silliest mistake when fixing your car

Couldn't get a Cortina to run right after fitting a 40 Weber to it. Conked out at a junction in a quiet Sussex village 11:30pm. Got out cursing. Slammed the car door hard. Slammed my left hand in the top corner against the B post [:^(]

My right hand don't work

Thankfully only had to wait a few minutes for passers by.....'Errr, excuse me. This is gonna sound silly but could you come and open my car door for me...'

Ouch. Trip to A&E for split knuckles.

Gaz

 

putting a porsche 924 on ramp got called away turn round guy working with me sent it up with legs not all the way under crunch 2 bent sills and bump in the floor and 1 upset owner who saw the whole thing

 

i was taking off the nsf wishbone. the bolt had pretty much fused itself to the bush's inner sleeve. i got really unset with it and just chopped the bolt.... before measuring to see whether the bolt was far enough out of the subframe to release the wishbone

measure twice and cut once you say?

 

lets have a vote here how many have taken off there wheels with the locking wheel key refitted then left the key out the car got punture then came much swearing at how stupid you feel

 

While changing my rear wheel bearings, made a few mistakes. On the first one, I used the old (smaller) bearing race to seat the new one. Which was stupid as it took me about an hour to tap out the old race. Then, everything went fine from there, until it came to tightening up the hub nut. I overtightened it like a loser, stripping the hub nut, and the stub shaft. This was on a saturday, at 3.30. Cue mad rush to GSF to get replacement stub shaft and then on to scrappy to get new hub nut. Worked out that it took me 5 or more hours in total to do one wheel bearing and half an hour to do the other one

 

Changing the valve stem seals on my old Orion, covered all the oil ways, bar one, with rags but didn't have enough. Dropped a collet and it went straight down the hole. Took the sump off and luckily it was there. Just to top it all off had to take the sump off 3 times as it wouldn't stop leaking. I didn't really need to change the seals, just a slight bit of smoke on start up. Now i stick with the saying - if it ain't broke don't fix it

 

One of my daftest moments was a couple of months ago;

The Mk2 decided it didn`t want to start, so I pushed it out the drive onto the road, and tried to bump-start it down the hill. No joy. Now I`m stuck at the bottom of a very steep hill on a dead end road...

I`d checked for a spark, so thought, `I know. I`ve got a can of Easy Start in the house. That should do the trick`.

I didn`t have any Easy Start, but reckoned a big can of carb/injection cleaner should work just as well.

So I`ve sprayed some down the inlet, and tried to turn it over. Nothing. `Ok. I`ll try turning it over and spraying at the same time`

Cue, a massive bang out of the exhaust, a three foot flame out of the inlet, and my hand/sleeve on fire.

Luckily the flames went out fairly quickly. I`d now spent nearly two hours tinkering around, when I suddenly realised, `Hold on. It`s not getting any fuel!`

Sure enough, when I took the pump relay out, it smelt a bit odd, and when I split it open, the coil was burnt out. A quick bodge to get it working again, and the engine fired up first time.

15 minutes later a new relay from GSF was in place and the car carried on like nothing had happened...

 

Well, me and my brother were changing the rocker cover bolts (to fit the new rubber gasket). Two of the bolts were very stuborn & would come off.
My brother had a great idea of heating the bolt up, we covered the carb with a thick metal sheet & moved all the fuel lines away, then heated the bolt.
Both of us couldnt remember if oil was flamable then wondered why my head caught alight. Luckly we blew the small flames out .

I've also left my locking wheel key on then driving off, but managed to find it.

 

one of the dumbest things that i did was tellin my mate about the noise my lada's carb makes without an air filter in the airbox. i said to him ''go on start it up n have a listen'' so he gets in the car n starts it up..... HOLY ****!!!! i jumped back about 3 feet after gettin an electrical shock from the dizzy cap i was cleanin with a bit of sandpaper that i totally forgot i was doin while talkin to my friend... damn i felt like an idiot haha.

 

just changed the head gasket on my old 1300, ran the car for a while but couldnt get hot air coming through the blowers so tried to find an air lock in the system, my brother (a very experienced vw man - god knows why he did it) decided to loosen one of the inlet hose jubilee clips to the heater matrix.

-cue boiling hot water taking off most of the skin off his hand and wrist...3 hour wait in A&E with his skin peeling off. he's still got the scars...

 

couple of years ago buying some cheap suspension spring clamps trying to tighten the spring down to put back on cue the imatation rubber ball spring going around the roof of the garage landing square in the middle of a bushi 3000gt rear window and being showered in glass looked cool but mighty scary

 

MY MOST EXPENSIVE -

When i left school i trained as a mechanic at a Fiat dealership. I wasn't 17 yet so couldn't drive but my old man had let me have a few goes in his car on a supermarket carpark.
So me feelin all confident went ito work and told the foreman i could drive ok now after all the practice in my dads car.
The foreman chucked me some keys and said to bring this brand new Panda in from the compound for a pre-delivery inspection. I remember him sayin " be very careful "
There was hundreds of cars in the compound all parked really closely together. I found the car and managed to get it out really slowly and carefully and drove up to the main building.
Approaching the big metal automatic doors there was a ramp up to the entrance. The doors opened up and the wheels wedged slightly resting on the bottom of the ramp.
Not really having done a hill start before i let the clutch out givin it plenty of revs......
The car shot forward, i didn't turn the wheel in time, and scraped all along the side of the car with the automatic door.
The other mechanics came running over and bounced the car off the door.
They told the foreman the doors had closed on me by themselves, but needless to say, i didn't drive again till i'd passed my test

 

Thought I'd blown an amp on my old Ibiza.. Spent ages trying to work out why it wouldn't work! Took it to an electrician in the end who said it was fine.. Then realised there was an in-line fuse sat in the engine bay for the amp

 

Forgot to tight up wheel bolts. Car lurched badly on the second or third roundabout, buts wheels stayed on fortunatley.

Was getting a replacement calliper from the scrappie. Couldn't be bother to undo the brake lines so decided to use a stanley knife, the one with the hooked blades. It slipped and cut straight through my thumb clipping the tendon and bone.

Implanted a 2.0 bottom end into my golf. Engine ran fine for about 20minutes then seized. Found out my dirty draper tourque wrench had lied to me about two of the the camshalft bearing nuts causing it to seize solid ruining the head.

Changing air filter on a polo, plastic handle screwdrivers shatters and all the little bits fall through the carb into the manifold. Couldn't be arsed with this one, just started her up and hoped the plastic would burn away. It did.

 

no, but driven down the road forgetting to take the wheel bolt key, off the wheel bolt.

found it later that day down the junction in the gutter.

 

recently took my rear wheel off to put my new alloys on and found the little plate that slips in with the caliper wind back tool stuck in between the pads and the caliper!!!!!

dont ask how.....

 

Years ago on some car or other I left an oily rag somewhere in the engine bay. It decided to get friendly with the alternator belt...clunk, snap, oops

Not so long ago, changed a rear stub axle on the Golf to try to get rid of a noise that I suspected was due to a fair amount of wear on it. Noise didn't go away with replacement... think I may have changed the one that was OK
At least I didn't chuck out the one I took off. One day I'll get around to looking at the other one to confirm my suspicions.

 

I'm a long-haired scruffy tramp, did the same with a remote start switch on the starter, but with hair not oily rags.
Other stupid things I have done include dropping a hot downpipe "Yes, it's finally undone!" on my bare chest, and also cutting my tit wide open while sliding out from under the car on a crawler, while it had a sharp bit of rusty steel sticking out - I still bear the scar, lol.

 

hmmm lets see

left wheel nuts loose on several occasions...managed to realise before the wheel fell off

left the locling nut on the wheel nut and amazingly it was still there after a ride around the block

petrol rag and split petty from 5th inj....touched spanner on starter terminal and earthed it to body....woof ..small fire lol

been working on cars and piled up all the bits n bobs behind the car...decided to go for a test drive without said parts and ran em over