A recent thread about a build gone bad had me thinking of mistakes I've made along the way and what I learned from them. Let me preface this by saying that I am still learning a lot about cars but I am particularly learning a lot from this site about Oldsmobile in general. This being said I am not a novice mechanic. I started under a shade tree and graduated to a service station. From there I went through various technical schools in the USAF in becoming a heavy equipment mechanic. I worked for several years at a Dodge dealer and went through several factory schools. I learned a lot along the way but the things that have stuck with me most are things I learned the hard way. I thought I would start a thread that we could share lessons learned. Who knows it may prevent someone else from making a similar mistake. I have a lot of these stories but here is the first.
My first real car was a 64 Plymouth Belvedere with a Poly 318 engine. The distributor is in the back of the engine and against the firewall. My first attempt at a tune up I dropped the point screw down the distributor. No problem I went to the junk drawer and found a self taping screw of some kind and set the points. Heck with that screw I dropped. Everything was good for about 3 miles until the screw found its way to the gears and sheared the distributor shaft. Call the wrecker/Lesson learned!

 

i know a guy back in my school days, also doing a tune up. he had the air cleaner off to access the distributor easier, he dropped a screw in the carb. he said no big deal, it's small enough, it won't hurt anything. he put the car all back togather, it ran great at first. he took it down the road,and brought back a few minutes later, backfiring and missing like crazy. that little screw cost him thousands of dallars.broke a piston top, bent a valve, and ruined the head.

 

Not so much an individual experience but good info nonetheless:

When putting something together, I mean anything, and something doesn't feel right then it usually isn't. Take it apart and find out what's up. Forcing something to go where it doesn't want to or just being plain pig headed about it will usually lead to a bad decision and failure of something.

Come to think of it I have had this experience.

 

Here's one for the rookies, I had a leaking rad hose and since it was cold out, I thought I'd do a quick fix just to get home and wrapped the hole with electrical tape and brought an extra jug of coolant with me. I proceeded on to the highway and watched the temp gauge closely. The temp went up then down to normal which I assumed was because I was now doing highway speeds and the rad was working more effectively. What I did not know is the coolant had already drained and the temperature gauge was not reading the coolant temperature but just the hot air! So much for that engine....:https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...es/redface.gif

 

You really hit home with that one. This accompanied with being in a hurry can really cause problems. I ran into this one a couple weeks ago while mating my rebuilt engine to the transmission. Something didn't feel right but I was in a hurry then I heard a POP Now I need to pull this thing back apart and see what that POP was.

 

If you lose a small screw (or anything else for that matter) into your engine, or if you don't know where it went, FIND IT before you run the engine again.
This was brought home to my brother in law when he serviced his automatic Austin 1100. He couldn't find one of the nuts removed from the valve cover so put another one on.
The nut had lodged in the inner drive shaft UJ, and when he drove the car it smashed through the transmission casing. The resulting shrapnel destroyed the transmission and engine bearings.
That was the end of that car, repairing the damage would have cost more than the car was worth.

Roger.

 

Ok here is another one on the learning curve. Same 1 rst car and the valve covers are leaking. I buy a new set of gaskets and install them and torque those valve covers down as much as the 1/4 inch bolts could stand. Drive the car 3 miles and the oil light comes on. I had torqued the bolts until the valve coves bent out of shape. Lesson learned somethings need finess not brute strength. Call the wrecker!

 

Had a car in the shop that had taken a hard front end hit. After replacing the entire nose, car came over to the garage for a tune-up and fluids check. Ran great from the body shop to the techs' stall. After the tune-up the car stumbled and smoked. Well, it had been sitting for over a month, so let it run a while. Tech is wondering if he screwed something up or did the head gasket just blow or something. In a minute the white smoke clears and the engine runs well. Can't figure what repaired itself until he notices that the washer jar he had filled with fluid was empty. The body shop had hooked a vacuum hose to the jar by mistake. Don't remember what they did with the washer pump hose.