Corvette Valdez and how to have a bad day.

Today was supposed to be a good day.... 

Take care of some chores, good weather, pick up a few small pieces from the junkyard for my BMW project. Since I'm going to the Junkyard I might as well go to the recycle center and dump all the used oil and ATF I've accumulated over the last few months. As of right now my c6 Z06 is my only "real" car. Meaning registered, not race car etc. No way my wife was going to let use her precious VW either. So good excuse to use the wrong car for the job.

At 1:38 pm I snap this photo and send it to my friends and say "I don't feel like I do that many oil changes"

I only live a few miles from the recycle center. No big deal. I'll drop this off and head to the JY. 

I'm driving not really paying attention and realize I missed the turn. I hit my blinker to turn into a side street. Out of habit I check my rearview and see an SUV coming down on me hard. He has no intention of slowing and just goes into the opposite lane to go around me. I hit the brakes and swerve. That's when all hell breaks loose.

1:57 pm

One of the 5 gallon buckets came forward and popped it's lid. In the process dumps about 3 gallons of used motor oil onto me and the center console.

That's about a 1/4" of standing oil.if you can't tell. It even came out the seems of the body.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon taking all the interior out cleaning everything and pressure washing the carpets. Unfortunately I don't think there is any saving the 3 main pieces of carpeting. Luckily they aren't too expensive second hand. I'm going to try to find a set tomorrow locally. If not, I can order a used set off eBay.

I hope you all had a better day than I did. berkeley me running.

Man that sucks!

Damn dude.  Just... damn.

In reply to Nofive_0 :

Fuuuuuuuu.. berk. That SUCKS! I can smell it from here, just seeing the pics. 

Oh nooooooooooooooooooooooo

On the bright side, at least it wasn't oil spewing out of the actual engine of the car!

Well on the plus side wherever the oil spilled is now thoroughly rust proofed!

Dude, that sucks.

I had a similar thing happen once; old Subaru wagon of mine, I was hauling a spare engine in the hatch. I had it strapped down on a few wood blocks; I was only going 5 or so miles up the road so wasn't too worried about it.

Then an insane driver ran a red light into my path as I was ambling down the road at 40MPH; I took evasive action through some combination of swerving and braking.

Good news? Didn't hit the guy.

Bad news? The engine slid off the blocks and took out both the C/D pillar glass and rear hatch glass, and managed to dump what little residual coolant/oil was still inside all over the hatch. 

Mother of God. That sucks. 

look at the good news, you found your missing change.

Seriously, that sucks big time.  I hope you can get it all out and nothing of any consequence was ruined.

I feel like the hole in the block I came into this thread expecting would have been easier to deal with

The List of Things I'd Rather Have Happen is Long and Varied. 

RevRico said:

I feel like the hole in the block I came into this thread expecting would have been easier to deal with

Not as messy.

On the level of suckiness that's a 10 out of 10.  

Oof. I'm sorry. Good on you for having the will to immediately set about cleaning it up. I might've been tempted to go back to bed, getting up only occasionally to bang my head against the wall.

Ouch dude that sucks bad. I'm really hopping you get it cleaned up, although I've no ide how you'll get the smell out. Good luck. 

Every time I put a bucket of used oil in my van I have this nightmare flash through my head. 

I feel so bad for laughing.  So bad.

How to rust proof a fibreglass car.

Be a real shame if that car got stolen right after you put full coverage on it.

Yeah, i have a sensitive nose, i really feel for you on this one.  I can send a gallon of purple power.....

Stampie (FS) said:

On the level of suckiness that's a 10 out of 10.  

yes, that is right up there with this:

Ouch, that's painful to see. I'm always nervous about the same thing happening to me when I transport my used oil. Reminds me of this photo that just popped up in the meme thread:

*Edit: mad_machine beat me to it!

Geeeeeez, I am going to have nightmares about that. Unbelievably bad!  

Ohhhhh man, that sucks. I had the cap unscrew itself on one of the 4 quart bottles of Rotella in the trunk of my Miata and that was bad enough. I threw the carpet out entirely and have wiped and cleaned the trunk out repeatedly, and 2 years later oil still weeps out from under the battery tray and from seams in the trunk

And I though the time a gallon of milk spilled in my old 1st gen RX-7 was the worst thing that could happen. Nope! I removed and pressure washed the entire interior but the smell still lingered. I drove around the entire summer with the windows down and the sunroof out to circulate air. It took months before the horrible smell went away or at least until I got used to it.

Good luck getting it back to how it was prior to the incident. I don't envy what you're doing.