I feel really stupid--dumbest mistake ever

Actually, the second dumbest mistake ever. The dumbest was using a screwdriver to jump the solenoid on an '86 Ford Tempo with the car in gear, standing in front of the car. Anyway, I posted on here that I couldn't get the clutch to disengage on Henrietta the '38 Ford pickup (307 Chevy and T5 trans). I had replaced a flywheel due to ring gear being chewed up. Put everything back together like it was and clutch would not disengage. Tore it down to see if I had put the disc in backwards, found that it was in correctly. When I started to put it back together, I couldn't find my clutch alignment tool for the 14 spline disc (you will see later where this fits into the story), no biggie, $2 item at Advance so I go get another one. Put it back together, made sure pressure plate bolts were torqued correctly, etc. Clutch still wouldn't disengage, although the hydraulics were working fine, system bled, and fork had more than enough travel to disengage the clutch. Let's just say that it's a good thing I bought another clutch alignment tool. The other one was chewed up pretty bad when I found it--where it had fallen down between the clutch fingers and the pressure plate face, which pretty much explains why my clutch wouldn't disengage. Can anybody on the HAMB top this for dumb mistakes?

 

like we talked about yesterday at paulding meadows, it had to be something siple. glad your on the road, mark

 

Very late nght session painting the garage walls and floor last night. All going fine until i wake up this morning.

I must have gone back in the garage forgeting about the wet floor and walked back into the house, over new carpet.

Yep boot patterns all over the place

All fixed but keeping a low profile today

 

I was doing a tired, late night thrash to replace the water pump on my old 62 Impala. Installed the pump and fan, put the radiator in, hooked up the hoses, put in the antifreeze, then went to install the belts. Found the water pump pulley laying beside the belts! Said screw it and went to bed. Repeated the process the next night when I was wide awake!

 

Don't feel bad, my list is long and sure to get longer the older I get.

Just some of the stupid things:

Replaced a clutch in the middle of winter in an unheated garage. Everything went back together very easily, was very pleased, and surprised. Looked to the side and saw the dust cover sitting against the shelf. Had to tear everything apart again, assembling the second time didn't go as well. Got late and colder and fingers all cut up.

Felt the front of my truck get a little funny every time I stopped. Checked out the front end, couldn't find anything wrong. Still had the problem. This was my daily driver and had to drive it to work and make deliveries. After a few days, while driving to work, I feel the rear of the truck drop and stop immediately. Rear wheel fell off, lug nuts spread across the road. Luckily, the brake drum stayed inside the rim and the wheel didn't take off. I did a brake job on the truck the week before and must not have tightened the lug nuts on that wheel. Ruined an alloy wheel and learned a valuable lesson, double, triple check lug nuts.

Just recently was removing an engine from a parts truck with my forklift truck. The truck was inside my shop. Chained the engine up, raised the engine and was backing out of my shop and felt some resistance. Couldn't figure out the problem until I looked at the top of the forklift mast and it was catching the bottom of the overhead door. Pulled the bottom of the door out about an inch or so. The door is fairly new 10'X14' door, not a good feeling.

I have a few more but some are even stupider.

 

#1 x 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Working late at night to get my race engine together for the next day. My phone rings and I answer it. One of my pals checking in on my progress. When the phone rang I was finishing up torquing the rod bolts. Walked back over to the engine stand and thought o.k. ready for the oil pan and gaskets. Put it all together and when I got under the car to put the headers on I looked at the pan and remembered I didn't finish torqing the rods....NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

Started racing supermodifieds...

 

Oh just a couple of weeks ago,I was tacking up some mounts for the exhaust,right underneath where the rear seat is.Well some cheap thin plastic insulation caught fire which in turn led to my rear seat catching fire.When I got from underneath the car I saw nothing but smoke in the car and flames reaching the back window.I had visions of my car going up in flames.Luckily my rear seats don't bolt down so I managed to yank them out and kept the car from burning to the ground.Saved the car,but not the seat.Dumb lesson learned.

 

First marriage - to the point that her family likes me better than her . Recent stupid mistake - was topping off fluids in my '81 F-100 and had big jug of oil and gallon of antifreeze , both open , on radiator support - can you guess what I did with the anti-freeze ? There might be others , worse , but I claim the 5th amendment .

 

bought a truck for $3950. guy wanted cash. so i got cash. miscounted the above cash. paid $1000 too much, simply because i'm to effing stupid to count correctly. what an idiot!!...jack

no longer qualified to inspect grenades

 

wow!

 

Yeah I can but I'm not telling!

 

that one's pretty hard to top, isn't it?

 

1. got married!
2. got married again, and believed her when she said "I would never take your cars from you."!!!!

 

Last year I finall got all the pieces together to put the motor & tranny and everything back into the hardtop. Had the clutch, disc, fork and everything together, bolted up and the whole mess on the cherry picker aimed at the front framerails and me and Captain Zoom Zoom were ready to drop it in when I spied the flexplate I had taken off the 350 a week earlier, and I realized there was no pilot bushing.............

 

First do feel stupid! now you think all the smart asses on here never made a mistake welllllllll keep rollin just slow down thats why they make chairs a old customizer told me long a go on a roof chop............ya dont have to weld it on tonite just look at it a while then decide your fine shit my typin finger hurts

 

Wow...you're pretty stupid!


Just kidding. That'll make you want to bang your head against the wall for sure, but there have been far worse mistakes with far worse consequences.

My favorite so far; I was trying to hook up an electric fan to power (on a modern car), so I decided to tap right into the back of the alternator, and to save time I didn't bother unhooking the battery first. Long story short, I took the nut off the alternator stud, and then pulled the main power lead out of my way, but in doing so I accidentally arc'd it against the shiny chrome fuel line that ran about an inch away from the back of the alternator. The arc blew a hole right through the fuel line, which contained fuel at a residual pressure somewhere around 20 psi, and made a mini flame thrower aimed right at me. I came out of it unscathed, and aside from an expensive fuel line, so did my car, but it was definitely stupid. ALWYS DISCONNECT THE BATTERY!!!

 

I worked in a truck shop and did a lot of clutch and transmission work. The pressure plates on those things are huge and come with shipping bolts to hold the springs compressed (see where I'm going here) evry new mechanic forgets to remove the shipping bolts once.

 

Helping a "friend" put headers on his car once....
They just didnt seem to fit, needed a hair more room, so we pull the hood of the 58 edsel to get that bit more room. Then still not quite enough, so we pull the oil filter for a bit more room.... Keep trying things, even unbolt one motor mount and rotate the motor a hair. Finally, we decide they aren't going to fit (wrong model header) put it all back together, he fires the car up and backs into the garage to go grab a beer. Come home from the beer and see a huge puddle of oil on the floor..... Forgot to put filter back on. Fortunately just a huge mess in the garage, no damage to car.

 

Several years ago, I was helping a
buddy remove the rear suspension
from an old, OT Camaro race car that
had been sitting for several years.
The car had aftermarket aluminum
front spring eye bushings in the rear
leaf springs. We had the wheels off
and car up on jack stands with
stands under both the rear frame
section and the rear axle too. I
removed the bolt from the spring
eye, expecting the spring to simply
drop out of the bracket. But the
aluminum bushing was corroded
and seized tight in the mounting
bracket and nothing happened...
at least, not right away, anyway.
I crawled out from under the car
to go and get a hammer to tap on
the seized bushing and no sooner
was I out from under the car, when
the seized spring bushing let go
on it's accord, suddenly, violently,
releasing all of the energy stored
in the springs . There was a
tremendous "BANG!" and the back
end of the car leapt about a foot
into the air - and then, the car
crashed down, coming completely
off of the jack stands, landing flat
on the shop floor! Not even 20
seconds before, I'd been under
that car. BE VERY CAREFUL
WHEN WORKING ON OR AROUND
COMPRESSED COIL OR LEAF
SPRINGS! There is enough energy
stored in a compressed spring to
kill you ten times over!

Mart3406
=========

 

Nope, can't top that.

 

Did a complete paint job on a work van.
Installed fancy new ladder rack with out a scratch.
Oops, won't fit out thru the door now.
Take the 7000 piece rack off the truck in one piece. To save time.
Oops couple minor scratches, brushable no problem.
Move van out and reinstall 7000 piece ladder rack in one piece. To save time
Step ladder scratched the shit out of the side.
Remove 7000 piece rack in one piece again. To save time.
Bring van back in for major touch up and blend respray.
Dissassembe 7000 piece rack , move van out, reinstall 7000 piece rack.

Saving time isn't cheap.

 

Re building a motor and got all of the bottom end done and flipped the motor over on the stand and set the heads on the locating pins. Phone rings and I had to go rescue the now ex-wife and couldn't get back to the motor that weekend. The next weekend my dad came over to check out the motor and asked me something about the crank. So I flipped the motor back over and both heads hit the floor just missing both our feet.

 

!. Got Married to a bi-polar woman, still fighting to get divorced, the kids 20 and 24 (autistic) are with me thank God.I have my car and 98% of my parts not many tools she has them locked up.
2 I have done many stupid car things like dropping a pipe plug down the valley and having to remove the pan to ge it back,, I have never screwed up a car or gun so bad that it could not be fixed, with time and sometimes money.

 

1) Got married too young, got out, no kids. Not bad.
2) Married a BPD hillbilly from W.V. STILL going to court from THAT one (over 10 years now)
3) Married a Mexican with Spanish heritage (Basque). Bitch flipped as soon as papers signed.
3a) Stopped dating white women.
4) Married quite happily to a wonderful Puerto Rican.

Cars?!?!? Should've kept the second one - '66 Galaxie 500 2dr htdp 390 4 bbl, from CA.
Mechanical mistakes! Not many notable, but I do have a habit of changing pads on my bikes and rolling (downhill) out of the garage before pumping up the master...usually on my right side, if you have to ask...

Cosmo

 

Im highly debating getting married any time soon and i think this thread has bought me a year or two, But hell i will try to pick a good one up at a car show or a swap meet.... The worst thing i have done is forgetting the cotter pin on my front hub and losing the truck to a concrete median totaled a 64 f100 and only got the motor and trans out of it, i learned to triple check my suspension work on anything now.

 

I've done my share of dumb shit, but I've got a funny one that a buddy did years ago with his car while I was workin' on mine:

He worked for hours & hours hand making an aluminum fan shroud, and then I heard reher-reher-whumipda-whumpida-kkrcrhh...silence...............profanity.
He used thin gauge aluminum which promptly got sucked into the fan.

 

Trailered my 1948 Plymouth to the brother-in-law's garage for body work. The engine was installed, but not running yet. The brakes didn't work right, but I had enough pedal to back it off the trailer. Started down the slight grade in his driveway, and the car gained a little speed. I stepped on the brake pedal and got practically nothing. The car is now going a little faster. Now I'm frantically pumping the brake pedal, and as I did, I'm pulling up on the steering wheel for a bit more leverage. At that precise moment, I realized I never installed the nut on the steering shaft....I was now frantically pumping the brake pedal while holding the steering wheel in mid-air. Now I'm trying to shove the steering wheel back onto the steering shaft so I can steer away from his Kubota tractor that was straight ahead of me. And all this while sitting on a large wooden block because the seats were removed. Luckily, the car came to a stop before I hit anything, and my brother-in-law was standing at the top of the driveway laughing hysterically. It seems really funny now, but it was a few seconds of sheer terror while it was happening. I only wish we had video-taped the whole fiasco so I could post it on you-tube

 

Dropped an obscenely large Olds engine into a Buick (300 seized) and decided to put hood pins in versus the OEM latch while we were in there. Spent half the day getting the top plates lined up and bolted down, started the car up to take it for a test drive. Punched it on the straightaway, at which time the hood flew up and basically wrapped around the front window, shattering it and destroying the hood. Throughout all our concentrating on getting the stupid posts and plates to line up and look good, nobody thought to install the pins! It was my car, so I guess it was my fault.