Stupid things I did that I can remember:
1) Left my cell phone on the spoiler of my Trans Am like 9 years ago, (at least that's where I think I left it.) Took the car for a burnout session down the road, came home and said, "where's my cell phone?"
2) Had to change the wiper motor on a 97 S-10 ZR-2 I used to own. Couldn't get the wiper arm off, so I used my windshield as a place to put my hammer against. Needless to say, I replaced my windshield 3 days later.
3) This is the best one...a few months ago I wired up my Innovate LC-1. I ran the constant hot wire through the firewall and used a round termainal to connect it to the positive supply on the lower passengers side of the engine. I NEVER PUT A FUSE THERE. Months pasted, and I did a CAS retrofit for the MS. I drilled another hole in the firewall to run the 2 CAS wires, and I knicked the 12+ constant wire for the LC-1 and it grounded to my firewall. Turned bright red in seconds, melted all the housing off, filled my garage with smoke, and check this...it must've wiggled right against my brake master cylinder reservior, cause it burned a hole in that and leaked brake fluid all over the place. I was so F'n pissed off. I epoxied the reservior and surprisingly it held up like brand new, and I ran a new wire with a fuse.

 

Made a typical British-car mistake -

My friend had a TR-3 with real knock-off wheels. Spinners have threads opposite the power delivery - right-hand thread on the left side, left-hand on the right side - so the torque won't loosen the spinners. We did the rear brakes, swapped the drums/hubs from side to side and didn't notice. Luckily for me, I wasn't around when the passenger side wheel fell off.

 

I left two vacuum lines off at my signal source fitting when installing a boost solenoid. For the bypass valve and boost gauge. I thought the motor had blown after all the stalling, starting, sputtering, etc.. You would think that the gauge not reading would be a dead give away, right?
Stephanie

 

I put my first ACT clutch disk in backwards and bled the damn clutch 20 times trying to figure why I couldn't disengage the clutch.

I'm sure a few people have swapped the fuel source and return lines when reinstalling a motor. Runs for a minute then dies and never starts again. WTF?

I also tightened down the ground bolt on the back of the head by the injector harness ONTO one of the wires. This caused a constant ground to the injectors which is wide open. No wonder I hydrolocked a motor. 550s dumping into the motor whenever the key was switched.

Frank

 

-Drilled into the oil pickup during the turbo install

-Smashed the little pressure release valve on the rear end when swapping gears. That one took a few weeks to figure out why whenever I took it for a long drive it leaked.

 

can't remember if it's my worst, but it happened today.

Installed a customers rebuilt engine in their miata today. It's a '94. Forgot to put in the Oil Pressure sender before bolting the engine in. I contortioned my arm around everything and put it in the wrong threaded hole in the block. Went to crank the motor and a huge stream of oil shot out of the block. Loss less than a quart and was a pain the *** to clean up.
The car runs great, though.

 

My epic failure happened right in front of my house trying to do some suspension work. I had strut in hand, and a wrench on top of the nut, attempting to free the spring!

I placed a book on my face, and my friend put a pillow on his face (Sagety first, right?), and we toqued till the spring blew off, several pieces scattered over 50yards, and a new dent from the flying spring appeared on my neighbors GTI ;p

He was cool with it, and even congratulated us on an epic failure hah

At least I learned to always use spring compressors

 

i did this once....

did that

ive done this soo many times.....





few of my own

- put a greddy kit onto a miata, forgot to take the stock breather out, when i rolled onto boost, dip stick hit the hood so hard i startled me

- my cousin forgot to tighten his lugs, rolled out, went about 30 feet, b4 the car took a nose dive into the pavement

i was under the car, and a friend was lowering my motor into the bay, chain snapped, motor fell literly right onto the mounts and about an inch from my face, almost crushing me....

 

Darwinism failed to protect our species from you sullying the gene pool that day.

 

Forgot to mention this one. Near the end of summer I decided to change the trans fluid and the filter on my 2000 Silverado. I had the truck up on ramps, in park position. I had to remove the shifter cable from the side of the trans to get to 2 pan bolts. I took the cable and the bracket off and for some dumbassed reason, I grabbed the shifter on the side of the trans and bumped it back 2 clicks, (NEUTRAL.) The truck rolled backwards and I rolled out from under it the second I saw it start to move. It missed me by about 2 inches and rolled down my driveway about 2 feet before I could jump in it and hit the brakes.

 

I over-tightened most of the bolts on the cylinder head cover. 3 eventually broke, and 4 others were stretched and had to be replaced. I guess "hand tight" has different meanings. Found this out when I had to replace the cam seals. Interesting item, now that I have that fixed, the car doesn't smoke anymore. ???

 

Friend of mine - installing brake pads in backwards, with pad backing against rotor.

 

So... so far it's 53 posts of stupidity. Is there a prize? Who is the winner? I think it's safe to say, that we are all mechanics. My definition of mechanics is: Mechanic: a person who fixes mechanical objects; a person who learns through trial and error.
I think we can clearly see that we are all human here, and we all give credit towards eachother in that we all have fucked up and paid our dues.

 

I've made many mistakes throughout the years, but I learned from every experience and it only got me to where I am today.

Most recent was putting the heads back on one of our trucks and over torqued the last head bolt....SNAP like a ************. I must have hit the dial and it wasn't set to any torque as I tightened the last one. Remove the bolts, pull the head, remove the broken bolt, and proceed to try again. It went fine the second time.

Not sure if he was lying or not, but I knew one dude that said he had his hair ripped out of his scalp from the radiator fan.

Vash-

 

1) Don't work on cars with certain people. More than once I've heard "oh ****" and be hit in the head with a falling 17mm wrench.

2) My F150 was notoriously going thru it's OEM coil packs. Well apparently one time in my rush to fix it, I left all the unique sized sockets sitting in the wiper cowl. Thankfully they were still there a few months later when I worked on the truck again, albeit a little weathered.

3) Forgot to retorque a wheel after pulling it to take pics for a friend. Got down the road with a lot of noise before I turned around and came home and drove the truck in. Realized on the way home from what what I'd forgotten to do.

 

Its always a case of "spend 100 bux to have some ******* do it, or try it out myself"


I think I've learned that the ******* is worth the 100 =/

 

During long distance GoKart racing (30lap = ~30km), at club level in my home town. (This about 10 years ago, but I have been spared from real errors worth mentioning since, actually):

Lap 1: Good start. All runs well. Keeping good speed.

Lap 4: Spring on carb for throttle return breaks (aka: throttle jammed in full). Goes into the pits and kills the engine with the brake. Install new spring. Dad push-starts and I rejoin the race.

Lap 6: Snaps the drive-chain right on start/finish straight. Drags Kart into pit lane and lift it onto the trailer. Get engine off, get new chain on. Dad push-starts and I rejoin the race.

Lap 8: Right on the start finish line (!!): Lots of noise and very high RPM. Crank cogwheel does not grip chain since I attached the engine, but forgot to tighten the deadbolt. Engine has worked itself backwards 5mm and the chain jumped of the cogwheel. Drag the Kart into the pit and get it on the trailer. Remove engine. Replace engine with spare. Dad push-starts and I do not rejoin the race. We then attach the throttle cable to the new engines carb. Dad (now getting a bit tired) push-starts and I DO rejoin the race.

Lap 15: Butterfly (or cable wheel or whatever it was) in new engines carb breaks, since we did not adjust the throttle pedals stop-bolt. Drives Kart with one hand on the carb into the pit. Swap on old carb from old engine. Dad push-starts, but Kart runs like crap. Quick check…Opps! There us a hole on the underside of carb, made by the loose chain.

Winner finishes the race. Dad says: You are getting someone else to push-start you.

 

lol

 

Typically I tend to spill alot of fluids on the ground and end up wearing most of them.


Probably the stupidest thing was overtightening the airfilter bolts on a testarossa. They are very fragile.

 

After swapping engine/changing the clutch I start the car up everything seems to be running well, look under the car and notice huge amounts of oil spilling out.
Get under car, notice oil is coming out in between the engine and transmission bell housing.
Suspect new rear main seal is installed faulty, rather than removing the engine to replace it I remove the tranny/flywheel to get it, buy new rear main seal replace it, put everything back together. Start car..
Still leaking tons of oil.
Remove transmission/flywheel again.
Notice large gap between oil pan and block, realize I left one of the U shaped rubber gaskets for the oil pan on the old oil pan.
Remove engine, remove oil pan replace gasket.
Put everything together..
Worst two days of my life