What are some... oh yeah... duh moments?

I left the oil drain plug out. Went through 2 qts before I realized it.

 

Slight hill between me and the garage. Behind my D.D. letting it back down for the day waiting for the driveshaft to be reworked for tomorow. (Original nylon, no torch in the garage), car comes down and as soon as the tires hit the ground, it starts rolling back. (92' Full sized cadillac) All i could do was hit the deck and let it bap the garage wall. crawled out from under it, pushed it up a bit and bricked it. lesson learned.

 

My most sudden, clearest, and memorable learning moment, back when I was about 14...
I had to remove the front suspension from my '32 hulk so we could go fetch an axle-less '33 junker we had bought for $11.00...
Moved the front end a ways, straining my back...then I realized it would be EASY if I simply stood within the triangle of the radius rods and picked the thing up by the tie rod.
And it would be smooth and simple to lift from my legs...
Oddly, a deuce axle is MUCH HEAVIER than the radius rod...
And a nicely painted tie rod SWIVELS SMOOTHLY in gloved hands...
As I straightened up to walk the thing to the trailer, the radius rod ball swiveled right on up and caught me right in the back of the head.
The pain and light show were so intense that I barely noticed the bottom of the axle destroying my shins simultaneously...

 

Spent the better part of a weekend building a sbc long block and putting it in . worked on it straight thru .
pulled the old motor , stripped it , cleaned , prepped , painted and installed everything on the long block and stuck it in the car bolted it in , put everything on the top on even the coolant .
Then i raised it up , went to put the convertor bolts in and NO flywheel DUH !!!

 

haha! awesome I have just sat here and read all of these!

Along the same line
-> I have wired a quite a few things and love heat shrink tubing.... If I remeber to put it on before I soldered the wires!

To the guy who pulled on the rope with the over head door I would laugh.. If I hadn't done the same thing.... on that exact door..

To the guy who put two quarts of oil through without the drain plug. I owned a f250 powerstroke lowered the vehicle down to let it drip while I did some other things came back put THREE AND A HALF GALLONS through fired it up. ran rough at first thinking "it just needs to get pressure" made an awefull noise then shut off! I called my ford mechanic buddy freaking out saying I just destroyed my new powerstroke! Luckily he said they shut themself's off before any real damage happens.... for once I actually was thanking the Ford engineers! $60 worth of oil, and an entire bag of oil dry later I was back in business!

 

Quite a few years ago, I was given a chance to drive a late model for a very good racing team in Wisconsin. I figured this was my chance to show everyone what I could do with real equipment. Excited, determined, and ready to become the next Richard Petty, I stomped the throttle and blasted out onto the track for my first qualifying lap. With the engine screaming, I hit each one of my marks on the track perfectly through turns one and two. As I roared down the backstretch, the engine wound out and seemed to run out of power. At that second, to my horror, I realized I had not shifted into hi gear! Let me tell you, those boys really knew how to build an engine!

 

Same deal on my OT 4x4. Doing a tub, transmission and t-case swap. On the test drive it just wasn't "right", clicking, clunking, kinda wobbly. Test drive was maybe a mile. I got lucky though and the lug wrench fixed that DUH

 

In the same vein as the flared brake line with no nut.. crimping the end of a plug wire and realizing you forgot to put the 90 degree boot on first... after watching a buddy do the exact same thing and laughing about it 5 min before. D'oh!

 

sunday after noon in the barn working, picked up my cell phone to call my wife in the house to see when lunch would be ready, at the same time the phone in the barn rings,
i walk over and answer it. it was me... i know i'm an idiot

 

Must have been a wrong number.

 

that's what my wife keeps telling me

 

well duh!!!
dont ask me how I know that a freshly built chev V8 engine sounds real noisy when you drop in the distributor without first checking to see if the oil pump shaft is in too!! DUH!!

 

Back in 1977 in auto shop class we were installing a crankshaft in a chevy 350/4 bolt main.

I was torq'in the bolts to 110 lbs/ft, just like it said in the shop manual. Going for the final pull and the wrench still hadn't clicked when SNAP the damn bolt broke off in the block. Somehow we were able to catch a tang of the broken bolt and back it out with a screwdriver. Rustled up another bolt and did the same thing, getting close to 110 lbs/ft and SNAP the dang thing broke AGAIN!

That's when we re-checked the manual and realized we were using the torque settings for a two-bolt main, which I assume has bigger bolts and can stand that 110 setting.

 

They guys who own the car in my avatar went to a bigger injector on the BBC and kept using the same tennis balls for plugs. They fired it once with the balls in and they were sucked all the way to the bottom of the stacks...

All I will add is this... NEVER use a blue tarp to cover a $500,000 show car for a 150 mile trip on an open ramp truck (NOT my idea!...but I went ahead). That was 1990, and I'll bet there is STILL tarp dust being vacuumed out of that car.

 

Oh Bruce, I hate to laugh at someone as wise as yourself, but ...YOU WIN!

 

my dad and i bough a saturn to fix and flip for the right price, and being a great brilliant guy i am desided to save my pops some time and changed the belts and oil, well we didn't have ramps and this sucker sat low .. so i drove her to the ONLY flat spot on the property and put her up on jack stands.. now keep in mind this lil non hamb friendly saturn was a standard 5spd fron wheel drive 2 seater ...so.. i turned her off and turned the key on agian to listen to the radio (no accessory on the iggnition), and i put the thing on jack stands, changed the oil... then changed the belts and when i closed the hood the fucker rocked forward on the fucking stands and when it hit the ground and rolled it started.. with me in front , i'm lucky i'm tall and skinny, my legs when under and my torso and arms whent over (human taco) and the sucker put putted draging/pushing me right into the badly made dog fence and it died,took me and hour to get unstuck, i was lucky to live.

now i double check EVERYTHING!. i still fuck up though..

 

My buddy wanted to do some suspension work on a derby car. He jacked up the left front end, but then wanted to compress the suspension. Well doesn't he put a jack under the wheel and start jacking away. Got about 4" higher and then the wheel spun and shot out the jack. He says he won't do that again. I have my doubts.

 

When I was 17, I replaced the manifold burnt arcing plug wires in my 1966 fastback daily driver. I happened to leave it in gear in the driveway, bumped the remote starter to see if it the order was correct.... fired right up and drove through the bottom panel(s) of the garage door.

 

I was once adjusting the tappets on my '48 Ford...I was standing in front, rotating the engine as needed with a ratchet on the front of the crank. As I finished a valve, the ratchet swung downward and ended up pointing straight down out of my reach. I tried to crawl up over the radiator so I could reach farther down...and couldn't. The car had been in gear and each turn had moved it forward...my legs were now restricted to the space between the bumper guards sideways and the suddenly very limited space between bumper face and the wall endways. And of course the bumper level was such that I couldn't even move at the knees any significant distance...
I was able to struggle upward and extract myself, but it took long enough for me to imagine the story in the Carlisle Sentinel: "Skeleton discovered in abandoned garage," it began.

 

Not directly car related, but the message works. I read in a building magazine about a young guy helping out on the demo of an old house. The wise old veteran carpenter watched as the kid wrestled a giant cast iron bathtub down the stairs to be disposed of. After a hour of huffing and puffing he got the tub downstairs then outside in the trash heap. The old man walked up and gave it several whacks with a sledgehammer breaking it into small manageble (lighter) pieces. He looked the kid in the eye and said "Next time.. ASK!"'

 

Okay, you may not think it's car related, but I just don't have the energy to work too long on my projects. I figured it was my bad choices of food.(8 piece chicken for dinner) so I went to the store for some vitamins. Picked up some "1-A-Day" multiple vitamins, then spent a few minutes trying to find the doseage..... DUH...finally read the biggest words on the box...1...A...Day... took a quick look around to make sure no one was laughin' at me...

 

When I was a kid my dad figured this out when he had to throw away a toilet from the upstairs bathroom. He told me he would break it into big pieces, then I was to put these pieces in a box and break them down into smaller pieces. His very first hit sent a chip of porceline across the room and deep into my knee cap. thanx Dad....

 

"No, I'm sorry. Shaqueeta isn't here."

 

just an hour ago, I was cleaning a gas tank. you know the deal where you put a chain inside and roll it around till your really annoyed. seams that old chain tied itself into a big KNOT!!!! I was real annoyed by the time i had that chain out

 

laying under the OT daily driver, snow melting off onto my shirt pissing me off like nothing else. Changing an alternator, its a fiero and yes you HAVE to be underneath to do it and yes its a total bitch. Can't get this damn bolt loose. Can't see it and get a wrench on it at the same time.

So I start bitching, dad says "well which way are you turning it?"

Me: "I'm loosening it"

Dad: "Righty tighty, lefty loosey"

me: "well no shi... oh damnit!"

Then after me unintentionally tightening it, it was so f-ing tight I just got the impact out.

Adam

 

I laughed out loud on that one!!!

 

Any body do this I can't be the only one but maybe I am. Fueled my crew cab ford the other day and after I was done I put the pump handle back on the pump got my reciept and climbed in the back door...duh

 

telling your story in front of us, is that a part of your therapy? hahaha!!! good one!

 

I'm in the UK - as you know we drive on the wrong side of the road with right hand drive - just about everytime I fill my Mercury up I get back in the passenger side - feel like a right prat - duh!!

 

that made me laugh.....I needed to laugh....thanks