Admit your Garage Mistakes

[70caprigt3k]

When i had my old LTD bushbasher i was searching for some fuel in the shed and sure enough i found a jerry can full of what appeared to be petrol so i filled her up and tried to crank it over it blew some serious smoke and ran for about a second and blew flames from the carby with a whole lotta smoke long story short it turned out to be diesel and i had to bleed the fuel system and buy some petrol but strangely enough the car had ran better than it ever had after that. i was only 13 at the time so it was a good lesson learnt.

[FPV GT]

Unbeknown the harmonic balacer has rotated on the cleveland, when we tried to tune it it was 180 out, well we thought we had tdc, fuel went into the sump...... and boom, blew the l hand rocker cover completely off.

[Falcon_Phill]

had to reverse my car out to get some things welded on. Sitting there for like 20 minutes wondering why it wouldnt move, handbrake was off. started to try and lift it up and psin the wheel, stuffing around for ages. Then someone says 'is it in gear?' :

[AWD Chaser]

Originally Posted by EA2BA

Let me guess making and selling fire extinguishers

or

Fire proof clothing

Or making fire proof cloths with built in jacks!:nutsycuck

Mine would be fitting my brand new vielside kit to my Swift. 4 days later, did a fishy on a dirt road....came back and refitted the original kit... I was so p***ed and upset at myself for being so stupid.

Also doing 155Kph on an old backroad (sealed road) with about 1/2 a litre of water in my front wheel (same car). Was like sitting on a washing machine on spin cycle! lol.

Was working at Mobil once. Guy came down to the back of the servo (where we serviced the cars) and said he just filled his Toyota LandCruiser with 160L of unleaded.... we ended up having to drain all the fuel in the tank and then he had to refill the tanks again with Diesel... lol - expensive

[AshMan]

Have one of those high pressure cleaners at work that have a diesel engine built in...

Well lets just say that the diesel engine won't run on truck wash (soap)!

Had a mate that did a DIY NOS install, he plumbed the nitrous line straight into a vaccuum line, never mind about the spray bars or extra fuel...

got lean out?

[superroo]

Best one i herd, happened long time ago. A not very smart motor mechanic apprentic was told to fill car x with oil. They had one of those large pump driven oil fillers where you don't do anything. Apprentice filled the engine till it was full of oil, i mean, till oil came out of the cap in the rocker cover.

[jd dad]

Brother in law (who knows sfa about cars) couldnt figure out how people got the oil into their engines so quickly. Turns out he was trying to put it in through the dipstick tube.

[[Tonko]]

Originally Posted by jd dad

Brother in law (who knows sfa about cars) couldnt figure out how people got the oil into their engines so quickly. Turns out he was trying to put it in through the dipstick tube.

haha ive heard a similar story but this kid put the oil in the carby, or tried too... not sure exactly what happened but he didnt have an apprenticeship the next day...

[DanXR6T]

Biggest mistake made while working on cars?

Letting my gf of the time watch....

"Are you sure you know what you are doing???"

[The Yeti]

Weve all ha little ups it you think you havent take another look at your self, My best one was when I was a 1st year the shop was busy and as I wanted the hoist for the job I was doing I desided to help the other apprentice finish of a 5000k sercive on a manual Group A Commadore (nothign hard about that) he was filling the washer or somthig nI finshed filling the oil lent in the window to start it to fill the filter before checking the oil, didnt check to see if it was in gear the bloody thing started as soon as I hit the key and drove its self in to bench/wall not alot of dammage but it wasnt easy to tell the owner who was waiting in the waiting room for his car

[gtfpv]

my friend and i built a buggy when i was 17 we were both 1st year apprentices . we bought an old beetle took the body off and fabricated a roll cage which also held the engine in place we thought it was a good idea to mount 2 not one fuel tanks over the engine.
the only mistake we made was fitting fuel line . off the lawn mower !!!! from th tanks to the pump.
exhaust manifolds melted fuel line on 1st trip. we saw flames . stopped i ran away. mate tried to kick fuel tanks off to save the buggy i could hear the petrol boiling in the tanks . next thing he vanishes into a mushroom cloud.
he had 6 months off work with a 3rd degree burn to his thigh.

[GUTLES]

Originally Posted by AshMan

Have one of those high pressure cleaners at work that have a diesel engine built in...

Well lets just say that the diesel engine won't run on truck wash (soap)!

Haha, one of our Apprentice's did that..

My uncle was doing something to his EF when it wasn't very old, had a Brick on the Accelerator for some stuiped reason, jumped in to move it & forgot the Brick was there & reversed into a Brick wall causing heaps of damage!

[andeek]

Silliest mistake I ever made was trying to fit an auto trans to my old VN by myself. I twisted the handle on the trolley jack supporting the trans by accident while under the car. Needless to say I spent a bit of time (about 25 mins) pinned under a car with a turbo 700 gearbox sitting on my chest. Luckily I didn't break anything and found a way to free myself. After I refitted the trans I took it for a test drive and discovered I'd split one of the cooler hoses on the trans.... was a thick grey cloud of smoke behind me.... doh.

One of my mates re-ringed his 253 in his HX Kinga.... didn't really know what he was doing. Ended up he lined all the gaps of the rings up in a row instead of offset....lol. He spent a bit of time figuring that one out. Same guy had a flat battery so I was trying to push-start his car. Here I am pushing this lump of crud holden waiting for him to drop the clutch and start the car. It wasn't till about 10 meters down the road that I discovered he was rolling in neutral turning the key waiting for it to start (like pushing the car was gonna recharge the battery).

[santoitaliano]

dropped my oil, changed filter, poured new oil in.. only to find my mate pull my sump plug out of his pocket and asking me if i needed it.. bye bye to $30 of magnatec...

good rinse i guess.. gee did dad crack the s at the oil slick in the driveway..

[Stav]

The most expensive mistake was dialling in a cam and not turning the engine by hand first before starting it. Car kicked over and the engine was destroyed.

[TruBlu351]

Pulled my oil filter but the old rubber o-ring stayed stuck to the block. Fitted the new filter and the old o-ring got squashed out. Started car and after several minutes found the main arterial wound bleeding several litres of oil on my driveway. :

No 2. fitted new gearbox and when putting bellhousing on from under the car there was the coil ignition wire dangling at the back of the engine which I'd accidently trapped between the bellhousing and block. Turn the key...nothing for a few seconds, then WHOOOMPHFF! Fried all the wiring. My burnouts don't create that much white smoke!! ;)

[gbright]

1 rebuilding a cleavo trying to rotate the crank to undo conrods couldnt for the life of me get it to rotate it was about 3 hours later i relised that i had attached it to the engine stand with the drive plate still on and one of the bolts was creating a large amount of pressure
2 same engine when i first bought it couldnt get my hands on a trailer so i thought she'll be right just put the seats down in the mitsubishi colt we got it in there ok {with the aid of a forklift} in the end it took 4 guys an engine crane and removing the hatch to get it out {i was this far from pulling out the angle grinder and just cutting it out lucky it didnt come to that}

[fmc351]

Not sure if this should go here, or in the Bar. But its auto related so here it is.

A mate and myself just rebuilt the front end of an XF (yeah I dont know why either). After doing all the bushes, ball joints, tie rods etc we decide to repack the wheel bearings. Being only about 6 months old and not loose on the car theyre still good so no point wasting more money. Anyway cleaned em up in some degreaser and then blew em out with the airgun as Ive done many times before. This time I decided to hold the things on their side, the runner between my fingers, I hit the air across the outer edge, they start spinning, cool :dr_Evil: . Faster and faster, they start to sound like an air ratchet free spinning. Something said stop now, but yeah well, its like wet paint. The noise gets louder until they start whistling, louder and louder, I mean it was loud........ then POP like a .22. Bearings all over the shed, a blown out cage and an empty runner and a bruise on the palm of my hand. :

So what was the last dumb thing you did? :baby bott

[Falcon Freak]

FF

EDIT - and that makes it 1,000 posts for me! :

[EFDream]

Couldn't get the rivets out of the case holding the factory amp on the inside of my Fairmont's boot so I used a screwdriver (from inside the boot) to try and lever the bracket out. End of storry I managed to make a few dents in the side panel (from the inside) with the tip of the screwdrivaer as I wasn't paying atten. ggrrrrr. It's now gonna cost me a few dollars to get fixed.....stupid....

[Feathers]

Was ages ago now, but I was working on my project XD, and had put paint stripper on the bonnet, then sat on the ground in front of it to undo something while I waited for the paint to peel.
When I finished what I was doing I moved to get up, and put my arms on the bonnet to help myself.

Bad idea.

[muzz]

Yesterday.
My car is misfiring on a cylinder but there is power in the lead. So I take out the spark plug and connect it to the lead to see if sparks. I asked the misses to turn the engine over and of course the plug hole starts spitting air and muck into my face. Lucky I didn't get an eye injury.

Just stupid of me.

[TUF_302]

HAHA i did that once before, at school, i can tell you the teacher was less than impressed.

[gbright]

re post http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=39073

[Laminge]

Threads merged

[fmc351]

Originally Posted by Laminge

Threads merged

Ah, thats what search is for. Id never have found it anyway.

thanks.

[Shea]

hahah some funny stories.
while working on my RS, was excited to be putting the last of the engine components in. got to the thermostat housing and couldnt find the right bolt. i found one that looked like it would go so i tried it. all was good and then it got pretty tight so i turned just a bit harder.. big mistake. bolt snapped off flush with the block!
argh damn drilled out the middle and got an easy out, only to have the easy out snap off in the bolt stuck in the block!!!
argh!

[krazy1blue]

about 17 had my first valiant(yeah yeah) got a flat left front.didnt knuw they were left thread.broke two studs before dad told me.

[EAsyduzit]

Had put a "new" motor in an old vintage Austin 7 boattail with a mate and was leaning in with my head in under the side-lift bonnet when one of the brass fan blades flew past my ear when it unbalanced and disintegrated. Fresh jocks please!

[RG]

Step dad's VR Commo did a water pump and he had to drive it to a mates place and fix it quick as he needed the car urgently. Long story short he told all of us to keep away while he undid the radiator cap on a near boiling engine but my step brother didn't listen an ended up with some real nice burns all over his face.