"Mechanical Genius" comments you've heard?

I used to work for a mechanic who was really bad at electrical repairs. He had a mid 90's Cavalier in the shop one day that was blowing a 15 amp fuse within seconds of starting the car. I left for lunch. I come back and he says " I need you to replace some wiring behind the dash in the Cavalier." Guess what he did.... His bright idea was to stick 30 amp in it and see if it lasted twice as long.

I also had to then diagnose the original problem and found the shorted out solenoid on the transmission that was causing the problem in the first place.

 

An old drag racer from Birmingham named Dan Wells has been around since dinosaurs roamed...
Dan bought a new 61 Dodge he raced. At the time all they had were street tires and they spun as most of you know...

Dan's shop was next door to a Firestone tire store and he knew the owner. Dan was talking to him, "Dan, there's a new product coming out and I'm getting a set... They're called racing slicks". The next week they mounted them up. "How do you use them?"

Well, pour some soapy water over them, hold the brakes and spin them..Get them hot.

That Saturday they mixed up some soapy water in a lacquer thinner can.

That night when their class was called he pulled to the line, poured the soapy water over the tires then he heated them up, just as he was told by the Firestone rep.
I didn't see it but I can imagine it. Dan was pulling everything 3-4 car lengths off the line. Dan won the money that night easily.

The next weekend EVERYBODY was doing lacquer thinner burnouts.

By the end of the night most of the paint on all the quarter panels had dissolved.

 

I had a kid tell me a while back.."Im not too impressed with 5 litre mustangs...who cares how much gas it can hold?...

 

If he had just compensated by reversing the polarity on the electrical system, he would have been ok....

 

"i tryed to make like the original, so i put a 350 in it"
that was pretty good because he was working on a 1928 1/2 ton ford

 

Virgin Naugahyde...........I here its hard to find these days.

 

When I was a kid, I wrenched my own go kart and mini bike. Parents of the other kids in the neighborhood used to call me up to fix their kids' stuff. One day I get a call from richie rich's mother...richie's new dirtbike won't kick over, and would I take a look at it. (Actually mr and mrs rich were divorced and I figured out years later that the bike was a present to richie from dad to one-up mom, and there would have been hell to pay if it broke on her watch, but...I digress...) I get over there and the bike is in the driveway next to the hose and a bucket, sparkling clean because mom just made richie wash all the mud off of it. I give it a kick, and...locked up solid. I took the sparkplug off, and tried it again. Sploosh! Genious richie said he gave it a reeeal good cleaning, and even hosed out the muffler. The idiot hydrolocked the thing...

 

at a car show with my 50 olds powered by a 394 olds engine 3x2s dad was telling his son it was a 348 because it had 3 carbs,was a heavy duty diesel mechanic for 35 years heard one of our so called senior mechanics trying to explain wht he couldnt get a motor running to a driver,it had jumped cycle so he had to recycle it would take a few hrs--had to go take a leak on that one

 

Where do you get virgin naugahyde? Ugly Nauga's!
Thank you, thank you, I am here all week folks, try the drink specials!
CHAZ

 

dammit dammit dammit now i have coke that blew all over my monitor.

 

This one's probably more alcohol than stupidity, but most likely a mixture of the two!
My dad worked at a gas station in the mid 60's and the town drunk was a regular there. One day he came flying in looking all nervous so my pops asked him what was wrong. Looking nervously around the sky he explains that a helicopter has been after him all day, he can hear it but hasn't spotted it yet.
He had a flat tire.

 

A customer came in to the shop yesterday and said his rear disc brakes were squealing on the weekend. That is until he fixed it by spraying the hell out of the discs and pads with penetrating fluid......

 

Ok here's one.

A guy told me that you can't put a car engine in a truck because the revs would be different and the pistons would hit the heads!

I think that guy was a little stroked over!?!

 

I always liked the nimrods who talk about "289" Chevy engines or "283" Fords.

One that sticks in my mind is when I was parting out a '66 Chevy some years ago. I had an ad in the local racer classified and someone came over to buy an entire '66 Impala nose. So I showed him the two that I had and he tells me that they're both '67 noses.

I say "whaaaattttt?". I had a '67 Impala SS in the driveway and told him that THAT was a '67. he said, nope, no way. I go as far as to pull the reggie out of the glove box and show him that it reads "1967". He tells me it must be wrong from the DMV. I told him that I was sorry that I couldn't help him and he left.

Bob

 

"220, 221, whatever it takes." - Mr. Mom

 

Yeah but Can't never did nothin anyhow

 

I was standing near the Service Desk of the dealership I used to work at and overheard a conversation between the GM and an angry female customer. She was angry because after just having her brake rotors changed 6 months ago, she was told they were warped and needed to be replaced again. The GM asked her if she drove the car in the rain. She replied of course she did. He told her that the using the brakes a lot in the rain caused brake rotors to wear faster than normal and also caused them to cool down to fast causing the warping. A sideways look at the service manager showed him to be biting his tongue to keep from laughing. The woman made her apointment for the replacement, got into her van and proceeded to drive through the service area, aroud the building, out to the road, and then down the road as far as we could see with her brake lights on.

I asked the service manager if he might make mention of the fact that she shouldn't drive with her foot on the brake pedal next time she came in? He just smiled.

But guys remember don;t drive in the rain if you expect to get any wear life out of your brakes. GM Bob's tip of the day.

 

Does anyone else get really depressed reading these?
These stories really make me lose hope in humanity.

 

I lost hope in humanity years ago. People steadfastly believe bullshit and try to tell you you're a moron if you disagree. See 383 small block mopar further up the list.

 

Ah Yes --- They are among us.

 

Last year had a customer with a very nice 1968 Firebird convertible with a 455 and a turbo 400 in it. The customer had the car build at a shop in New Jersey a few years ago and now wanted to drive it here in Texas where he lived now. But the car ran rough.. way rough.

So we get the car, do a quick inspection and notice a 500cfm 4 brl carb on the motor, a "little" small for that engine. So we ask the customer for the specs of the engine, well he didn't know but he told us it was build to have lot's of power. We do some street tests and the car pings and coughs and overall runs like a dog. We ask the guy what kind of gas he uses "just the low octane stuff, there is no difference" (first indication we have a problem). So we drain the gas put in some good gas and some octane booster and the car runs much better. We do a compression test and measure 210+psi in each cylinder.. wow.. that's some compression.
So we call the guy back and tell him he's got a very high compression engine and needs to run better quality gas with a larger carb. His response "you obviously don't know what you are doing, I had the engine builder install the smaller carb so I wouldn't use so much gas and I could run on low octane fuel" whatever we said, he didn't want us to put a bigger carb on, even when we tested with a good ~850cfm carb we had in the shop and got much better results he didn't want us to upgrade his car.

We just tuned the car as best as we could and send him on his way with the advise to upgrade the carb and run racing fuel. When we talked to him the next day he was very happy with how the car ran, of-course it still had the good fuel in it that we put in, I wander if he noticed the difference when he got his own cheap gas.

 

A few years ago, a woman posted on Fordbarn, asking what her deceased fathers cars were worth.
She gave her name and city so I called her.
Her father had parked a Model T and a Model A next to his barn and left them sitting there for 35 years, out in the weather.
I tried to explain to her but she refused to believe.
She kept saying, "No, they were RUNNING when he parked them there."
There truly is no hope for the human race when we have idiots like this voting for President.

 

While standing at the airport waiting for my bags , some young genius standing there trying to impress his girlfriend said "his mechanic was trying to screw him over and told him he spun the mains , motors don't have a main, I think he wants more money from me , I wasn't born yesterday!" I was thinking he wasn't born yesterday but the day before

 

HAHA! Theory of relativity--- Don't knock up your relatives?

 

he meant to say i don't have a brain, you misunderstood him.

 

also how did he check the level???? Must have just dumped in 5 quarts and called it a wrap!

 

Yeah, I lost hope about the time Clinton got elected...

Buddy of mine trades a decent long bell 331 Hemi to this strange guy he knows who "collects" engines. Now it was a turning motor stored in the barn, complete except I guess a couple of pushrods or some goofy thing, I saw it myself a couple times - it was even clean and painted up nice. It was a trade for I think a clip for an old Thompson gun and some other pieces my buddy needed, and since the long bell Hemi isn't super desirable he let it go.

Anyhow, the guy leaves it sit outside uncovered in the rain for like three weeks. Then calls up my buddy, wants his gun back because he thinks he got ripped off because the motor's now set up. Well, yeah, it's probably full of water at this point, at the least.

Now this same guy has a '78 Camaro torn apart in the garage; has this tunnel ram small block he built and offered to trade me for something - but the motor's never been run. Makes me wonder if it would even run at all, or if it did how long before a major failure. Was after me for a '57 Pontiac for ages, then when I finally offered to sell, he decides it needs too much work - it doesn't need any more work than it needed 5 years ago.


Come to think of it, the same guy I emailed on some other swap deal and he spends three emails trying to tell me that Cadillac engines were made by Pontiac. No, they were all made by General Motors. No, Pontiac made them. After a couple emails I gave up trying to argue common sense with an unarmed man.


If it's any consolation, I don't think this guy votes - he has no license and would have to get one of his parents to drive him to the polls. Yeah, he's into cars, but can't drive them.

 

A bucket made of diamonds, what else?

 

oh he noticed it.... just hoping the owner wouldn't come back...

 

Heard this in high school "if you mount the coil with coil wire coming out from the bottom, gravity will let the sparks to run out of the coil"