Admit your Garage Mistakes

[elvisidal]

when i was 14 I put both the trucks on my skateboard the wrong way around using the oldest stripped and rusted bolts I had before so it took forever to get on and off.

Rewired a guitar pickups the wrong way and wondered why the bridge one wouldn't work

painted a door blue and the number 5 white on one door then painting the other door white with a blue 5 ..

general notpayingattentiontolittle things which in turn leads to major things being obvious failures

[jcxr]

Originally Posted by pottery beige

Changed diff centre.. Went for spin around block.. Tidying up noticed full bottle of diff oil sitting on bench..

Meh. I used to drive to the servo real slowly to put it on the hoist to fill it up.

[04redxr8]

Many years ago, rebuilt a 202 for a UC sunbird. The head gasket looked identical front to back, except for the small openings for the water jackets at the rear. After a couple of weeks of over heating, and not knowing why, decided to build a 253 for the car. That was when I discovered what had happened.

[Watto_Cobra]

Originally Posted by Scotty85

Id have to say the silliest thing ive done was unbolting something on my magna around the battery. The ratchet somehow made contact with both terminals. Got quite a kick out of it, and it melted the contact points on the ratchet hahaha.

Numerous times ive forgotten to label spark plug leads to their correct terminal, but somehow have winged it correctly.

Battery's are handy. Was out pruning pine trees when I was in forestry. My BIC lighter died and the Landcruiser's was missing. A few drops of chainsaw juice on a rag and a spanner across the battery terminals saw us right.

[CFOUR]

I woke up to leave for work in the dark a 4:30am, damn flat Tyre. grab the workshop jack take off wheel with flat Tyre, hmm better call and say I'm running late. hang up phone put wheel on lower jack tighten nuts put jack back in shed and attempt to drive away but somethings not right. I had put the same bloody wheel back on!

Two days later at 4:45am doing 110km/h on the highway my left rear Tyre exploded (never buy nankangs), guess who hadn't had the time to get his spare Tyre fixed.

[sen]

is it just me or does that look like a retread?

[krt10]

it looks like a nankang

[CFOUR]

not a retread a 1200km old nankang

[tezxr8man]

i had a flat battery and a dead starter on my EB. Replaced the battery after trying to jump start the thing for about an hour, got frustrated and slammed the bonnet shut onto the ratchet an socket sitting on the header tank, being cranky and frustrated i slammed it gain only to realise the problem and the dint in the bonnet
on an EF i used to own i put an EB battery in coz it needed 1 only to realise after they swapped the terminals from EF onwards after it was hooked up. So glap it was only the main fuse that died

[xyef351]

Well my dilemma was when I had locked my keys in my car. Which was a 302 xd fairmont ghia, while at the shops, So i thought i,d crawl under the front and pull the dipstick out, I reached up and pulled it up then bend it over and pulled it up sum more then bent it over again , then grabbed it to lift it up some more and thought dam thats hot, really hot, had a look up to see what was going on and it was glowing red, dam thing found the positive terminal didnt it, had to grab it and rip it away from there fast, dam didnt that hurt my hand.

[XF Falcon]

Installed my new Brembos on the front of the XR6T. Bled all four brakes (hadn't been done since I purchased the car), starting from the rear left, then rear right, front left then front right. Made sure all the air was out of the new front brakes, and thought excellent, time to drive around the block for a while and bed them in.

Start to reverse down the driveway and the brake pedal sinks down to the floor and the car barely stops in time before the road! ummm thats not right! I thought the 6 pistons were meant to be better than that! lol

So back into the garage, wheels off again, bled the fronts again, and sure enough a little little bit of air came out there. Cool, time for another test drive!
DOH same thing!!!!!

took the wheels off again, looked around scratching my head...

Then it finally struck me... I was only bleeding the outside nipple and totally forgot about the inside nipple! (in my defence it was out of sight) LOL
So I only had half of each front calliper bled properly!

Needless to say, after bleeding ALL 6 pistons in each calliper, the brakes worked like a charm

[Oxa384]

Old bloke down the end of our street was doing some work on his 94 camry i watched him drive past back and forward about 4-5 times then he stops out the front reving the bjesus out of it then suddenly white smoke starts poring out the exhaust pipe and starts filling the air!!!

As i went to go down to him it starts to take off (sounding like its slipping big time) he makes it down to his house filling the entire area in smoke.he came up to ask me what he could of done as he only did a oil change,it had me stumped so i went down to investigate what had happened,what he done was drained the automatic trans instead of the engine oil then filled the motor with 4 litres of oil,so he had nearly 8 litres in the engine and no oil in his trans!!

He even went and bought a allen key specially to fit the trans plug.....
He is allways stiring me up about my car so it was a bit of laugh when this happened.
Epic Fail!!

[stev3n]

My first car was a Dato 200B. I burnt the clutch out and decided I'd replace it myself.
Anyhow removed gearbox and pressure plate on my own. Installed pressure plate and gearbox again. Just about to take car off the jacks thinking to myself how clever I was, just at the same time as dad arrived home.

Dad says "what are you doing"
"Replacing the clutch"
Dad "why did you buy two clutches?"
"What do you mean?"
Dad "Well the new clutch plate is still sitting on the workbench"

He gave me a hand to do the job over again

[Franco Cozzo]

At work, I had finished draining the oil with the car up on the hoist, I moved the oil drum out of the way and started lowering the car, 30 seconds later I hear a snap and a crunch sound, I caught the number plate on the very edge of the oil drum and snapped the frame and bent the numberplate..

[rex351]

As a first year apprentice aircraft engineer I was the parts cleaning boy. Had a magnesium sump/intake manifold to paint strip for dye checking and put it in the stripper bath for the recommended 4 hours on a Friday morning. Remembered it on Monday arvo and pulled it out to find it had lost 3kg and now looked like swiss cheese! Boss not happy with that one. Have also seen same boss try to taxi a cessna away still tied down to the ground, lots of noise and dust but no movement!

[ltd]

My sister had an ED and it blew the head gasket. She had limited funds at the time, I had done three of them years earlier and as I tend to work 5 on, 6 off I thought; "I'll fix it for you". Stripped it all down, took head bolts out, undid timing chain tensioner and removed timing chain sprocket from the cam whilst still wired up and thought ha ha, success. All I gotta do now is remove the head. Long story short, lifted it off and forgot that little bolt on the front of the head - SNAP. Bye bye timing chain guide. Felt like a prized idiot for that one.

[sleek7]

Would have been 16 or 17, old man was showing me how to drain the oil from the car (toyota camry....).
Drained the oil, put new filter on it and then got me to re-tighten the sump plug. poured the new oil in and found it was dripping under car.....turns out i cross-threaded the sump

[RESPEC6]

ahhhhh this is an interesting thread lol

I have accidentally drilled into a heater fan in my old VR SS commodore = removal of dash and heater box = no fun..

[NGN 351]

Originally Posted by mad machs

A long time ago..... I once rebuilt my 3.1 Capri engine with new everything- crank, pistons, cam, valves- the lot.
The crank broke in within the first 100 or so miles as I'd put the main shells in the wrong way round & blocked off the oil ways to the crank! :

(I remember the oil pressure was very high, now I know why)

Now thats funny !

[Paxton]

I installed a Trip computer into my EF. Only problem was, with the dodgy wiring loom that I had made, I mistook the Ground wire for the Live Wire, and thought I'd killed the Instrument Cluster. It was late afternoon on a Friday.

After two days of driving the thing around with no speedo, and the transmission in Limp Home Mode, I decided to take a quick look at the fuses. I'd blown the Instrument Fuse, not the instrument cluster.

I'm also guilty of forgetting the sump plug (and Oil filter), but otherwise, I leave the big stuff to the professionals.

[trev62]

A Fri arvo, 3pm..at my mechanic mates workshop, tinkering on a customers truck that had just had new uni's put in.... customer there in 30 mins, just finishing it off, almost beer-o-clock, last job of the week. He says "check gear box oil level, Trev".. I un-do a top side bolt near link thingy... long spring follows bolt out, nope, thats not it.. put it back in, find right bolt, level fine, bolt it up. Truck finished, it starts up fine, ready to back out of the workshop... um... um... cant get in in any gear??? Head scratching all round. Other mechanic tries it, nearly breaks an arm trying to get a gear.
Penny drops.."which bolts did you un-do Trev?". Showed them.
4 hours later... after we ALL had to drop this heavy bugger out, picked up by a truck box bloke who they had to beg to come and get it, (and a very unhappy customer who planned to work his truck that weekend). Not popular at the pub.
I had to take the Monday off from my "real" job to go help them put now-fixed box back up in truck. Now I know a bit about detent switches... and ball bearings that shouldnt drop into the bottom of a box.

[peeds13]

When I was 18 I thought I would make a peformance improvment to my Hz 1 tonner's 253 by pulling out the main jet in the 2 barrel stromberg and drilling it out with the smallest drill bit I could find....
Of course it didnt start again until I bought a 500 holley for it lol
Oh and I put a 500 holley on a standard 253...

[xy500]

Originally Posted by peeds13

When I was 18 I thought I would make a peformance improvment to my Hz 1 tonner's 253 by pulling out the main jet in the 2 barrel stromberg and drilling it out with the smallest drill bit I could find....
Of course it didnt start again until I bought a 500 holley for it lol
Oh and I put a 500 holley on a standard 253...

not as bad as my mate, who put a 650 holley on an otherwise stock 253

[nipper575]

No fault of my own, but equally stupid that I let it become a real nuisance.

4 years ago when I was 17, I had a particular carburettored car that for some reason kept blocking the jets with some strange black, charcoal looking substance. The car would die if you accelerated, but it would idle and drive on the choke. The first time it happened, I took apart the carby, cleaned it, put it back together and the car went fine, for about ~5 kms.

It had done the same thing again. The fuel filter was spotless, I changed it anyway just in case. This went on every day for about a week, with me having to take apart the carburettor every single time as I needed the car to get to and from school. I had other priorities being a year 12 student studying for exams, yet every night of that week, I was mucking around with that bloody car.

I gave my mechanic a ring, explained what it was doing and he said "Sounds like the carbon canister is coming apart and dumping the filter media into the intake". 5 minutes later, the problem was fixed for good, I kicked myself for not ringing the mechanic first.

[nkhi2009]

changing the steering columb by my self managed to jam my hand under the columb in the hole in the fire wall damd it hurt for eva whelding spaners lol

[XCwillo]

Originally Posted by peeds13

Of course it didnt start again until I bought a 500 holley for it lol
Oh and I put a 500 holley on a standard 253...

i had a 500 holley and a 350 Holley, i knew the 350 would be the buggest i should go on a 250 X-Flow but i almost put the 500 on just because it sounded cooler to say and the 'Holley' embossed on the side looked better >.<

[Jim Goose]

Many years ago,a female friend was returning from NSW in her newly purchased 2nd hand Hilux (surf) when she called to say the clutch wasnt working.
She was stuck about 200km from home so we drove down to meet her.
We all looked at it for a while.
The clutch master cyclinder was full.
So we all assumed the plate had runn out of friction material.
I then realised while staring aimlessly underneath the Hilux at the pan and gearbox that i could see right through it.
The gearbox had seperated from the engine!
Only a few bolts were left.
It was a backyard conversion with a 253.... truely awful when I took a closer look.

I think the old forgetting the sump plug when putting in the oil trick is the silliest thing i have done....

[Halfmo Rocks]

i was replacing the rear door on my old AU sedan after some delightful person put their towbar through it.
just finished fitting new door, reached for my beer...knocked it over, spilling beer over my spanners - in a huff i slammed the door shut - which smashed the window. didn't i feel clever.
at least i had the window in the old door as a spare.
the ''no beer while working on the car'' philosophy lasted right up until the next time i had to do something to the car

at least i never forgot the sump plug

[AWD Chaser]

Was running out of ideas trying to get a snapped bolt out on the weekend.

Had drilled a hole all the way through, and trying to get something jammed in there to unscrew it out... Found a coach screw that fit the drilled hole - so I screwed that into the bolt, started to undo it... was going well... till the coach screw snapped - now I had a snapped bolt, inside a snapped bolt!!!!

An hour later and I had them out... But wasn't too impressed with myself...

[EDtickford]

More than once i'd say.. undoing my wheel nuts and wondering why they were so tight because i was going the wrong way!!!! whoops