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I see all the beautiful cars on this site, I hear all the expert knowledge, I see the stages of restoration from junk to car show. Since we're waiting on spring at least here on the east coast got a little down time. I want to know the hardships, the stupid mistakes made along the way. The totally your fault no one to blame **** the bed mistakes. The embarassing stuff you can't even tell the wife.
I will start several years ago I bought a Dodge Dart it was rough & needed parts so I got a great deal on another Dodge Dart and I bought it with out looking. Turns out it was a Dart Swinger so parts were useless. One more recent. I was in my garage spraying black coat on some brackets or something it was really hot so decided to go outside to finish. Brackets came out sweet however the over spray landed on my wife's 2014 white BMW X5 Had to have it professionally removed I was scared to death to make it worse. Cost $200 not to bad. That's 2 for me other and I'm fairly new at this so there should be some doozies out there. Can't wait to read them and no I scratched the chrome putting a bumper on I want to hear the good stuff. Thx this should be good & who knows maybe even help someone from making the same mistake.
I think this thread is going to be awesome "Smash72"!! Thanks for posting it LOL.
I had a $3000.00 mistake haha, someone told me to pour oil down the carb while it was running and let the oil sputter it out , then call it good till spring. The next spring jumped in fired it up, it began knocking so loud in the garage my wife came out and thought the car was going to blow up LOL. The garage was full of smoke, the car knocking and blowing the oil out the exhaust, I shut er' down are realized I bent a couple connecting rods haha. Well that cost me a refresh of 3k .
My wife was still OK with it tank-gawd.
Oh ther's more but I'll save em' for later haha.
Cheers
Eric
I have bee lucky to not have any big mistake but i have had alot of stupid things happen that i caught. Nothing catastrophic but i have been lucky.
1. I took some rods to be swapped to some pistons and they when by the numbers i used which where not by the cylinder and i ended up with a bottom end that did not rotate lol.
2. same engine mentioned above ., I bought some steel shim head gaskets. Turns out they where for a 330 and slightly diffrence in the water jacket than my 350. I realized this after putting the engine in and topping of the fluids. everything was hooked up and topping off the coolant was last. I didnt get to fore it up lol i had to take all back apart.
3. While breaking in my current engine we had a hose pop off while i was throttling the carb and i got 2nd degree burns .
I guess the big one would be driving home from the track with my drag radials and getting caught in the rain back in 2010 . Big down pour came right before my exit and the divider wall won lol. This was one year after getting the resto done.
Last edited by coppercutlass; February 29th, 2016 at 06:47 PM.
On my 86 jeep I was changing a fuel pump while babysitting my toddler son. Got side tracked for a while and forgot to tighten 1 fitting. Went to start it and poof. Put the fire out quickly but it burnt a few wires.
Ok I got one more from my work van. Second day after a nice snowfall I pull into a Auto Zone for some window washer fluid. My brain on auto pilot I pour the whole gallon into the oil fill.
Thank God I never started it. I realized it as I'm putting the cap on. Ended up changing my oil right in there 5 degree parking lot. No harm was done as the oil all rose to the top. Was pretty weird seeing all that blue water coming out of my drain plug. I'm sure the Auto Zone guys got a good chuckle.
The first time I ever changed out a thermostat, I put the new one in backwards. Surprisingly, the car ran fine for the first few hours of cruising around. Then I noticed it starting to run a little warm. Then it ran pretty hot so I headed for home. On the trip there it started to ping and rattle really bad. Before long it sounded like a jackhammer in the oil pan. I was shutting it off at traffic lights an it was just barely restarting. But I managed to get home.
I was expecting the worst the next day when I went out to check on it. I was expecting the engine to be seized up. But it wasn't. I removed the upper radiator hose and right away noticed my mistake.
I fixed the t-stat and changed the oil and drove that car for many more years. It did seem to be a touch down on power after that. So I must have hurt it at least a little bit.
Hindsight now tells me I should have just parked it until it cooled down before making the blast home.
For what it's worth, the engine was a small block Ford.
3 people out of this whole site every made a embarassing mistake ? Com on thought this would be fun to read. Must say I'm a little disappointed.
I'm sure that's true, but how many folks want to share bonehead moments?
I guess I could share one that sticks out for me anyway.
I had a 98 shortbed Chevy that had a stopped up heater core from mixing the green and orange anti freeze, similar to peanut butter. Pulled both hoses off the core and thought compressed air should work....Used a cupped hand over the inlet and blasted it. Ha ha, I blew that $hit all over the truck and me, what a mess. If you ever try it, use short bursts of water from a water nozzle, works much, much better.
Back in the prior century I was replacing the clutch in my 1960 Oldsmobile Super 88 Holiday SceniCoupe. I did not know that clutch plate surfaces had to face a particulary way. You guessed it, I put the mother in *** backwards and had to redo the whole job!
Mine stemmed from an interrupted day in the garage. Typical "car day," doing periodic maintenance on multiple vehicles, including oil changes. My wife called me in for lunch. Before I go in, I pull the drain pan out from under the car, to be poured into the jug for recycling. Nice lunch! Back out to the garage, and I start putting the oil in the ol' Dodge Omni 024. You guessed it, I forgot to put the drain plug in! Of course I did not notice it until I had the fourth quart up-ended in the top of the fill hole. What a mess!
I work in a body shop and have been for almost a decade and I got so many stories it's unreal. Just recently I dodged a 4000 dollar bullet. I fixed a Nissan Versa and when I pulled the car off the frame machine I accidentally pulled the air bag sensor clean off the harness. I repaired the connector and managed to get the scanner to clear the code but still the air bag light was on diagnostic mode. We took it to the dealership they where stumped and replaced the module under warranty . Talk about lucky. I was on pins and needles. That's a huge f up. This was about a month ago. About a year ago I broke a 1690 dollar windsheild. Boss let me off the hook on that one. While I was working on the car there is a fender bolt really close to the glass. I managed to get it loose which you would figure is when I would break it but it was when I tightened it I tried to get my bit tool out of the tight gap and caught the edge of the fragile glass and it just cracked . I'm very lucky to say the least I didn't have to pay for it .
Good stuff got a quick brother story. He's a Motörhead thru & thru used to run at the local strip with a sweet 69 Camaro. Of course he needed to go faster so he trades the Camaro & some cash for a 454 Chevelle. Brings it home takes it off the trailer and decides to take a quick whip around the block. Going around this street we called the S-hill he gets on it a tad *** gets loose and he wraps it around a tree. About a 12K loss plus the embarrassment. That was in the early 90s to this day he blames it on the wet road surface & racing slicks. Only I know there wasn't a cloud in the sky that day.
don 71 i made that one a few weeks ago ,and coutless others on my 72.like dont tighten everything yet !then forgeting to go back and tighten.or tighten when i shouldnt .once i blew a tranny on friday night and replaced it on saturday only to blow it up that night .yikes mama still doesnt know that one
i had a VW i thought i snapped the clutch cable, but a quick inspect under hood showed the cable was intact and there was movement at the actuating arm when a helper pressed the clutch hmm so the cable was not snapped. I had a need to have the car operational and had a parts car that ran and drove. so i pulled up the parts car dropped trans and related parts to swap into the driver, as soon as i started to remove the clutch cable on the driver i found it had worn thru the sheath on the bottom of the cable (out of sight when viewed from the top) and caused the cable to not operate the clutch properly....in the end i just swapped the clutch cable from the parts car into the driver and reassembled the parts car....20 min job completed in about 4 hours !!!!
Good stuff got a quick brother story. He's a Motörhead thru & thru used to run at the local strip with a sweet 69 Camaro. Of course he needed to go faster so he trades the Camaro & some cash for a 454 Chevelle. Brings it home takes it off the trailer and decides to take a quick whip around the block. Going around this street we called the S-hill he gets on it a tad *** gets loose and he wraps it around a tree. About a 12K loss plus the embarrassment. That was in the early 90s to this day he blames it on the wet road surface & racing slicks. Only I know there wasn't a cloud in the sky that day.
I knew a guy that did something like this back in the 70'or 80's. When asked where he wrecked it. He replies somewhere between 2nd and 3rd.
Railguy
About 4 years ago I was installing the battery in my Cutlass. My wife called me, my grandson had fallen and hurt his arm. I took him to emergency where he was x-rayed and determined his arm was not broken but just sprained. I got home, went out to my garage and there was lots of smoke and the smell of burned plastic. I had just dropped the battery cables which landed on the battery, but wrong polarity. I had to buy a new engine harness and alternator.
back in the day I decided to install a electronic distributor into a bbc in my 72 supreme and disty hit the horn relay, jumped spark into oil pan, split both valve covers and stripped all the cover bolt holes, burnt my buddys hair, dang holley was culperate! never forget that one!!
I had a 80 Chevy pickup that I ended up having to replace the engine in because of bad heads leaking oil and seized the engine. When I went to do the first oil change I had one hell of a time getting the oil filter off. Ended up driving a screwdriver through it and prying it off. Apparently someone forgot to put a little oil on it when it was installed. Put my new filter on and filled the oil then started it up. I got out and looked under the truck and there was oil everywhere. When I took the stuck filter off, the rubber gasket was stuck to the filter body without my knowledge but then broke loose with the new filter on it. Almost ruined a fresh rebuild.
My first car was a '71 Maverick 250 I6. The muffler was rotted bad. I was a dirt poor 16 yo, but was headed out on a 2 day road trip w/ a friend the next day so I bought the cheapest muffler thing I could find. A little CherryBomb style glass pac & a couple of clamps for like $13.
The next morning I went to a friends & right before we left we sawed off the old muffler (luckily at the very end of the exh) jammed on the glass pac & we hopped in & left.
It sounded not only very loud, but very weird. Very 'whistle-y'.
After about 30 mins of it shrieking & people looking at us, we gave up, turned around, & went back to his house to check.
Apparently these muffs are directional! There was a little fan shaped baffle in the inlet that need to go toward the front of the car . D'oh.
Flipped it & while still kinda loud sounded much better.
yes, but the junction on the horn relay stays hot, the holley was seeping gas while setting and I didn't realize that the oil had gas in it at the time, I gues that's my payback for installing a bbc in a olds huh!! funny now though, 26 yrs later and I still lmao
All good stuff almost but not quite a bathroom worthy thread. We need a few more, don't be shy. I already feel way better after reading some of these. Also learned a few things. Keep them coming.
Real quick way back in the early eighties I bought this little Mazda with a rotary engine. Paid $400 which being only 20 was my bank roll. Got it at a junk yard and was my first stick. Ran and sounded like a sewing machine. Thought it would be fun to put 50 cents in the tank and chirp gears all week. Got it home about a 30min drive ran fine. Go out the next day won't start turns out it had a bad timing chain. In this particular rotary engine that's major surgery not worth fixing. Of course we didn't think of salvaging the interior or any parts. Pretty sure we ended up lighting it on fire and leaving it on the RR tracks. At age 20 with a bunch of alcoholic friends all in the same broke boat, that's what you do. Right after everyone spray paints there names all over it. Those were the days.
[QUOTE=smash72;900716]All good stuff almost but not quite a bathroom worthy thread. We need a few more, don't be shy. I already feel way better after reading some of these. Also learned a few things. Keep them coming.
I agree, best thread going on CO. I'm also learning a few things Put-r-ther keep them coming haha.
yes, but the junction on the horn relay stays hot, the holley was seeping gas while setting and I didn't realize that the oil had gas in it at the time, I gues that's my payback for installing a bbc in a olds huh!! funny now though, 26 yrs later and I still lmao
I wasn't referring to your comment but in hindsight I can see where it would look like that. I was thinking of working under the hood for getting the key was on and getting zapped with, what 50,000 volts? I know I ve done it more than once and seen others do it.
Railguy
I know you guys are going to find this hard to believe, but I actually messed up a few times:
When removing the broadcast card to keep it in the house (and eventually Fort Knox) for safekeeping, I dropped it on the concrete garage floor and it collected some dust. When I took it inside, it wasn't properly acclimated to it's new environment so I think the relative humidity was increased by 1 or 2 percent. This probably caused a minor difference in the factory wrinkles. If I ever do sell the car, I will disclose this.
Another time, I was fake driving the car in the garage again, I was making all of the high pitched tire noises and engine revs and I almost hit a fake pedestrian. It was a close call, but I still consider myself a much better driver than the Google cars. Nobody's perfect after all. That is until we all get our chips installed. Then we will be perfect because we will be programmed to recognize the "perfect parameters."
Finally, I did also make the error of assuming that getting this car as high up in the air on the jack stands would be very beneficial to take on the job at hand. Then when I needed to reach something under the hood, I had to get my 12 foot stepladder and also had to break through the clouds. Who knew higher isn't always better???
I'm not ready to quit on this thread till we get a few more. So I got another all true by the way and gotta couple city ones as well just not of me messing up parts. Didn't work on cars till a couple yrs ago. T-bones and sideswipes stuff like that.
I was about 11 years old lived on a nice farm property with about 6 acres. Might not sound like much to a lot of you but from age 13 (2 yrs later) until I got married I lived in a Phila row home. So this place seemed vast. Anyway was home alone bored to tears I decided to take my moms 70 something Ford Pinto for a little spin. What could go wrong won't be on the street I could just take it around the property once or twice. Put it back before anyone got home no one will ever know. Well half way around I got stuck in some mud. Being 11 figured give it some more gas and power my way out. Clean off the tires put it back no one will know. Well I punched it and buried my self to the axil. Now I'm getting scared i have one of those quiet old school no nonsense behind the wood shed blue collar Italian step fathers (Salvatore) no really that's his name. So I'm starting to panic. In my genuis 11yr old mind I needed something to pull this Pinto out. What do I see yep shiney like a new penny my step fathers copper colored AMC Ambassador still remember that crushed red velvet interior. Well I find some chain in the garage and I venture out with our spanking new lap of luxury four door sedan. hook it up with the AMC pulling in reverse. Pulled a couple times and was making progress but was running out of time before my parents got home so not learning from my last punch it mistake I punched it and WALLA !!!! It gave way I did it !! Whose the man !!!
Got out to marvel at my 11yr old accomplishment. Boy was I disappointed the Ambassador was now stuck and that sudden jerk noise was the bumper coming off the Pinto. The Ambassador bumper wasn't looking to good either. I was done dead in the water. I thought about leaving and playing dumb "like really stuck in the mud you say" yea that won't work so I took the *** whooping literally. It's not the whipping itself that's bad although not fun it's that feeling in your stomach you get waiting for it to come. Anyway Two yrs later shipped off to live with my real dad in Philly. That's where my driving skills really come to light.
I'm not ready to quit on this thread till we get a few more. So I got another all true by the way and gotta couple city ones as well just not of me messing up parts. Didn't work on cars till a couple yrs ago. T-bones and sideswipes stuff like that.
I was about 11 years old lived on a nice farm property with about 6 acres. Might not sound like much to a lot of you but from age 13 (2 yrs later) until I got married I lived in a Phila row home. So this place seemed vast. Anyway was home alone bored to tears I decided to take my moms 70 something Ford Pinto for a little spin. What could go wrong won't be on the street I could just take it around the property once or twice. Put it back before anyone got home no one will ever know. Well half way around I got stuck in some mud. Being 11 figured give it some more gas and power my way out. Clean off the tires put it back no one will know. Well I punched it and buried my self to the axil. Now I'm getting scared i have one of those quiet old school no nonsense behind the wood shed blue collar Italian step fathers (Salvatore) no really that's his name. So I'm starting to panic. In my genuis 11yr old mind I needed something to pull this Pinto out. What do I see yep shiney like a new penny my step fathers copper colored AMC Ambassador still remember that crushed red velvet interior. Well I find some chain in the garage and I venture out with our spanking new lap of luxury four door sedan. hook it up with the AMC pulling in reverse. Pulled a couple times and was making progress but was running out of time before my parents got home so not learning from my last punch it mistake I punched it and WALLA !!!! It gave way I did it !! Whose the man !!!
Got out to marvel at my 11yr old accomplishment. Boy was I disappointed the Ambassador was now stuck and that sudden jerk noise was the bumper coming off the Pinto. The Ambassador bumper wasn't looking to good either. I was done dead in the water. I thought about leaving and playing dumb "like really stuck in the mud you say" yea that won't work so I took the *** whooping literally. It's not the whipping itself that's bad although not fun it's that feeling in your stomach you get waiting for it to come. Anyway Two yrs later shipped off to live with my real dad in Philly. That's where my driving skills really come to light.
I know you guys are going to find this hard to believe, but I actually messed up a few times:
Finally, I did also make the error of assuming that getting this car as high up in the air on the jack stands would be very beneficial to take on the job at hand. Then when I needed to reach something under the hood, I had to get my 12 foot stepladder and also had to break through the clouds. Who knew higher isn't always better???
Get a couple transmission jacks so you can prop up the front end like you're doing a wheelstand?
I was working on my VW years ago, after moving the engine/trans back a bit to mess with the nose cone. After getting somewhat frustrated trying to position one of the trans straps I stood back for a smoke and decided to remove the aluminum crank pulley. Carefully (if using two steel bar jack handles is carefully). So it didn't break. It broke. Damn. Threw one of the jack handles down on the concrete driveway.
Never knew steel could bounce so high. Or so far. Holy crap!
I watched it bounce high and far, directly towards the windshield on my Blazer fifteen feet away. Visions of shattered windshield. No...it's gonna hit the grill. No...smack dab in the middle of the headlight. Ok, that's no problem.
Get home with the new headlight, about to replace it. Torx? WTH is Torx? Back to the store to get a Torx driver.
February 29th, 2016, 05:31 PM
