Whats your most embarasing mechanical messup?

[Chris142]

I was 20 when I done this one.

I had an old ElCamino once. Typical 350 engine and th350 trans.

The car started knocking, sounded like a rod. I pulled the engine and replaced the main and rod bearings. The old ones were worn but didn't look that bad.

Put the engine back in the car and it still knocked!

I pulled the engine again and put a 10/10 crank in it. Still knocked!

I figured that it must be a piston or something of that nature. I pulled the engine again! Went to a junkyard and bought a engine from a wrecked pickup. The pickup was a stickshift so I had to swap the flywheel for the flexplate.

I put the junkyard engine in and it sounded the same!

I then figured that maybe their was something weird with the torque converter. I pulled the trans and put another torque converter in it.

Still knocked.

I pulled the trans down again and took it to a trans shop that a friend worked at to have it rebuilt.

I told them my tale of 2 weeks, 2 engines, cranks, bearings, torque converters etc.

The guy behind the counter asked me if I had looked at the flexplate closely, which I had not really, just bolted it up....A few times.

Went home and removed the flexplate......Sho-nuff it was cracked! Had a crack between 2 of the bolts that hold it to the crank.

[ March 09, 2004, 10:49 PM: Message edited by: Chris142 ]

 

[jetfishn]

Back in the day, when I was young and in a hurry, I was doing a mild rebuild on a Mazda piston engine PU, rings, rod bearings, valve job, timing chain, when I was getting close to done with the rebuild I had installed the camshaft, rockers, timing chain sprocket, and was tightening the sprocket bolt on the cam, well, a little too much arm and I had a two piece cam, was fit to be tied, but got over it and got a new cam and finished the rebuild and drove the truck many more miles.

 

[tweeker43]

replacing the thermostat on my mazda protege. dropped the bolt somewhere on the block. took me about 1.5 hours of fishing, digging, probing with magnet, and rocking the car to finally hear it drop on the floor.

heaven to my ears.

at work, we had to rebuild a small smc rack and pinion slide one night. the maintenance guy and i have to pull this whole stack of tooling to get to what we need.

we rebuild and assemble it - 6 bolts leftover.

tear it down and reassemble - 2 bolts leftover.

third time's a charm.

 

[cryptokid]

hah.
the time i was in the sandrail and the oil pressure gauge went to zero. i had just put in a new pump so i figured the gauge went bad. little did i know the oil pump drive had sheared off the pump! about 30 seconds later and the engine seized up solid. that was a hot running vw 1776cc with weber carbs, big cam, high compression heads, big valves. it was a real runner and i kick myself to this day for not shutting down when i noticed the gauge at zero.

 

[Drew99GT]

Not my messup, but a couple years ago I saw a website detailing a guy who I believe had the intake manifold or something off his miata engine, sitting on a work bench. Little did he know that he had accidently knocked a whole jar of BBs/lead shot into the manifold/engine somehow. You can probably guess the rest!! He had pictures of the teardown, and the piston tops just looked hilarious; bbs just smashed into the pistons. The valves looked the same way, just dimpled.

Another great one I saw online: a guy left the bottle heater on for his nitrous syetm accidently. The car was parked in his garage, which was below the main level of the house. The bottle got too much pressure, and essentially blew up one side of his house. It ripped the back half of the car off!!!!!! Great stuff

 

[Shannow]

My most heart wrenching mess-up (happy ending) was when the father of a girl I was going out with bought one of those quartz sparkplugs that you can set the mixture by the flame colour.

We tuned a few cars, and got around to mine, a 186c.i. Holden with triple 1 3/4" S.U. carbs, big head, and the works.

It seemed to be idling really well, ran hard on the way home.

Following morning I couldn't start it (no choke, and three carbs, I usually squirted 2ml of metho down the PCV port of the centre carb.

When I finally got it running, it was rough, and wouldn't rev.

There was white smoke (vapours) coming out of the crankcase breather and exhaust.

Called in a neghbour who (I thought) was mechanically switched on, and a few others who were, and they reckoned big internal issues.

I was 19, and had maybe $100 in the bank at the time.

Anyway, I'm adding up the cost of new parts, then though to set the S.U.s back to standard starting set-up "jet flat with the bridge, then richen 2 turns"

Ran like a charm, and no smoke, fumes, or anything.

 

[SteveD2]

Last september I took my "new" boat out for about the 5th time. I had just finished getting it running really nicely. It's a '72 Glastron with a 150hp Mercury outboard. I FORGOT THE OIL! Normally I let it warm up and keep the RPMs low for a while. This time I was so excited to get going I went right up to 6,000 RPMs. About 5 minutes later it died. Old engine, hasn't been started long, it probably just stalled. Started it. Another 5 minutes at WOT. Died again. Then I got a HORRIBLE fealing. No oil.

I quickly added about double the regular dose and tried to start it again. It turned over really slow and wouldn't start. Eventually it did start, ran really slow. Then it started to get back to normal, and we decided to stay for the rest of the day. We had fun for about 3 more hours.

Then I ran out of gas. I switched tanks, and for some reason it never started again.

My boat is REALLYhard to paddle.

 

[shortyb]

I've done several bone-headed things since I started playing with mechanical stuff, but this one cost me the most (in $$$ and pride). While being my typical a-retentive self, I was washing a battery (Optima, sealed) in the kitchen sink. I turned it over to rinse the bottom and heard a hissing sound. I thought that it was leaking for some reason but upon turning it over, I noticed that the posts were melted down abit. Then I looked at the sink (stainless steel) and noticed 2 holes burnt through it, leaking the running water all over the stuff below. After cleaning it all up, I tried to get to Home Depot and replace the sink before my wife saw it. No luck. As punishment, I had to buy the porcelain covered cast sink she had her eye on for awhile

.

 

[TooManyWheels]

A couple of things, one minor, one major.

The minor one was when I was trying to prime the oil pump after replacing a cam. I couldn't figure out why it was taking so long to get flow up the pushrods. For much of that time there was something niggling at the back of my consciousness. I finally identified it as the sound of liquid, but it wasn't in the engine. It was the oil, pumping out where I had removed the filter and not yet replaced it.

The major one - I was reinstalling the transmission in my truck after a long, careful rebuild. Apparently I managed to bend the flexplate somewhere in the trans removal or reinstallation. Now on the last phase and in a rush to get the project completed, I glossed over the bent flexplate and bolted the torque converter right up to it.

I fairly quickly realized my error, but the damage was done. Wiped out the pump and bushing, and I had to completely disassemble the trans to find the debris. So much for shortcuts.

 

[Pablo]

I don't have any really embarassing car idiocies -most car realted stuff involves either:

a) being too broke to get a good quality correct part, hence early breakage....and just waiting for the next cheapa$$ fix to break.
b) having too much money for my own good and replacing everything....and knowing the car is running great, but not knowing exactly which wad of cash did the trick.

Nope, most of my idiocy is home and yard related...typically plumbing....like the time I hacked through a water pipe "hidden" behind a waste pipe....or the time the toilet cracked open...or the leak at midnight....me and house pipes have this thing....

 

[TooManyWheels]

Pablo - I can identify with that. One Sunday morning we were awakened by a neighbor banging on the door to tell us our water main had broken. The drama was heightened by me having a job where I flew out of town every Sunday evening at 5 p.m. We got it fixed though!

 

[davidfarming]

My most mechically embarasing moment had to be when I tried to flush the coolant out of my father's 1971 Pontiac Grand Ville. I was trying to save my father some money, but it cost my pride and more money than I could think of. I tried to loosen the lower hose off the radiator, to drain the fluid, but it would not come off easily. So with all my strength, I pulled it off along with part of the radiator nozzle. It had rusted onto the hose. Needless to say, we had to call a tow truck to tow the car to the shop, where they welded the nozzle back into place. All told, we spent about $300.00 (1976 money) to change the radiator fluid, which should have cost around $10.00.

 

[JohnnyO]

Too many snapped off bolts to list. Most embarrassing I'd say was a simple thing really, about 17 years ago. Got home from work and decided to check the antifreeze in my '84 T-Bird. Take the cap off, stick the tester in. Squeezed the bulb and the whole glass tube, beads, little hose on the end, squirts off and sinks to the bottom of the radiator.

Later my (first) wife gets home to see me shaking the radiator over my head trying to get the thing out. Her fingers being smaller, she was able to get two in and pluck it out. The antifreeze was fine BTW, but checking it ended up taking me 2 hours.

 

[Thomas Pyrek]

before I knew much about cars...

Something happened to the case of the auto trans in our caravan and it was leaking fluid. At the time, this was the vehicle that I drove to school. I only noticed this when the trans was slipping when cold. Talked to my mom (who was even more clueless than I) Added some ATF till it was full and continued to drive it. Drove it like this for 3 or so more days. Next time it was slipping badly I checked the fluid and it was totally off the dipstick. added more and drove around the block, a nice red line showed itself in the fresh snow. We got a new (rebuilt) tranny which grenaded itself 7 months later... IN MACON, GA!

Yeah, I like manual transmissions now.

 

[labman]

I forget how I ended up at home without my keys. I couldn't have locked my self out of the house, because I installed dead bolt locks to prevent that. I wanted to go somewhere, and decided to hot wire my truck. I was getting nowhere with the ignition switch, and fell back on the wire with an alligator clip on each end. Unfortunately, I put it on the wrong terminal of the coil and added fried points to the problem.

Most of my life, I remember my MOTHER telling about the time my dad was working on the muffler, and something fell and broke his glasses, which cost more than having the muffler fixed would have.

 

[ikeepmychevytoo]

Not a mess up, but I spoiled some valuable time.

Even I bought it used it was a new thing for me... my car!. I was clueless about the oils back then, but I was 'smart' enough to do it by the book. Had it washed and then it was time for changing the fluids... Being an '84 model it reads "use SF oil only" on the dipstick. It was 1999 but I was so smart that even it took three days, stopping by all the gas stations, I managed to find that antiquated piece API SF oil. I couldn't sleep well if I get that SH junks.

You know, that beautiful feeling of knowing you did it right...

what was the subject? embarassment? (how does it spell...)

 

[Kestas]

I once inadvertently flushed my brakes with mineral spirits instead of brake fluid. I kept some mineral spirits in a conveniently sized 8 oz. container which happened to be an old container of brake fluid. After flushing with the proper brake fluid, I had to rebuild (again) all the calipers, wheel cylinders, and master cylinder on my 74 Torino.

To this day I make sure EVERYTHING is labeled properly at home and at work.

 

[TallPaul]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pablo:
...or the time the toilet cracked open...

---

I once replaced the main floor toilet because it was cracked (not leaking, just cracked) as a preventive measure. A month later the basement toilet cracked and flooded an inch of water over half the basement.

Trying to paint the grille on my truck once and couldn't get the childproof cap off. Got mad and laid the can on its side stabbing wildly to skewer the cap and pop it off. Missed and pierced the can. Black paint sprayed me in the face. I jumped back, the can flipped onto the floor of the garage and rolled all the way to the back (fwwwwwt, fwwwwwt, fttttw) leaving a trail of paint and spent itself onto the floor by the back door. I ran in the house to the washtubs and grabbed a bar of soap to wash me plastic lensed glasses off before the paint could set. Paint came off really well, but it was Lava soap. New glasses, about $100. Finally did get the grille painted.

 

[Last_Z]

Pablo, you continue to crack me up....you're too much, dude!

Well, my biggest mechanical mess-up started as a simple worn out fuel pump in my '88 Trans Am. I went to the local Discount Auto Parts and bought a replacement from them and installed it. Bad idea.....it would vapor lock on me if less than 1/2, 1/4 of a tank. Instead of getting an original AC Delco, I bought an "additional" mallory 60psi pump. It was mounted AFTER the in-tank pump, but I still had the vapor lock problem. Since I didn't know any better, I made the huge mistake of connecting the pressure relief return line right into the new pump instead of having dump the fuel into the tank (I basically closed-looped the system.) Well, that mistake raised the fuel pressure CONSIDERABLY. Such pressure busted the diafragm inside the pressure regulator and fuel started pouring into the cylinders. Right before the "climax", I was at WOT.....the engine shut off out of the blue. I stopped and try to restart the engine and then heard a cracking noise. Long story made short, I hydrolocked a cylinder which bent a piston rod. When I tried restarting the engine, the cylinder was still hydrolocked, so once the starter engaged, it couldn't turn the engine, so it cracked its own housing. The next day I found out the damage I had done; I removed the intake ducting and fuel poured out. Cleaned all that mess up, installed a new regulator, new starter and fixed my original mistake, the return line. Cranked the engine and to my amazement, it started right up, BUT with a terrible knock; much worse than if the engine had no oil. Turned out the damaged rod was not only bent, but also twisted and was hitting the counterweights on the crank.
My f*** up cost me money and 2 weeks of downtime. Lesson learned!

 

[Last_Z]

tallpaul,
good story....that was too funny, especially the lavasoft part