the drain plug after all the oil drained out, chuncks of rag started falling out... DOH!! oil pan came off, lower intake came off and lot of cleaning took place... Thankfully no harm was done...

crazycanadian wrote: I was doing a lower intake manifold gasket on a 3.8L windstar van... I got everything apart not a problem, laid some rags down in the vally while I cleaned up the old gasket material before putting down new gaskets.. For what ever reason I got distracted, before pulling the rags out.. Needless to say I forgot the rags and bolted everything back together... 2 blocks away from the shop the oil pressure light came on.. I got it back to the shop, not a problem.. When I pulled the drain plug after all the oil drained out, chuncks of rag started falling out... DOH!! oil pan came off, lower intake came off and lot of cleaning took place... Thankfully no harm was done...

ha ha, BTDT

Was so focused being surgical clean when assembling a new Z28 SBC engine, left rags in the valley and bolted on new Torker intake. Realized the fail when the dizzy wouldn't drop in.

I was 20 y/o IIRC... live n learn

Ok, here is mine. This was related several months ago on the hillclimb.org forum under "My '86 GTI build" thread...

The engine is a 2.0 liter 16V 9A on my hillclimb car. I had just completed reassembly after a complete bottom end rebuild including oversize high compression ceramic coated pistons and a full balance job. The head had been completely ported and relieved the year before and was just cleaned up.

I had been dialing in the cam/crank with the adjustable cam pulley - using a 19mm socket and ratchet on the crank bolt to turn the engine. My wife called to say supper was on the table so I left it as it was with the intention of picking up where I left off in the morning.

After supper I thought I would just go back and complete a couple details, like installing the plugs and setting the ignition timing to the old marks which I did. For some reason I decided it was ready and I was anxious to get that "first startup" behind me, so I lit the fuse. The engine started right up!...ran for about 3 seconds. That is about how long it takes for a wrench to remove the crank bolt, have the harmonic balancer and timing pulley come off the crank and the engine stop.

I called myself names I usually reserve for certain stubborn auto parts and other drivers.

After the catharsis of head banging stopped, I decided to check for visual damage with a borescope (none), reassembled the bits that flew off and did a leakdown to check for bent valves - the leakdown was excellent. So ensuring I did NOT have a wrench on the crank again I lit it off once again...it ran great and has been fine since.

I titled this little episode "Old Farts and Flying Wrenches". I now make it a policy the NEVER walk away from the car with a bolt not torqued or with a tool still on a part. You just cant be too careful when old folks are around.

Its not the only dumb thing I have done, and certainly resulted in less damage to me and the car than a few of my other stupid tricks over the last 50 years messing with cars, buts its in the top 2-3.

Back when I was 16 and in high school, I had a '62 VW Bug. I read in a VW Magazine (no internet then) that the best way to set the timing without a timing light was to turn the distributor until the car idled the fastest and then lock it down. I did that. Drove the car up onto the highway and the engine exploded in a big way. Bits of rods and crankcase all over the road.

I'm thinking that may not have been the best advice...

Speaking of not leaving tools on cars: Changing pads on my Miata at a track day, I get called away, so I leave a14mm wrench sticking up on the caliper to remind me to tighten it down. Get done with the distractions, put the wheel on the car and tighten it. The lugs go about 1/2 a turn and stop. Not normal. Get called away again, come back to the car, and I'm about to start driving when I remember about the one wheel. I pull it off, and the 14mm was there, making sure the rim didn't mount flush to the hub.

early in the morning, the second day at the track ... decided to check the pad life

jacked it up, pulled the wheels, rotated the caliper out of the way, bungee corded it to the uca ... flash light to check the pad thickness ... pad good, rotated the caliper back in place and tightened every thing back to spec ...

went to the other side and gave just a quick look at the pads while holding the caliper out of the way by hand ... good, so tightened every thing and replaced the wheels and went to the drivers meeting ...

4th or 5th lap at the end of the fastest straight-away ( in the CRX it's about 102 - 105 ) hit the brakes and it turn dead rt ... headed directly towards the worker station ... everything sorta slowed down ... in the mind anyway ... hit the brakes again, same reaction ... see the workers starting to head for the woods

decided that I had huge amts of sand straight ahead .... so off the brakes and blow the corner, get slowed down, limp back to the pits, jack up the front end, remove the left wheel...... viola .... bungee cord wrapped around the axle, tore the boot to bits, crimped the brake line ... so no fluid to the left front ... no wonder it pulled to the rt ... scary lesson learned

Yesterday dumped all of the gear oil from the sister's Scion tC changing out the half shaft. Took way longer than it should have too

One I did.

I was working at a friends shop across the street from the local police station. It was late Sunday night and I had to finish the motor swap in my 79 Z28. So I could get to work and to get it out of the bay so he could conduct business Monday morning. For some reason I was trying to cut off a bolt from the water pump. I think I was removing a bracket or something. The water pump was on the floor and I was using and Oxy Acc torch. Anyway as I was cutting the flame went out and as luck would have it this resulted in the entire pump getting filled with Oxy/ACC mix. Me not thinking re lit the touch and as I brought it back down to the pump it exploded. The back plate italy hit the ceiling of the shop and the sound was earth shatteringly loud. Now as I stood there in complete amazement I then realised that I could not hear anything. As I started to gather my thoughts and make sure I was not bleeding (I was not) the police show up with full blue's and two's. Something close to the "who's on first" then ensued as I could not here them and they thought there had been gun fire or a very large explosion. I was def for about a day. I got the hearing back on my left side a day later and the right cam back sorta and I had ringing in that ear for almost 10 years. To this day I am very tone def in my right ear and the ringing comes and goes.

Another dumb one was trying to undo the bolt on the flywheel on my 86 RX. Pulled the car off the jack stands. (I was pulling sideways not down) The car landed on a tire and my toolbox. Saved my bacon. I needed a new set of shorts. Went out and purchased a 1/2 inch impact gun that afternoon.

Was doing my first brake job on the Fit, everything was routine until it came time to get the rotor off. Pulled. Wouldn't budge. Pulled harder. Kicked it a couple of times. Hammer. Bigger hammer. This goes on for about an hour and a half, I'm completely exhausted from beating the E36 M3 out of this thing. Then I notice it has tiny screws holding the rotor in. In my neanderthal bashing spree, I managed to tag two of the wheel studs. Needless to say the wheel wouldn't sit flush, and I had a short, very wobbly drive to discount tire.

Went over to a buddies house to help him change the carrier bearing on his Tundra. He's an overachiever, so he's under the truck, halfway done by the time I get there. I walk past the truck, parked on his inclined driveway, and head inside to grab a beverage. I come back out just as he breaks the last driveshaft bolt loose. With no wheel chocks, the truck rolls (harmlessly) over him, he flattens out, and the truck rolls halfway down the street. He had to change his shorts afterwards.