stupid things we did as teenagers while working on our cars

I was 16 in Auto Shop class. Put the car on the lift and remembered,"Gotta disconnect the battery cable, don't wanna be a dumbass," Too lazy to bring the car down, I grabbed a ladder and an air ratchet. Ladder was barely tall enough, so I'm teetering a bit. Hit the positive instead of the ground first, the air ratchet torques over and tack-welds to the core support. Startled me enough to almost fall off the ladder. Probably shouldn't have spent lunch before class in the "smoking area".

 

Winner!

 

I pulled a flat head out of a 49 woody by building a a frame out of 2x6's. Didn't have a come along so I wrapped a chain around the top a let it hang. The hook was about 6 feet off the ground. Push the car under and placed a bumper jack in the middle. jack it up as high as it would go the placed 2x4's under the tires., lowered the jack. Place 2x4's under the jack and repeat till the hanging hook can be hooked onto a chain on the motor. Reverse the jacking procedure. with the motor hanging in mid air I pushed the car back. Got a couple of mattress and pushed the A frame over. Sold the motor and bought some tools!!!!!

 

When I was young a old mechanic told me ALWAYS put the sump plug on top of engine next to filler hole smart ass I asked why saved me a lot of cleanups Regards

 

I bought a Fiat







I also attempted to Patch a brake line with inner tube, bailing wire and silicone goop.

 

Did stupid shit then, do stupid shit now. I haven't changed...

 

Ok, I know a 70 Chevelle is off topic, but this fits in here....my old boss had it jacked up in back ala 1976. He needs to change the oil but his floor jack won't fit because he has a steep driveway, so he gets a pair of ramps, rolls up and voila, car is level and high enough to get a creeper under it. At this point everything is great until he gets to cranking on the drain plug and the car starts rolling backwards due to no parking brakes from too many burnouts and no chocks. At this point the neighbor across the street comes home to find a Chevelle in the street with the hood up and a pair of legs sticking out from under the front bumper. He couldn't scoot out either way because the creeper had him pinned from underneath..lol

When I heard this I nearly pee'd myself, because he was one of those anal-retentive shop rule followers, that explained everything!

 

And I forgot this one...when I was little, 5 or 6, I had an obsession with jacking my future Ranchero up with the bumper jack. And I wasn't content with just getting some air, I would jack it up to the very top, high enough that my Dad had to push the truck backwards to get it down and the jack shot across the street.

 

A-Men^ Just a lil less.....
At 16....first intake manifold change= 2bbl to 4. Gotta be sportin a holley right? Luckilly I asked about the distributor and marks what not,but in the rush for the 50hp I would get......I left the return spring off and test drove in the rain. Just down the block,but...Needless to say,and talking from my older self to my younger self- Just turn off the ignition. Ya right! A half block long tire smoking frenzy. I think I touched cloth on that one.

Or the time I did my first re-build and fired up on an engine stand at 17.
Fenderwell headers turned upside down. No prob,except when it spit flames and burned the paint on the 8ft ceiling.....Dad was PISSED!

Or the time my battery arced against the rad support and a smoke ring surrounded the entire hood gap....might still have the scars from that one

Or the time.....You get the idea.....

ahh,to be young(er) again....

 

When I was 16 I was getting the body of my old 56 chev prepped for paint. I had been at a friends shop and removed the bird from the hood and something else as well.

Got late, headed home.....

doing 70 or so.....

Hood flipped open, bent the hell out of it and cracked the windshield.

All that hard work down the drain

 

When I was 18, I had a 68 Jeepster Commando, they had the side hood holdowns, with no safety latch. If you open the hood straight up, you can lift it out of the hinges. So I get up one morning to go to class at the community college, hop in and it doesn't crank. Out I go, throw open the hood, play with the battery connections, set the hood down and it fires up. Great it's running, throw her in gear back out, then floor it down the street. Well the hood flies open and bounces off the top of the windshield, so I nail the brakes, now the hood is straight up, comes out of the hinges and goes sliding down the road. I blow a brake line besides when I hit the brakes. So I pick up the hood, put it back on and go back to the house. My dad who worked midnights at the time woke up from the noise. He's like, what the hell did you do. I always remembered to check those hood latches after that.

 

At 16 my '56 Chevy had a knock on the lower end so I dropped the steering at the pitman arm and dropped the pan. I had jack stands under the front but the car was parked in the yard. Stands sunk in the dirt and the car fell over and mashed my finger between the steering link and the lower a arm. Just before it cut my finger off my kid brother, age six, came in the yard. I got him to put a jack under the car and lift it off me. Finger has never been the same, but he's been hooked on cars ever since.

By the way, the knock was a spun bearing but with little money I just looked at it and figured i could roll in a 030 bearing. Did not turn it or anything - Replaced just that one bearing and drove it for a year before it had to be rebuilt because it smoked so bad.

 

14 years old, jacked up my '58 T-bird to pull the front wheel cylinders off to rebuild them, and used a log out of the wood pile to set the car on. One piece of firewood, on end, in the middle of the unibody cross member tube to balance the car.

My dad came out of the house, saw that, and flipped out.

I said "But it was a really thick log, dad."

That is when the palm of his hand met the base of my skull. The "Reset button" he called it.

 

My buddy and I drove around a little 53 ford business coupe that we started with a screw driver and we sat on milk crates because someone wanted to put bucket seats in it and threw away the stockers.

 

Drove my mom's 63 Nova wagon in highschool. Besides painting the front grill to look like a checkerboard, I though it was a good idea to paint the wheels a couple of nice thick coats of black paint with a brush. Didn't think it was necessary to remove them from the car first so I painted the wheels, lugnuts etc all together. When the mechanic had the car in his shop to do the inspection he wasn't real happy when he tried to remove the wheels to check the brakes. Same car, bought an adaptor from J C Whitney to put a carb from a friends 318 on the little six cylinder. Worked ok once you got the car moving but my dad made me remove it when it back fired and caught on fire as I was pulling it into the driveway.

 

The same dumbass brother of mine who totaled my 54 Chevy pickup, decided he was going to "work on" a 68 Chevy pickup that we kept around the house to haul stuff with.

He (and I) knew just enough at that time to make ourselves really dangerous.

This was in the early 80's and he bought one of those big foot-shaped accelerator pedals. Problem was that the pedal was so wide that it stuck over into the path of the brake pedal, and if you really pushed down hard on the brake pedal, you ended up flooring the gas pedal too. The 68 was just a damned-old used truck at the time and the brakes weren't that good to begin with.

He found this out the hard way.

He takes it down the road for a test run....no problem....then turns around about a quarter mile down the road and guns it.....approaches our house and is gonna lay on the brakes real hard and leave some scratches out on the road, but yep....he activates the newly f'ed up accelerator/brake pedal situation and ends up overshooting the driveway and jumping the truck off of an embankment that was about 5 feet high, and does a fairly aggressive nose-dive into the vacant lot next to our house.

Dirt flies up in the air....he bends the shit out of the front bumper, smashes the grill and tweaks both front fenders.

Like a true brother, I'm laughing so hard that I had to sit down on the ground.

I can still see that expression on his face go from real macho and smug, to "oh shiiitttttttttt" as he's flailing around in the cab.....still makes me laugh thinking about it.

He still doesn't think it's funny.

 

Quote: "NOT Supposed To TELL Stuped (I know !) SHIT !, ON YOURSELF !!!"
Soooo, this guy I knew (ha!), had to replace the fuel pump along side of road, caught ride into town, Advance Store Replacement pump.......Hummm ! Clerk said it'd work, this one's got a glass filter on IT !
When (He) tried to install, it Hit Firewall ! (Go to Tool Box !!) Hammer.........Chisel, Large Chisel ! Split firewall in an "X".........Now, IT fits !
His cousin (aircraft mech.) pulls up, gits out,.....
"what'r you doin' ???? Why you chisel the Firewall ?"
"WHY did'nt YOU Just Take the Screws out, turn top around ................"
___________________________________________
People pass me(Him) NOW, in My(His) "Throw-away- P.O.S. Car ! that gits 30 mpg !, an don't have a CLUE !
that that ole Man used to run a '57 Chevy in "F" Stock NHRA and did the Quarter in 12.9 sec. ( 12.70's on Short 1/4 Mile ! Yea'ah some Strips would make the Quarter
50 to 100 ft short !, so the Locals could "BRAG" .

I already said Goodnight !

Smokey II NOT !
ever-day CAR. an don't have a CLUE !, that

 

heh heh he Wrecked (wrecked hell totaled it)a beautiful 38 coupe. Many many moons ago (you was probably still in diapers) I had jus bought it & we was doing some tranny/clutch work so had all the lower interior out or disconnected. Was working in a texaco as a 2nd job. Anyway we got antsy so my friend the owner & I deceided to test every thing out. The station was @ the bottom of a pretty good hill. Up to the top of the hill we went & turned around & all the wanna bees were standing in front of the station it was in the late afternoon. We deceided to give the boys a show & down the hill we came . Running @ a pretty good clip we flew past the station and the wanna bees wuz hooping & hollaring & whisteling. We wuz just a smiling. A block or two past the station is the stop sign so I hollered @ DeArment to back off. OH DID I MENTION he was the throttle guy & was laying on the right front fender! OH! also no floor boards anyway he let off the carb & I stabbed the brake pedal HEH HEE HE it went to the bottom ,brakes not hooked up Interesting huh intersection is fast approaching I jammed it into 2nd & layed on the horn. I looked left & right & just caught a glimpse of a kaiser frazier approaching on the right so I hooked it left but not in time. CRASH BAM & I see DEArment flying over the engine past the windshield, the kaiser frazier went over the curb thru a guys manicured lawn & skinned up his big oak tree & I ended up in the middle of the intersection & DeArment who I thought would be brokenup or dead was up walking towards me . His jeans were kinda shredded & he had some road rash but other than two wrecked cars & a few banged up people all came thru it pretty well. I got a few citations as I lived in Ohio & this took place in Pa, I no insurance,no registation or license,unsafe automobile & unsafe speed in a residental area. The coupe was totaled & I had to pay quite a sum ,Just can't remember how much. But the dang horn might have saved me from T-boning the guy & putting DeArment head first into his car as I pretty sure he tried to stop I hit him with the right front. Fender,grille,raditor,bumper & braces & frame were pretty bad so I junked it.
I don't make this stuff up so here is a newspaper clipping( you know newspapers they never get it right) that my dear mother saved , she had a scrapbook full of them heh heh he God Bless Her Soul


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When I was about 8, Iwent outside to play "GAS STATION" and filled me Dads gas tank with the garden hose. OWWWWWW!

 

I have a few...

When I did my first rear-end lube change on my Olds back in college, I remember my dad teaching me how to do it when I was a kid. He told me to remove the plug and pump the lube in until it dribbles out. Well, the rear-end was caked with crud and I couldn't see the filler pipe plug. I only was able to see the plastic vent valve. So I pulled the valve off and pumped an entire gallon of gear lube in. It still wasn't dribbling out, so I called my dad at work and asked him. He told me "to look for the pipe plug, dumbass." After chipping away at the crud I found the plug and unleashed a waterfall of gear lube all over the place. I smelled like that shit for a few days.

My most dumbest move was when I was about to break in the cam on my new chevy 350 (that I built all myself). I was so excited to fire it up that I forgot to put coolant in the radiator. About a minute into the break-in, my temp gauge shoots from left peg to right peg in about a second. I shut it off and my dad asks what happened? It suddenly hit me that I forgot the coolant. After listening to my dad yell and cuss for fifteen minutes, we get some hot water from the bath in a bucket and pour it into the radiator to not thermally shock the block. Thank god, the engine was saved. And thank god for cast iron! I think that if I would've had aluminum heads, they would've been toast.

 

Yeh, but it helps alot.

 

You don't have to be a teenager. My oldere brother just finished a course on automotive repair at the local community college. My Dad's datsun truck needed an engine rebuild, so my brother rebuilt for him. Well my Dad the ever cheap person that he was, drove the truck about a week after the rebuild, without changing the oil. He decided that it was time to change it. While the oil was draining, he decided that it was time to change the brakes. The brake job done, he gets in to return the brake shoes and get this deposit back. He gets up the street to thestop sign, the truck dies. Any guess on what he forgot to do. Another rebuild.

Of course as the perfect teenager, I never did anything stupid. HAHA

 

A friend bought an o/t truck with no fuel pump and an auto trans that was stuck in drive. I don't know how he got the truck to his house, but when I got their I helped him put the new fuel pump. When we were done, not really knowing what to expect if it started, we pushed it off the driveway, pointed it down the street, and hit the starter.

Be damned it the thing didn't start first crank. Naturally, the first thing we did was take it out for a test drive. About 10 blocks away, we both look at each other with a look of horror and asked... Do you smell gas?? He pulls over into a parking lot, I get out, and as soon as I open the hood, I start holler'n "Shut it OFF!!"

I guess I forgot to tighten the fuel line to the carb... and with the thing always in drive, we didn't bother checking for leaks before we started the test drive. The whole engine compartment was a fog of gas fumes. I still can't believe we didn't blow that old truck sky high.

 

I had a 1950 chev truck with worn out 3 speed linkage. I obtained a floor shifter from someplace. I got tired of lifting the hood to realign the gears to shift, so my buddy and I decided to put the shifter in and do away with to column shifter. Only two people could drive that truck after, myself and my buddy. The shift pattern was all backwards. Stupid me.

 

I did the exact same thing with Henrietta the '38 Ford pickup in 1966 not long after I got the truck, I was 14 at the time. Jacked it up with the bumper jack from the '55 Ford, had the rear end out of the truck, set it up on concrete blocks about 3 blocks high, didn't think to block the front wheels. Had been under it and just crawled out when the front wheels rolled, the stack of blocks crumbled and fell, and the truck came down hard right where I had been. I am alive through no fault of my own.

 

A friend and I were given a 50 ford if we got it out of the man's yard. It wouldn't start and he lived on a hill (BIG HILL) so we took the hood off, he sat on the fender and poured gas into the carb as I drove down the hill. The old man pushed us into the street and away we went. The damn thing rolled all the way down the hill and was just rolling when it started. When we got home neither of our Dad's would let us park "that piece of shit" in the driveway. Had a heck-of-a-time that summer though. We were both 14 years old.

 

Too much funny shit probably forgot the bad stuff.

I don't think I messed with Jimmy in shop class anymore after one day.

Do you guys remember that wrestler, was it it Earnie? He was a large black man and his trade mark was he used his thumb jabbing it into his opponents chin during the wrestling matches. Well of course we did that mostly playfully.

In shop class there were only a couple of guys alot bigger than me so i picked on them again mostly playfully and we were good friends. They were no match, hah, plus I could run, and using the thumb on them well that was hilarious. One day Jimmy and I are in the spray booth masking a car getting it ready for paint. I thought it was an opportune time while he was crouched down taping a tail lense or bumper or something, I got him in a loose head lock (laughin) and get him with the thumb, then start running as fast as I can to the front of the booth away to escape his wrath. He winds up and launches at me a razor blade he was using to tape up the car with. It grazed my left pinky finger tip, on the palm side at the finger print, sliced it an inch long. I think I used masking tape and our paint rags to stop the bleeding and kept going with my day. Seeing the scar still makes me laugh.

 

I was around 17 when I was having trouble getting the '50 Ford started.
I decided since me and my buddy couldn't push it fast enough by hand to get it to fire that we would put a 10 foot chain on the back bumper of my dad's 55 Chevy wagon and hook the other end to the front of his '50 Ford. I popped the clutch at about 20mph and it did fire right up, and into the back of Dad's 55. Dad was not pleased. He made the obvious point, "next time push it with the 55, don't pull it (moron)".

 

cut middle and fourth finger off puting a jackstand under a car because I didn;t trust the bumper jack. Unfortunately for me, me hand was on the top of the jackstand as I was palcing it under the frame. That's the exact moment the bumper jack "bannana'd". Doctors sewed everything back up but I still can;t move the 4th finger on my left hand. Cut my pinkie off of my right hand 20 years later, not sure it counts though since I wasn't a teenager.

 

Too many stupid ones to list. I managed to survive'em, but a couple were pretty funny ....... eventually.

What makes a stupid move worse? Someone who's there to amplify it.
It was a Wednesday, I'd finished my first full-on engine rebuild (high school auto shop), and was trying to start the car. It was popping back through both the carb and the pipe, and of course, not starting. Obviously I'd gotten something wrong, but wasn't sure what. After I ran the battery down, I collared a few guys and we took it out on the street to push-start it. Up the street, down the street, adjusting this'n that, etc, until class was over.
Thursday's class, the same.
Friday's class, our teacher, "Uncle Billy" (we all liked him), had the class gather 'round my car and told me to pop the dist cap, rotate it 180* and replace it (those caps had two lugs, 180* out). I did that, and asked the guys to push again, but Uncle Billy said to just hit the button. It fired and purred. I'd done everything right except that.
I doubt any of the kids in that class ever made the same mistake.
To this day I use an anomalous color plug wire for #1.


The second incident was in my garage, thrashing on an old Vespa scooter, with four of my brother's friends (and him as well) over. They were all leaning on the scooter while I worked on the ignition, just shootin' the shit.
I got up and kicked it over, and it fired right up, but the throttle was open and its return spring was off, so it started to scream a bit. Quickly (as the kill switch for the solid mag was also off) I tucked the screwdriver in my hand across the plug lead and the head, and was treated to the sight of a five man ballet impression of a large flower opening in quick motion as they all flew back from the scooter.
I still chuckle over that one.