List your dumbest auto related screw up

[Workinprogress]

The recent post about rookie mistakes got me thinking...

 

 

Happened when I was 16 (18 years ago!!) I had my 65 VW bug parked by my parents house in the snow. Went out to start it up, just as it fired I realized the throttle was stuck on the floor!! Being a bone-head kid, I froze while the engine raced, finally after about 10 seconds or so I killed it. I didnt have a tach, so I dont know how high it revved but from a cold start it couldnt have been very good for the internals.

 

Grant

[Trecani]

Last year, 15 at the time. After an oil change I am in the process of putting a hi-po intake on my dads 67 mustang. First goes the carb and all that, then the distributor, leaving a big hole in the engine..... Then goes the intake and whoops, theres two gallons of water right into the engine after I change the oil and drain and refill the radiator... It sucked.

[cobraz240z]

when i was 17 i had a 71 240z and some kid told me to do the timing on the motor with the rear wheels in the air and in gear and to advance it and some dumb things like that to make a long story short i ended throwing a rod through the block in about 5 min luckly i had another motor

[materchan]

two years ago forgot to change put oil in after changing it. the motor ran for 2 months untill it wiped a rod bearing. i dont think ill be doing that again anytime soon.

[Lunar240z]

i'm pretty bad about remembering to turn the lights off...

[Wagz]

I'm the one who posted about a rookie mistake yesterday. It wasn't my dumbest mistake, though. About 15 years ago my brother-in-law asked me to do a motor swap in his mid-80's S-10 4x4. He had burned up the original V6 and I agreed to swap in a replacement wrecking yard engine.

 

I spent the better part of a day yanking out the old motor and bolting in the new one (which included having to unbolt the cab from the frame and jack it partially off the frame to get the motor in/out - this was right out of the shop manual, I swear). At the end of the day I had it all in. Hoses all connected, belts on and adjusted, wiring done, anti-freeze, etc. I mentally went over the check-list and decided I was ready to fire it up. I turned the key and it fired-up the first try. There was a little bearing noise. No big deal, it was just getting the oil pressure up after sitting for who knows how long... Oh, Crap!! Motor Oil!!!!

Like I said in my other post: sometimes I'm a forgetful moron.

 

The good news was that there wasn't much serious damage. My brother-in-law drove the truck without issues for several more years.

[steve72z]

About 10 years ago I had a Jeep CJ5 with a 304 V8 and a sloppy shifting four speed. I had just changed the carb to an electric choke Edelbrock. On a cold winter morning I went outside to warm up the jeep. I checked the shifter to make sure it was in neutral. I should have checked better. The new electric choke worked great, reved the engine to about 2000 rpm. The jeep was in first gear. I held on to the roll bar and went for a ride down the driveway thru my rought iron fence. I finally stopped when the jeep ran into the back of my new Dodge Ram Quadcab truck I had just purchased.

 

 

Never do that, my wife still reminds me.

[BrandonsZ]

About 10 years ago I had a Jeep CJ5 with a 304 V8 and a sloppy shifting four speed. I had just changed the carb to an electric choke Edelbrock. On a cold winter morning I went outside to warm up the jeep. I checked the shifter to make sure it was in neutral. I should have checked better. The new electric choke worked great' date=' reved the engine to about 2000 rpm. The jeep was in first gear. I held on to the roll bar and went for a ride down the driveway thru my rought iron fence. I finally stopped when the jeep ran into the back of my new Dodge Ram Quadcab truck I had just purchased.

 

 

Never do that, my wife still reminds me.[/quote']

 

In my 1973 F250 about 2 weeks after I bought it about 3 years ago, I started it with the clutch out in the granny 1st gear. With the FE block, lots of low end torque, and a nice boost in rpm because the choke was all the way out. Luckily I was fast enough to turn the key back to "off" I doubt holding the brake with both feet would have stopped it, it came about 1/2" from hitting a sign and about a foot from hitting a tree after hopping the wheel stop and the curb. I wonder if the tree would have stopped it. Now I have a switch that kills the starter if the clutch is not at least pressed about 1/2" which means I have to have my foot on it to start. It usually doesn't start right up and I had caught myself several times because the truck moved when I turned it over. Needless to say I don't put it in granny to park anymore.

 

I tried to hook up a relay for a set of air horns in my suburban when I was 16, ended up hooking something up wrong because as soon as I hit the button the fuse block caught on fire. Totally sucked.

[280zwitha383]

I feel better about myself after reading all of that but I know that mine is coming. Probably the worst thing I've done so far is not bolt the shifter cable in right on my ratchet shifter so I was stuck in 1st gear after a hard launch racing a camarao dude and taking it up to about 7.5k (too much for a 383 with stock roller valve-train IMO). Other stupid thing I did was set my hood up against the fence only to have it blow down and then I ran over it late one night after coming home from work.

[Guest strokerZ]

Few years ago on a new turbo block...didnt re-install the oil pickup...stupidly didnt check for oil pressure etc and ran the motor without oil........Dont really want to talk about this anymore:icon52:

[Mayolives]

How bout the brain child that worked on his 190 Mercedes for two years doing a very decent mechanical refresh of the engine, swapped the interior from a parts car and topped if off with a really nice paint job. This all sounds good right? Now comes the part where a stoned, nitwit, moron carelessly backing his other ride, a ford van, at a speed far greater than reasonable, slammed the van into the front end of his pride and joy 190. You can only guess who the moron was.

[Workinprogress]

My VW bug saw a lot of stupid mistakes....

 

Parking on a hill and forgetting to put it in gear or setting the brake. Coming out of the store to see my car gone and think it was stolen (only worth 200 bucks at best at the time) Then seeing it against a telephone pole RIGHT next to the highway. (driver's door was left open also, it caught the pole and sprung it badly)

 

Not fixing an oil leak. There was literally a puddle of oil under it every day, so I put in 90 weight... (ran for another year)

[steve72z]

I pulled my toyota work truck into my driveway, ran in the house to get something I forgot, ran back out to the truck and backed it out of the driveway. Only problem was that I forgot to shut the door which hit my gate and bent the door back to the fender. Had to call my boss and give him the bad news. It took years for my boss to stop giving me a hard time.

[Wagz]

... Other stupid thing I did was set my hood up against the fence only to have it blow down and then I ran over it late one night after coming home from work.

In high school, I purchased a used hood in perfect condition to replace the badly dented/warped one on my Chevy Monza. Two weeks later I went for a test ride after a tune-up. I got up to a fairly good speed on the local highway only to find I hadn't latched the hood completely. It flew up, blocked my view and acted like a sail to rapidly slow me down and nearly send me sailing off the road... just before it bent backward about a foot. It was a total loss and I had to put the old dented hood back on...

[patzky1]

Yeah,

 

I had recently installed the b&m shifter on the 350/th350, but did NOT hook up the neutral safety switch. Then I proceeded to start the car in first gear (didn't even check it) and ram it into the back of the parts car that was sitting just in front of it in the drive. Needless to say, a bumperless 280 will loose every time to a chevy caprice in a head-on collision. Bent my hood and grill all to hell... I can get pictures if you want to see them Just damn glad that the parts 280 had a decent hood on it! (Otherwise I would have to buy one on eBay for $500 LOL) I told my parents that somebody had hit my car in a parking lot!

 

The saddest part was that the motor didn't even fire because the two cars started only about five feet apart, making the starter motor and my hand the only real culprits. I just sat there and let it happen .

 

Pat

[Lunar240z]

oh yeah, i also ran over my dad's foot with my vw bug. i had just learned how to drive a manual, and i was driving it onto our slanted driveway.

[Guest JAMIE T]

OK, I have a real bad temper. You can see what this is leading to...

 

I had a '69 Hurst/Olds. Nice, very rare muscle car. I was trying to get the drive shaft bolts out because I was going to freshen the motor. Of course they were stuck like a mofo and I was loosing patience with the tight quarters. I rolled out from under the car and punched the door and left a huge dent in it, hurt my hand, and the bolts were still stuck.

 

Forward a few years, Supercharged Mustang, stuck in the snow. I am going between 1st and reverse trying to rock the car out of the spot. The slightest throttle would spin the tires in the rain, much less in the snow. My brothers mustang is broke down about 10 miles from the house and he is expecting me to come help him out. So after about 5 minutes of rocking and getting very tired, I punch straight up and bust my sun roof out. It's still snowing, my car is still stuck, and brother is still stranded, with his girl friend.

 

My biggest car mistake was buying a Mustang conv. that had been wrecked very badly and repaired poorly, all because I "needed" another project car. That car sat for three years until I finally stripped it and hauled it off.

[Guest tony78_280z]

I once dropped a 305 in a Z car thinking it was a 350. I just never doubted the guy who sold the motor to me, so I never checked. Read all about it

[JMortensen]

I had two lifts in one shop I worked at. So I had a Toyota Celica on the one rack and I had ordered an oil filter from parts. Did a brake job on the Jeep on the other rack, pulled another car in, fixed it, you know, just working along. Then a couple hours later one of the sales guys asked if the Celica was ready. "Five minutes" I said forgetting that it had no filter on it. Dropped it down, put 5 quarts of oil in it, fired it up and started to move it out of the shop when I realized I had laid down a Exxon Valdez size slick all over my area, not to mention the mess it made of the car.

 

I think the oil slick was worse than driving a Civic down the street with no oil, realizing what I had done, driving it back and putting oil in it. The Civic didn't seem to mind at all, and there was no cleanup on that one.

 

Worse story, only 1/2 mine. The Porsche shop I worked at had an oil gun which you could use to fill the oil and it would tell you how much you had put in, kind of like a gas pump. My boss is doing an oil change, phone rings, he LEAVES THE OIL GUN IN AND ANSWERS THE PHONE. I'm doing a timing belt on a 944 so I'm not thinking anything of it until a couple minutes later when I keep hearing the pshh-clunk, pshh-clunk, pshh-clunk of the oil gun. 911's take a lot of oil, I think it was 11 quarts to an oil change. The gun had put out something like 30 quarts. THAT was a big oil slick. And slick it was. When I realized what was going on I stupidly RAN over to stop the oil gun. Oil + polished concrete + idiot running = completely horizontal 4 feet in the air resulting in head smacking on ground when landing. So my entire left side of my body was covered in Castrol 10W-30 and I had a nice headache going. I guess I figured since that thing had been pumping oil for 10 minutes, I had to run through the oil to shut it off as quickly as possible. Oil resistant soles my ***.

 

If you want to talk driving when I was 17 I was taking my girlfriend to a dance. On the way to pick her up I bought a rose. The rose rolled off the seat and the thorns stuck my hand when I shifted. I looked down to see what was going on and when I looked up juniper branches were flying across the windshield. I had run over an island in the middle of the street and plowed through a bunch of LUCKILY only about 2' tall junipers. Bent the crap out of the rim but it still held air. Took her to the dance, dealt with the tire later...

[SuperKid]

About two month ago, I was buidling an engine in my auto tech class. The engine was a Ford 289. Well, I had apparently gotten the wrong torque specs for the main caps, because they said 80 FT/LB. So, I set the torque wrench to 80 FT/LB and started tightening the main cap bolt, when SNAP, the bolt broke! So, I checked the sheet again, checked the wrench, lowered the wrench to 70 FT/LB. Went to the next bolt, started tightening it, then SNAP, that bolt broke too! So, this time I went and got a different torque wrench thinking maybe the wrench I had needed to be calibrated. I lowered the new wrench to 60 FT/LB, started tightening the next bolt, when SNAP, that bolt broke too! I was dumbfounded, so I lowered the wrench to 50 FT/LB, then went to the next bolt, and what do you know? SNAP! Finally, I said screw this and set it to 25 FT/LB and the bolt finally didn't break. Luckily, that engine wasn't going to be used in a car (it had two fist sized holes in the block from rods blowing out) so I didn't have to take the time to pull the broken bolts out. I felt like an idiot after breaking off four bolts. The other guys in the class seemed to get a kick out of it. lol. Although it wasn't as bad as the guy next to me who was torquing a plastic valve cover and din't read the specs right. He tried torquing it to 30 FT/LB instead of 30 IN/LB!