Stupidest thing you've done recently?

Taking apart the toilet tank, so the wife can paint behind it.. I got mad at the fact that the float was in the way.

grab break off, fit of rage. Now I gotta replace it. $9 down the toilet.

Yesterday, I woke up, made a pot of coffee and decided to make breakfast. Well, I need to go to the grocery story REALLY badly, and all I could find to eat for breakfast was bacon. So after I eat some bacon and drink an entire pot of coffee, a friend stops by. I totally forgot that I told him he could come by and I'd set the tension on his chain and flush the brakes on his '97 BMW F650. So I proceed to go out into the fiery inferno that was the outdoors yesterday, immediately after my glorious breakfast. I thought I was going to vomit the entire time, and was really hoping it wouldn't come to that, since I would imagine that particular blend of vomit would be especially foul. Somehow I held it back.

Mmmm...bacon!

Yesterday I was fiddling around with my pile of Honda VTR250 Junk and had it sitting there idling when I decided to see if the brake light worked (since I noticed the taillight on). I was standing beside the bike on the left side. I'll just push on this here brake lever...no problem. Except that I'm not familiar with riding bikes since about Jr. High school...and I dropped it down into first (d'oh! Brake lever is on the RIGHT side!). It just spun the tire and died...didn't fall over or anything, fortunately.

Just the day before, I departed on a 4-hour round trip WITH a half a tank of gas and WITHOUT my wallet. That was interesting!

I'm hoping to win something by not acknowleding the ignore thread by posting in it ;).

Clem

Stupid thing 1: Work on my car.

Stupid thing 2: Create a blog about it.

I ran out of gas on the way to work yesterday and almost got hit by two cars pushing my truck across the intersection.

I think my biggest (so far) was thinking I could easily repaint my saab..

Needed to do an oil change, remembered that I bought an oil filter a while back, looked briefly, went to Napa and ordered one, came home and while getting my drain pan I found the filter I had ordered. Went to Napa, picked up the new one and did the oil change. Now I still have an oil filter that hasn't been used.

Just this evening I did a very stupid thing, argued with the missus and proved her wrong, in public, I am forever in the doghouse.

aussiesmg wrote: Just this evening I did a very stupid thing, argued with the missus and proved her wrong, in public, I am forever in the doghouse.

/thread

^^^ yeah, that's pretty rough right there. That argument would have been worth bonus points if you had saved it until you were alone

So, I just got my car running and filled it up for the first time by driving it to the gas station. No more gas cans for me! Or not. Well, I figure a nice short drive around the corner, I only have to lock one hood pin.

Oh wow, look, this car is fun to drive! Let's take it to the top of 2nd! Huh. I guess they didn't have that safety precaution where you can see between the dashboard and the hood if it flies up on you in 1985.

I once did an impression of a biplane being shot down...

Changed the oil in late Tiburon.. and somehow forgot to tighten down the drain plug. Filled up the oil, changed the filter, did the whole tune up.. and then left to go up to philly (from Ocean City, NJ) I get about 5 miles up the parkway and I hear a "ting" under the car.

upon hearing this, I look into the rear view mirror to see if I can see what it was as it came out from under my car.. only to be treated to a plume of oil and oil smoke out from under my car.. shut the engine off and coasted to the shoulder before any damage was done to the car (but not to my ego)

I discovered that aluminum foil makes a decent emergancy oilpan plug if you ball it up tight and then screw it into the threads.

This was almost as bad as the time I forgot to put the plug back in when changing the oil.. it was a good thing the car was low on oil before I changed it, or I probably would have dumped a quart or two on the driveway instead of just filling the pan to the brim

uhmmm.....no comment...

Chipped the back 'lip' of a miata's main timing cog on the crank trying to get it to come off. I was told by too many people that night that 'oh, that thing just slides off!" When it didn't just slide off, I got the prybar out and took a 1/2" chunk out of the back of it. Damn it. Mazda Motorsports has them listed at $17 or so, so not terrible, but should have been avoidable had I borrowed a pulley puller from the beginning, which is what I ended up needing to get it off.

Went to a pub last night, found it is owned by a long last friend, ate to much fish and chips and drank too many New Castles.

Mmmmmmmm.............. Newcastle.........

Don't see nothin' stupid there

My list of stupid things is too long but I'll throw some in every once in a while.

First to mind was last year going to VIR or a race. I'm gettting there early to reserve enough room in the padock for 4 racer buddies. Just as I get there it starts to rain so I jumped out of the ambulance, set the trailer ramps, unstrap the car and fire it up. Now the rain is coming down in sheets. As I back the race car down the metal ramps the clutch slips out from under my foot, spins the back wheels and slides the back wheels off the side of the ramps. So there I was with the back wheels barely touching the ground, the front wheels barely touching the trailer and the frame of the car hard on the back edge of the trailer with the rain coming down like there was no tomorrow.

I have a good one, seems fairly typical of my life:

Last summer: Had an old Murray riding mower, a hand me down from grandpa via mom and dad. 20 years old, showing its age, needed to be fixed fairly frequently. I'm not the world's best mechanic, still learning, and electrical problems are like voodoo where I'm concerned. The thing hadn't been running right, and I had JUST got it back from the mower shop. It does OK for a little bit, then runs rough for a few minutes, finally sputters and dies, just like it had been doing before I dropped it at the mower place just the weekend before. Pissed, frustrated, and hot, I checked everything I could think of, all looked OK. Pushed it up into the bed of the truck, drove down to the mower shop, rolled it off and left it, said something like "hey, man, it's still broken, let me know if it's too much $$ to fix." I'd had so many problems I was expecting it was just dead and not coming back.

Got home and phone rings pretty much immediately. "Hey, man, you know these things still take gas..." Embarrassed, I slink back and pick up my rusty old mower, all that was wrong was an empty gas tank. Insisted I pay the guy for his time and trouble.

Wound up trading the thing to the same mower guy for a few truckloads of mulch earlier this spring. :D

First some backstory: I have one set of sheets for my bed and no clothes dryer. Usually I wash my sheets on a weekend morning and then hang them up immediately when the washer's done, which gives them enough time to dry before I go to bed again.

So it's the middle of the week and I'm on a neatness kick. I get it into my head that my sheets need washing. Problem is I usually stay at work until 4:00 or 5:00 PM - not enough time to dry the sheets if I hang them up when I get home. My POS Euro front-loading washer takes a full hour and a half to do a load so I can't wash them in the morning and wait around for it to finish. A connundrum.

In a flash of brilliance the solution comes to me. "I'll just wash them in the evening, let them sit in the washer overnight and hang them up when I get up tomorrow!", I think to myself. "Then they'll have lots of time to dry before I go to bed! It's perfect!" So that night after dinner I go about loading all my bedsheets into the washer, throw some soap in and turn it on...

Do you see the problem here? Did I mention I only have one set of sheets?

I'm lucky it's summer so I didn't need a blanket. Still, sleeping on a bare matress sucks. Not one of my brighter moments.

J

I stock oil flters, bought on sale, for my cars. yeah, grabbed the wrong one. it almost fit.

I started the car, watched the dash light go out, then got out to check for leaks. As I've done 100 times, I got out of the car, looked around, stretched walked to the front of the car, looked around again, waved and said Hi to the neighbor, then finally bent over to look under the car. Holy $h*t; oil spraying everywhere. Not just oil, but expensive Mobil 1, which evenutally was sopped up with kitty litter.

Fast forward. . Now when you look in the garage cabinet, every spare filter is labelled with the name of the car it goes to.

Jack

Jack wrote: I stock oil flters, bought on sale, for my cars. yeah, grabbed the wrong one. it almost fit. I started the car, watched the dash light go out, then got out to check for leaks. As I've done 100 times, I got out of the car, looked around, stretched walked to the front of the car, looked around again, waved and said Hi to the neighbor, then finally bent over to look under the car. Holy $h*t; oil spraying everywhere. Not just oil, but expensive Mobil 1, which evenutally was sopped up with kitty litter. Fast forward. . Now when you look in the garage cabinet, every spare filter is labelled with the name of the car it goes to. Jack

That's the great thing about having an AE92 and a Samurai - Just buy Toyota 4A-series filters and everything fits and if I swap to a blacktop, or even do a crazy 2ZZ-GE swap, they still fit Plus if I really need one, I can steal one off my sister's AE101 FX ;)

Jack wrote: Not just oil, but expensive Mobil 1, which evenutally was sopped up with kitty litter.

I once bought a $1.99 cheap Purlatr filter that had the threads not centered. One side of the rubber gasket seated leaving a gap on the other side.

I was amazed how much a quart spreads out on my floor. And I had no kitty litter....

Cut my hair with a buzzer. Used the guide that was marked "5". Went surfing that day from around 10am till like 4pm. Lathered every inch of exposed skin in about a quarter bottle of sunscreen before i went out. The next day i was wondering why it felt like the top of my head was on fire. Woops, guess i missed a spot.

My dad did some pretty stupid things lately. A while back, he walked across a live race track trying to get to some bleechers. It was just an HPDE and the cars had just lined up in the pits before starting, but I did not hear the end of that from those instructors (they didn't know he was my dad, but they lectured everyone several times about track safety).

He also took his .22 rifle out a few days ago and shot it in the back yard into a hill in a field. OK. Problem is, he decided that his $20k John Deere made a good target (OK, he wasn't AIMING AT the tractor!). A day later, he found a flat rear tire and broken instrument cluster glass and it took him a moment to figure out why.

Was at VIR this past weekend, and didn't pay attention to where I parked the bike... Got on the bike a few hours later (did I mention that it was dark, both when I parked, and when I got back on)? I had just filled up in Danville, so there's well over five and a half gallons of long chain hydrocarbons sitting up nice and high. Push it off the sidestand, and it just keeps going. Right foot was on grass that was a bit slick with dew. Thankfully, I only broke the tip of the brake lever and cracked the turn signal. Black racers tape on the turn signal assembly, and I'll be trying JB Weld on the brake lever tonight. If not, I'll have to buy another.

set GPS on top of my truck. got sidetracked doing something else. Hopped in truck and started driving. Heard a noise a few miles down the road, but didn't think too much of it until a few miles late and realized what it was! Neved did find that GPS.