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

This was both an enjoyable read and a bit sphincter puckering as some of you narrowly escaped serious injury or (gulp) even death...

These are ones I'm reminded of as I read through the thread...

'76/'77 - friends and I are playing hoops in my driveway one evening when a nearby neighbor Jack rides up on his full dress Harley to visit my dad. Jack parks the bike at the end of the driveway to stay out of the way of the basketball and goes in the house. Being 13/14yo, and wanting to impress my friends. I hop on Jack's bike and began regaling them all with my non-existent Harley knowledge. Bike has a block of black buttons underneath one of the handle-bar grips, and in my arrogance/stupidity I figured I would honk the horn to improve my status within my circle of friends. As luck and likely an appropriate level of kharma would have it, I chose the electric start button and the cycle lurched on the kickstand. I think my brief life passed before eyes about 3x. I still get a small adrenaline rush whenever I'm reminded of my good luck that the cycle did not come off the kickstand. Sidenote: I finally admitted this to my folks about 4-5 years ago and my dad visibily squirmed when listening to the story and 'what might have been'.

'80/'81 - drove my OT car to highschool in mid-winter NDakota carrying a few neighborhood friends. We would wait in the car, engine & heater running, until we could hear first bell. First bell comes so we bail out and start walking into the building. For some reason, I looked back at my car, and wondered to myself...'why is there smoke coming out the tailpipe?' Yup, left the car running, but had the presence of mind to lock it upon exiting. Called my mom to bring the spare key so I could unlock the car (humiliation #1) By lunch time, the 50% of school who would enjoy razzing me about it (hard) had begun and lasted a few days (humiliation #2) Not the sort of popularity any teen is likely seeking.

About 15 years ago, I'm doing some underhood work on my running '56 Chev. Not sure where the extreme brain-fart came from, but I chose to pull the electric choke wire off the choke and lay it on the intake manifold where it started to melt and burn (up to the firewall) like one of those comically long movie fuses on a stick of dynamite. Thankfully the ground at the battery wasn't tightened, so after a split second of panic I managed to think to pull the battery ground, which killed the engine, but didn't stop the wire from being hot, so I race around to the driver's door so I can turn off the ignition. Phewww!

 

How about priming the oil system on a brand new motor prior to start up, and noticing it wasn't building any pressure? So I look underneath and see probably 5 qts. of expensive Brad Penn breakin oil all over my garage floor! Seems I missed one plug while assembling the engine, and I knew I checked several times to make sure it was all sealed up!

 

Finished Tbucket. All black, polished and chromed everything. Tri-power had been giving usual trouble. Leaking, popping through carbs and drive ability issues. Well, the whole mess starts on fire. While I'm standing there watching it burn, trying to decide on the best approach to save the paint, one of the guys in the shop panics, and comes running up with a bucket of water. You know how that went. Now, instead of carbs and intake on fire, I got carb, intake, and floor burning. To stop the carnage another guy comes running up with a shitload of used shop rags and proceeds to try the smother method (couldn't make this shit up). I'm now looking around for the guy with the hotdogs and marshmallows since what had started out as something I could light my cigarette with, was now a raging bonfire. I walk over, grab the big powdered extinguisher and put the whole mess out. Needless to say, clean up was a bitch. Did have a silver lining. Heat swelled the carbs enough to stop the leaks and that fine powder made a great polishing compound.

 

Drove the '60 Holden sedan out of the garage after it had sat a few months. Driveway is congested, so turn a little coming out of the rollerdoor. Paused in the driveway... no brakes! Had blown the seal on one of the rear slave cylinders. Grab the handbrake (mechanical), and car stops. All good. Head into the house, order the new seals.

Come back later in the evening, jump in the car and start reversing back into the garage. Car is moving well before I remember it has no brakes. Reach for the handbrake, but too slow. Shunted the rear quarter into the rollerdoor 2x4 post, shoved that back 4" and shattered the weatherboards on the garage wall before the car stopped.

Said a few choice words, then got out to inspect the damage. Figured I must have stove in the rear quarter. The contact point was the fin on the rear (like a '57 Chev rear), right on the chrome taillight surround. Not even a mark. Obviously GM Holden's 1960's engineering standards were higher than 1950's Aussie shed construction standards.

Kids still laugh, and are glad I did it instead of them.

Cheers,
Harv

 

I was having problems with getting my Mercury started. Dash lights on, but wouldn’t crank. So I was pulling the shifter through the gears in case the neutral safety switch was out of adjustment (if there even is one on a ‘62?). Still no cranking.
Next step, try jumping the solenoid with a screwdriver while the key is on. BINGO!
Car started instantly and was on high idle. Only problem was it was in Drive! I was about 3’ away from my rickety picket fence. The car started moving and I tried to hold it back- no go. I was pinned between the fence and front bumper. I would have had time to jump out of the way, but my fence posts were so rotted that I knew the car would have pushed it right over, so that’s why I tried holding it back. I had an in ground swimming pool on the other side of the fence, so had visions of my car underwater in the deep end!
I couldn’t figure out what to do, pinned against my fence and knowing if I wiggled out my car was going for a bath. I realized I had my cell phone in my pocket so I dialed with one hand and called my wife in the house. I told her to get out here and help or we were going to have a car in the pool! Wife came to the rescue, but that was a long 2 minutes or so!

 

Many years ago I picked up a mid 70s F150 with a cracked block cheap,got it running and did not know that someone had removed the neutral safety switch and tied the wires togather. Stopped to get gas and no crank so opened the hood to jump the solenoid and when it fired up it went into reverse with the door open and thinking it was going to take the gas pump out,it did not have a air cleaner so I put my hand over the carb and it quit with inches to spare. The parking brake was working shortly after that and the wires were hooked togather much better.

 

When I was about 17 I had a friend who owned a wrecking yard. He let me work on my '40 Ford coupe there and pretty much gave me any parts I wanted. I decided a '50 Olds radio would be cool in the Ford but the hole in the dash was too small. No problem, a little trimming with the cutting torch will take care of that. Did you know those rubber floor mats will burn? So, my buddy sees all the black smoke and runs over with a hose and douses the whole inside of the car. The windshield glass was hot enough that it broke when the water hit it and all my dash gauges were burnt up.
Unfortunately that was not the last stupid move of my career. But that's another story.

 

Was working on my Catalina at my buddy’s house one Saturday afternoon, he and his girlfriend and others were hanging out by the pool, I shorted the starter to crank it up and she took off. It was heading for a large pecan tree, I ran beside the car for about 20 yards trying to avoid catastrophe, pulled some wires and got her to stop. Everyone came out of the pool to se e if I was alright. Totally embarrassing.

 

About six or seven years ago, I was going to change the battery in my OT late model driver and thought I would keep the circuits alive by putting and power plug into the lighter socket, attached to a battery I set on he floor in the front passenger area.

Hooked it up and went to the trunk to change the OE battery and for whatever reason I happened to look up and saw smoke and a glow from the interior. The small jumper wires had overloaded with current flow and melted their insulation, and then began destroying anything they touched, such as the console and other trim bits

I burned my hand (not seriously) jerking the wires loose from the jumper battery and other surfaces they were touching. It was a very close to call to totally torching the interior! The car involved was a specialty performance model, not a clunker, and I spent about $600 or so buying a new console and a other bits to restore it to it’s like new condition before my stupid mistake. Never Again!! (it will be a different dumb ass mistake the next time).

Ray

 

Working on my friend's 49' chevy field car messing with the carb. We were about 13/14.. I had told him to start it and after he did he was standing between the open door and the front seat. I manage to get the throttle stuck wide open and the engine screams, I can't get it unstuck so I yell for him to shut it off. Engine is going for the moon. I back off the fender and turn to him to yell again but ended up running around the open door knocking him to the ground to dive in and turn key off. That was when I realized I wouldn't want to share a fox hole with him; when I knocked him down he was running in place holding his hands over his ears and screaming as loud as the engine was.

 

My first car was a '50 Buick 2 door hardtop I bought for $75. Neat car but the fuel pump was shot. My friend says take the hood off and I'll sit on the fender and pour gas down the carb and we'll take her for a ride. Cool, lets go. After about 2 blocks I decide to make a fairly abrupt right turn. Friend and gas go flying across the intersection like a flat rock skipping across a pond. Whoops. Had to talk fast to keep from getting a whoopin.

 

I was changing out the carburetor on a friend's late 60s Mustang. Got it all hooked up, but if I remember right, I didn't even hook up the return spring. Hey... you asked for dumb lol. We lived on a 200 acre farm that had a one-lane dirt drive from one end to the other, straight through the cornfield. Roughly 1/4 mile long. Good place for a test drive. A light push on the throttle to get her going and then I laid into it. Quickly realized the throttle wasn't returning. Taking off now at full throttle, both rear tires spinning. The ignition switch was loose, and you had to reach behind the dash and support the loose cylinder to turn the key. Have to take both hands off the steering wheel and lean over to the right to do that. It's just corn out there, and normally it wouldn't have been a problem if the car went into the field as I was turning off the ignition. But the drive crosses over a huge drainage ditch and the little dirt bridge over the culvert is only one lane wide. It was everything I could do just to keep the car semi straight, fishtailing and picking up speed fast as I made it across. Whew. But now I was doing at least 50 mph and I didn't have a whole lot of road left before I'd be flying across the road at the back of the property and into the trees. I was going way too fast to reach over and fiddle with the ignition switch. I really needed to scrub off some speed. I yanked the steering wheel to the left and put the car into a 360-degree spin. There was dirt flying everywhere. But it brought the car to almost to a complete stop. But it was still wanting to go. I quickly reached over and turned off the ignition.
Holy cow. Pant pant pant...
I fixed the return spring and returned his car. I had to apologize as we were digging corn stalks out from between the grill and radiator.

Edit: Wait... wasn't a Mustang. It was a Mercury Cougar.

 

Work on it.

 

LOL!

 

Stuffed a 327 in a CJ5, not that that was the dumbest. That came the first day I droveit to work. Stopped to show off the engine install to a friend's father. Forgot to rehook those pesky hoodlatches Jeeps used to have before safety latches. Got part way home and stopped at a traffic light only one in the middle of nowhere. Hit 2nd gear, hood flies up and right off. Jeeps had hood hinges made to easily remove hoods for working on the engine. Hood just misses old man's car right behind me (thank goodness). Never forgot that again... Well except 30 years later with a Morris Mini. But that's another story...

 

Hell, as many times as I did that I thought it was mentioned in chapter three of the repair manual...

 

I remember that but it was the firewall and heater core.

 

Did the same exact thing with a Commando, I was 18 hop in and it didn’t start. Pop hood fiddle with the battery connection and it starts. Now Im running a bit late for class at Community college, forget to latch the hood. Back out the driveway floor it down the street and boom hood bounced off the upper windshield frame, I hit the brakes, hood comes down out of the hinges and slides down the road. Plus when I hit the brakes I blew a brake line. My dad had work midnight shift, the whole noise of it woke him up from down the block.


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You couldn't slide it into neutral?

 

How could I forget that? Wasn't that subtext, article 3171-3? Also covered were trunk and gas tank, door glass and inner door panels and the ever popular universal muffler hanger screw right in the middle of the rear footwell....

 

Not something I did but something I witnessed, a good friend of mine I worked with right out of high school had been building a drag car and would tell stories about it all day every day. One Friday after work we were hanging out at his shop (his dads garage) and he started in about how fast the car was gonna be. Someone asked him to fire it up to listen, so he did and thought it was cool to let it run a while with open headers, after a few minutes and cleared the engine of any un burnt fuel he put it in gear and let it rip out of the garage. Well he never did bolt the seats in so it shot out of the garage like a rocket he fell back as the seat tipped in full relaxed mode, the throttle stuck wide open and we thought we would never see him again, he was able to get it sideways by the time it hit the road and slid into the ditch across the street. He popped it in neutral then was able to shut it down. His dad came home as we were pulling out of the ditch with a tractor and yelled at him that he was gonna get killed in that thing.
He never did finish the car and still living and working cars today. (OT car was a 1st year v8 Vega).

 

Ok, my turn. 1973, and I'm 16. Owned a 69 RS-SS Camaro. The starter went on the fritz so I got it up on the curb on the passenger side and scooted under the front with my wrenches. While first removing the wires, my class ring shorted the starter burning a nice ring on my finger. It gets better. The starter cranks and I have to lay there until the car goes over me and then get up, grab a wrench and chase it down to unhook the battery. At least the hood was open so I didn't have to do that.

 

Or a firewall and large wiring harness.


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I was helping a friend on his first build, a 1938 Ford coupe and he had ask me to help with the brake lines, and bless his heart he tried but every line was leaking, he had a flaring tool but he had never done any brake work, He didn't have a double flaring tool, fortunately I did so I went home and got it.

I returned to his house and had most of the lines double- flared and remake a few to finish up.

He had been talking about how good the engine sounded all day and reached inside the drivers window and turned the switch, the car roared to life and it was in gear, the car crashed into the back wall of his garage, narrowly missing my friend by inches, His wiring kit came with a neutral safety switch but he failed to install it.

You could still smell the fresh paint in the car, the front bumper, grille,hood, front fenders and headlights were damaged, paint was all scratched up.

He never drove the car, he sold it to the painter and bought a 1937 Convertible, BTW, he installed a neutral safety switch on that car. HRP

 

Re wire my headlights 4 times, just to remove some paint to get a proper ground

 

Riding with a friend in his 55 Chevy 6 cylinder 3 speed. Going downhill well over 60 mph he slams it into 2nd gear to slow down, blows the clutch disk apart. We managed to limp to his house, replace clutch in his front yard.

Then he backs over his brand new toolbox he left behind the rear wheel.

 

Put a Ford powerplant in it

 

"Slide" it into neutral?
At full throttle?
Likely damage his engine?
Sure... I could've done that.

 

Gotta come back and read these, no time now

#1) 1955, 16 years old, 1st car, ('47 Kaiser moredoor), gotta raise the front
end up for what I don't recall now. Get stepmothers (2) galvanized wash tubs,
(2) 8ft 2x 10's, make a ramp, hear her screaming from the house,
" You better not ruin those tubs", drive up on the makeshift ramp,
squash/collapse (2) galvanized washtubs, exit driveway in haste returning
home after midnight when dad is in bed.

I'm sure there are many many who have pulled the ol' pour 5 qts. of oil in the
motor without the plug in the pan, but has any one done it more than onece?
Confession:................I have.