Technical Ever get so pissed off you wanted to, or did, destroy something?

I forgot to mention--"magic words" are very helpful

 

Money's no object, these are priceless! I usually stop short of ruining anything but on occasion, when it's something I've made (wrong) myself or easily replaced, I have been known to toss it on the ground, grab the 12lb. sledge and swing away until I'm exhausted, then crawl into the house and pull the covers over my head. Serenity now!

Well I'm off to the machine shop, then the bar. With a better attitude.

 

My wife and I used to go to the dump every couple weeks before we could afford trash service. It was literally a mile away from the house. Anyhow. We always wet up there with a sledge hammer crow bar or some other damage inducing device. We would pay our $5 dumping fee and have some aggression therapy smashing tv's dining room tables, beer bottles, whatever we could find. We could usualy get in about 15 min of destruction before the kicked us out.

 

Of course!

 

A friend once said to me "you love it when shit breaks" no I don't, but shit breaks. I'm doing the carrier bearing on my 1 ton today and I've managed to break my little finger in the process.

 

i'm as guilty as the next guy of losing it when things didn't go right, but we had a mechanic at work (readymix trucks) who loved to chase green drivers out of his shop by throwing 3-foot-long wrenches at them. one of those deals where he was close to retirement but not close enough. off work he was a pussycat.

 

One size fits all, or "universal application". I see universal application, I know that REALLY means "spend more time modifying it to make it work than just making it in the first place".

 

Not automotive related but abut 2o years ago I was working in the kitchen and it simply would not work the way I wanted.I stood up from under the sink and spouting obscenities I hurled my Channelocks on to the floor with considerable force.The pliers bounced off of the floor and right through the glass door of my wife's new oven!80 bucks poorer,I resolved that the next time I get that pissed,I will put down the tools and go for a walk. ONce I calmed down i figured out how to fix it but man was I pissed!

 

i once squished a grapefruit in this chick's face, no wait, that was jimmy cagney

 

I had just installed the side glass in my 39 and was mounting the shoulder anchor for the seat belts. I had to grind a small bit of slag where the bolt went. I knew that the grinder would ruin the glass so I cut a piece of cardboard to cover up where the sparks were going to fly. I ground the nub off and took off the piece of cardboard. Somehow the sparks got behind the cardboard and ruined the side glass like I was afraid it would. ME MAD!!! I got out of the car and said a really bad word or two and with all my might I punched a steel cabinet I have. Just at that moment my wife and dog walked into the shop. They both turned around quickly and left. What I didn't realise was I had a large house speaker on top of the cabinet for tunes and when I hit the cabinet the speaker tilted and if it had fallen would have likely landed on my head or worse on my car. I was pretty embarrassed by my lack of self control and apologised to both my wife and dog. The knuckle marks are still there to remind me to be calm under duress.

 

Got angry when my 56-f100 wouldn't start. If you know these Fords the hood hinges are marginal at best! I jerked the hood up really hard and it went right into the windshield before settling back into the proper position. Of course it made the windshield look like a large spidersweb

 

many years ago i was trying to install a muncie into a nova. i tried for over an hour. i hucked a few tools around the garage then kicked and screamed a bit. i went in the house to cool off and my mother saw i was upset. she said she could help. i laughed but she insisted. we went out there, she laid on the creeper and i pushed her under. i went on the other side and bam, we put it in first try. i couldnt believe it. that was 1985-86 and we still talk about that

 

I've been credited with inventing a few new curse word combinations....just spew 'em at random. Feels damn good!

 

There are imprints of screwdriver handles in drywall and I cant remember what made the three from the inside out dents in the garage door. And half a toolbox littering the woods behind the shop.

I did do a Gallager job to the radio that would never stay on a single channel ,out in the driveway.Otherwise Iam a pretty mello nutcase.

Never saw a axle stuck like that before.

 

Used to, don't anymore. I can't remember any specific stories but a good friend that I worked with used to call me "Ting Ting" after the sound that the thrown combination wrenches made as they bounced on the concrete floor.

RIP Glennie.

 

Yes I have beaten stuff up when things went wrong but lost most of the damage doing trait lotta years ago...But a few years ago my wife complained about the wires for the blowers on the fireplace heater I had built one to many times..Seems they got in the way of cleaning any ash spillage..I tore everything off and threw it off the deck..Should a seen the look on her face but she stayed quiet, I'm sure she thought if she said anything she'd be following all else off the deck..A year later I redid it all so nice and tidy..

 

Years ago I had a 57 Dodge pick-up. The truck had seen better days, to say the least. Flathead 6 that ran good if you could get it started. But it was really hard to start when cold. One cold morning, I tried to start it to go to work. The POS wouldn't start. I got angry and slammed the driver's door as hard as I could. As the door slammed, a large chunk of Bondo dropped right off the door at my feet. I think I scared the shit out of it.

 

I've been reading all these entertaining stories and thinking to myself.."I've never done anything like that" when an old memory came back:
1970.71... Had my girlfriend and her mother with me in my 57 Pontiac, driving down Powell boulevard in Portland one summers day. The 389 had a Rochester Q-jet carb from a late model [70s] engine and sometimes it gathered up some crap from the tank and flooded over....this day it did exactly that..came chugging to a stop as I steered it into a parking lot....gasoline all over the top of the engine.....I fiddled with it, tapped on it and tapped a little harder...broke a hole in the side of the float bowl. I had a helluva hangover and the ol lady began ragging.
I had a spread bore carb in the trunk I was planning to replace the leaky Q-jet with "someday" and this was the day.
Got the Rochester carb off and heaved it as far as I could across the parking lot, hoping it'd cause a spark and go up in flames when it hit the concrete but it didn't..
Calmly installed the Holley and drove away.....as far as I know there is a Rochester Q-jet carb lying in the weeds at the edge of that parking lot...or it may have been struck by some yard service's freshly sharpened mower blades, causing a new flurry of expletives, hate and dissension...wonder if it got thrown again.

 

once put my non-working watch in the 50 ton press at work...made it 1/8th inch thick and 3 inches in diameter. I felt much better

 

a few years back my uncle returned some wrenches to me they found when they removed the drywall in the garage wall to open it up for the addition . aparently my uncle said I wasn't the only one that did that as he found some of his own and my cousins .. but that was in my teenage years , now I just set the tool down and go sit in my recliner for a little bit .

 

This isn't a good thread for me to read cause, the next time I fly off the feckin handle when something doesn't go right in the garage, my excuse will be "well... All the other HAMB guys do it too"! I try real hard not to lose it these days. I'm 32 years old and, I could make this thread 20 pages longer with "episodes".

 

Reading these is making me feel way better; it's good to know I'm not the only one.

Working on an 86 Chevy pickup that was a rust bucket winter beater, lying on my back under it with a 18"breaker bar trying to break loose a rusty bolt. Bolt snapped causing me to punch myself in the nose while still holding the breaker bar. I shot out from under that thing and grabbed the first heavy thing I could see, which was the handle from the floor jack. Beat on the fender until I had no strength to go on...

Seriously, I think you need to do something like this at least once to learn the patience it takes to work on old cars.

 

No, I'd just have to fix it later.

 

Y'all are some angry fuckers, aren't you?

 

Growing up I only drove Chevys or Mopars then had a chance to buy a Galaxie 500 HT with a 390.Triple black,drop dead beautiful car.Farmer I bought it from drove it for years without incident and he didn't always baby it.I drove it like a nice normal driver style car.Within a week the trans developed a leak.Fixed that.Drivers power window quit working.Fixed that.Alternator and battery both died.Fixed that.Gauges failed.Fixed that.
Then one day it started to blow oil out the dual exhaust.By day 4 it was a cloud following me.Pulled it into the gas station I worked at and did a compression check during which the starter quit working.Fixed that.
Found low compression on 3 cylinders and now water was coming out of the exhaust pipes.
Hooked it up to the wrecker,towed it to the crush yard down the street asked them to smack it while I watched and they did.
Fixed THAT!

 

temper...temper

 

A couple years ago when I was working in a collision shop my boss brought his friends $500 dollar beater in. For whatever reason the drivers fender was too far back and the door wouldnt open. My boss told me that his friend didn’t care too much so I should spend the least amount of time on it as possible, and do whatever I had to do to make the door open again. Normally It is faster to just do things the right way, so I popped the hood and began loosening the fender bolts so I could re ajust it. Unfortunately the gas struts that held the hood up were worn out and the hood came slamming down on my fingers.

I then calmly got in the car from the passenger side, unlatched the drivers door and proceeded to kick the shit out of it from the inside until it opened, crushing the fender and folding in the leading edge of the drivers door. After the pain in my fingers subsided I fealt bad, but apparently his friend was just happy to have a working door again.

 

I put a tube of red spot putty through sheet rock once. I've mellowed too. Now only plumbing can make me that mad.

I watched a buddy kill his daily driver Rabbit with a pickax once. We were about 19 and he had just found out that his baby momma was several months along in becoming some other dude's baby momma. Better to kill the car than the girl.

 

When I was young, I had a bad temper.
Owned a custom motorcycle shop and decided to clean up a bit. There was this Honda 750 frame that I had been tripping over for some time. I decided that I would hang it up under the tire rack until I needed it. About 2 hours later I needed a part off it. So, up the ladder to cut it loose. Somehow, in two hours, the balance point had changed and the damn thing pushed me to the ground. I'm in a sitting position with this frame on my lap. So I pushed it away at a high rate of speed and it landed about 15 feet away. Not content with getting it off me, I got the torch and cut it into 4" pieces. I did manage to save the neck for the serial number. Still have it.

Threw a toaster once, but that's another story.

 

I came closest last spring when I went to change the thermostat in my O/T van.

Whoever was in there before me I don't know what this moron did, but he'd removed a brace and put a different bolt in. It twisted off. Well, they're under the cowl and a bitch to get to in the first place.

I was calm, I said, okay, I have a whole other engine on a pallet, I'll just swap the intake out.

No. Not that easy. Both front intake bolts ALSO snapped off. I had to pry the intake off with a crowbar. Chevy 350 with TBI. I don't know what that clown did before me but he must have had to do the intake gaskets, as the aluminum intake had been painted black for some reason. And my guess is the wrong bolts were used up at the front as well.

At that point I just walked away, and when I saw another, very similar van on Craigslist... I just bought that and started swapping parts around. So technically it is being destroyed a little at a time as a parts van.

I found out why the brace was cut off, you have to remove the belt and tensioner to get it out of the way. Damn near threw my back out putting the belt back on because this one, too, needed a thermostat. I thought.

No, this one probably needs intake gaskets too, if I run it for 3-4 hours at a time and shut it off it seeps out some coolant, not sure where but seems to be from the rear of the motor.

Plus it needs another speedometer, something's messed up in that, and it's like a 1-2 year only part and a bitch to find, I had to change the seat because the one in it was making my back hurt, umpteen other little things to fix, it has an AIR system to come off, the CTS needs changed and the same damn brace is in my way....

If this one didn't have a nice body I think I'd play demo derby with the two and buy something, anything, that's not another Chevy van.