gretchen/jason Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 How about having a B&M gear shifter without reverse lockout and slapping youre z into reverse at 70MPH and ending up going backwards down the highway . Then softly landing in 4 feet of snow on the side of the highway . I will say that shifter wasnt in my z for very long . Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexideways Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Did a timing belt job only to realise that I had reinstalled the old belt. The guy had had the belt for a long time and the new one was dirtier than the old one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spotfitz Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 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? Damn Mike, and you gave me a ribbing for my other post about my wife? LOL This happened just recently. When I was putting my rebuilt motor back together I just threw one of my old valve covers on it to keep the dirt out while it sat waiting on me to put it in. Acouple months later I finally got the motor in and eventually fired her up after priming the oil system. At the time I had a friend over and as I'm letting it high idle for alittle while I get out and he says I have an oil leak. I check under the Z and oil is just pouring onto the garage floor. I kill it and start checking things. It looked like it came from the oil filter. I pull it and check the seal and everything looks good so I put it back on, filled the oil back up and called it a night. Next day I'm out in the garage again working out any other bugs I might have. I fire her up and check for leaks again. Same thing, oil pouring out on the garage floor. Now I'm thinking, what the hell. I start checking the oil pan gasket and drain plug and they both check out. I put more oil in and start her up again and this time I run around to the side that was leaking and start looking for the problem. After acouple minutes of idling oil just starts pouring out of the valve cover seal. I shut her down and pull the now hot valve cover. Once I flipped it over to look at the seal I just felt foolish. The valve cover I grabbed to keep dirt out had half the gasket missing on the spark plug side and I wasted about 4 quarts of oil because of my stupidity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeeZ Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Anybody notice that this thread is over a yr. old from Dec, 2005? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FJ 280z Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 one time i was driving my moms automatic toyota tercel in hawaii and it was a 5speed, i was used to my girlfriends automatic tercel in arizona, so i pulled up to a blockbuster, got down, walked in, lookin around the movies for about 5 minutes when a guy comes up to me and asks if thats my tercel outside, i said yeah, he said its in the middle of the street. i left it in neutral and didn't pull up the parking brake and it rolled out into the middle of a parking lot..... needless to say i was quite embarrased... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mike Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Anybody notice that this thread is over a yr. old from Dec, 2005? Yes... But our screw-ups are TIMELESS:-D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TurboZfreaK Posted February 3, 2007 Share Posted February 3, 2007 Well this one is straight off of a Z. I had to change a head gasket, so i had a black plastic chain tensioner spacer, you know to keep the tensioner from poping out of place, everything was going great, got the head back on put everything back together. OK man I was ready to start her up, so I did, started great, but as it was warming up i went and gathered up all my tools, and TOO LATE, grind grind grind CHUNCH!!!! stoped the motor in its tracks, I ran over and wondered WHAT THE F%$*, as I was looking through my tools, I thought where the H#%$ is my spacer, DOH, it was in my case being chewed up and finaly caught between the timing chain and the main gear, in the end i broke my tool, my timing chain and my main gear was thrashed, WHAT A IDIOT, so now i have a little chain hooked to my tool to prevent that disaster again, but in my defense the tool was jet black kinda hard to see, so my new one is made out of bright orange nylon. LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TeamNissan Posted February 3, 2007 Share Posted February 3, 2007 When I was 13 my mom asked me to go warm up the car and like a kid I put it in drive to fool around (1st time behind the wheel). Went a lil too fast and hit the gas again instead of the brake so paniced and put in park to tear a clack clack clack sound.... That was the end of that trans. My mom to this day wont let me drive her car. Even when I work on it and have to take it for a spin to check everything she drives and I sit in the passenger seat lol. I had a shop for a short time 2 years ago and a customer had a auto n/a 1990 300zx with a blown engine. So I swapped then engine and everything, made it all perdy and clean. Took it out to see that everything was ok and noticed a nice patch of ice. So i back up onto the ice to do a lil bs burn out but my feet and in turn work boots were so big I hit the gas along with the brake and rear ended a jeep I was about to do a oil change on lol. didnt do jack to the jeep but I ended up having to buy a new fog light, bumper and paint for the z. Niether owner noticed but I came clean because I hate how like 90% of shops are jag-offs. Niether customer seemed to mind lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeatrpi Posted February 3, 2007 Share Posted February 3, 2007 My daily driver Mazda 626 has noisy ticking lifters. I had the brilliant idea that to identify the culprit, I would remove the valve cover and start the engine. Trouble is, I forgot about the oil. Needless to say I learned that I have very good oil pressure. It took me a few hours to clean up the hood, fenders, floor, garage walls, my clothes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lbhsbZ Posted February 4, 2007 Share Posted February 4, 2007 I was 17 and had picked up a used set of headers for my beater '64 chevy truck. I parked the truck in my sloped driveway, popped the hood and got to work. I cut the old exhaust off, removed the manifolds, got the passenger side header on then moved on the drivers side header. I'm sitting in the engine bay feeding the header down when the collector bumps the shift linkage out of park....truck starts rolling down the driveway, I try to jump out, cut my head on the hood latch and land on my ass....chased the truck down the driveway and across the street and dove through the window to stab it back in park (the e-brake didn't work and the doorlatch was kinda sticky). Just missed the neighbors house by about 5 feet. .....and thats when I discovered wheel chocks. Next one: I was working for Toyota and one of the guys on my team asks me to pull in a Supra that was sitting outside (2nd Gen). Apparently he'd already looked at and ordered parts.....something with the trans. So I go out there, fire it up, click the shifter back one click (into reverse...I thought), look behind me and step on the throttle, and promptly slam into the back of the car parked in front of me. After diagnosing it, he had left it in neutral, not park. I got yelled at for that one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proxlamus© Posted February 4, 2007 Share Posted February 4, 2007 installing a throwout bearing backwards installing brakes upside down with the bleeder on the bottom forgetting to ground an HEI module putting in the dizzy shaft 180 degrees off Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
280zwitha383 Posted February 4, 2007 Share Posted February 4, 2007 ah, I was waiting for this one to come back up. I was trying a funky little idea of mine to relocate the struts by drilling new holes in the mount up top. I had been on and off with them several times but for some reason this time I jacked the passenger side up by the A-arm instead of the front differential mount. Messed around with the height a little bit trying to get the bottom of the strut to slip off. Finally I just took the hammer to it (like I had done before when I didn't feel like messing with it) and got it almost off. I got nice and snug in there so I could really get a good grip and a little leverage on the strut and muscled it off only to have the whole back end of the car come crashing down and sandwich my hand between the strut and some part of the brakes (I think, it's kind of a blur) and finally (the strut) semi land on a part of the A-arm while still squashing my hand. Even though I was little short of holding the back of the car up with my pinched hand, I managed with my left hand (I basically had to roll over) to move the jack over a little bit and raised it up enough where I could get out. I was pretty sure my hand was broken and I pulled it and myself out from underneath the car as quickly as I could because it still wasn't very sturdily supported. My had was a little sore but I could still move it with little additional pain. Anyway, I've learned to use jackstands. I used to think they weren't really very necessary because I have always had faith in jacks but if I would have had a jackstand underneath something else I wouldn't have nearly been crushed by my own car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparks280zt Posted February 5, 2007 Share Posted February 5, 2007 I bought an old rusty Datsun to try and fix up. What a money hole! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eec564 Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 My list is FAR longer then I want it to be. Here are a few I remember off the top of my head. A year and a half ago, I rebuilt a 327 that was laying around and dropped it into A 74 Nova, replacing the inline-6 that had one under-sized piston from the head getting cracked one upon a time. Did a perfect rebuild, started up perfectly on the first try, but idled awful. Shut it off, checked a few things, wouldn't start up again, just popped out the carb. My uncle took one look, told me to turn the distributor 180. Runs perfect now. Another time, I changed the oil on my grandmother's Grand Marque. Real annoying oil filter to get to, have to do it all by feel, and I was doing this at night. I changed the oil and filter, started it up, the oil light on the dash went out, and I started backing away from the shed. Then I see in the headlights a HUGE puddle of oil. Crap, what did I do? Turns out, the old gasket for the oil filter was stuck to the block, so I had two rubber gaskets between the filter and the block. Leaked like a sieve, but built up enough pressure to turn off the idiot light. Asside from cleaning up one heck of a mess, no harm done. Another time I was driving my old 84 Mercedes 300SD. Absolutely bullet proof car. I had come off the interstate, and I downshifted (it's an automatic, but they're ment to be shifed that way) to help me slow down, and it started to rev the engine a little too much, so I shifed up again. I must have missed a gear and put it into neutral, because I thought I was still one gear too low, and moved the shifter up one more. Right into reverse. There was a VERY loud clacking noise just like trying to engage the parking gear while moving, and the tires nearly locked up a couple times, but I got it back into drive REAL quick. No harm done, transmission works fine to this day. One that still ticks me off is the only stupid thing I've done to my Z. My very nice alarm system has a remote start as part of it. Very useful in cold weather to warm up the engine/car, and in hot to cool off the car with the A/C. Now, my car is a 5 speed, and you can see where this is going. After hooking the system, I went to test it, not while in the car ready to hit the clutch and brake, but standing next to it. The remote start worked perfect, propelling my Z that I left in 1st gear right into the open door of my 83 Mercedes 300SD. Put a nice 2x2 inch dent in the hood of the Z and some scrapes on the headlight bucket. Engine never actually fired, and it didn't hurt the Benz. The remote start is disconnected until I get a reliable neutral safety switch. Another time, I managed to give my friend's dad's car a flat tire. It was a nissan altima (I think, might have been a sentra), top of the line, every feature. CD changer, leather, everything. But no power steering. I didn't even know those cars came without power steering. I backed out of the driveway, then put it in 1st and started to turn into the street. The wheels didn't turn as far as I expected them to, and the front right wheel got to meet the curb on the left side of the driveway. Flat tire, but at least the rim was okay. Yet another time, long before I had a license, I was moving heavy machinery around my grandpa's farm. Tractors, swathers, etc. I went to move one tractor around, and since it was the first time I had ever driven it, my grandpa was supervising from the ground. I started it up and went to raise the bucket nice and high so I could see where I was driving. I stopped midway when my grandpa yelled at me saying I didn't need to raise the bucket WAY up there, since there was no need to. I started backing the tractor into the spot we wanted it in when the loader hit the back of the swather. Smack into the 250 gallon propane take the thing ran off of. Made one heck of a clang, like an out of tune church bell, but it didn't leak, break anything, and I'm still here to talk about it. Would never have happened if I'd just raised the bucket all the way in the air to give me the extra room to manuver. That's all I feel like writing about for now, but I've had several close calls with farm machinery that wasn't working properly and nobody bothered to tell me when I was asked to help out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eec564 Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 Anybody notice that this thread is over a yr. old from Dec' date=' 2005?[/quote']Yes... But our screw-ups are TIMELESS:-D Good threads never die. They just get posted to again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam393 Posted February 10, 2007 Share Posted February 10, 2007 So far, i havent done anything really stupid yet.... *knock on wood* But a few years back, my father and mother were going to some charity car show, and on the way there it started raining. My mom made the mistake of trying to get my dad to look at houses on the way there, and while he wasnt looking, a stop sign was approaching very quickly with a car sitting at the line. My dads knee jerk reaction was to swerve and miss the car, but this caused him to slam his '66 Aston DB6 into the stop sign. Needless to say, he was a pretty unhappy... NOw he learned his lesson and never drives it unless its perfect outside. And a few months ago he was getting ready to go to work and forgot his rear driver side door was open, and backed the Volvo out of the garage. Well his door bent forward, and he stopped just in time to prevent a repeat of Tommy Boy, but either way, the door hardly shut afterwards and ended up bending part of the driver door too. In the end he had to replace the door, and the car looks great, you cant even tell something has happened to it:burnout: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wedge Posted May 3, 2007 Share Posted May 3, 2007 On my first car i poored Anti-Freeze in the power steering container . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
280zwitha383 Posted May 4, 2007 Share Posted May 4, 2007 I put a regular fuel pump pushrod in my roller cam engine (and ran it for about 2 years).... Needless to say I'm waiting for my electric pump to come in... I knew about the distributor gear but NEVER thought about the fuel pump pushrod. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CArFAn Posted May 4, 2007 Share Posted May 4, 2007 I have super glued my fingers and hands together on misc parts on my rc car.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thanh Posted May 5, 2007 Share Posted May 5, 2007 When I was 16, I double gasket the oil filter on the oil change. 65 dollars worth of synthetic down the drain . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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