How can you be so stupid? It's easy once you get the hang of it...

I generally share my stupider moments, so my friends can laugh at me and keep my ego under control.  I thought a thread devoted to that might be fun.

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out why the left rear turn signal and the door mirror flasher were not working on an XC90.  I was looking for a pinout diagram for the rear electronic module, which is always a cast iron bitch to find in Volvo service info, so I cursed the world for a while, then backed up on alldata and printed off the wiring diagram.  After cursing the fact that there was no left tailight anywhere on the diagram, and cursing even more, (for a solid 20 minutes) I realized I had backed up one window too far and was looking at the lighting diagram for a Nissan Frontier...

Anyway, the power feed for the signal light goes up to the door plug, and a second wire is crimped to the connector that feeds to the rear, and one of those wires was broken, in case anybody cares.

And I still can't find the left tail light on that Nissan wiring diagram.  

There is a left turn I am taking on a new street for a project last 6 months. 

I have been driving my 67 Caddy, 49 Ford F1, or 67 Bronco on that route. For some reason the left signal wouldn't cancel. I spent a lot of time looking at the Caddy turn signals, and couldn't figure it out. 

Last 4 weeks, I have been using my Evo IXMR on that route. Same problem, left turn signal doesn't cancel. I am like WTH is going on. I didn't become old Florida Senile overnight.  So I came home and was. &&&*((()(*)(*)* to my wife. And she asks "thats a weird turn, its not fully left."

We drove back to the street (with her fast modern car), which did the same. As she is driving, she says "You are a moron, you have to make the real left turn for it to cancel"

SIGH

yeah I know I a stupid.

I chased and internet diagnosed a no start situation. Could be a bad cluster.  Key fobs are broken. Bad transmission sensor. Bad ground. Endless diagnoses.

Fuse. Not a blown fuse, but one inserted into the wrong slot. Nothing like spazzing out, fearing the worst and it's a simple 5 amp fuse in the wrong place.

Appleseed,  you big dummy.

I've had quite a few non-car related ones recently:

Was trying to schedule a meeting with a client today. Our "meeting link" button was broken for some reason. Spent 20 mins troubleshooting it until I realized I had scheduled it for yesterday and the software wouldn't let me create a meeting in the past.

Went through airport security, sat down at my terminal and panicked, as I'd lost my hat. Turned my luggage inside out, about 5 mins later realized it was on my head.

Changing the brakes on a Fit years ago. Passenger rotor absolutely would not let go of the hub. Beat on it with an engineer's hammer for about 30 minutes, tried prying it with a prybar, was absolutely exhausted. Eventually remembered Honda puts those tiny retaining bolts on the rotor. The driver's side one had fallen out (or never got reinstalled), so I just assumed the passenger's side didn't have one.

I did the valve covers on the IS-F, and now the power steering doesn't work. I'm fairly certain it's not a simple solution, as I've been troubleshooting it for 2 weeks. Pretty sure one of the dozens of wires corroded or broke. I don't understand electrons so I've just been driving it w/o power steering.

Years ago when I was doing my OBD-I S52 swap into my E30 I had a no start condition. I had spark but no fuel, I checked the wiring harness at least 6 times, replaced the fuel pump, swapped injectors with a friend of mine, tested the Porsche MAF, etc........on and on.

I finally realized I had pulled the fuel pump fuel when doing the wiring harness just in case. 

Fresh 10A fuse, the car fired up immediately into a glorious headers-only roar. 

I spent half a day trying to figure out why a switch in my house had stopped working.

Looked like some idiot had installed a switch for a three-way system instead of a proper one. Couldn't figure out why it wasn't working properly and I was absolutely certain there was no other switch in this system.

Until my wife came home and asked why I hadn't tried flipping the switch by the front door because that was the other one that worked the hallway light.

In reply to calteg :

Did you disconnect the battery?  If you did, there are some recalibrations that need to be done.

ObStupid:  Wiring both ends of nitrous solenoid relays to ground.  Ground under the dash at the switches and ground under the hood.

The funny: The vehicle owner went through an entire tank of nitrous in one night just playing with the purge system, and thought the car was faster with the nitrous but his tuner didn't think so...

Trying to diagnose a list of error codes on a large boring mill recently I pointed out, rather smartly, that sometimes one condition will create other fault conditions and end up in a long list of error codes coming from one initial problem. One of the codes was low hydraulic pressure, and I told him that we still don't have hydraulic pressure, pointing to the gauge.

That's the coolant tank, you idiot, this is the hydraulic tank, and we have lot's of pressure. Apprentice boy bailed me out on that one, it was a steel chip across two terminals on an auxiliary 90 degree head.

Brother and I installed twin SUs on his Triumph Herald station wagon.  Cleaned and rebuilt the 1 1/4" carbs, built a new intake, hooked everything up annnndddd... it ran like E36 M3. 

Played with it for almost an hour and then it finally dawned on me that if you have two carbs, both carbs need a fuel line...

I often think if I were a color, it would be maroon.

I spent a solid 3 hours trying to diagnose why one of my theatrical moving lighting fixtures wasn't working.  I pulled it down out of the grid (on a rickety ladder, and it weighs 80 lbs), checked the fuse, tested the continuity of the cord, and even replaced the fuse just in case I couldn't see that it was blown.  Plugged it in on the floor and eureka, it works!  Figuring I had fixed the problem, I went back up the ladder and re-hung the fixture, plugged it in, and nothing.

I had turned on all 22 breakers... except that one.

I started the corvette, set the fob down on the roof while the car warmed up, then drove to Connecticut. Whdn I stopped at a rest area about two hours from home I couldn't get back in the car. Fortunately I was close to a friend's house, they drove me home and I found where the fob slid off my roof a block from the house. 

I did a head gasket swap on my small block Ford, not for the first time, forgot which way the distributor rotated. Wouldn't start, had to have it towed and a professional see what a dummy I was.

Well, let's back up.
 

Before that, I had replaced the short block, remembered to add oil, but forgot about the coolant. Fired right up, and ran for ten minutes for cam break in while the headers turned cherry red (timing was also retarded). 
 

Let it cool down overnight, put in coolant the next morning, ran fine on a 15 minute test drive with no leaks. Loaded up and drove 650 miles to NC. Thought I got away with it, but the heat on the lower row of head bolts meant that the sealer didn't hold and it started seeping coolant through them. Chose to replace the head gaskets rather than remove and replace the head bolts. 

Aw geez, there aren't enough letters, an insufficient number of adjectives, and not enough time in the universe....

I tried to put on a pair of safety glasses today only to have them collide with the pair I was already wearing. Apparently I can't have more than one on my desk at a time because I attempted to repeat this feat a couple hours later, but this time caught myself as soon as I lifted them off my desk.

So it's just not me, all y'all are conflicted also. And here I thought oops, that I'm the only nerdlinger stumbling down the sidewalk o' life ....be safe y'all.....late......G'night

I flew to Norwalk Connecticut to work on the emission control on the hospital incinerator. Turns out I was there 2 weeks early. Thankfully I was allowed to do the work. 

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

Speaking of other peoples' dumb moments.

Factory Five car.  Beautifully done, drove well, sounded weird, didn't seem to have as much power as the Ford Motorsport 302ci crate motor would have suggested.  I think you may see where this is going.... the crate motors had roller cams, which all have the 351W firing order.  Swapped four plug wires around and it ran EXTREMELY well, and no longer sounded like an aircooled VW.

351C-4V Mustang.  Yep, a '71 with the intake ports the size of the ones in a 429. 

Didn't seem to run hot by the gauge but it boiled over after you shut the engine off.  Hmm.  Removed the water pump to find half the bolts were broken off in the block and the heads glued in place, and most of the coolant passages were blocked off by the evil blue silicone.  (Do they even sell that stuff anymore?)  While the pump was off, decided to check for water flow through the block.  No flow from the return passage from the right side head.  Someone, somewhere along the way, had put the right side head gasket on backwards, blocking off almost ALL coolant flow through the right side of the engine!  It has to go on upside down for the coolant passages to line up.  From the looks of it, it had been that way for a LONG time, too! 

The head and block were not warped, amazingly.  It ran really well after that and a new timing chain (it had the weird -8 factory chain still in it).  Also, putting an iron 351C head with iron exhaust manifold attached into a '71 Mustang engine bay suuuuuuucks.

Not to single out Fords.  Recieved a '69 Chevelle with a "rebuilt" 350 to finish engine install and sort out.   Went to prime the engine.  Didn't build much oil pressure and then the drill spun freely.  Five quarts of oil on the ground.  No oil gallery plugs in the back of the block, all the oil exited stage rear and somehow managed to saturate the clutch disk, too.  Removed trans, clutch, flywheel, looked in the holes and could see the cam sprocket at the other end of the galleries - no plugs at that end either.  Engine came out after that, and while it was out we stuck a borescope into the plug holes and saw that it had standard size pistons and huge, giant vertical gouges in the bores, and it appeared someone tried to smooth it out by finding some 24 grit stones and honing the bejeezus out of it...

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to calteg :

Did you disconnect the battery?  If you did, there are some recalibrations that need to be done.

 

Yup. I've tried it with my quasi-legal version of techstream, even drove over the the Lexus dealership to have them try and calibrate it, no dice, can't establish communication to the steering ecu. Went to the junkyard and got another ecu, same issue, which is leading me to believe it's wiring related

A few months back the alternator went out on my girlfriends e30ute. Car died on the freeway. She was only a few miles from home so I figured I'd run out there with a fresh battery and try to limp it the last little bit. Put the battery in and it would crank all day long and not fire. With the ignition on, the main relay buzzed it was clicking so fast. I spent a week tracing down wires trying to figure out why the ecm wasn't providing grounds. Even swapped with a buddies pcm. Nothing. Finally yanked the battery out to put the original back in and see the pcm ground hanging down underneath the tray. The battery hold down bolt was the pcm ground and when I swapped it in the dark at 11pm on the side of the freeway I didn't hook it back up.

I made two separate threads about these related incidents, but that was many moons ago, so I'll recount them here.

I was putting the BP-4W in my '90 Miata, and the engine had come from a junkyard and was all full of water, so I tore it down, sent it to a machine shop, had it bored 0.010" over and put it together myself. Got the engine in the car, did all the work to install the Rotrex supercharger that I was also adding, get everything ready and it starts up but has no oil pressure. I immediately shut it down, and start going through all sorts of diagnostics. Some guys say they never packed the oil pump with grease, others say if you don't pack them with grease they'll never prime. I pulled the plug out of the oil pump and poured oil in there, I built a pressure pre-luber, nothing works. Tear the engine out, put it on the engine stand, flip it over and pull the pan, and discover that, like a moron, I never torqued the pickup tube. Doh!

Put the engine back together, drop the engine back in, put the transmission back in, install the supercharger and, hurray, it has oil pressure. Start it up and get it idling on Megasquirt but the weather is hella E36 M3ty out so I can't drive it to start tuning it. So, it sits for two weeks, and then I try to start it and I've got all sorts of strange E36 M3 going on. The ECM would power up when I turned the key to run, but no fuel pump, then when I would crank it, the ECM would lose power, and it wouldn't gain power again until I turned the key off, at which point I'd hear the fuel pump kick on. I'm doing all sorts of diagnostics and checking the ignition switch and a bunch of other stuff and Keith Tanner goes "Sounds like a ground issue to me." I had, to my credit, remembered to hook my ground back up to the intake manifold, but I had forgotten that I had installed the MiataRoadster phenolic intake manifold spacer and washers and the intake manifold was now electrically isolated. It must have been making some contact between the manifold and the studs before, and then after getting everything warm, it moved around so it was no longer making contact. I moved the ground to the valve cover and, voila, it starts and runs.

I have had absolute panic mode set in of where are my keys...

...while I am driving.

I replaced the windshield wiper sprayer motor, because it didnt work in my gs300. I would pull the stick, the wipers would move but no spray. Replacing the motor didn't help. That's when I discovered the push button on the side of the windsield wiper, with the spray diagram on it. 

DjGreggieP said:

I have had absolute panic mode set in of where are my keys...

...while I am driving.

All the time.

I think the "I don't remember putting my keys in my pocket" subroutine doesn't do any logic checks