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

I thought I saw a thread like this a while back but can't find it. I just wanted to add to it!

-->Just put a HEI dist. (coil on cap) in my 283 chevy. Spent about 1 hr scouting a place to mount my old coil and then fabbing a new bracket! (I Had to move it because it wouldn't clear that huge dist. cap!) Then went to hook it up and realized that I just wasted about 1.5 of my time!!!! duh!

Anybody wanna share their stories it sure would make me feel better haha!

 

That is too funny .I`m sorry. I spent 20 mins Friday looking for my safty glasses and they were on my head!!

I seem to be having more of the Duh moments now that I`m over 40.

 

I had about 6 friends over to put the finishing touches on an O/T big block chevy project and someone accidentally wired it like a Ford. Ten minutes of cranking later, POW! sounded like an f'ing shotgun. Ill never forget 18436572 after that. Lol.

 

I was helping a friend bleed the brakes on a '68 GTX, kept pumping but wasn't getting anything. His girlfriend walked by and commented that I had my foot on the clutch.

 

Put a new oil pump and pickup in my flathead V8. Shimmied the pan back up under the car, put the exhaust back up, 5 quarts fresh oil.

Putting my tools away I noticed the gasket that goes between the pickup and the pump still in the package.

 

Awhile back I ran my cell phone over with my model A after I had set it on the cowl. It survived for a little while longer after that. That was a duh moment.

Another one is turning the gas valve off while running errands then driving off until the motor starts to run lean.-Weeks

 

Squablow,,your're a brave man to tell that on yourself.
My most recent, DUH, was to cut a gear lever hole in the back instead of the front of a new floorboard of an OT truck I'm doing.
But i saved the day by using the plug from the correct location to plug the wrong location, it was plywood.

 

long ago (sure seems like a lot of my recollections begin that way) I purchased a W&H DuCoil for a 301 sbc I was stuffing into a 55 BA post. Used, but in excellent condition. No instructions of course. Got it in, hooked up two coils mounted on the firewall each side of the dizzy. Got cute and coiled (no pun intended) the wires around some small diameter tubing so they would look like springs. Got everything in place and got in to crank 'er up - plenty of cranking (8D battery in the trunk) but no a lot of firing. Pops and bangs...got out...checked the wiring order...yep...18436572. Bumped the mark around to 8° BTDC, popped the cap to make sure we were looking at #1 - roger that. Checked for fuel (Holley 3310), good squirts all around. Jumped back in the cockpit...kicked 'er over again - same crap...sputtering, tried to run - N F G. Sat on stool, opened a Coors...thought about what could have changed - car ran with the stock 'vette DP I had in it to break the engine in. Finally my brain kicked in...DUH...if each coil fires alternately, then the current will be directed (by the DOUBLE CARBON CONTACTS on the rotor) to alternate cylinders. Gee...what a revelation. Sorted out the wires, jumped back in the left seat, hit the key and she fired right up...a rumpety rump....so proud of myself for that insightful analysis. While I was busy patting myself on the medulla oblongata, I noticed an untoward amount of smoke coming from the two 'custom' coil wires...I had inadvertently (stupidly in YOUR language) created two resistors. Once I replaced those two mangled messes with the appropriate length of wires, I once again started the care, and everything was fine. Fortunately, my reputation as a master hot rodder was safe (until this confession of course) as there was no one around while I was embarrassing myself.

dj

 

Ha! Awesome! Always love to hear these stories. I feel ya on the model "a" I used to drive abuddies during an exhibition race at the fairgrounds. In between rounds we would shut the valve off because it liked to leak a little. Started the next round pulled out then it died! After cranknin on it for a while in front of a small crowd my buddies pushed me off the track. As soon as I was off the track pat (the owner) with out saying a thing just walked over reached under the cowl turned the valve on and walked off laughing! ..... Oops haha

 

When I built my T bucket in the early 70's the 283 was the first Chev V8 that I had owned that I had done any actual work on. I rebuilt the engine and got it in the roadster and spent about two days trying to get it to start. Then about 02:30 in the am I woke up with a revelation that it didn't have the same distributor rotation as my Olds and went out in my bathrobe and rewired it and fired it up. I don't think the neighbors appreciated that too much though.

 

Along time ago car would not stay running long ,Winter ....Replaced distributor ,Battery and swore the parts guy sold me a bad battery ,They were cool about it and gave me another one ,Any way It was the alternator ,I was young and dumb throwing money at the wrong parts . Also scrapped atruck because of a broken belt in a tire ,It was a pos anyway and trans was slipping .....I thought the front end was bad also .....Scrapped a truck I put a caddy in ,Couldnt get it to run ,Realized years later reverse rotation One more ,Grant it I was on something back when these moments happened ,1st car I did not finish ,Painted motor and left masking tape inside ........Thats all I have ,,,,

 

Drinking in moderation is fine and only users lose drugs.

 

I needed to fabricate a steering shaft out of Double D stock. I had to run from the steering column to the u join at the center support bearing and from the support bearing to the steering gear. I took a rough measurement and because it’s pretty expensive (Using stainless) I bought just enough shaft material (36 inches) to do the job. I measured and cut the top shaft and did a trial fit and it was perfect. With the upper shaft in place I slid the lower joint on and measured the lower shaft. With the last measurement in hand I took everything apart and laid it on the work bench. The wife had been calling me to supper so I figured that I had better go before I got into trouble. When I came back out I picked up the shaft and marked where
it needed to be cut and hacked it off. Thinking that I was all set I decided to put everything together to see how it worked. I put the lower shaft in place slid the support bearing on and then the joint and upper shaft. When I positioned the support bearing to my disbelief the upper shaft was too short to reach the column……..WTF it fit an hour ago. After scratching my head trying to figure what went wrong I realized that when I came back from supper I picked up the piece that I had cut for the upper shaft and cut it for the lower one. Of course the remaining piece was too short to make a new upper shaft. If measure twice cut once is a good practice then measure twice cut twice must be better! If anyone needs a piece of
DD shaft I’ve got some left over.

 

Was doing an intake manifold swap on my buddies SBC. Everything went great, got all of the gaskets lined up, used some RTV to make the end seals, set the manifold on, and buttoned her up. Then I realized the shop rags I had layed down in lifter gallery were still in there.

 

hell, when i was 16 driving my ot car, camaro, oil and smoke in the rearview mirror, parked looked like oil pouring out the back bottom of the pan, shit, i blew this sucker up, spent all weekend pulling the motor, only to find that the starter gear exploded when i started it and put 2 tiny holes in the oil filter sparaying driectly on the flexplate, so, u pulled and engine to replace the oil filter and starter.........duh.....and my dad just watched the whole time as he had a broken hand.........neither of us thought it could be something so small........duh.......moment for sure....

 

Oh my I am having flash backs to stupid things I have done.Tooo many to count!!

Tried to plug the air drill into a extension cord!!

Think the best one was when I was going up in the woods to get some parts off a old car I took a rack of 3/8 sockets with a 1/2 inch ratchet!! Needless to say I never got the parts that day!

 

I just hooked my mig welder up to gas, and couldnt figure out why it was welding like ass. Came on here and found out I forgot to switch the polarity.

 

Bought a wooden 1966 18ft Super Sport Chris-Craft boat in the early 90's and spent months restoring it in my driveway, the worst part of the whole ordeal was sanding and varnishing. It was powered by the original 327 Chevy, new plugs, points and wires were installed, when I got to the part of firing this thing up I tried for 2 days with no success, I double and triple checked everything including 18436572. As I was sitting on the edge of the boat thinking what the hell am I doing wrong here, I looked down at the intake manifold and saw "firing order 12756348" cast into it.. the SOB was a reverse rotation engine. Swapped the wires and fired first hit... Yes their is a God..sorry for using your name in vain 500 plus times the last 2 days.. forgive me..anyway now I'm curious as to why this thing runs backwards so I call the Chris-Craft Museum in Florida and talked to a very nice guy who explained to me that the boat is a right hand drive and with the driver only in the boat the torque or yaw of the motor running in reverse rotation helped lift and right the boat to a straight and level plane across the water other wise the boat would be trying to constantly turn right. Once it was explained to me.. the Duh light went on.

 

Got another one!! Buffing a fender skirt on a 59 Chevy and I placed it on a blanket so as to not scratch it!! and placed it on a table and turned on the buffer and of coarse locked the trigger!! Well while buffing the skirt I caught a corner on the skirt and pitched the skirt across the shop and then the buffing wheel hooked the blanket and pulled the buffer out of my hands and proceeded to wine up the blanket around the buffer.!!! Note to self!!lol

 

Not on a car, but when I was farming in the 80's I noticed that a top roller bearing on my small bulldozer was very loose....as in wobbling a lot....
Bought a new one, and put off installing it for a month or so....finally decided to do it, and when I went down the to shed to bring it up, I went to wiggle the bearing.......AND IT WAS FINE......
I must have dreamed it....geesh.....
And NO I never took that bearing back, as I didn't want to explaine why I didn't use it.....

 

While recently doing the brake lines on my model A truck I cut the line bent it perfect and put a good flare on it and go to put it on and......DUH I forgot to put the burrel nut in it. Unfortunatly I dont learn and did it twice, but not on the same line at least.....

 

I hate it when that happens. I did the same thing on a 283 before.

 

Just now. I thought this thread was about dull moments not duh moments.

 

This one time, at band camp......Actually it was at the Pile-Up years ago. Got all pissed up the night before at the hotel-then went out the next morning to start my sled and...nothing! Saw some other rodders in parking lot so asked them over for a jump. While they were all hooked up and I went to try it again I remembered I installed a toggle/kill switch under the dash because I had a touchy contact switch on the side of the carb on my Buick straight eight! They started their truck, I flipped the switch, started it up and said "Thanks Guys!!"

 

Every god damn day I have a DUH, usually I put some'thin down and then can't find it..

 

last summer I was trying to cut a piece out of some plate my brother picked up. The cut off wheel wouldnt cut it, wore out about 3 or 4 of those. dulled (and broke) a few saws all blades, and some jig saw blades. finally decided I would torch it out even though I didnt want to use a torch. Even the torch wouldnt light it off. WTF! turns out, it was stainless steel. grabbed a regular steel plate and had the part torched out in 2 minutes. I must have spent 4 + hours on that piece.

 

spent 2 hours fabbing a lower drivers doorskin- made a wooden pattern, cut the sheetmetal out, wheeled the contour out, flanged the edges- i go to put it on the car only to realize i flipped my pattern and made one for the passenger side.

 

I was working all day and night to get a willys ready for a car show in sweden... i thought i had done everything right but the car would keep lugging and just not run right.. i used the last day and night trying all kinds of stuff, test driving etc.. then after making sure i could ride with a freind early next morning to sweden, during my last cup of coffee around midnight i saw what was wrong from the stool i sat on.. the cable end on the pos wire on the coil were just put into the theaded stud and the thumb nut were just barely entered not making a good connection for the saturation, probably during reassembly to keep track of wires.. all i had to do was tighten the nut and the car ran perfect..

I also had the habbit of ordering parts several times for the same car.. my partsman told me over the phone: i`m pretty sure you have that part, probably several.. I walked out by the shelves and found 2 new ones in boxes and a big box of several NOS ones.. classic..

 

You don't have a long lost brother in Australia do you??

The most embarrassing thing I ever did is O/T and was in front of over 100,000 people. We were at the Hobart Regatta one of the worlds largest sailing regattas. This was back when I was a member of the 'Red Berets' Australian Army Parachute Display Team.
We were going to do this big display of an '8 way star', 8 paratroopers jumping in formation with red smoke, looks great. We all exit the aircraft, link up in free fall and pop smoke.
Anyway we normally do 'Hop and pops' jumping out at about 4,000 ft, deploying our canopys and coming down in a 'team stack'................ but not this time!

Well for the regatta the 'Star' was initiated by getting out of the aircraft at 14,000ft, linking up, popping smoke and falling in formation.
As is normal for an 'RB' display its just a big 'pissup' the night before we all went out and got well and truly tanked.
The next morning with a raging hangover I geared up, boarded the aircraft with the rest of the team and promptly fell asleep until we got to height.
We all got into position to exit the aircraft 'Green' light lit up, then on 'Go' we all ran off the ramp where I promptly carried out the 'normal' hop and pop procedure. I dumped my canopy at 14,000ft and watched the team fall away from me. D'OH!
Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is hanging in one of those rigs for that long? Then the bastard event commentator singled me out once on the ground to ask why I was different to the others in the display. Its amazing the BS you can come up with!
I never drank before a demo again, in fact I have only drank about four times since!

Doc.

 

I spent a day rebuilding the front end on mt o/t bronco. I got it all together. put the wheels on and dropped it off the jack. I was so proud of myself that i went for a test drive and thats when i realized i didn't tighten the lug nuts. I spent the next day replacing parts that i bought the day before.