Projects Tired of damaging my own shit...

Anyone out there ever damage your car while you're working on it? I'm not talking catastrophic damage, more like a little ding/dent/stain on the seat. I work alone most of the time, so I find myself lifting heavy stuff, installing seats/transmissions/body parts by myself, and in doing so sometimes put small scratches/dings, etc in things.

Just today, I finished working on my 52 Plymouth today. It's a T5 conversion with a relocated speedo gear. Like an idiot, I didn't lube the speedometer when I had the instrument panel out, so it started to stick, and moved the gear on the shaft. Lubed the speedo, pulled the tranny, fixed the gear, then buttoned it up. While putting the seat bottom back in place, a wire from the underside of the seat caught on one of my NEWLY COVERED seats and put a small hole in the fabric...you could hear the words from blocks away. Yeah, it's very small, hard to notice, but it just SUCKS.

Anyone else ever do something like that?

Chris

 

tired of damaging your own shit? open a shop and damage other peoples shit and charge them for it.

 

I do that on occasion and hate it when I do .......but....on balance, I'd rather damage my own car than have someone else damage it!

Ray

 

that is why i put mine in primer then drive it till i get the bugs out [5yrs and still have bugs]

 

Re-covered the rear seat of my car and the next day climbed in back to attach the rear window trim. Forgot about the phillips screwdriver in my back pocket! New seat with a new hole.

 

Reminds me of us installing the rear seat in the wagon and I decided to drop the back seat to see what the cargo area looked like.

Little did I know that the two alignment pins had punched a hole in the freshly covered seat back,,talk about talking in tongues!,,I was livid but all was not lost..my pal Dave that had just finished the upholstery came up with a great fix without re-doing the seat.





The silver pieces cover up the rips and work as a guide to center the pins when the seat is dropped.

Oh,yeah,these items were found a Wall Mart,,,they are nothing more that Onida salad spoons! HRP

 

I resemble that, in my OT trailer tower, parts hauler rig. Never did figure out exactly what it ate but it stuck to the bottom of the carb when I had it on the bench.


I always remember one of my dad's stories about how he poked a hole in the viynal roof of his car when he swung a broom at a cat that was sitting on top of his car.

 

I make big mistakes and small ones like most folks. I work alone for the most part. When finishing a major fabrication job, I like to have my regular mechanic look over the car and give it a safety check.

A couple months ago I was ready to start up my cabriolet after three years of nearly full time effort and fifty years of the car being in non-op. My mechanic missed finding a couple cotter pins missing that could have been a disaster. Luckily, after a more minor startup mishap on a local street, I found them missing and had to get a shorter nut that would allow the missing cotter pin to fit. My fault/error was in putting on a hubcap too soon. Bottom line is that accidents/mistakes will happen and it is nearly impossible for someone else to fully check all of your fabrication and assembly work done over a span of years. Generally, I think the key is to always be as careful as you can, but when you finish a big job, just do a shakedown over an extended period, going a little further and faster each time you take the car out.

 

I do remodeling and repairs for a living, usually by myself. Bad enough to screw up something for yourself but
way worse when it is someone elses home, and you not only have to fix it but it costs more than the original work
paid!

 

All the time. Isn't this part of the fun?

 

I watched a buddy finish detailing a customer car he had just painted, get in it to back it out of the garage, romped on it a bit and scrubbed the whole passenger side on the door frame. I heard words I didn't know even existed.
I had a fiber grinding wheel come off my air grinder and hit the brand new windshield of my rod, scratched tracks half way across the glass. I couldn't stand the scratches, bought new glass!

 

I don't even want to think about that. I hate the screw ups I do to my own stuff bad enough.

 

Put a big ass scratch in the door of my off topic newly painted car while I was putting it together in my garage. Got it fixed but, not cheap. Was walking by it with a broom with a metal handle and sharp edge and not paying close enough attention. Dumb mistake!

 

Everyone's done it. It's like masturbation. Anyone who says they've never done it is just lying.

 

I stopped being tired of it and now, I expect it. That way, when nothing goes wrong, I REALLY feel good.

 

That is why I get so impressed when I see over the top show cars fully displayed. I know I would have put nicks, scratchs and holes in a car during a full build.

 

I blocked sanded my 1954 for hundreds of hours. I am slow and I wanted it as near perfect as possible.

One day my good friend Jerry came by. Jerry was in an electric wheel chair for many years, before his death last year, but he still went to Bonneville, and was building a 1964 GTO. He was an inspiration to me. Jerry backed his wheel chair into the 1954 Chevy near the gas filler door. He made a good sized ding in the car, but he did not notice what he had done, and I said nothing. I was able to massage it out some with the paintless dent repair method, but it is there if you look for it, and it is going to stay there. Every time I see that ding, I think of Jerry and it makes me smile. Sometime a flaw is a good thing.

John

 

I'm really good at this too. should we start a social group "HAMBfists"?

 

......................................Great story. I love it.

 

Newly painted anything. I'll try not to nick, scratch or ding it in anyway. Inevitably it's bound to happen and not referring to road driving incidents. It usually happens when your trying not to.

 

I've got too many of these to even write about, but the first one that comes to mind was lowering a freshly painted O/T car years ago and immediately crunching the left rocker on the jack when it went all the way down.

 

Always expect the worst, then you can never be disappointed!

Too many to mention here.


jerry

 

I have adopted the same philosophy. When things on a project don't go bad I'm shocked


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Kinda the same thing, bolted the front fenders and grille on my '33 Tudor, jacked it up center of front axle, pulled the stands, and let it down, bending the points of the fenders; but got lucky and was able to stop before getting the grille.

 

Couple of weeks ago I cut both windshields down with a sand blaster (first time doing anything like this ) for my chop top Fleetline. They came out perfect, so I was all cocky that I did it the first time around. So I had them on the roof of the car out of dangers way working on the inside of the car Saturday ,THEN IT HAPPENED both pieces slid off the roof onto the garage floor............I have not been out in the garage since.

 

I was building a stand for my vice with a 1" thick steel plate for a base with thick walled 4 x 4 steel tube for the post. ground all the metal to be welded clean and shiny, set the 4x4 where it goes, then knocked it over where it hit the tail light on my 61 Dodge denting the trim and busting the lens.

61 Dodge parts are hard to come by, eventually I found an NOS tail light lens which ended up costing me 50 bucks. it was the third lens I had bid on over a few months of trying to find one and lost out on the other 2 which were equally overpriced.

 

Who was it that said an amateur gets excited when thing go right,
a professional gets excited when things go wrong.

 

using an engine puller to load my old '28 chevy engine into my truck....my driveway has a slight decline, and the engine puller picked up speed on its own and rammed into the back of my truck. it was too heavy for me to slow it down....

 

I was buffing the hood of my 57 plymouth and the cord caught the buffer and whipped it against the hood causing a small ding. I was so mad

 

I hate it when something happens when working on one of my cars, but I feel absolutely sick when I have inadvertently damaged a customers car... but I have always found that just owning up to it and fixing without short cuts has always remidied the situation. Most customers cool off pretty quick when they realize your going to make it right.