Wrenching Confessions: What self inflicted idiocy have you achieved?

The locks in my 57 T-Bird have been frozen since...forever, so I ordered new locks, and today I decided I'd finally fix it. I removed the door panels and eyeballed how the locks were fastened to the door. Got the old ones out, and the new ones in without anything too dumb happening. Put the door panels back on and decided to go for a drive.

...and then I tried to roll down the driver's window. It made it 2/3 down, then slowed to a halt. I tried a few more times, with the same result. So before I broke the window, I looked down into the door through the window channel (gotta love the gaps on old cars) and saw the light. Literally.

I had left my 2 D-cell Maglite in the door, and left it on.

Replaced the door locks on my '81 Chevy PU project after painting, put the keys away ... ya know, in a safe place so I wouldn't lose them. Next spring, after hours of searching no keys to be found.

Easier to replace the locks again instead of jerkin' meself off lookin' all over creation I thought. Stashed the keys in a more better safe place. Last I searched they too are MIA.

I don't have a lot of bad stories and if I did I don't think I would like to admit them. I started playing around in the garage when I was very young. I was about 10 when I wanted to wax the family car. My dad never waxed when I was a kid (we had old cars) I had seen commercials on how the wax was just rubbed on and the car magically shines like new. So one summer day I tried to shine up the old family truckster. When my dad came home from work that afternoon there was the car covered in white crusty residue. I didn't know you had to "wax off". I think I was about a year older when I was building something in the garage. I don't even remember what it was but is was wood and I wrapped sheetmetal over a portion of it. I was trying to drill a 3/16 hole through the metal and wood. I had the piece in the vise. The drill bit was dull and I was bearing into it. I decided to put my hand behind the piece so I could put some more force behind the drill to get through the metal. I thought once I was through the metal I would have time to reposition my hand and finish drilling through the wood. I ended up with a nice circle of skin missing from the palm of my hand.

Much like jmc14's story. My father told me he was changing out the windshield on our family's 68 vista cruiser, while I was playing around inside the car. I was also quite young at the time. I think under 4 years old. I don't remember it. He was holding the replacement glass in his hands to put on the car as I managed to bump the gearshift and send the car rolling out of the driveway. My dad dropped the new windshield breaking it but was able to stop the car before it ended up in the street.

this weekend a neighbor was taking her kids on a ski trip for a week she left about 8am at 8:45 she was knocking on the garage door all upset it seems her bimmer wagon was making a bad noise and was wondering if i could take a look at it for her. (she said they had been planning the trip for months and she was about in tears). so i took the car for a ride and it was making a noise like metal to metal the faster you went the worse it got and you couldnt tell where it was coming from. i was thinking wheel bearing or something really bad.

i told her as long as we could get parts we will have her on the road. so we moved cars around to get it up on the lift. we checked everything could not find anything even running the car thru the gears on the lift produced no noise. there was a tiny, tiny play in the one wheel bearing and was about to pull it and check it when another neighbor stopped by George.

you have to understand George is 81 years old has played with cars since he was ten years old and has a mind like a steel trap when it comes to things mechanical he can figure out almost anything if you give him time. his big plus is he has comman sense he reasons things out. he always says after hearing about a problem either with "the possibilties are" then a list of things to check will follow and the answer to the problem will be in the list most likely or he will say "can i make a suggestion" now when he says that it means he knows whats wrong.

George comes in the garage and takes a seat and doesnt get near the car and i proceeded to tell him what the car was doing and what we had checked. George's response was "can i make a suggestion"........when he said that i looked at my nephew and knew i over looked something in plain sight.

George says "did you try driving the car without the ski's on the roof"...........................i dont think i have to go any farther do I as i hang my head in shame

Helping my coworker out this weekend with his Chrysler 300 2.7, because he's not a car guy and I am. Right? Right? He wanted to troubleshoot a little before towing it to the mechanic.

A few weeks ago he was about to take a trip to Vegas and being low on oil he topped it off. Never mind the fact that he was about due for an oil change anyway, he decided to just pour 3 quarts or so into his engine.

Highway speeds, up inclines, fully loaded car, needless to say they didn't make it. I think they towed it back home, car sounds like hell. Code read, Cyl 3 misfire. Drained the oil, it's black, doesn't smell too bad, no visible metal in it, a bit more than 8 quarts in a 6 quart capacity engine. Poked a hole in the filter to get it loose, lots of silver oil came out of there. No Bueno. Put a new filter and poured the oil back on, he turns the car on and it proceeded to spew the new oil right back out of the filter. The gasket from the old oil fiter was stuck on there. So embarrassed.

Changed the spark plugs for him too, as they were way overdue, they looked nasty but still getting misfire code and still sounding like hell. I told him to take it to the shop.

Replaced the water pump in my Saab 9000. Cross threaded the banjo bolt for the turbo coolant line into the water pump housing, FUBARing the threads.

Ordered used water pump housing yesterday, was supposed to have it today but they didn't get it shipped out in time.

As a result tomorrow I will be spending 5+ hours in the back seat of a Fiat 500 with two tall adults.

My 1980 Toyota 4x4 had a pretty nasty oil leak. Rear main seal for sure. Lacking even have a driveway at the time, I had to work in the street. So, parked on a residential street in Santa Cruz, my brother and I dropped the driveshafts, yanked the t-case and tranny, pulled the clutch and flywheel, replaced the rear main seal, etc, etc. Ten hours, start to finish. (There were a couple of runs to Kragen for tools.) Commuted with it for the next few days and it still leaked like crazy. Took a better look at it the next weekend. That's when I noticed an oil pan bolt was missing and obviously had been for a while.

ouch

I remember when I was five years old, thought I would help my dad out by cleaning his Daimler SP250 for him.

With Mr. Clean.

I climbed up on the trunk and started scrubbing. The marks were still there until a few years ago, when I got the car repainted.

When I started driving, I did the 22R engine oil cap thing with the Celica. I left it off, was doing some spirited driving in Northern Ontario on winding roads. Luckily, the cap came off and was nestled in the plug wires.

I hand-tightened wheels on when I was working on my NX2000 and forgot to torque them. Part-way along Snake Rd., I figured out what the noise was and I pulled over before anything bad happened.

I think the one I felt worst about was when I had Cindy's NX2000 race car up on the jack at Mosport and it somehow popped off and ripped the front spoiler off.

I didn't know until years later, but she saw all of us clustered around the car and tip-toed away while we fixed it. We used duct tape in the exact red shade of the car, which worked fine... until the next race weekend at Mosport, where someone didn't torque down the oil filter (not me this time!) and she spun out into a tire wall and ripped the spoiler off.

Swapping a dead auto trans out of a CRV I got for nothing. Didn't get the splines lines up correctly on the junkyard unit and broke the pump shaft tightening it up . Got lucky and found a third transmission for $200.

Looking back I really have no regrets about the whole thing, I learned a lesson and still made a nice chunk of change.

Only minor ones...

One of my first times working in the auto skills center, I used some torque sticks to put the lugs back on the Miata's wheels. Never having used them before and not understanding how they worked, I only ran the impact gun until the first hammer or two. Developed a bit of a wobble on the way home... Figured it out on the side of I-95, just outside Baltimore. Snugged up the remaining lug nuts, drove the rest of the way home very carefully, and never used torque sticks again.

More recently - trying to remove the VTCS system from my Miata intake manifold - essentially some plates screwed on to a shaft that generate tumble at certain times. Couldn't get the phillips screws to back out, so hit them a couple times with an impact screwdriver. And then spent hours carefully cutting the now-bent shaft apart to get it out from between the intake runners...

I've finally decided that torque sticks are only good for keeping me from over-tightening my lugs ... I then go back and hand torque them

First one happened when I was 14. Dad bought the family a 13' Boston Whaler with an 80s Suzuki 25 2 stroke on the back. Deal was if I saved up money and took care of it, I could take my friends out for a ride. In the garage one day I couldn't find the oil needed for the fuel/oil mixture but I did find some ATF. It had the same consistency so I decided it should work just fine. Dad said the carbs looked like they had prechewed bubble gum stuffed in them when he had to clean them.

I probably should have stayed away from tools starting then.

During the engine rebuild on my mustang, I had to reinstall the cam plate cover. I read the directions as it needing something like 100 ft/lbs. I thought, wow, that's a lot of torque but I guess it makes sense because it is probably spinning pretty fast. A couple turns later the thing sheers off in my freshly rebuilt shortblock 2 weeks before I am due to leave for school across the state. Turns out it was actually in/lbs. Whoops

I am sure their are more but memory loss has it's perks.

Oh, I also dropped a box full of pistons from the attic straight through the windshield of my Mustang.

tuna55 wrote:

glueguy wrote: Good one today, but home DIY. Replacing washer on leaking bathroom sink trap. Unscrew and remove the trap, it's full of water, reach up and pour it in the sink. I had to laugh at myself with the results 2 miliseconds later.

AHAHAHAHAHAAA I can laugh... because I did it too!

3rd!

Only idiocy I have achieved recently is to wrench on a rusty POS Ford PowerStroke diesel that weigh 6500# without air tools. My wife's Avalanche is 10x easier to work on.....

Bumped for the latest tale of idiocy. I spent all evening un-flooding my RX-8. The manual says not to shut off the engine without warming it up. Note to self: follow directions; do not back the car out of the garage stone cold and then park it in the driveway and shut it off...

Still can't get it to start.

Had a laptop with a breakdown of my WRXs engine bay on it sitting on the inside of the car. Leaned over it and forgot my mouse was on the keyboard, the screen closed on the mouse shattering the screen.

I still forget to pump brakes up before driving the car.

Enyar wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

glueguy wrote: Good one today, but home DIY. Replacing washer on leaking bathroom sink trap. Unscrew and remove the trap, it's full of water, reach up and pour it in the sink. I had to laugh at myself with the results 2 miliseconds later.

AHAHAHAHAHAAA I can laugh... because I did it too!

3rd!

Dammit I just did this Thursday. And I thought I had moved past this idiocy. hahaha

marks93cobra wrote: I had a 1970 Chevelle SS 396 back in college( I believe this was in 1990). I couldn't always get the driver's door unlocked from the outside, so I would unlock the passenger door and crawl into the driver's seat. On one cold morning, I knew I had no chance of getting the driver's door to open, so since it was freezing out, I was in quite a hurry, so I unlocked the passenger door, jumped in the car, and closed the door. I then proceeded to make my way over to the driver's seat, when I stepped on the dry-chemical fire extinguisher I kept in the car (since it leaked every fluid quite profusely....remember, I'm in college, so I have no $ to fix anything correctly). Anyway, fortunately for me, the nozzle was facing into the carpet, but when that thing discharged, and the magical white power dispursed, I realized quite quickly how fast the oxygen disappeared from inside the car....needless to say, I was in all out panic mode when I lunged for the door handle on the driver's door, and after wrestling the door open, I literally fell out of the car and into the street gasping for air.....man, I wish I still had that car.

One of the other LeMons teams at CMP had a fire extinguisher get loose, it was rolling around and randomly firing blasts of green powder and dust inside the car.

dculberson wrote:

Enyar wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

glueguy wrote: Good one today, but home DIY. Replacing washer on leaking bathroom sink trap. Unscrew and remove the trap, it's full of water, reach up and pour it in the sink. I had to laugh at myself with the results 2 miliseconds later.

AHAHAHAHAHAAA I can laugh... because I did it too!

3rd!

Dammit I just did this Thursday. And I thought I had moved past this idiocy. hahaha

Same here.

yep .... BTDT

When I was sixteen and knew exactly nothing in the way of car repair, I decided that I could tackle replacing the water pump on my 87 Maxima. I got to the part where I had to remove the crank pulley, I couldn't figure out how to get the crank from turning while I tried to remove the bolt, so I took and put a screwdriver through the camshaft gear, ended up just turning the crank with the cams locked into place. After I got it all put back together, I tried to start it and only got soot coming out of the intake from the bent valves. $1400 later I had a used engine installed by a shop. I wish I had had a mechanical mentor when I got that car.