Projects I'm a dumb ass!

Well I would call this the Smart Ass Battles starting from the top down...

 

I took an engine apart and in the slimy mess of parts I found a small spring..Had no idea where it fell out of and when I assembled the engine I still could not find where that spring belonged..Engine ran fine..About six months later I remembered that a while before I took the engine apart I had lost the spring that was on the idle speed adjustment screw...

 

The glove box is for those small forgotten pieces.

 

In 1968 I was a student in auto mechanics at our vo-tech HS. A guy in my class rebuilt his Y-Block Ford. Installed it in the car, had everything set to a tee. Hit the starter and it fired off so quick it scared us. He let it run a couple minutes and shut it off to get out instructor to show off his great job. When the teacher came to check it out he hit the starter and CLICK, checked the battery, wires etc. Still click! About this time another kid looked over on the work bench and asked him "what is this box with 5 quarts of oil in it?" Talk about your OH SHIT MOMENTS

 

You get a pass on this one. Listen to squirrel, you don't need them if you torqued the rod bolts correctly. If you didn't those things won't help. Take a nap.

 

Packing something to ship yesterday, two boxes, two direction sheets in one box, figure I will slip the other one in the second box and pack them...I forget it.. okay I put it in a bag and I will tuck the bag in the USPS box.. seal the box and there's the bag... had to open it again...

The pot story reminds me of the parts car I bought cheap for one of my beater cars. Didn't run, guys had torn the ignition apart. Put it together and it was just out of gas, so bone dry I left the cap off to help the pump suck it up to the engine. Found two bongs in it, one in each seat, which explained that. The second turned up after I'd driven around with those seats in my car for like a year.

 

I love these kind of threads. Why is it the best threads are those where people tell their stories where they screwed something up....in other words, that they are human!

 

I rebuilt the carb on a 63 Biscayne I had long ago. Everything over a plastic box so I wouldn't lose anything.
I was new to this and wanted to do it right. When I was done there was a rod that was missing.
Tore the bench apart, under, swept the floor. Nothing.
Inexperience dictated a coat hanger would be fine. It took a few tries, it worked like a champ.
When I sold the car, I told the dude about it.
I saw the car at a car show a few years later and asked how it ran, etc.
It still had the coat hanger, the guy was amazed.

 

I worked in a gas station after school and watched the owner take apart the bottom end of his '60 Corvette up on a lift. He had a coffee can on the floor and every bolt, nut and washer got thrown into it. When he put it back together there wasn't anything left in the can. That left a huge impression. Me? I have to lay everything out in the order it gets disassembled and still have a problem going back together.

 

Haha! Sign me up.

 

This really had me chuckling. Back in the day there was a gas station in town and the owner Jack was really good with the automatic transmission jobs. He had a young helper Bert who would start work in the afternoon and keep the station open late to pump gas and occasionally pull a transmission for Jack to work on the next morning. Every so often Bert used to run across the street and buy a bag of popcorn, pull the pan and fill it with popcorn and button it back up and that's what Jack would find when he pulled the pan the next morning. Jack just took it in stride.

 

Ya can't make up a story like that!
Was the popcorn with extra butter?

 

You folks that are ex military will love this.One of my families friends was a retired Marine DI.
He loved to put an extra part or two in the pile when the recruits were doing the assembly of their rifle blind folded.Had one recruit that he just could not trip up.Finally called him out on it.Seems like his Father was a retired Marine veteran of the Pacific campaigns,and owned several Garands,1911 Colts and M1 carbines.He had taught him how to do the blindfold reassembly of same when he was 12 years old.Our friend said his only comment was"sweet Jesus,I`ve been had".
Good luck.have fun.be safe.
Leo

 

Put them on so you can sleep at night! That's what I would do.

 

Yeah, while everyone else just torqued the rod nuts and called it good, Chevy put pal nuts on because there was a problem with rogue employees putting bottom ends together without torquing the nuts.

 

When I was a 16 year old dumb ass I decided to rebuild a carb on a 65 Chevy truck. With the left over parts the gas mileage was highly modified!

 

Many years ago I did this too on my wife's car. In my case we were both in the car and I was driving. It made a weird clunking noise but just on turns that we both heard. I just blamed the car because it was a POS.
When we got home I checked and it turned out that both front wheels were loose.

 

I happened to look in a parts bucket and staring back at me was 12 rod bolt lock nuts. So off comes the oil pan unless someone can convince me that they are not necessary. Just sayin.[/QUOTE]
These are called "pal" nuts and I believe they are made Pressed thin steel. As all have said it's something not loose sleep over unless your planning on running a steady 5000 rpm.

 

Toss 'em.

 

Well I guess I wanted in on this Dumb Ass game...The other day my small air compressor started making a strange noise, sorta like a slipping belt..Checked it and it was chewed up in a spot so I ordered a new one and for the mean time checked belt tension and put some dressing on it and fired it up..Seemed fine so back to work I went..Next day the noise is back and worse, so worse I ran to shut it down..Now I noticed the squeak-like belt slipping noise could be made turning the compressor by hand..Yep low on oil; more like clean as a whistle!..I put oil in and made a little wish that it would be okay for a few more days..Fired it up and the squeak went away and I figured I had it dicked..Yeah, for a short while..The squeak came back and then a bang and a big thump and the pulley from the compressor came rolling by me two bays away..Shit, threw a rod and locked up...I guess I don't need the new belt..

 

That had to suck.....

 

Yeah if I didn't have a bigger one for big needs [sandblasting] to bring online..

 

Nothing seems to make that same sound as a loose wheel. Three times when I worked as a service writer people came in and said they had a noise kinda like the wheel was falling off. All three times had loose lug nuts.

 

x2 (again) what Squirrel said.
Actually, I don't have a clue, I just wanted to pretend for a moment I knew something he knew.

 

Left over parts are not a big deal. Just hide 'em.

 

DUMB ASS OF THE YEAR !


One of my commercial customers needed a throttle body for a car so they ordered one..

When taking the intake hose off a object fell out...




Yes that is a pic of the throttle body and a crack pipe that was wrapped in tissue.. The tissue came loose and plugged up the throttle body...

GEE I don't know why my car wont run? and hey dude where did you put the pipe !

 

Mmmm... wouldn't be caught dead working on a VW....that covers the VW part of the story ....now I believe there's something about pot heads being part of the story yet no mention of being for or against that subject was expressed in the returned explanation comment......mmmm but then if said person were so dead set against the VW's that alone gives the answer to the other part........back in the day it seems that pot and VW's kind of went together ....so of course said person was not a pot head in the past ....but it could be argued that not everyone that messed with VW's where pot heads..... Humour ha ha....moving on..

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I wouldn't worry about those lock nuts........but then I'm the guy who was driving my 40 chevy through the sage brush, hunting rabbits one day when the 216 just locked up tight. Car slid to a stop and I walked home. Never did find what went wrong because I sold the car where it sat to my neighbor.
It's probably ok.

 

We never put them back in.got good torque on rod bolts it will run ok.