List your dumbest auto related screw up

[280zwitha383]

It just figured because everything else was going waaaaaaaay to smooth!

 

yup, that's usually a good sign you're about to totally screw something up

[BrandonsZ]

Just having one in your car isn't enough...

 

I was driving to Alaska in my 1986 chevy sprint. It burned oil like a B**** so I always had to pull over about every so often and fill it. I got sick of shutting it off and restarting it because sometimes it would hard start. Anyway I was adding oil and I droped a "glug" worth right on the exhaust manifold. It smoked up really bad and then I saw this orange glow tot he smoke. I looked for my extinguisher and it was burried in my supplies. So I went back and huffed and puffed on the fire and it went out good thing it wasn't more or gasoline or near any wires! I turned it off and let it smoke for a while till it looked like only carbon was left. Then drove on.

 

Scary but it was the only think that ever happened to that car in the 20kmi trip, but the windshild definately needed to be replaced after and they have a habbit of putting road tar on mud in Canada so I had road tar dirt under my car like it was blown insulation. Had to chizel it off.

[Okimoto]

my friend, BANG who used to own a Z also owned a truck as a daily driver.

 

I was still a teen when it happened, I think. He had to work on that truck quite often. One time we had it up on cinder blocks. Being the dumb*** I was, I kicked the truck. the brick broke, the truck fell, and my friend almost lost his head, had he not jumped out.

 

Another time... He asked me if i tightened the lugnuts. Being frustrated and wanting to go home, I said yes. Driving to work, he found out the next day what I forgot. This one I should have known better... because I saw him fly across the freeway in his brand new used 240Z with three wheels and one drum a few months prior, LOL. he hadn't even put 10 miles on it before that happened.

 

But nothing really ridiculous has happened while working on a car yet. It will. I'm sure of it. I've owned the Z for 2 years... it's bound to happen soon.

[Guest 260ondubs]

I've done the lugnuts thing before..... i was delivering pizza in a 323 wagon when the tire went flat. I swapped it over in the pizza place car park, but i was forced to do it very quickly as i was still supposed to be working...... well, i had done the nuts up okay.. but forgotten to completely tighten them once the car was back on the ground... on the next delivery everytime i went round a left hand corner i could hear this horrible grinding noise, it took me about 10 minutes driving and then it hit me! Pulled over asap and yeah, did them up properly, luckily it didn't come off.

That's just a baby one though, I have a real hardcore screw with my Z.

Okay, this may not happen to everyone in their lifetime, but a while ago, after I drove home for about 40km, I stopped my car on my driveway to open the gate, and didn't think twice. As i'm pulling the gate open I here a clink...... I swing around..... my Zed is rolling down my driveway! I shat myself and tried to stop it, but it was downhill and I had no chance. I stayed with it and the whole world kinda blurred as I thought "oh crap, my car is gonna hit my house, and I am in between the car and my house. I thought my legs were gonna get severed.

Now here is the bad and the good bit = I got pushed over by the car right through a VERY small gap between two post smashed a statue with my weight hit a brick wall and landed on my 302 V8 sitting on the concrete and brusing my leg badly on the gearbox before hitting the concrete and coming to a rest.

My car, hit one of the posts that i got thrown through and stopped dead with the motor still running and lights on.

I was in a bit of shock. Waaay to worried about my smashed front end than myself. I was limping, but my Zed was scarred and wounded.

I spent all day today ripping all the **** and junk off of it. After the whole day, it was pretty much ready for all the new pieces. I sourced a bonnet, grille, bumper, new spoiler and indicator in about half an hour. hehehehe i love my Zed contacts.

I pulled the crossmember straight with a chain that was linked to the stairs of my house. hehe backyard panelbeating!!!!

Only the driver's side light bucket needed fixing to get it to sit in place properly.

I nearly lost my leg. I dunno how it worked out so i went between those two close posts.

I just felt for my poor car....... she didn't need that kind of abuse.

[mom'sZ]

I finally realized I was standing next to it, grabbed it off the wall and ran out to extinguish the flames.

You guy's are killing me... Wagz, I know exactly what you mean, when something is on fire, it's like you go f-ing blind! I was a kid, maybe 17, working in a shop, I knew there was an extiguisher hanging on the wall somewhere. I looked up and down that wall, screaming like a banshee, and finally my workmate runs up and grabs the thing and hands it to me!!! Later (after the fire was out) I'm looking at it and it's a big white wall, nothing on it, big red rectangle, maybe 3' x 4', six inches wide, with big red fire extiguisher hanging there... didn't see it...blind... BLIND!!!

260ondubs... dude, you're lucky, really

be careful people, think

ever heard of the darwin award? And I'm not saying smart people don't do dumb stuff. I've seen it. What makes it worse is racing because it is sort of like a self created emergency situation.

[Chaparral2f]

Back in the mid '60s I had a real sweet '53 Studebaker coupe. I had built a 455 Buick nailhead to drop in it. Being young and not too patient (smart) when I had it bolted in I decided that I wanted to hear it run. I hooked up a pair of jumper cables, filled it with oil and with a remote starter button in one hand and a coke bottle full of gas in the other I cranked it over, feeding it from the coke bottle.

Engine Backfires through carbs. Idiot's bottle of gasoline catches fire. Idiot sees firey bottle, freaks out and flings it away. The bottle lands in a large pile of brush that hadn't been hauled away (by Idiot). The dry brush pile goes up like a torch. I (the idiot) run to where the water hose should have been hooked up but even though I didn't haul the brush away, I did manage to put the hose in the tool shed for the winter. I finally realize that nothing is close enough to the pyre to be in any danger of catching, but my older sister doesn't come to the same conclusion and so she calls the fire department. By the time the firemen arrive, the conflagration had burned itself down to a manageable size, I've gotten the garden hose (just in case) and everything is under control. The most painful part is having to explain to the fire fighters (most of whom I knew) just what had happened. They thought it was pretty funny so I guess it wasn't a complete loss.

[twoeightythreez]

About 8 years ago.....

Was finishing the 430bbb install into my '72 4-door skylark, oil in motor, mounts tight, engine run in, time to go under and make sure everything is tight. Idiot I am, I still haven't hooked up the parking brake. So, it's up on ramps, no wheel chocks, and in Park. To make matters worse, Allentown's East side has a landscape not dissimilar with that of San Francisco, and my ramps are parallel, with an umm....Incline... but back to the stupidity. I notice the trans selector on the TH400 isn't tight. Somehow it slips my mind that the car is on ramps, with NO CHOCKS, no parking brake and the car's on a friggin hill, and I reach up with a wrench and tighten the bolt, which disengages the parking pawl. I realize a millisecond too late what i've done, and slam it back into park. 4200lbs of Buick start rolling backwards, gaining speed due to the hill, not to mention the ramps, accompanied by the ominous clack-clacking of the parking pawl trying to re-engage. I realize I might just be on a roller coaster to the next world, so what's my natural instinct? You guessed it..I reach up and grab the engine crossmember. The adrenaline allows me to hold the car up on the ramps for about 30 seconds while I scream for help. Nobody is around, freakin city neighborhood, houses all over, apartments within sight not even a block away, still nobody anywhere...so I quickly run the scenario through my head....yes I installed new springs...they haven't settled yet...there should be JUST enough clearance for my head...if I turn it sideways. I use the last few seconds of my rapidly diminishing strength to shift my body between the hooker headers and get as close to the center of the car as possible. I will my arms to let go, and the Beastly Buick starts it death roll. I flatten my body to the ground and turn my head right, my right ear flattened against the asphalt, and my calculation was EXACT...the crossmember leaves a deep black grease mark on the left side of my face as the car passes over. The next second I realize I'm still alive, and grab the bumper in a futile effort to stop the car. Me=150lb and the 4200lb car does not care a bit. I get dragged down the street until the car hits the curb on the opposite end. I quickly get up, get in the car, start it up and drive back up the alley and park the car. That moment my dad comes home and asks "what happened", so I tell him and he was rightly pissed off, seeing how his son was almost crushed by his own car.

Being the idiot I am, I still hadn't learned my lesson.

A week later I installed an edelbrock 750 on the 430, and start adjusting idle mixture. The parking brake is hooked up, so I put her in drive and set the parking brake. Good. I adjust the idle mixture to perfection, and decide to rev the engine to hear the good ol' big block sound. (I forgot it was in drive)

I snap the throttle open, the car surges forward, hits me, throws me 2 feet back into the garage door, denting the crap out of it, and once again I'm questioning my continued existance as the beastly buick slowly pins me...crushing...at about 1/2 mile per hour, before the parking brake finally stops it. Whew! (I'm glad the choke wasn't on!) It took me about 5 minutes to wiggle free from the car's grip that time. Needless to say I was careful as hell around that car from then on. (It has since been junked, the quarters rusted too badly to pass yearly PA safety inspection and I didn't have money at the time to fix it. The motor went into another buick which I have since sold.)

Now I also learned my lesson, use wheel chocks, because now I had to not only buy a new garage door but I also had to install and paint it too.

Yay.

[grumpyvette]

I guy I know comes over and ask me to adjust his fan belt as it kept comming loose, I looked it over and everything looked ok, ...at first,.. I ask him to rev the engine a few times,the belt came flying loose, we put it back on, and were about to test it again when I notice the damper seems to be spinning eratically, a little checking revealed the elastic in the damper was 90% shreaded and under rpm load the lower crank pully was moving in and out about 1/4" and the belt would come loose as soon as the rpms built up.

I suggested he buy a new damper and called the local dealer, price was just under $200 and the guy freaked out, he left, drove home and put the car on a ramp and squirted tons of that yellow weather strip adheasive into the area the damper elastic used to occupy, about two days later this idiot gets into a drag race and when he hit second gear the outer damper ring and pully came off completely and destroyed the water pump radiator and HOOD as it flailed around when the whole damper came off the crank nose as the retaining bolt had worked out.

 

 

 

I could have predicted the problem would eventually occure..with at least some certainty, he BEAT the damper onto the crank with a 4LB hammer several times in the last few years, doing cam swaps and when I suggested he use the correct tool to seat the damper, he informed me that tightening the retaining bolt and wacking the living #$%^&* out of the damper a few times retighten,(repeat/frequenly as necessary) worked perfectly so spending $28-$40 on a special tool was not necessary

 

BTW for those guys not so hard headed

 

http://www.tavia.com/cat12.html#1

 

[primadonna z]

Few years ago doing an engine swap we get to the point where it's time to start it, and dial it in. We fire this engine and it starts fine, but has this bizarre tickin sound. It's consistant with engine RPM, but this ticking is FAST! Well were all standing around listening, reving the engine, and trying to figure out where this sound is coming from. About then one of the guys turns white, and is pointing down at front of the engine.

 

Seems when we were setting the distributor, because of all of the crap on the front of the engine I went below and used a ratchet on the damper bolt to bring it to TDC. You guessed it, I never took the ratchet off.

When you'd rev the engine the ratchet would actuall levitate from the 6:00 position though.

[LineC]

My car in high school was a 1989 Jeep Cherokee w/160,000 miles. Head gasket started leaking. I replaced the gasket put it in backwards and blocked every water passage in the head. I thought it was just holding air and kept trying to get it to burp. After 12 hours of running it right to red line on the water gauge finally broke the head off again and felt like the world's biggest dumbass. Especially when my dad owned a semi and tractor shop and had a lot of 30+ year mechanics working. The mechanics are still laughing at me.

[Hartspank]

I put a tranny in my '79 Monza Spyder and forget the torque converter!! That really sucked!!!

[twoeightythreez]

About then one of the guys turns white, and is pointing down at front of the engine.

 

i bet if he was a smoker he lit up about 2 right then!

[SUNMASTER]

Something funny that happened to me when i got married. Wife worked about 60km from home. One guy drives the van (16 seater) picking up all the women in the morning and bringing them back in the afternoon.

 

One afternoon they are late . We did not have cellphones at that stage so i cannot contac her . I got worried and cross the later it was getting. Young newly married wife not on time

 

Eventually she get home and me the fool cant controll my temper going on why she is late.Eventually when she got a chance to speak she said it rained wery hard on the way back from work. She said they stood next to the road because the plugs got cold .

 

Neverless i started laughing :grin: because i think what she meant was that water got somewhere in he ignition system (she knew nothing about engine's). Till today when we drive in the rain i mock her about plug's that go cold.

[AK-Z]

Something funny that happened to me when i got married. Wife worked about 60km from home. One guy drives the van (16 seater) picking up all the women in the morning and bringing them back in the afternoon.

 

One afternoon they are late . We did not have cellphones at that stage so i cannot contac her . I got worried and cross the later it was getting. Young newly married wife not on time

 

Eventually she get home and me the fool cant controll my temper going on why she is late.Eventually when she got a chance to speak she said it rained wery hard on the way back from work. She said they stood next to the road because the plugs got cold .

 

Neverless i started laughing :grin: because i think what she meant was that water got somewhere in he ignition system (she knew nothing about engine's). Till today when we drive in the rain i mock her about plug's that go cold.

 

Could of been that the glow plugs (deisel) were cold, but she won't know that haha .

 

For me; probably the time when I forgot to put the oil filter on, lol. Besides that, nothing (yet, lol).

[twoeightythreez]

I had built a 455 Buick nailhead

Don't you mean four-TWENTY-five nailhead? (I'm not counting any displacement possibly added by boring when you built the motor...30 cubes is certainly possible..buick did it with the big block 400 to create the 430, and Poston only sells 430 replacement pistons...they tell you to bore your 400 out to 430 bore)

455 didn't come out till 1970...and the "nailhead" wasn't the same engine family as 400-430-455. (400 replaced 401 nailhead in 1967 intermediate-size buicks, 430 was a bored-out 400..optional on full-sizers...and 455 was the stroked 430 that buick came out with when GM lifted displacement ban in '70)

Yes, and I know that buick named thier wildcat series of engines by torque, not displacement, but I believe that particular motor was named "wildcat 475" (referencing the 475ft.lb torque that the dual-carb 425cid motor was rated at) I might be wrong but I used to be really into the buick motors

 

401,425 buick "nailheads" can be identified by a round, chrysler-esque bellhousing and a rear-mounted dizzy with sump-mounted oil pump,

while 215-300-340-350, 400-430-455 can be identified by a B-O-P standardized bellhousing pattern, front-mounted dizzy and external oil pump (like on an AMC or...gasp... an L-series motor

215-300-340 were also a different family from the 350..the 350 seemed to combine some buick big block attribuites with the small block design....weird....had huge mains and cam bearings that liked to starve lifters as they wore down, unlike the earlier "wildcat" small blocks...e.g. the 350 was basically a "big block" with a smaller bore and stroke. It still had few interchangeable parts (i believe the cam bearings were the same, but that was all) with the actual buick big blocks(or the earlier small block buicks), it was kind of a bastard child, one that buick nurtured from 1968 all the way to 1980. (the 231 [which actually started out life as a 225cid, 3.7L six..used in '64-'67 skylarks&specials when the tooling was sold off to Jeep due to lack of demand...'68 specials debuted with the stovebolt chev six]was based off the earlier 300's.[231 was based off the '66-'67 340]..which is why it's a 3.8 instead of a 4.3 like the chev v-6...the 340 had the same bore [3.800] as a 350 but a shorter stroke [3.42 opposed to 3.75 for the 350])..Buick actually bought the tooling for it back from Jeep so they could have an economy motor in 1975! ) (and boy are the GN owners sure glad Buick did)

 

425's were available with the dual-4bbl option, while 401's made do with a single 4bbl

the 401 nailhead is famous as being the engine that was used to start the turbines on the SR71 blackbird...kewl...

 

To tell the diff between a buick 350 and the 400-430-455, look for the displacement cast on the intake manifold....and also the 350 had a flat oil pan flange on the timing cover (deep skirt block) while the big-blocks had a beveled one since the crank sat farther down to accomodate the longer stroke. Also, the engine mounts on the block and frame were different...the big block had isolator mounting holes forward and aft to accomodate the different platforms they were used in (the full-size buicks had the motor mounted farther back in the engine bay than the intermediates...to accomodate the center-sump oil pan the full sizers used....a fact I realized when I swapped one into my skylark all those years ago.)

 

Then in another infamous use of tooling sales, Buick sold the tooling for the 215-300-340 to Land Rover after developing the 350, who used it until BMW bought the company in the early 21st century.....man that was another example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

...and to think people think platform/powertrain sharing is a new thing....

 

More useless buick related factoids from my "useless info folder" in my head

The 225cid V-6 was known in buickese as a "fireball"

The same engine when Jeep had it was known as a "dauntless"

 

I guess years from now, when people are debating the names manufacturers give thier engines.....

do you think they will ponder how ridiculous "triton" "iforce" "vortec" "magnum" and "endurance" sound as engine names as we do "wildcat" "dauntless" "fireball...I bet that guy got flamed" and "super chief"???

[Brett6485]

I was swapping manifolds on my truck, done it plenty of times so I was just racing threw it. Got it done, quick check, fire it up, let it run for a bit, change the oil all seems well. Get out on my "test" road and have to see how the new manifold works so I nail it, get it up to 90 and all hell breaks loose. She bucked, sputtered, backfired than finally died. Tow it home and start to check, turns out I set the manifold down on the crank position wire. Just pinched it, but enough to melt the wire and let it arc all over the place. I quickly swapped back to stock and had it towed in for warranty. They replaced the CPS, PCM, distributor and the body control modual. Thank god for warranty and the "I dunno what happened, it just died" line. I double check things now.

[Guest Mike]

I asked my ex to marry me while we were in the car. Hey... you DID say, "dumbest auto-related screw-up", right? Not specifically auto mechanically related?

[SHADY280]

i got my hand caught between the fuel rail, and the valve cover, with no tools within reach. my dad ended up removing the valve cover some time later.

[GeeZ]

This is the dumbest I will admit to. At 18, I was building a 383 Coronet from an old city car with a slant 6 that I bought from a used car dealer (that was dumb). I put a 727 Torqueflite and bone yard motor and spent as much a 18yr old with a family grocery store had. After I got it working and fired up, I rev'ed it in gear with the car on jacks and I heard a loud noise from under the car. The rear tire don't turn anymore. I just knew it was the transmission, so without any other diagnosis, I removed the tranny, hurt my back, because the trans started to slip of the trans jack. At 18, I thought the trans was more impt than my back. I tore into the transmission and guess what, nothing wrong. I had a friend's friend who was a trans mechanic and the diagnosis was nothing wrong. Being a little smarter now, I started tracing down the drive line. Well, the driveshaft turns but the wheel don't. Yep, it is the spider gears. $100 later and with a bench repaired rear end, I am on the road. That was 40yrs ago.

[MusPuppis]

Years back I bought this little '73 Fairlady.. The next two years of my life were spent in a hell of broken and failing parts. It still doesnt run =/

 

 

Actual mechanical issue.. Hm, double ringed the oil filter on my 302HO swapped F-150 on the virgin start-up. Oil everywhere but we noticed right away, so no damage or revving thank goodness.

 

Was changing the plugs on a buddies N/A 3000gt and you have to pull the manifold apart some to get to them, long story short, I drop a plastic clip down one of the lower intake runners and cant get it out. I figure.. well, its plastic, lets hope it gets destroyed! That was a year and a half ago, 21k miles later the car runs just fine *shrug*

 

Mounted the ECU in the Festy so the wiring rubbed a metal bracket, severed like 9 wires, who knows why we didnt set anything on fire. Took us a very very very long time to figure out why the damn thing wasnt running worth a ♥♥♥♥, wouldnt idle and couldnt be driven. Ha.

 

I have to replace the water pump on the SHO today so its ready for the new owner this weekend.. so stay tuned for a horror story. =/