I've got a new worst mistake:

I was installing my DevilsOwn universal single stage the other day. My daughter usually comes out and helps me in the garage, which is fine as long as I keep her occupied.

I was kind of in a hurry that day due to studies, but wanted to see some progress. She starts clanging around tools and just bugging me in general...but I keep talking to her nice...just glad she wants to spend time with me...and hoping my patience pays off when she's a teenager.

Well...she picks up the little blue cap-like thread protectors I had just taken off the water injection pump, and throws one into the engine bay which I hear plink down to the driveway. I look up just in time to see her grab the second one and throw it straight at the timing gears and fall into the timing belt galley.

I had taken off the front cover when I did my coolant reroute the week before...and was going to leave it off for adjustable cam gears anyhow. Not such a great idea. The car is in the driveway and I need to move it -uphill- into the garage. This was the other reason I was in a hurry since dusk was approaching.

I can't see the piece of plastic...and hope that it will just fly out when I turn it over. I get my wife to stand there with Maglite watching for flying plastic. I go to start it, and it doesn't want to fire. I could feel it spin ENTIRELY too fast a few revolutions, and know that the cams weren't being turned.

Sure enough that damn cap got between the crank gear and the belt, and while my cams stayed in sync...they were a half revolution out from the crank.

Every timing belt change I've ever done was with the timing still intact, and this was the first time I had to set timing. It took me no less that FIVE tries over the next three days to hit it. I only did this during study breaks...and really missed driving my car.

Live and learn. Needless to say I modified the cover to fit with my rerouted rear housing on the front neck.

 

worst mechanical trying to figure out why my clutch was slipping under load on my dsm. must of pulled the tranny 20 or so times after having the tranny rebuilt found out it was oil down in one of the plug holes ran fine till about 12 pounds then would misfire. it felt just like a slipping clutch. we finished a customers car complete paint job after it got hit in the front it had to leave the next day spent all day all night getting it down finished about 5am. we went to get some breakfast came back to check if we got a whistling noise fixed took it for a test drive we forgot to latch the hood. it came loose about 45mph fucked the whole car spent rest of the day hmmering out the old hood and repainting the car into the next night.

 

think i have you all beat.. just not on a car... was cleaning the chain on a customers bike at my shop... chain caught thumb.... thumb went through sprocket.... missing half of a thumb now... on my right hand i now have thumbting wrong

 

Well I guess I cannot top that. Sorry man that really sucks.

My dumbass wrenching moment was turning the key in the ignition and promptly hearing POP! POP! FSSSS!! Apparently I forgot to reinstall the fuel rail bolts...

That rebuild failure happened right after an even bigger driving/diagnostic failure of driving to a must show work meeting 5 miles on a blown heater hose with detonation raging like a swarm of angry woodpeckers intent on destroying a tree. One machining and a headgasket later, good as new! Needless to say, don't buy a used engine from me.

 

My best came from following DIY maintenance advice from here....

Top of head cleaning using a small amount of water (in place of SeaFoam) trickle fed into the intake plenum = EPIC FAIL (Hydrolock + conrod bent).

The trickle feed technique didn't work and cylinder 1 gulped in a whole mouthful.

Geez I copped some flak from the Aus MX5 boys on that one - still do in fact.....

There are photos on here somewhere.

 

Soaking the engine bay with water and degreaser. I know I shouldn't but I done it twice. Then I have to spend an hour under the hood with a leaf blower and an air gun. My neighbors get pissed cuz my car runs for 5 seconds then starts poppin off like a mother ******. Thats the stupidest thing I be doing. At least its clean though.

 

Lets see. I was helping my friend install a new clutch on his 97 outback wagon. We thought we had everything put together properly and ready to go. Went to go drive the car and it wouldn't shift. We ended up having to repull the motor because the clutch plate was in backwards and the throwout bear disconnected. That was fun to say the least, but we learned how to pull a motor in 30 minutes

 

When I installed my wet kit on one of my cars I "T'd" off the fuel return line on accident and my a/f was 18.0 across the board on thy dyno. I'm lucky the motor didn't pop lol

 

Is this Bruce ?

 

I was changing the rear brake. I was lazy so jack up both wheels to do the change faster. (without jackstand, only using two Scissor Jacks)
When started the job I realize that the car was unstable so I decide to put one wheel back.

I pushed the wheel, the car fell out.

 

Done this

 

no it is not real name is Kyle

 

one time i was helping my dad disassemble a head from a suzuki sidekick and i don't remember exactly but there was a tight bolt on it so we had it sitting on a table (head) and he was holding it while i had a breaker bar on a half inch ratchet, the bolt snapped and the bar slammed him in the face and messed up his lips and face.
I also snapped 3 out of 4 bolts on the greddy manifold going to the turbo

 

This one was pretty ironic - I was super proud of myself. I had fixed everything relating to the turbo. I bragged to my dad about how it wasn't leaking, smoking or smelling anymore. I was so confident, in fact, that I offered to drive him to dinner with my mother in it. I did my usual thing, checked oil, added a bit, checked coolant, it was fine, started it up and off we went.

Some twisties, hard pulls and backroads later we park up at the restaurant. Park the car. Turn it off. HUGE cloud of smoke from the engine bay. At this point, I said "Oh ****!" because I thought I had honestly popped a motor or a drain line and wasn't going home that night. Popped the hood (Big, popular restaurant in a rich, popular city BTW. And I" was right in front of the patio). Start getting frantic, can't figure out what's wrong. Look down and the oil fillup cap is sitting nicely on top of the engine, but not in the hole

 

Well, when I was 16 I went out and bought these awesome spinner hub caps from autozone to put on my 97 cavalier. I pulled the stock hub caps off, and didn't know how to put the new ones on. In my teenage stupidity, I thought there was another 'layer' i needed to remove, so I started removing what I would find out later to be lug nuts. Without the car on a jack.

Down to 2 lugnuts I noticed the car begin to slowly slide towards me. Worried, I called my dad out who promptly called me a dumbass and then put the lugnuts back on the car.

I was literally too stupid to put on spinner hub caps.

 

So, umm.... Where can I gets me some of those spinner hubcaps?

Winter tires + steelies + spinner hubcaps = super mega awesome fun time win.

 

My buddy used to rock the hubcap spinners on his Escort, then they got jacked lol

 

lol, yeah.... They lasted about a year before they were too broke to even spin anymore. Snow clogged up in them and made rotating the tires the following spring REALLY fun! Of course it didn't help that my friends would randomly duct-tape them whenever I wasn't looking.

I also had no less than 4 neon tubes stuck inside the car with double-sided tape, all connecting to a 4 port cigarette lighter "splitter". Wires. Were. Everywhere.

And you all thought YOU went through a bad ricer stage...

 

Well since were resurrecting this thread, I'll tell you my dumb *** mistake.

Traditionally I am a **** about having my vehicles stable when working on them, since I had a friend in HS who had a truck fall on him while he was working on it. He was out of school for almost a year. Well anyway, since we live in the mountains, we have to rotated our tires every oil change. With 7 vehicles at the time, it seemed like I was always rotating tires, or changing oil. After this one time watching my neighbor rotate his tires with only floor jacks under each diff (4x4's) I thought I'd try it. While I was removing the last tire off my lifted 4x4 Toyota truck, my wife came out and asked me a question. While answering her I lost my concentration and bumped the truck with the tire and the truck started to fall over. It would have completely rolled onto its side if I hadn't pushed it, causing it to slide off the jacks onto the rotors. Nothing was damaged except my manhood, since my wife can't go six months with out bringing it up in front of every car guy I know. I still laugh at how I almost rolled my truck in my own driveway.

 

heh does torquing and over torquing and then ripping bolts count? plenty of those lol.