modification blunders? shop disasters?

I was trying to start an old Stude 6 cyl. that had a hole in one piston (I did not know it until later). Fuel got in the crankcase and when it did fire it blew the oil fill/crankcase vent cap off which hit the lights on the shop ceiling -- loud BANG, glass raining down. I learned to stay out of the range of those caps.

 

damn! that was close!!! and it is funny now...good story teller! glad it worked out so well for ya! yikes

 

More of an "after shop disaster" in the bathroom. Had been doing some spray-painting with nothing covering my head, and sure enough had sticky hair. Went to the bathroom, got in the shower, and poured some "Goof Off" on my hair to cut the paint. The stuff ran down my back and down to my "nether-regions" in the...ahem...rear. Immediate burning ensued. I was yellin' and jumpin' around there for a minute 'til I got rinsed off. My wife and I still laugh about that one.

 

Its like the old saying goes... "don't wizz on the electric fence"

 

you win! bummer.

i have my share of blunders, but nothing dangerous as of yet. just regular stupid stuff like not taping off my garage door when i was painting, got overspray over the whole thing and the door turned pink.

 

I remember back in high school a good buddy of mine had(still has) a '67 Falcon that we worked on in shop class. I don't remember exactly what we were doing but I remember there was no hoist available so we jacked it up corner by corner and put it on jack stands....oops. After we had finished doing whatever it was we were doing, we dropped the car in the same way and thought we were done. Until we fired it up and put it in gear. Aparently we had twisted the unibody so bad that the driveshaft was rubbing against the tunnel. Man waht a noise that made. We had to send it down to a shop to have it straightened out and have sub-frame connectors installed. We learned a good lesson that day.

 

biggest blunder I ever made was putting a 65 mustang on the rotissierie I made for my Chevy. wasted a bunch of time and money on that one.

 

I used to be a hot shit sales kid at Super Shops. (Does that date me?)

I once sold a customer a set of tires for his vette. His mistake, he didn't bring the car in. Mine, I figured 245/70 was close enough. He came in to get them mounted on my day off. Apparently the look didn't go over very well. I had my ass chewed for hours on that one.

Same shop, always having the pinner whites low rider crowd come in wanting 185/60-13 mounted on 8" wide wheels. You know the style. Anyways, one of the shop guys yells at me to come look at this kids car while it's on the lift. He is losing a lot of oil from the axle, maybe the vent from being over filled or something. I get out there to diagnose for him and I find where the smart fellow that lowered the car had cut the coil springs a tad, removed the perch from the axle tube and welded the coil directly to the tube, blowing a hole it it in the process. We declined to install wheels and tires on that one....

 

Me and my dad were messing with a '51 5 window Chevy truck one evening, trying to get it to pump it's own gas from the tank. I would start it and he would pour gas from the old round metal can into the carb when it started to sputter. Sure enough it backfired through the carb and lit the gas can on fire. Dad was holding the can and there was a small blue flame shooting out of the spout and making a scary low whistling noise. Dad, being a cool head, simply twisted the cap back on and slowly set the can on the gound. We stayed about thirty feet away from it for several minutes until we figured it was probably safe. I always thought it was pretty cool how he kept his head and didn't just instinctively throw the can which surely would have resulted in a hairier situation, as we were in a yard full of foot-tall dead grass.

 

When I was in highschool my friend went to use his uncles garage to put a HEI coil and new plugs and wires in his 55 chevy pickup. When he was done he fired it up and to show off to me he decided to powerbrake it to give a little smoke show. Unfortunately his uncles garage had a pit installed as a cheaper substitute for having a lift. The rear tires kicked out one of the pieces of plywood covering the pit and dropped the left rear wheel. Needless to say it completely ripped the box from the frame and crumpled a perfect fender, box, bumper and tailgate.

 

I worked on European cars for most of the 80's and 90's. I was rebuilding my first Porsche 914 gearbox with my boss looking over my shoulder, helping when needed. I got it together and put it back in the car. I was cleaning up while my boss took it for a test drive. I watched as he kept fucking with the shifter. He finally backed out and started in with the shifter again. He then pulled back in and shut it off. When he got out he was trying not to laugh. It had 5 reverse gears and 1 forward. I had put the carrier in with the ring gear on the wrong side of the pinion and he watched me do it and didn't catch it.

 

I learned the hard way not put the ground cable on the rear axle, when welding at high amperage, or at anytime.
I was Doing some welding on the frame. And let me tell ya, it is one hell of a way to let the smoke of the E Brake cables. It's the only path for the ground, since the everything is mounted in RUBBER.

 

Way back, newly married, jacking up our Fiat 1500 Crusader with the supplied jack, ( goes into the square hole under the rocker)..to do some unremembered maintenance. Brand new 1st ever Motorguard socket set (in a steel case) laid out ready for action....car is on a slight slope.... car slowly rolls back off of the jack and squashes said brand new Motor guard socket set much to my horror!
I still have that socket set and it has been invaluable,...as a reminder if for nothing else.

It turned out to be my first panel beating experience too.

 

Had my oil burner carb over fill the burner pot & I had 2 feet of flames coming out of the sides. Grabbed my welding gloves, picked it up and threw it outside in a snow bank. Snow is good sometimes. Setting the oil presure on my new AOD trans in my Merc. and the 8th inch line blew oil on my hot exaust, big fire . Step 1 cover fire with a blanked, NOT, step 2 blow it out with an air hose, that work. The fire extenguisher was the close by for the next step.

 

I worked in a body shop run by a lazy drunk. We did mostly cars but through a friend of the owner we also had the account to work on Ryder rental trucks. A few weeks after I started we repaired a truck and were preparing to deliver it. The big over head door of the stall where the truck was repaired had two operator switches, one by the door and one by the office. My lazy boss didn't want to wall all the way to the door so he opened it from his office. I was in the truck and thought the door was all the way open when I proceeded to pull out. A second after I started moving I heard a crunch and a bunch of crap fell onto the hood of the truck. Almost immediately I heard my boss screaming his head off. I caught the bottom edge of the door. It was a big door, 15' wide, and old, they couldn't find replacement parts so the entire door had to be replaced. At the time I was 18, sick to my stomach and worried I'd lose my first job in a body shop. Now it makes for a good story and I can laugh about it.

Remember: Tragedy + Time = Humor.

 

The Cool Head Award goes to............Dad!


.

 

http://i35.tinypic.com/2e1dk6w.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/2j18wew.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/30j193b.jpg
http://i37.tinypic.com/1z3p1cj.jpg
http://i38.tinypic.com/552m83.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/a0dl01.jpg
http://i37.tinypic.com/2yo692g.jpg
http://i38.tinypic.com/6xvnmw.jpg
http://i35.tinypic.com/5pn22v.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/aue0qv.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/15d5jjk.jpg
http://i37.tinypic.com/25u2z6b.jpg
http://i34.tinypic.com/2j2z1j7.jpg

some poor body work on a local car

 

That is some Kwalatee work! That is about what most of the body shops here do. I can't compete on price, and most jokers think work like that is good.

 

Now THAT is some funny stuff right there!!!!

 

Grind off all that filler and the car will probably lift about an inch or more!

 

Not having seen a tool like that before, what do those measurements equate to?

 

no idea what the measurements equate to , i found the pics posted on a local forum

 

lol yikes.. they should have painted it white.

 

About 40 years ago I had a 65 elcamino that was giving me some grief one day. It wouldn't start. I figured the battery was weak and needed a charge put on it. I hooked up the charger to the battery, then went and plugged in the unit to the wall.(not noticing the charger was dialed to the highest setting) I heard a hissing noise. ??? I ran around to the front of the car only to realize I hadn't removed the battery caps. Just as I reached for the cap" KA-POW" a cap blew. It hit me right in the middle of my forehead. It knocked me straight up. I went into the house to wash the acid off me, then I glanced in the mirror. Front and center were the words DELCO -REMY on my forehead. Took a few days for that to go away. I learned some shit about charging batteries that day.