Hot Rods The stupidest thing I did in the garage.

I have dropped tons of things under and around cars while working on them , some I have found, some just disappeared forever! Last week we had the race car up on Jack stands working on it. I dropped a small bolt and for the first time in my life I actually saw it fall! It was wonderful! I watched it hit the cement, bounce, roll and end up neatly tucked right in the inside corner of the angle iron leg of one of those Jack stands! I actually got to watch a bolt hiding! It was awesome!







Bones

 

Had to TIG a bit on a primary cover of an O/T two-wheeled conveyance. This won't take but a minute and I got a lot of other crap cluttering up the welding table, so I'll just set it on this 30 gallon drum I use for a trash can. Zzzzzzt, Zzzzzzt, Zzzzzzt, Zzzzzzt the weld is looking good but DAMN it's really getting warm here. HO LEE SHIT!!! No wonder it's getting warm, I got a fire in the trash can. Luckily i had the welding gloves on, so grabbed the can and dragged it outside where I just let it burn.

It was a really stupid deal, but could have been a lot "stupider".

 

Whats worse is that I have seen that happen, watch were it goes...and STILL can't find the damn thing!

 

The older you get the more shit you drop

 

Was given a 1957 Dodge Custom Royal D-500 2 door sedan by a neighbor farmer. Sat for years in a grove.
325 Hemi engine, 285 hp. 3-speed column shift. Engine locked up tight. Drug it on a trailer to get home.
Put it in the garage.....so this qualifies as a garage story.
Tried all sorts of remedies to free the engine and none worked so I parted it out.
This was in 1977 and looking back it was a pretty dumb thing to do.

 

Sometimes I totally amaze myself with my utter stupidity. Other times I walk away thanking the guardian angle that is looking out for my dumb a$$.
I was finishing up a drag car to be a weekend warrior back in the mid 1980's. It was a slightly off topic 68 GTO but that is totally beside the point. I had everything finished, double checked and was warming it up on a Saturday afternoon in my dad's garage. The rear end of the goat was up on jack stands about 2ft off the floor. I wanted to make sure it was right before I loaded it up on a trailer and went to the drag strip to shake it down. only issue was the slicks on the back were just a little bit too wide and when I kicked the throttle a little too hard in second gear the car twisted on the rear springs & the right slick hit the jack stands, shot it out the garage about 80ft into the neighbors front yard across the street, dropped down on the ground and preceded to drive right through the back wall of my dad' garage over the patio furniture and table, into the back yard. whole doghouse on the goat was messed up. Hood was fiberglass and sitting on the roof and was all smashed up. windshield was destroyed. grille was all broken up. When it kicked the jack stand out it totally caught me by surprise and I floored it for a few seconds.
I got out of the car, dad came out the back door, we both stared at each other and the back wall of the garage and each other for several minutes before either of us said anything.
Dad was the coolest father that anyone could have had as the only thing he cared about was that I was ok. he said to fork the garage and car they could easily be replaced which the insurance did do. I on the other hand am a totally clueless idiot that needs to be watched carefully around power tools and hammers.....

 

Working on a customers car and dropped a bolt searched all over , guess it went into that twilight zone where they all end up. A couple of months later I'm using the trouble light and see the missing bolt stuck yo the magnet on back of light . Thing is I've used that light many times and never seen that bolt !

 

If pant legs could talk.

 

I try not to do stupid, but sometimes it just happens. A bit of dyslexia occasionally sneaks in, and I've been known to do something backwards, and sometimes catch it before I get too far, but sometimes not.
Just a week or so ago I was installing the line lock on my '39 Chev gasser project. Got the solenoid mounted, wired, plumbed, and just needed to bleed the brakes. Next morning I'm laying out my tools to bleed the lines when I look at the plumbing and realize I plumbed the solenoid into the line to the rear brakes! Crap!
So a couple hours later, and new lines bent up, and I fixed my screw up. Laughed at myself once it was done, but was not happy when I discovered the stupid mistake.

 

I get the feeling this post is gonna grow to 10's of page in size

 

I’ve made some of my best double flares, without the fitting on the lines.

 

A friend had a Nova with a blown up sbc and auto trans. So Saturday morning we go buy a junk pick up that is stick. Drive the truck home and the Nova owner, another friend, and myself go to work. Pull the two engines, drop in the replacement. We had it switched over in less than 2 hours. We were proud of ourselves that the replacement engine was still warm and we were ready to fire it up. Hit the key to start it and the starter just spun. Seems one of us forgot to put on the flexplate.

 

99% of the time, anything I drop will go to the floor directly in the center of the vehicle's footprint.

 

Hey dumb ass ^^^ = >>>ME! Bet I done did it morest than you!! Looking all over for the red felt tip marker, it was in my shirt pocket felt up, no cap. It did a fine job of marking my shirt, neck and chin.

 

I stopped a buddy just in time on a deal like that. Quick weld job, weld table was covered, so he moved it over to barrel and started to set up.
It was a 55 gallon drum of Naphtha with a shop rag laying over the opening because the barrel pump had been removed.

 

Welding and caught my shop on fire....

 

Not in the garage but working off the tailgate of my truck. I was using a grinder with a cut off wheel cutting some brackets. With sparks flying I caught my fleece jacket on fire. Put it out several times and got a towel to wrap around me to protect the jacket. Caught the towel on fire also. After finishing the job I put towel and grinder on tailgate and took a break to my recliner. My wife comes home and rushing into the house to tell me my tailgate was on fire. Towel have fired up and burned the cord off the grinder and the bedliner on the tailgate was melting down to the ground.

 

My biggest mistake was when I had learned welding at school and I said yes to fix some rust on my brothers Fiat Uno from the mid eighties... I planned to change a bit of the channel, so I found a spot on the cars floor that I thought was a good place to put the jack. (I could not jack on the channel because I was going to cut it away). I jacked, and luckily the phone rang, so I went inside. Came out again, and thought to myself: didn't I jack the vehicle? I found out that the floor also was very rusty, and the jack now only lifted the carpet from the floor...
I found a new spot for the jack, cut out a piece out of the channel, made a piece to fit, layed down on the garage floor and started tacking.
Suddenly I felt something cold and wet running down my glove, so I immediately stopped welding to find out what it was. It was gasoline! The Italians thought it was a good idea to run the gas line through the right side channel and the gas line was just as rusted as the channel. I pushed the Fiat out of the garage and told my brother to never bring the car here again!

Rune from Norway

Sent fra min S52 via Tapatalk

 

Rebuilt a T-bird cruisomatic once. Started the car, put it in drive and went backwards. Another mechanic then told me the sprag can be but in 2 ways. The right way, and backwards.

 

It will. Here's 22 pages of similar stunts over on the Garage Journal.

 

Not that I ever did it, but a “friend of mine” had his car lifted from the pumpkin and was running it in gear. “My friend” after a bit leaned on the rear 1/4 and watched the car slam into the water heater


Why were my folks pissed at me?

 

I've got quite a few, spread out over 60 (+/-) years. Almost all of them I can think of right off hand are motorcycle or woodworking related. The only one I can think of right off hand involving cars/hot rods was the time on the way home from Chicago in Clarence. I was200 miles from Chi Town and 175 miles from home. Fortunately for me Sherry was right behind me in a late model. I had a flat on the right rear about 2 hours after pitch dark had set in. We were on 2-lane US-54 between Pittsfield, Illinois, and the Mississippi River. I found a wide enough spot on the shoulder and pulled off; jacked up the truck; removed the tire; put the spare on; and got back on the road. Shortly thereafter we started our descent down to the 4-way stop in Atlas, Illinois, which is about a 200 foot drop in a mile or so. As I started slowing down for the stop sign I noticed that I wasn't slowing down very well. It was right about then and there that I remembered that (for some reason I can't remember) I had removed the brake drum and set it inside the back of Clarence. I coasted through the stop sign and out onto the Mississippi River bottom (table top flat for over 5 miles). I did safely coast to a stop; jacked Clarence up again; put the drum back on; and proceeded to home. Had Sherry not been behind me to leave her headlights on I'd have still been there when the sun came up the next morning.

 

Bragging or complaining?

Ben

 

Had the radiator out of my OT Oldsmobile.
Started to get dark so I wanted to pull it a bit forward under the garage light.

As soon as the engine fired I knew what an idiot I was. Within half a second and shut it off but too late, huge ATF puddle.

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Another one I recall was almost 50 years ago. I had (what for me was) a pretty hot '64 Plymouth that had the drivetrain from a '68 GTX. You know the drill; 440, 4-speed, headers, double pumper Holley, etc. I found a set of 15x10 chrome wheels with "Indy" tires on them. I jacked up the car using a bumper jack. Remember that's all we had back then if you didn't have a floor jack. Even with both rear tires off the ground the wide tires still wouldn't fit under the car. I unhooked the rear shackles to lift higher. The wheels/tires stuck out several inches past the fenders so I couldn't let the car down 'cause the fenders would then be sitting on the tires. Brainstorm: I go up to the local Western Auto and buy a set of those helper springs; the ones with coil springs set on saddles that clamped on top of the axle housing. I put those in there and let it down. I don't remember how I did it but I had to jack up the rear of the leaf springs just to get the shackle bolts back in. The car was riding totally on the helper springs. Wow!!! I thought it looked way cool. Note: today I wouldn't think so, but I was only 18 or 19 at the time. I had to test it out so off I went. OOPS; no brakes. I hadn't noticed but when I jacked the car up that high off of the axle the rubber brake line between the frame and axle had been pulled apart. Somehow I got back home (parents' house) without hitting anything. Smart me, I get into dad's coffee can of bolts/nuts/screws/etc. and find a metal screw the right size to screw into the remains of the rubber brake line. Bled the brakes and drove the car on front brakes only for several months. Some of those miles I put on it were significantly above the posted speed limits. I've been fortunate that in my life God has taken care of me when I was too stupid to take care of myself.

 

Another act of pure stupidity by me. I was 17 and was working on my OT 69 nova in the garage on a school night. It was late and my mother came out and told me I should get done after all it is a school night. I quickly finished up and set my lift off fiberglass hood onto the car. I had just got the hood a few days ago and cut the hole to clear the 671 blower and painted it. The next morning I fired up my beast and proceeded to blast down the road to school. You guessed it!! Forgot to put the hood pin clips in. The hood flew off and over the car and wound up in the woods. My new hood was no longer one piece.

 

Did similar on my OT drag car about 25 years ago. Had fiberglass hood, on stock hinges with no springs. Forgot hood pins, took "test drive" in my neighborhood. Hood flew up, then fractured off the hinges. Got the privilege to buy a new hood on that one.

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I've caught stuff on fire, thrown things and broke out windows, and other normal dumb stuff, but a friend of mine put a lift in his shop and it had sheet rock on the 10' ceilings. The first few times he was pretty careful, but the first pick up he put on it he ran the top of the cab through the ceiling. Now we can laugh about it, although I always thought it was funny.

 

one on me (I know there must be others) and one on a relative.
I was torching on some metal in the shop and started to smell something burning?? My jeans were frayed at the ankle where they were cut off......and rapidly getting shorter No harm done. That was in the 70's.

Just a few years ago I was visiting my cousin and he wanted to know if I wanted to go for a ride in his "hodge podge Dodge", a fabbed frame, 40 something Dodge cab with a combination of IHC and some other front clip, short box, straight axle and a hot SBC with a racing T350 if I remember right. We drive out of town after having gotten sideways on a side street, go about a mile out of town turn around and drop the hammer, we must have been doing between 60 and 80 and the hood just lifted right off the vehicle just as we are about to meet a car, the hood flies high and lands in the ditch, we get stopped put it back on, he only had a latch on the front, no hinges/pins on the back. He has always been lucky. EDIT here is a picture of the aforementioned vehicle.