Paper towels make the whole trip!

I don't feel so alone now....Helping a buddy rebuild 289 for installation into a Econoline van. Too late and 2 many beers, neither one of us realized that when we made a new oil pump gasket, we only forgot one thing. A hole for the oil. Ahhh those were the 70's.

 

I was working on my '30 coupe (in 1965) and was going to touch up some spots with grey primer. The paint sprayer can was an uncleaned mess as usual, so I just screwed on the quart mason jar I mixed the paint in, it fit perfect. There is a reason there is a warning about not doing that exact thing printed on the old spray guns. It worked fine for about one minute...then she exploded...what a mess. I always kept the gun clean after that.

 

Once did an oil change on my 327 with the old style canister filter. Drove around the block to test and when I got back I saw a trail of oil heading down the street from where I'd done the change. So I installed the O-ring seal and another gallon of oil...

 

On a new Walker radiator they put plugs over the inlet/outlet and then paint over them.

You can hardly tell that they are there

 

Not an engine story, but about 20 years ago I had a small stump in my backyard and a new tree was growing by it so I was going to remove the stump when a friend comes over with his old 59 ford pu.
He had a 340 buick, turbo 400 in it and was pretty strong. He hooks a 20 foot chain on the stump and to his rear bumper. Takes off like he's in a drag race and when the chain tightened it brought him to a sudden halt with him all up against the steering wheel. He rolls out and falls to the ground holding his ribs and trying to breath.
Not enough to stop this guy he idle's the truck up at the carb and stands outside the truck and drops it in low. Truck takes off and gets stalled by the sudden stop. Does it three more times and the stump finally comes out and the truck keeps going, headed for the neighbors house. He ran for all he was worth and caught it and got it stopped 3 feet before taking out the neighbors house. Couldn't stop laughing for a half hour.

 

hey 39 all ford, a friend left a couple of shop towels in the lifter gallery and blew his engine. Those towels shreds plugged the inlet screen of the oil pump.

 

I installed a Kenne Bell supercharger on my car a few years ago (Cobra Replica that I've since sold). When I was done, the thing wouldn't fire. I spend a while checking all the wires, connections, testing fuel pump, looking for spark, everything I could think of.

Then I looked up and sitting right there was the plug wire that goes from the coil to the dizzy...not plugged in to the top of the cap.

That's 2 hours I'll never get back.

 

Forgot to engage the emergency brake on my just-restored/rodded '67 (or was a it a '68? I forget, it was about 25 years ago) 'Cuda coupe. Manual ******, natch. I lived on a hill at the time. Woke up the next day, no car.....so I called the fuzz and reported the car stolen.

It wasn't stolen after all, it was wrapped around a tree in the neighbor's yard down the hill. I laugh now, but wasn't laughing then!

 

...friend's father decided to do a Saturday morning oil change on the family cruiser (early 70's Ford LTD). He gets the oil drained out of it and realizes he dosen't have a filter for it, so he jumps in his pick-up and heads to the auto parts store. 20 minutes later he gets back to the driveway and his eyes are popping out because the car is gone....the old lady decided to do some shopping so she fired it up and took off. Now this is the days before cell phones so he's racing around town like a lunatic trying to find her. Luckily she only went to a store a few blocks away and came right back. He put some oil in it and it never seemed any worse for wear. He figures it had so many miles on it and the motor was so loose it must have saved it.......





.

 

Dumb-**** mistake- I went to put the timing light pickup on a SBC on number 1 lead. I couldn't figure out why it was running fine, but was about 100 degrees out! Then I thinks-Ah! a slipped balancer- so I pulls the radiator, and the balancer-all looks good. Then it hits me - I work in electronics where some of the integrated circuits have 8 pins- and they are numbered along one side and up the other- so after installing a few dozen at work that day, the pin numbering was still in my head, and yep, I had the lead on the wrong cylinder- number 8! Don't you love working like a mug?

 

Snapped a pencil off in the cylinder looking for TDC...

 

last year i put my car in the front garage to paint{tent}.it ended up there for about a week or two.after all the prep and paint i decided to start it up and pull it in the front yard to clean it.went back to the tent to get the bucket so i could wash it.WTF is on the side of the tent?didnt look at it till i pulled the car back in.when i looked at the red-white chunks on the side i figured out a mouse must have gotten in my zoomies and one of the cylinders.he didnt last too long getting chewed up and spit out like an old piece of gum.there is still some of him left to this day{man i should clean it up!!!}

 

hahahahahaha! i had a mouse get chewed up by my front brake rotor, it smelled sooo bad! when i replaced my brake pads i found his tail and a tiny furball of what was left.

 

When I was about 12, my Dad and his friend were changing out the radiator on Moms 65 Olds. Dad took the radiator down and had a new core put in it. A week goes by and he and the friend put the radiator back in, start up the car and in gets hot, real fast. So he puts in a new thermostat, starts it up again....and it gets hot again. So he and his friend pull the radiator back out, look it over and put it back in, with the same reults. Stumped, Dad gives up and waits another week( he was working 6days a week) The next week he and the friend put a new water pump on, start it up and it still gets hot. So they pull the radiator again, and the thermostat housing, and the pump, and flow test everything. Dad then notices the lower radiator hose seems a bit heavy.....yup, while the radiator was out having a new core put in it, the hoses were plugged with shop towels.

Dad and his friend didn't speak for weeks, neither one of them would admit which one left the towel in. LOL

 

bttt.

 

while workin at the speed shop, the boss` buddy had a zr2 that had the cylinders full of fuel. pulled the pluggs and cranked it over a few times. forgot that spark plugs create spark. lit the truck up. it wasnt too bad. my afro eventually grew back

 

In a late night rush to put some heads & a cam in an OT street car for a "match race" later that night. We started up the car and it was running really rough, as the guys all looked at eachother with the "WTF" faces, I glanced over to the workbench and saw a whole rocker/pushrod ***embly sitting there. Aww ****! Seems we were in such a hurry we left all the rockers and pushrods off of one head. Surprised that it even ran. Well, we put it back together, then tossed a rod out of the oil pan that night on a nitrous p***. That's racin'!

 

well went to west tech to watch an engine dyno.. another guy was their watched a red rag get ****ed into a turbo....

 

In the late 80's we had a car that I detested- an early 80's AMC Concord-fugly. Well it kept failing emissions and my Dad couldn't figure out what in the hell to do, neither of us really knew much about cars. After scratching his head for a long time, he took off the lid on the air cleaner and found the problem...

We lived in the woods and had lots of deer that came through daily. We had a big corn feeder for them and kept the corn in the garage. Short story long, the air cleaner was PACKED with feed corn and a coupla dead mice. Sheesh.

 

I have an S10 I got cheap because sometimes it would die and they couldn't figure out why. Had put another computer in it and given up. I swapped back to the old one, because the new one was a dud (no check engine light), and it ran but with a high idle. Then died and couldn't get it started again.

Eventually I thought maybe a pickup in the distributor was bad and had another so I swapped it - and found the hold down bolt loose. Have to think that just the shake of the engine would sometimes bump it so far out of time the computer couldn't compensate.

Of course, by then it sat so long it had other problems, so it still sits rotting in a field waiting for me to put some other body on the ch***is. Or s**** it.

 

My mom had a stray kitten crawl up in her wheel and slept under the rotor. she went somewere and came back telling me after a while she smelt burnt flesh... the cat was riped to shreads and toasted! I had to power wash that thing out of the caliper.