dumbest automotive thing you've done?

[MaxHarvard]

We'll today i hit #3,093,938. Quite a milestone for me.

my best 2 stories are:

Today, putting the car back together. I decided to make sure the exhuast was buttoned up OK. So i started it up. She ran really funny, like it does when its super cold outside. I shut it down, look in the engine bay... sure enough... i had forgotten to attach the entire drivers side bank of spark plug wires. DrSyko works a lot better when you run on all 8 cylinders!! LOL

2nd is last year when i had finished bleeding brakes i was too excited to try out my new disc set up that i started driving and heard a very loud THUNK! I get out only to find out that i hadnt secured any of the lug nuts on the front 2 tires.. thank god i only rolled 20 ft!! :D

whats yours? and it has to be stuff you did, not someone else.

[rsk68]

back in 1977 I had a 67 camaro, i was always rebuilding the T10 trans due to its weak nature, the last time i worked on it I was so exited to get it going i forgot to put oil in it, I made it about a mile before it blew the bottom out of the trans and scattered part all over the street, my Mom still gives me crap about that one, i was 17 yrs old what can i say.

RSK68
Rick Klein

[slck6t9]

Tightening the battery and some how the wrench touched the Cool-flex heater hose and arched it causing a pin hole and antifreeze spraying everywhere.

Scott

[Ummgawa]

When I was 6 years old (In 1966), my Dad had this ultra wicked 63 Buick Riviera, Black with Silver(yes silver) interior, every option on the planet, front to back console with floor shifter, NON locking reverse. It had a 465 Wildcat motor with dual quads and a power glide (which tore up alot).

Anyway, my neighbor, Mike Langford, and I were acting like we were driving it all the while it was parked on the street,in front of my house, aimed down hill. Mike grabbed the shifter from the passenger seat, yanking it in drive. It rolled down the hill where I lived, crossed over the busiest road in West End Atlanta, Avon Avenue, (By the way, I was at the wheel probably screaming like a girl) we weaved between traffic and jumped the road as Graymont drive dropped off about 18 feet below grade past Avon Avenue.

I am sure that the Duke Brothers would have had a full on woodie from seeing us leave the ground. The suspension compressed from the weight of the car and decompressed as we left the tarmac. I was convinced we had traveled 40 to 60 feet in the air (LOL). When we hit the ground, or pavement, the hubcaps flew off, the front bumper came off, side chrome came off, hood came up, I crapped myself, the rear hit and the trunk flew up, dented the gas tank beyond all use, bent up the rear bumper, dual exausts were crushed flat, transmission was locked in Neutral and the doors would not open.

Mike and I were lucky that day. We dove out of the windows into the woods and made a circle about two miles around to circle BACK to the car and played innocent. You shoulda seen the crowd, the cops, and my old man. The power glide was blamed for it all. I know all these things because of how much the insurance company payed DL Clayborne Buick to fix it.

I am sure that if my Dad knew it was me that did it, I would just now be getting off restriction, and I am 46.

Oh, and, Mike, the 40 year code of silence we "Pinky Swore" back then is officially over.

[Steve Chryssos]

Dude,
You win!

[RussMS]

:lol: Awesome story Jim

[MaxHarvard]

AHHAHAH!! Great story!! LOL!!

[Derek69SS]

I crapped myself :_paranoid

[jimhamptons]

Lmao!

[Hdesign]

:wow:
can't find the words

[BC69]

That made my day! I usually have a 2 year rule, I wait 2 years and then tell my parents, "Oh hey, remember when I said bla bla...well actually..."

I figure at that point you are clear of punishement.


Tim

[69MyWay]

The header screw up.....

In highschool I got my hands on a 71 Lemans with the Pontiac 350. I scored a set of used headers for $15 and couldn't wait to get them on. I started one day after school and stayed at it until midnight. I had trouble with the oil filter adapter housing.

My dad came downstairs and told me to knock it off for the night. I fired up the old pontiac open headers and cruised it around the side of the house shutting it down half way to coast it to the parking spot (since it was so loud). I parked it and slid the column shift in PARK. I got out of the car and walked about 15 feet away when I heard KABOOOOM! I thought a tree limb had fallen on the car. I ran to the car (in the dark)...but there was no car! I ran DOWN THE HILL in the backyard finally finding the car wedged against the nose of my dad's 64 Jeep. Yep....when I installed the headers I had to bend the shift rod from the column and I didn't verify it would actually go all the way back to park.

I ended up ripping the nose off the pontiac and smashing the jeep. If the jeep had been 3' further back the Lemans would have gone over a culvert into a 12' drop creek!

*****************************

The snow drift jump....

Same jeep riding with my g/f in a Kmart parking lot after hours. There had been a snow storm and all the snow was plowed into large piles in the parking lot. I had visions of these white fluffy snow drifts that I could punch through with the jeep sending flurries all around like some kind of postcard image. Against my g/f's protest, I pointed the jeep at the largest pile I could find and nailed it. (this is before seatbelt laws in Michigan). We hit the pile and within a split moment I found myself being pushed into the floor (as the jeep went airborn on the rock hard ice pile). My g/f got pushed into the floor too. As the jeep peeked in the air we both went up and hit the headliner, then came back to the seat and floor. We both bit our toungs, bruised our heads, knees, and had some scrapes. As I came to the jeep was just doing slow circles in the lot.

About a month later my dad was complaining the shocks were blown out on the jeep and had me help him swap them on a saturday afternoon. Low and behold, no only were the shocks blown, but the landing was severe enough to allow the front diff to make contact with the oil pan. My dad couldn't figure out how in the world such a thing would have happened......

[Smack_talker]

Dumbest thing was selling my 1970 Chevelle SS 454 LS6, I dont think I will ever be able to afford another one. :(

[slck6t9]

I have to agree, thant made my day Jim. So funny... :lol:

[rockdogz]

I had a '67 Camaro when I was in college, and had the engine rebuilt. After getting the motor re-installed, I was excited to fire it up and test drive it. Well, I had the hood partially open, but still latched, and as I cruised down the street the hood flew open... I'm really glad it was a quiet neighborhood street and no other traffic was around! It really sucked though because the hood never fit right after that, and it used to fit perfect. :mad:

[Steve68]

Jim WINS hand down, give him the prize :wow: that was the look on my face while I read the story,

I can't think of any,

[jonny51]

Get that man a prize!As always Jim great story :yes:

[Beach Cruiser]

Two Stories,

I worked my way through college as a mechanic at the local exxon station, Best job I ever had, All the cute girls in school would bring me their cars to fix... One day a girl brought her car in with white smoke pouring from the exhaust, Pulled the plugs later and noticed the trail of antifreeze coming from the cylinder head, blown head gasket. The next day she comes to inspect and get the estimate, she wants proof of the anti freeze. At this time none is visable, so I tell her to watch the side of the motor while I bump it over and she'll see the green liquid come out. Well.... Over night, the cylinder must have filled with anti freeze, and when I bumped the key, shot her straight in the face! Talk about a bad hair day! She wasn't very happy with me for that.

Second is the Dumb A@#$ award. One hot summer, we took my S10 4wd blazer with a TBI 383 out on the beach to cruise around and drink some beverages. After a full day in the sun (and draining the cooler) we decided to leave before the tide traps us out. Almost past the Tidal bridge, the truck just stops dead. No fuel from the injectors, so I pull the fuel line off to check for fuel pressure and it has some. During this process some fuel spills into the throttle body and the truck sputters to life for a few seconds. So, stuck on the beach with the ocean getting closer and the cooler getting lower, I decide that I will sit under the hood and squirt fuel into the throttle body just to get us off the beach before the Atlantic claims my ride. This actually works for about 500 yards! Till the engine backfired! and an inferno ensues! good thing the cooler still had enough water and Ice to put the fire out. Luckily I wasn't hurt (too bad) and the truck was far enough away to be safe for the night. The culprit, Blown fuse....

[69 L88 Camaro]

Sent the wife to The Speed Shop to pick up my special order Fel-Pro head gaskets. She brought them back folded up in her purse. :eek:

[Ummgawa]

Sent the wife to The Speed Shop to pick up my special order Fel-Pro head gaskets. She brought them back folded up in her purse. :eek:

Now thats funny :rofl:

[enzo]

I was 16 and got the keys to the old man's fully restored 57 Belair. It had a hopped up small block with a 4 speed. I drove it to school and my first period class was autoshop, so I thought I would give my grease monkey bretheran a show in the parking lot. I commenced to do a glorious burnout, one which would go down in infamy. All of a sudden, there was a huge clunk that came from the rear. The rearend blew into pieces, in fact the explosion was so massive that a piece of the ring gear flew threw the casing and nailed my classmate in the leg. He buckled and hit the floor, he ended up with about 10 stitches. Cool thing was - my teacher had the same rearend sitting in a junk pile out back; changed the rearend that day and drove the car home. My Dad never knew about it.

[zbugger]

I was about 19 years old and I helped my cousin get a 80 Z28 that was wrecked. It was smashed up at the rear quarter right at the wheel well. Well, my cousin got a bug up his butt and decided he wanted to take the damaged shock off that side. We pushed the car outside onto the driveway, and put it in park. Jacked up the car, sat right up next to it and got to work. We also decided to roll up some of the sharp edges while we were at it. Just so happens the driveway was on an incline, and the car was face down. The rear end was a one legger and the parking brake wasn't on. What's that? There's still gravity? Sonofabitch....... The floor jack, no jackstands, started to tip over. We said "****!!!!", pulled our legs out from under the car, and the damn car rolled down the driveway. We just looked at eachother, snickered, and said "I think we forgot to chock the front wheels.....".

[jannes_z-28]

I have one, not so funny but stupid enough.

This was when I had my racecars and we had got the Toyota Celica ready for the first testruns at the strip. But before going we had to start her up to check out everything.

You have to know that we had trashed for the last 14 days and non-stop for the last 48 hours to get her ready to go. The race was on a Saturday and Sunday. Our initial plans was to leave town 8 on Saturday morning. I came back from the garage at 5.30 AM to catch a few Z's before going. We had people waiting at the garage at 8.00 to go with us to see the car perform for the first time.

Well we didn't get to leave until 2.00 PM...

We had a few things left to do on the car, one important thing was the throttle linkage. We started to make that and after an hour it was time to start her up.

We checked everything, like timing and fueled it up and now it was time to hear the sound of this machine that had been my full occupation for the last six months.


It backfired like crazy, more timing adjustment. More backfiring. Adjusting the timing again, more backfire and more and more...

What the f**k, why doesn't it start. More deep checking, all cables look OK. Plugs are OK. MSD7AL-box is OK. Coil is OK (About that I have another story :D )

Give it another try, more backfire.

I have to tell you, this engine was a real piece. We had bought it from Pat Musi, it was a destroked ChevyBigBlock at 360 cu in that he had used in ProStock before the 500 cu in rules took place in 1982. This story took place in 1983.

Well after trashing with this backfiring one smartass guy say: "-Haven't you got the marks on the damper backwards???" I say: "-How stupid do you think we are?" And of course he was right. During the late night trashing I had marked the damper the wrong way. Obviously with my tired brain I had made the error. So off with the damper, put on the marks in the correct direction and back on with the damper.

It started on the first crank and sounded just perfect. This was inside a large garage two levels under street level and it was always nice to start up a race engine down there.

And now we could leave for the strip, we arrived late for the Saturday runs so we took her out on Sunday morning and ran a 9.07 off the trailer spinning the 15" wide Firestones half the track on a 8.9 record. That felt GOOD.

Here is a picture of that car:
http://www.protouring.se/old/racing/images/large/Toyota_start1.jpg


Jan

[jannes_z-28]

As promised next story.

Again my old race cars, this was the first one, the Opel Kadett.

In our garage again we are preparing for a race and are going to start up the engine. It fires up OK and we start to warm it up. I lean in the car to point on the tempgauge how far we would go this time. My partner is in the driverseat.

On the dash is also the MSD blaster coil mounted and somehow my indexfinger touches the connections on the coil, not the spark wire but the feed and earth. You have to know that this coil is getting 400 volts from the MSD7AL box so it is a lot of juice that nows travel thru my finger up my arm over my heart and out the other arm that I am holding to the cage when I am leaning in. I start to spasm and screams on top of my lungs. This is not heard over the engine and the driver is concentrating on looking at the tempgauge as I have instructed him. I am starting to collapse when he see me. He shuts the engine down at the same moment. Not because of me, because he thinks something is wrong, it missfires. Of course it does, my body takes all the voltage the coil is supposed to have :faint:

The scary part is that my muscles got kramped when everything was on so I couldn't get loose before the engine was shut down. It took a few minutes to catch the breath but then we started it up again and all was back to normal.

Lesson learned: we taped the connections on the coil.


Jan

[ProTouring442]

My first story: Back in highschoold my Dad had a '61 Corvette with a nice 283 and a 4-speed. I was 15 maybe. As a project, we had been building a very nice 350, it was on a stand in front of the Corvette. Dad asked me to back the car out of the garage. Now, that Corvette's very old husrt shifter didn't always like to find reverse, so as I struggle to find the damned illusive gear, my foot slips off of the clutch and the car lurches forward into the engine, which in turn falls over onto the front of the 'Vette.

My second story: This one was really dumb, but funny. Ever shim an oil pump bypass spring with a welch plug? :D I have... Idles fine, but when you hit the gas you watch the oil pressure gauge goes wacko, and the oil filter hits the floor with a huge bang!

Shiny Side Up!
Bill
'72 442 "Inamorata"

[trapin]

Jim...great story about the Riviera. I have to ask though, why didn't you just hit the brakes? Were they broken or were you so shocked that it just didn't cross your mind?

----------------------------------------------------

Dumbest thing I ever did was pull the coil wire on my Camaro when I couldn't get the car to shut off. My friend Dennis and I had hooked up an MSD-6A box to my car and had apparantly done something wrong with the wiring because when I went to shut the car off...it wouldn't stop running. Mind you I was 18 at the time. My friend suggested I pull the coil wire to cut the electricity to the spark plugs. And like a dumb ass I went ahead and did it.

KRRRRZAAAAPPPPP!!!!!!!!

.....my arm went numb for about 20 minutes. If you were ever wondering if those boxes worked well. They do....trust me.

[Ummgawa]

Jim...great story about the Riviera. I have to ask though, why didn't you just hit the brakes? Were they broken or were you so shocked that it just didn't cross your mind?

I was 6 years old, kneeling in the front seat. I have a tall old man and the power seat was ALL the way back. If I could have touched the brake my chin would have been on the bottom of the steering wheel. I thought I did good steering the beast through traffic (It was pure luck) that was coming from right to left.

Did the best with what limited driving skills I had available to me at the time.

At seven, however, I was ready for the Indy 500 :D

[trapin]

I was 6 years old....
Ahh...that explains it. You didn't mention that in the first post. That's how I got confused. But then again...I confuse easy. :rolleyes:

[Ummgawa]

Ahh...that explains it. You didn't mention that in the first post. That's how I got confused. But then again...I confuse easy. :rolleyes:


It begins.....


When I was 6 years old (In 1966),


I fully understand, dude. Its been a rough Monday for me too.

[TA219]

I guess i was 6 or 7 years old when this happened....

It was the same ol normal routine, my mother got me and my little sister ready for the day and put us in the car so she could drop us off before she went to work.
That day we decided that we were gonna play race car driver while mom ran back inside real quick. So one of us is playing with the steering wheel and the other one is shifting the column shifter from P through 1st as fast as we could :lol:

shoot, mom was coming back to the car so my little sis climbs back in to the back seat and i sit in the pass side like a little angel.

Mom gets in & trys to start the old station wagon and it wouldnt start, (this thing had problems so mom was very familiar with it under the hood)

She gets out and gets under the hood, does her magic and the car starts right up, and immediatly starts rolling in reverse (we didnt get it back in park after playing racecar driver :eek: )

Luckily we had a long, dirt driveway out in the country.

Mom yells "push the brakes" as she is chasing the car down in heels , I think great here is my chance... I jump to the drivers seat and try to push the breaks but i can bearly reach them ......the car wasnt stopping. (i think this was the first time i said **** outloud :wow: )

Luckily mom was in pretty good shape because next thing i see is the door swing open and mom managed to get the car stopped just before we exited the driveway.

I thought i was the luckiest guy in the world when Mom said that she wouldnt tell Dad about any of it :faint:

[CAMAROBOY69]

LMFAO at Jims story. :lol: :willy:
LOL at 69MyWay' story. :lol:
Ok my turn for the recent dumb stuff I did. 3 stories in about 2 months.

67 Mustang.
Heather and I have been working on her car on and off for the past 2 years and hadnt really driven the car yet. Soo we get the new shocks on and decide to go for a quick ride. Well in a 67 Mustang you have to take off the export braces off that go from the firewall to the shock towers. We bolted the driver one up but not the passenger side. We get about 3/4 way around the block and hear this terrible metalic hitting noise. I say "crap we just lost a main bearing" My girlfriend in tears and confusion doesnt understand so I start pushing it home. I say screw it and started it again and drove it the rest of the way, extremely loud at this point. I get in the driveway and put it in park. As soon as I put it in park the noise disappears. Right away Heather sais "the fan is hitting something" So I look and sure enough its hitting the tranny lines directly below the fan. After further inspection I realize the passenger side shock tower pulled in 2 inches causing the engine to drop onto the lines. HOLY crap those mustangs are weak. So we bought a solid export piece that runs to both shock towers and we bought a Monte carlo bar. Problem solved.

69 Camaro story
I was in the process of converting my car to power steering and the Hydratech Hydraboost before my road track event. So after a few days of work I get everything all hooked up and grab Heather for the test drive to check everything out. I drive about 1 mile and fall in love with the PS and the Hydraboost. Just overwhelmed with joy and excitement. So I punch the car to about 80mph then decide to get gas on my way back home. Pull into the gas station and hear this light metallic rolling noise. I step out of the car and watch my center cap of my 18" budnik wheels roll by. I grab it and go to put it back on. I notice I only have 2 lugnuts on. I dont say anything to anyone. I just tell heather "oh my cap fell off no big deal" I get my gas and drive home very slowly. :lol:

73 Mustang (Heathers moms car)
This car has been sitting for a year and never started. I decide I will go out and get it going for Heathers mom. Well it was Heather, her 2 brothers and a couple other people. Finally after just cleaning the distributor cap the car starts. I am in front of the car with a garage behind me. After about 12 seconds the car starts rolling forward a little. Now this car is idling at about 2,000rpm. I set my hands on the hood to slow it down a little. All of a sudden I realize its just going to keep going no matter what. I jump out of the way and the car launches right thru the garage door. Her brotehr jumped in like Bo duke and shut the car off just in time. We laugh our asses off then decide to tell her mom that her car is running and sorry about the garage. She was so excited to hear her car run she could care less about us or the garage door. :lol:

[sikryd]

I know this is an old thread, but here is my dumbest car storie.
I once pulled a friends transmission for repairs, forget exactly why. When I put the trans back in place (last bolt tightened), I moved and I hit my head on the torque converter (laying on ground and not in trans like its supposed to be). That one really sucked! I mean what a brain fart!

[Steve1968LS2]

Ran myself over.. long story.. lol

[Ummgawa]

Ran myself over.. long story.. lol

Kinda like "I'm my own grandpa"? Lets hear it!!

[Steve1968LS2]

Kinda like "I'm my own grandpa"? Lets hear it!!

Back in the day my old '67 Camaro had a starter prob.. when hot the solenoid would not engage the starter. The only way to start it was to turn on the key then cross over the solenoid with a screwdriver. This works great if in park.

One time it wasn't and when it started it lurched forward over my foot. I managed to get in the car and stop it before it hit anything. My foot hurt for a week or two.

Oh, I guess I would have been ok if my neutral safety switch was hooked up.. hey, I was young and if it didn't make you go I didn't put much effort into it.. lol

Doh!