Stupid Mistakes I've made working on stuff, thread..

[dav_dman]

Okay, the guy that left the locating pins out of the head and didn't realize it until he had the engine back together has inspired me to fess up a mistake or two and see if anyone else is as dumb as me sometimes.

Here's one i hate to admit to:

Once after working 16hrs and then diving into an engine, i put the head on and couldn't find my shoprag. Pulled the head back off [cussing myself the whole time] and pulled the rag out of the piston hole at BDC. I need to print out a 'Backyard Mechanic' certificate and hang it on my garage wall after that one.

I tell me friends that one so they wont ask me to work on their cars/jetskis/whatever :aigo:

 

[927mgtepat]

lol, thats a good one

 

[CPT Furious]

I swapped my new motor in and I was sure everything was correct, but it wouldn't start and I had some weird electrical problems. Turns out I hadn't reconnected my grounds!

 

[Clip]

i fired up the car after taking the whole intake manifold off to replace the starter. that was my first mistake.

after everything was back in place i fired it up and it ran like shit. it would idle rough and almost always die if i wasnt revving it past 2k rpm. popped the hood and remembered to plug in the AFM

 

[Shytheed Dumas]

I was adjusting my timing and heard this really bad rattle when I started the car. Shut it off, looked things over and heard it again. I looked down the front of the engine because my fan blade wasn't turning, and saw that I left my ratchet on the crank, the handle had swung around and gotten stuck in the blade and the rattle was the sound of the ratchet clicking off like a banshee. Thank GOD I didn't have the ratchet reverse. No damage, except to my ego.

There, that should put me in the running with dav man.

 

[starscream5000]

Bought some autozone "silicone" vacume lines one time :3d_frown:. Fired up the car after replacing all my vacume lines, ran fine so I drove it around all day. After a while I noticed I could no longer hear my stock BPV. Got to my grandfather's house, popped the hood, the vacume lines colapsed together after they warmed up from the engine (larger vacume lines only, the smallest ones were fine). Lesson learned: Never buy autozone parts when replacing shit on the supra!

 

[CFSapper]

was working on a tree fort as a kid and did the whole

look out and the other guy looks up gave my best friend 43 stiches that way

 

[Tanya]

getting the engine back together, starting it up, only for it to run like complete ass.

after 20 minutes of cussing, finding out #5 and #6 plug wires were mixed up

 

[starscream5000]

^LOL, did that with my geo one time. Got in a hurry after just buying it to replace some much needed things: distributo cap, rotor, plug wires, and plugs. Pulled out all the wire without paying attention and when the time came to plug them back up... Yep, couldn't remember which one's went where. So I did the trial and error and after about 5 different setups, I finally found the right order .

 

[Tanya]

hehe, I think I have so many dumbass mistakes, it'll take me awhile to remember them all.


long before I learned how to drive stickshift, hubby and I were working on some POS Subaru wagon, which was manual. It had some timing issue or whatever, and hubby had me in the car, and told me to turn it over. NOT knowing that I had to have the clutch pedal in, or the shifter in neutral, I turned the key and nearly ran him over :biglaugh:


here's another dee dee dee from my early years:
trying to diagnose a friends Ford Escorts idling problem, I thought it'd be a brilliant idea to use one of my cars spark plug wires (as it appears one of hers were broken). Not knowing that my engine was still running (back in the days where I still had stock exhaust, and you couldn't even hear it running) I grabbed a plug wire and proceeded to get a nice shock. dee dee dee!


couple years back, my EFI relay started acting up. It would overheat and shut the car down, would have to let it cool before the car would start again. Well, while hubby was leaning in the engine bay trying to figure out why the hell it was doing that, he asked me to try to start the car. So I did.

He was leaning over the coil. :aigo: He must have jumped back about 15 feet, there was a nice 10,000 volt shock to his stomache, hahahhahahahha

 

[madseacow]

I've got all this beat, I pulled the motor twice because I could swear the leak was from the oil pan..... cam seals. Or how about running it up untill now without ever checking for boost leaks? "hmm, I wonder why I'm boost creeping.. oh well deedeeedaa"

 

[mkIIIman089]

After a big down time, started it up, and it ran like shit. Come to find I was missing about 2ft of upper IC pipe, lol. Excitement got the best of me big time on that one.

 

[starscream5000]

Lol, damn, that's a good one, was the air howling out of the IC pipe?

 

[jdub]

After a big down time, started it up, and it ran like shit. Come to find I was missing about 2ft of upper IC pipe, lol. Excitement got the best of me big time on that one.

Did the same damn thing!
"Why all that black smoke coming out of the tail pipe?"

 

[madsupra88]

Ok here we go,

One day i was testing my car for spark, so i pull one of the wires out, hook up an extra spark plug to it then touch it to a groung while having a freind crank the car for you. well me being and idiot, i had bad struts on my hood, so it would fall down every 2 minutes or so. i dont know what i was thinkin, but i was holding the spark plug from the tip of it where it sparks touching it to a ground, so my friend cranks the car, and the hood was starting to fall at the same time, it shocked me so bad, that i litterally jumped while smashing my head on the hood. so i got all freaked out, and noticed the car was still started, so i didnt want that spark plug touchin anything else, instead of shuttin the car off, i went ahead and grabbed the spark plug to move it, and shocked the hell outta me again. that was 4 years ago by the way ill never forget this moment.

 

[themadhatter]

i was doing a tranny swap and got a little to excited with the air wrench when i was bolting the motor and tranny together I manged to bend my 4 puck clutch disk so bad it looked like half a shpere

lession take your time and pay attention or you'll break expensive shit lol

 

[87CandyBlueT]

I was adjusting my timing and heard this really bad rattle when I started the car. Shut it off, looked things over and heard it again. I looked down the front of the engine because my fan blade wasn't turning, and saw that I left my ratchet on the crank, the handle had swung around and gotten stuck in the blade and the rattle was the sound of the ratchet clicking off like a banshee. Thank GOD I didn't have the ratchet reverse. No damage, except to my ego.

There, that should put me in the running with dav man.

I've done that, but not on the Supra.

 

[7MGTEsup]

When I first got my car back together after an engine refresh, I fired it up only for it not to want to run below 3000 revs. After lots of head scratching I remembered I had for got to put my block off plate on the back of the manifold so had a 20mm air leak. Or by far the worst, took it for its first test drive got 1/2 mile down the road only for they revs to head for the read line when I clutched to change gear. So I knocked it off and pulled over, had a look under the bonnet (hood) noticed the throttle linkage hadn't returned all the way to its stop. So I opend and closed it by hand a few times, then I heard a ping and though oh shit what was that. Limped it home at about 1000 rpm. Pulled off the intake pipe and there in the 3000 pipe was a tiny clip off a vac pipe.

 

[SLO-MK3]

Some good ones here, keep'em comming.

madsupra88, funny story man, I was waiting for you to say the hood fell on you after you smashed your head into it. I f*ckin' hate those pos struts. I use vicegrips to hold my hood up.:biglaugh:

Anyways, some of you may have read about this before. I've had a few mishaps, but this one haunts me every time I get on the boost.

I had just finished my swap(7mge-7mgte),got it running and everything was cool. I start test driving it around my house giving a little more boost each time, and pull into my driveway after each pass to make sure everything is still in tact(don't wanna go balls-out the first pass, ya know). So just when I'm sure everything is rock-solid, I go for a 2nd gear pull at 10psi and all of a sudden I hear a loud 'pop' and then a 'crunch' right after. I coasted home and come to find out an IC pipe had blown completely off and I ran it over.

Lesson learned: don't use cheap couplers and/or worm clamps.

 

[Shytheed Dumas]

In highschool I found out about how hard a spark plug can shock, too... on a 3 1/2 hp lawnmower. It was my dads, and the kill switch didn't work, so he used a rake to short the plug to the block. It was a hot day, and I had run out of something to drink way out in the yard. Since there wasn't a rake around I just grabbed an empty coke can on the ground without thinking and ended up flat on my ass.