Admit your Garage Mistakes

[gtfpv]

Originally Posted by vanman_75

too many to list but the most dangerous was when rebuilding a hot moke motor ,enter angle grinder and inlet /exhaust manifold ,in order to fit twin su carbs you separate the manifold ,so sitting on the floor manifold between feet grinding away it grabs and goes ripping up my leg and just misses me tackle ,every time i look down i think just how close i was to sitting down to pee .lol

blaaahahahahahahahahaha !!! i havent laughed like that for a week . thankyou.

[gtfpv]

when i was young a mate took his car to his girl friends fathers workshop to get new tyres fitted . the next day him and i were cruising in his escort . upon stopping at a corner , his rear wheel kept going . embarrassing for the girlfriends father.

[gtfpv]

i was welding about 10 years ago in my workshop at work. i had ( a nylon parker on) company issue. ( DILL) . ANYHOW welders wil know , when your doing a great weld you dont want to stop and will put up with a little heat on your hand etc for the sake of the perfect weld .
on this occassion it was getting a little hot, smoke was getting behind the mask and i had about 1 inch to go before stopping , i was experiancing normal heat pain , suddenly it became intense. i stopped welding and there was orange light, the heat didnt stop. my parker was on fire . i did the makerana that day on the workshop floor untill , someone ripped off the jacket . ended up inhospital with hand and leg bruns from dripping nylon.

[guy351]

hahahah there are some good ones in here and its good to know im not the only 1.

worst so far would have to be flushing the radiator then forgetting to put the hose back on and wondering why it was not filling up. also forgetting to connect the thermo fans back up then going on a road trip.

[gtfpv]

almost forgot . this one was my best. i borrowed my sister inlaws barina, becuase of her curtousy i told her i'd service her car for free. had no time to do it so started at home at midnight in my garage at home.put remote door up wheeled car back for access room jacked the car up to do th oils, climbed under car, was undoing sump plug, ( forgot to take keys out of pocket)- rolled onto side and triggered the remote in my pocket. garage door started coming down . i made it to the garage door switch just as the door touched the roof. had a split head 2 grazed knees and bruised shinns, had to lioe on the floor for 1/2 hour to recover.

[3VSleeper]

I once changed an engine in an escort I owned at the same time installed an oil pressure gauge, new donk had a bit of work done to it. When I started it I found the oil pressure severly low. Thinking I bought a shagged engine I ripped it out and put the old one back in only to realise later that when I installed the oil pressure gauge I had over tightened the feed line and crimped the journal onto it which caused the low oil pressure reading on the gauge. :

[karfarzel]

I remember when I was 18 I just got a pair of steel car ramps from Rocca bros, When I got them home decided to do an oil change on my TE Cortina 250, Being on a gravel drive way, it was'nt moving up the ramp, so I gave it a good jab on the gas, in a 1/2 second the ramps were up under the car mangled to pieces, took me an hour to get the mangled mess from under the car.

Another time on the TE, I snapped the insulator off a spark plug, spent 30 mins trying to get ceramic bits out of the piston chamber with a vaccum cleaner.

In my first car a 74 TC Cortina 2ltr, I just bought a new stereo, I could'nt wait to fit it, so I connected it directly to the batt, worked well for 10 mins driving around, until the electrical connections melted with smoke billowing out from under the bonnet.

Those were the days...

[Iggypoppin']

Installed a Fuel Filter on my mates Gemini V8 the wrong way round, engine started then coughed, splutted, and fuel squirted out all over his mint Cortina. which was THANKFULLY covered in a tarp.
spent 15 minutes cutting off a wheelnut because I'd turned lefty loosey into lefty tighty with an Air gun. and a tyre iron.

[GTP 290]

welding up a roll cage in the back end of a mates RX4, for those of you that don't know 6'3 and the back seat of an RX4 don't mix. needless to say my knees where in the approximate area that my ears usually occupy. While tig welding above my head a spall drop of filler wire decided to drop down between my legs and straight onto the under lay... the old brown staw type stuff. 2 second later there were 2 foot flames each side of we and all of a sudden the oil soaked rags didn't seem like such a good idea to sit on. Needless to say i was out in a hurry.

working on the same car but at the workshop this time. Cleaned the engine using whitespirit down the exhaust side of the engine and remembered a few things that needed welding on the exhaust. so I lifted her up in the air and began to weld. Whitespirit does not evaporate as quickly when it's mixed with old engine oil and the flames were bigger this time.

bacl at the workshop once again, my boss had just brought out a workshop and stripped it of all it's tooling. Tooling which included a mobile oxy/acet set. Thought to myself one day I'd try it out to cut out a muffler, half way through cutting i heard a little 'pop' type of noise and thought nothing of it as some cars have unburnt fuel in the exhaust. Next thing my workmates start yelling "FIRE FIRE FIRE" I looked out to the side of the hoist to see the aceteline regulator going up in flames. What would you do in this situation? well for me i ran over and blew it out. I realised the stupidity of what i had done afterwards.

many many more to come, i should write a book.

[motorcycles4eva]

this thread gives me some peace of mind..lol..
when i was younger.. i reversed the battery connection cables on my statesman but returned 2minutes later to see smoke bellowing from the bonnet..
also another time was installing a mates stereo..he wanted to hear music so we switched it on whilst trying to fit it.. ended up burning out the system as it earthed out..lol
ahhhh. he still rubs it in..

[klawsterfobik]

Doing up a brake line with a ring spanner :(

[Iggypoppin']

just did this. Gemini coupe I just bought, I'm cutting the firewall with a nine inch grinder, cut nearly 20 cm too much, in the dark, of course. As I'm finishing off I realize why they call the 9 inch grinder one of the most dangerous power tools around. Hit chassis support rail, grinder flies up, big hole in my GOOD portion of firewall, fell over, grinder still on.....fell onto my brand new bonnet. Heading to scrap yard tomorow, needless to say my 70 dollar bonnet will be a 5 dollar chunk of useless.

[malazn mafia]

I had just picked up a nice set of EL GT rims and in the process of fitting them up to the EL. Anyways, borrowed the old man's camry jack and used it along with the falcon's one to jack up both sides of the car at once to make things a bit quicker. Being young and stupid, what I forgot was that jacking up a car on lawn was not a very brilliant idea. Undid both front wheels, wheeled them away and just as I'm coming back rolling an EL GT wheel over, i hear 'creaaaaak... booomphh', as the camry jack sinks in on an angle into the lawn and the other jack follows like a domino. The result.. both front brake disks buried halfway into the lawn and an EL looking very sad, resting with its entire front end on the lawn.

On a closer look, both jacks had bent out of shape and resting on their sides under the car. Went down the street to borrow a jack, and all I could find was one out of a VW Passat. 2 hours later, after using the VW jack about 50 times along the chassis rail from the rear wheel to the front, and sliding the stock EL wheel along the chassis rail an inch forward to the front each time, I managed to get her out of the ground : . Didnt do any damage to the car thankfully, but felt very lucky as a few weeks before I had stupidly gone under the car with 2 jacks on lawn to inspect why the heater wasnt working. :

[Iggypoppin']

Just got the news tonight everyone, a man in ascot park has died after his jacks holding his car up collapsed, crushing him to death. Please guys be careful apparently this man was an enthusiast too, just got a bit sloppy, like we all do at times, please use support stands and tyres under the car to stop it from collapsing. Don't ever want to log on here to find out someones died..

[rusty 351]

when i was younger bought an xe that had the gauge cluster in the middle of the dash from an esp with mint gauges, speco i think the brand was,
took them out and they ended up in the bin.
i get the s h i t s everytime i see a set for sale :(

[TK-421]

a mate came around to my place a few years ago complaining that his xw 500 6 was over heating, anyway you could see the cap was under pressure and einstein decides to remove the cap while wearing a short sleeved collared shirt.

as soon as the pressure was released the cap shot off and the hot water went straight up the sleeve giving him burns on the under arm and neck, i found out later he had to visit the emergency room.

[XR6_661]

I spent about 2 hours last night working on my girlfriends EF falcon. Had to put a new brake light switch in.

If you can picture a grown male, with his head shoulders, etc in the foot well, holding a torch in his teeth, legs up over the centre console and into the passenger side. That's how I was doing the job.

Anyway, Old one came out now worries, as they always do, because you just force the out. I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to get the new one in, just couldn't do it cos the steering column was in the way, etc etc. Kind of hard to explain, but I just couldn't do it. I even tried forcing it into place. Tried everything.

Then I remember the Falcons have adjustable steering columns. The bloody party went in in under 10 seconds.

[RG]

At HPR for the AFF Drag Nats on the Saturday morning I found that the eyelet that is bolted to the top of the alternator had broken, it's the lead that charges the battery. Being in a bit of a rush I grabbed a ring spanner and just as I was about to undo the bolt to add in a washer to get me through the day I relised I hadn't taken the negative lead off the battery.

Of course that is the same time that I dropped the spanner and instinctively went to catch it. Of course I was also wearing a ring, so the spanner drops, hits the terminal on top of the alternator at the same time as earthing itself out on the upper intake manifold all the while I have just grabbed this bloody spanner.

Result;

You know it's a bad burn when the damn thing doesn't really hurt.

[XR6_661]

Ouch!!!

I looked at the pictures first and couldn't figure out how you got a 'ring' blister around your finger!

Read the story and it all made sense!

[Springfield_Johny]

Well while we're on the subject of finger injuries....

While removing the side repeater from a crappydore, I had my hand resting on top of the guard up by the windscreen when the bonnet struts failed. Pics tell the story



I still have this bit in the jar at home.

[steve.zissou]

nice - imagine a few 4 letter words after that one:

- reminds me of working in warehouses where people would get their fingers with rings caught on shelving and basicaccly rip their finger off - or the photo of the bloke that put the barrel of his shot gun on the end of his boot and two toes later.....

[Springfield_Johny]

Yeah there were a few four letter words

[GT69]

Originally Posted by NJXR6

Just got the news tonight everyone, a man in ascot park has died after his jacks holding his car up collapsed, crushing him to death. Please guys be careful apparently this man was an enthusiast too, just got a bit sloppy, like we all do at times, please use support stands and tyres under the car to stop it from collapsing. Don't ever want to log on here to find out someones died..

I use to have a jack that would let itself down slowly. One day i had both real wheels off doing some work. decided to paint the fuel tank while i was at it......1 foot of clearance soon became 6 inches....then 5 inches....by the time i actually realised what was going on I had to yell at the old man to come over and jack the bloody car back up as i couldnt get out.....

Funny in hindsight. Needless to say the jack went straight in the bin.....and i had to apologise to the old man for the harshness in which i ordered him to hurry up and jack the car up

[Pinkbits]

Originally Posted by RG

Result;

Remember that commercial?, I think it was the Colgate ring of confidence.

[ryanstev]

I bogged this up:




About 2 months after doing that I bashed the bog out and did it properly. Welding replacement steel on the corner, I haven't done the quarterpanel yet.

[XWildGT]

I didn't put any beer in the fridge had to down tools to go and get some :

[marquis 78]

How many you want haha? I've learnt everything by mistakes. I will give you the dangerous ones. I was 17 working on a zk fairlane. The front of the car was on jack stands with the handbrake OFF so the tranny was the the only thing holding the car still. I had bricks behind the rear wheels. Once I undid the tailshaft, I heard a whoosh and the car rolled off quick and over the bricks while nearly crushing me. $#@#$% stupid of me. After some swearing and redfacing I sold my xd and went for a test drive with the buyer just after I struggled out. Went to the hospital after the sale and lucky no ribs were broken. Took me 2 weeks to recover.

I've since become a tradesman where safety is drilled into us. Took me years to be able to get under a car without freaking out and thats why I have jackstands on level ground while also leaving the jack in place. I even put the wheels under the car also. Don't take risks no matter how small. That's my most stupid garage mistake. Cheers, Steve.

[prydey]

Originally Posted by NJXR6

Just got the news tonight everyone, a man in ascot park has died after his jacks holding his car up collapsed, crushing him to death. Please guys be careful apparently this man was an enthusiast too, just got a bit sloppy, like we all do at times, please use support stands and tyres under the car to stop it from collapsing. Don't ever want to log on here to find out someones died..

absolutely spot on. never ever get under a car without axle stands or some sort of non collapsible support.

[neatebxr8]

Result;

You know it's a bad burn when the damn thing doesn't really hurt.[/QUOTE]

Reminds me of the time when I got my watch that I was wearing caught between the postive battery terminal and the snorkle of the air cleaner. The watch had a metal band which got super hot real quick (was a real flurry to get the thing off), the burn scar remained with me for a long time and is still evident 20 years latter. Lesson learnt was to remove all metal objects from hands and arms before working on vehicles, just the one of mant that I have learnt over the years.

[VioletGT]

Mate of mine broke his wrist when he was doing circles in his mums non power assisted xd... the wheel swung back and he didnt let go