Features Whats the dumbest thing you ever did to your vehicle while working on it?

Ran over my rear bumper filler on my 49 Dodge...was gonna fab one in aluminum anyway..it still smarts when you think about it...was able to make a template for the aluminum replacement from the runned over piece....

 

Recently installed a gas tank under the bed of a friend's truck, with his help. I had been working on the truck for a while at my shop, and it was on the lift so we could work underneath. He came over for a night of wrenching and that included drilling a series of holes through the floor of the truck for a brace we were adding while we were there. Second hole in he gets a "whoooosh" of air as he breaks through the floor? He had drilled a hole through the sidewall of his spare tire, which was safely placed by me in the bed floor before he got there. Brand new tire that had never touched pavement.

We are quite the team!

 

Not working on but parking my car. I have one of those brake pedal locks that goes between the floorboard and the brake pedal to prevent theft. I pulled into my spot at a car show and promptly installed the brake lock (leaving the trans in DRIVE) only to discover the car slowly rolling backwards towards very nice cars. My first instinct was to hit the brake but the lock prevented that, (still rolling...) time seemed to go on forever as I imagined doing $$$$ of damage to someone's show car, I was finally able to put the key back in the lock and remove it to brake the car. I didn't have the nerve to look around to see who might have witnessed this...

 

Dumbest thing I ever did was taking my first 1931 Dodge apart without bagging and tagging the parts....

 

About 15 years ago, we had a real shithead mechanic working at the shop. We will call him Bob. Bob finished installing a THM400 into a one ton Chevy cube van. I happened to walk by and noticed he had somehow installed the shift linkage upside down. Hey Bob, that’s not correct! Bullshit, it’s fine. Ok, I keep walking. He had it running on fast idle(remember that??) and was filling the transmission with fluid. Shift linkage upside down, so Park on the column was low on the transmission. That old Chevy finally picked up fluid and SHOT across the shop right for the owners two year Olds Aurrora. Somehow Bob got it stopped before the collision. He didn’t last long after that.


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

One time i was spraying my wires wheels with a deep red paint. It was Imron industrial paint. As you know you waste alot of paint spraying wire wheels, lots of over spray...

Well i had a customer's brand new $60k truck with less than 50 miles on it two bays over. His brand new WHITE truck...

The next day i noticed the damn truck was almost pink!

I spent an entire day getting that off, what an "oh shit" moment that was

 

yeah I had the smart idea that I had money and cut the rear seat floor out of my impala thinking I was going to replace it in the coming months, it’s been atleast a year or two....


Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

MAN! Do I ever feel better about myself!
Though I was a mechanical moron, I've never done anything as bad as these!
Thanks guys!

 

The driveway of the house I was renting to a guy in his late 20s, was on an 8% grade, and at the top beside the house, was a flat concrete slab with plenty of room to work on a vehicle.
One Sunday afternoon, he arrived on my doorstep visibly shaken, and asked if I could fire up the excavator to pull out his truck. I answered no problem, and asked him where the truck was located, whereupon he answered, across the road in the neighbour's yard.
I looked outside and just about soiled my diaper! At the time, the road we live on was so busy, that it was basically a steady stream of cars in both directions from morning until late in the evening.
He was going to do some work on the truck, but forgot to put the transmission in park and block the back wheels. While he was leaning over the engine compartment, the truck started to roll back. He made a desperate dive for the drivers seat to stop the truck, but it was already moving too quickly. It rolled backward 150 ft down the hill, across the busy road, without hitting a soul, and hung up on a big alder on the other side, that was big enough to stop the truck but flexible enough that the truck was not damaged. The weight of the truck was totally supported by the now leaning tree, stopped 10 ft short of going through my other neighbour's kitchen wall (or possibly roof).
Thank goodness it was a Dodge Ramcharger, similar to a Chevy Blazer, because I literally had to lift the front with two lines to keep it from tipping while I slid it down off the tree and up the embankment. He was embarrassed and hugely grateful, but all I cared about was, that nobody was killed.
He got in the truck, fired it up, drove back up the driveway, and decided that he had done enough for one day.
I went home to contemplate whether my insurance would have covered any of the losses had someone been seriously injured.
The most embarrassing part of the whole thing for him, was that he was a heavy equipment operator and mechanic, and couldn't imagine how he could have screwed up like that.
Bob

 

17 years old, heading off to college, putting new shocks on my 61 BelAir hardtop. Bumper jack, rear end in the air, crawled under with wrenches and new shocks. Removed the lower nut hammered away at the shock until it popped off and the axle fell on me. Luckiest move was that the tires were still on, hurt me a little, mostly my pride.

 

My latest, O/T daily springs a trans fluid leak. Cooler hard line. I bought some hose and clamps and figured I would patch it, no big deal. Next day drive 110 miles and notice I can hardly see out the back window. Leak got really bad. Look under, it's pouring out the fitting at the trans, no hose going to save that.

So I drove it home that way, put about three quarts in it on my way home.

Then, to top it off, when I go out to the you pick for some used lines because they're like $5 instead of $50, I only got the rear one. Get home, put it on, start it up... other one leaking same place, you dummy you should have got them both.

So my Friday was clean out a foot of snow in the driveway, go back out to the junkyard, pull the second line, come home, install on van. I was done like 7 at night. Then drive 150 more miles Saturday morning. After adding another quart before leaving, then another half out there, then finally the other half and now it shifts right again. At least they were the GM clip lines so they weren't too bad to install. But you have to pull any fittings they go into and replace them too, when they rot the ends weld themselves right into place. At least I learned that when the oil lines went in August....

 

My son, bless his non-mechanical soul, tried to patch the trans cooling lines on one of the endless stream of shitbox cars he's had with, of all things, gorilla tape. No pressure on it when it's not running... but hot trans fluid seems to be the best solvent for the adhesive on gorilla tape. I also had to weld up the diff cover on one of his beasts due to the ring gear rubbing a hole in it. Fun.

 

How about changing the spin on filter on a semi enclosed remote filter unit, spun old one off, filled and installed new one, fired motor, checked oil pressure, all OK, revved it a few timed, heard a spit and gurgle, then OK again, then oil pressure started dropping. Killed engine, stepped out of car and nearly fell on my a. Oil everywhere, oil dripping from bottom of filter. Took filter off and guess what, there were 2 gaskets there. One obviously very distorted. Checked old filter and sure enough the gasket was not on it. It must have stuck to the aluminum filter adaptor.

 

When doing final assembly on my current 30 Cab. Joined motor to transmission and looked st TC, and remembered I had a new 2500 stall in the garage somewhere. Found it in the box still and slid it on. A week later and fired it up on stands to check it all out. Everything worked well, except the transmission /TC seemed off. With motor idling about 800, the brakes would stall the motor. Decided I had better check the TC I took off, yes it was the new one, the one I put on was from the donor tranny I was using, and I had spray bomb reconditioned for swap meet goodies. Motor out, TC changed, works great since!

 

Had a 41 Merc with an 8BA in it. Was fiddling around with twin 94's when the engine hydrolocked due to raw fuel in the rearmost ps cylinder. Pulled all the plugs to spin it over to clear the fuel. I was standing on the passenger side and jumped the solenoid on the firewall with a screwdriver. Bad move. A water hose jet of fuel doused the solenoid ! The car was in my attached garage ! How I did not burn the whole place down escapes me ! There were sparks at the solenoid. Drunks and fools...……………..

 

Hasn't about everybody changed oil at some time or another and filled motor with new oil only to have forgotten to put plug back in the pan?

 

Yup ! On my 1st car.

 

It's just being extra thorough, an oil "flush", look at it that way.

 

I have forgotten to put the filter on a couple times.

 

Not rebuilding the trans when the car was under construction!

 

I’m too embarrassed to share

 

My Father had a beautiful little 69 Dodge Dart, red with a black vinal top. He parked it in the driveway one night, came in to dinner. Middle of dinner the phone rings- hey Gene is that your car in my front yard. He must of missed park, the car rolled down the last half of the driveway, across the back yard, down a hill, across another backyard between two trees which were between two houses, across the next street into the guys front yard.
We followed the tracks through the snow, could not believe it never hit anything. Car did not have a scratch on it.

 

Backing my 64 Chevelle up along the side of a building. Opened the driver's door to check. Door edge caught the building, opened all the way and broke the door hinges clean off. Drove home with door in back seat. Sure felt foolish.

 

This one is bad.......got my 34 running this summer but AFB carb was way rich so I thought I'd bolt on a 650 Holley double pumper a guy gave me. My brother was helping me and we were stone sober. I tried to start the engine and the 650 dumped fuel all over the top of the engine and down the manifold. At least thats' what it looked like. Truth is, I forgot to hook up the fuel line to the carb and the pump was hosing the top of the engine and carb down with raw fuel! I still didn't realize it and pulled all the spark plugs to get the raw fuel out. Turned over the engine with the starter and a plug wire sparked....WHA_OOM! Man, I had fire everywhere! I had carpet remnants on the garage floor and they also caught fire. HOLY SHIT! I screamed at Scotty to grab the extinguisher and he was back in a flash but couldn't get the extinguisher to work. I grabbed it out of his hands and put the big boy squeeze on it and it worked.....flames were all gone in an instant. Damn near burned down the house and the car. Scotty helped me clean up the extinguisher crap and we left the next morning for the HAMB drags.

 

One of my lasting memories of why did you do that was , a cam swap on the old Harley , while I’m at it many parts off cleaned up replaced , just routine stuff trying to keep bolts and fasteners in place ,and slow down the stock price rise on the oil companies from so much leakage . All returned to service and I did forget the cam was a huge amount advanced from stock cam I replaced . I stroke it through a few times to get some fuel in the jugs , turn the ignition on to light the fire , lay into the starter pedal and a mule could not have returned the pedal back to the top any faster . It was a week of hobbling around sayin “ potty words “ as my 4 YO , grand daughter now tells me not to do now at this stage in life , before I retimed it and climbed on to the monster again . Some of the things we do in life , we define as fun . Damn , I would hate to see what was defined as not fun at that point .

 

I did that 3 or 4 times back in the 60's with a kick start XLCH. Sometimes the alcohol v common sense ratio goes the wrong way and one forgets to retard the spark prior to kicking. I think I actually did a hand stand on one once before I crashed into a heap in the parking lot.

 

OT car, dyno pull on nitrous.... I looked at the wrong jetting chart.

Same car, Second engine.... promptly drove into 2ft of water in a flash flood. Hole in block

3rd engine, lasted 5 years, until i drove it backwards into the round end of a guardrail at 143mph.

Same car, started on fire welding a small pinhole behind the car's side skirts. no extinguisher, no hose. Ran down to the lake with a 5 gallon bucket and got it out. No damage but some paint bubbling.

Slowly but surely getting smarter....ha

 

While it pales in comparison to most all the previous posts I have one thing to say. Don't use aerosol paint stripper in front of a fan!

 

I would have to say fabrication and build mistakes. If it was square,cut to correct length, drilled the right size, bought the right part etc the first time every time. Car building would be easy.

 

Had a rust bucket 37 Chevy Business Coupe in to replace or repair nearly every panel, replace entire floor, install recessed firewall, and replace bottom 10" of body. Mounted on rotisserie and replaced front third of floor followed by the center section and finally the rear section. The car was sideways on the rotisserie for convenience and was so rusted that it had to stay on the frame to maintain it's shape. Had to cut the body to frame bolts with a torch and as the last one was cut CRASH, the body hit the floor. Had removed all the body to frame mount bolts with each section. Top repaired but right side drip rail totaled. Cut off let drip rail also and think it looks better without them.