admit to your stupidity

[JC930]

I think it would be interesting if you would admit to something that you did on your car that was really stupid.
Like when I had to pull my motor and tranny again when I stabbed only one ear of the throw out bearing, or when I hooked up a wire that was hot to my windshield wiper motor and it only worked with the door open. Your right it was hooked to the door jamb switch. Ok that's all I'll admit to at this point.
Your turn.
jc930

[Alan Cottrill]

replaced clutch. forgot to install disk. after I bolted up the motor back up I thought to myself "boy...that went together easy"

[scottb]

There was a pretty good thread recently, where people admitted their garage mistakes. Very funny!

[1fastredsc]

Well, where do we start?
1) When i sold my 951 because it was having serious boost issues and (back then) i though that the motor was going to be toast. So my dad took it off my hands (i didn't charge him) and it turned out to be simple fixes.
2) While i owned the 951 i got the bright idea to make this string of oscillating LED's in electronics class to give it the night rider look under the stereo head.
3) I got into 3 consecutive stoplight races where i got up to 100mph and then stopped, then took off again. When i finally did stop my brakes were smoking considerably.
4) When i bought my 944 which had a slightly cracked block but i didn't know.
5) When my father and i put together the 944 engine the first time with the wrong oil pressure spring installed and it blew an oil filter apart.
6) In the course of 3 months i went through 3 pairs of front shocks on my old 88' nissan pickup, but of course i never went off road .
7) When i was driving behind a state cop in jersey on the 280 and the cop took and off ramp. So once he was out of view i stomped on it and took off. What i didn't realize was that the off ramp was attached to the corresponding on ramp and i got nailed doing 100mph in a 55 section (the highway was empty).
8) When i bought the 911 thinking that the hot start problem and the shifting issues were probably small fixes.
9) One time i was doing some welding not realizing that there were two gas containers under what i was welding with gas in them.

There's probably more but i can't think of anymore. I feel like a walking tim allen right now.

[Bill Douglas]

I once did an oil change and forgot to put the drain plug back in. I thought "My God, this car takes a lot of oil".

[JTO]

I bought a "cherry" 1975 911S Silver Anniversary Edition without a PPI. Man, have I paid and PAID for that one!

Troy

[Teutonics]

Replacing fan in evaporator box, trying to remove one of the spring clips that had one ear broken off (couldn't use circlip pliers with ear missing).

Holding box in one hand, pulling clip with pliers in other. Clip pops off (with amazing force!), pliers/clip/hand comes straight toward my face..... after slicing through my lip, the clip embeds itself in my gums above my front teeth.

Wife: "OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED?!?"
Me: "Hit myself in the mouth."
Wife: "What did you do that for?"

Like I didn't feel stupid enough already. Thanks honey....

[masraum]

7) When i was driving behind a state cop in jersey on the 280 and the cop took and off ramp. So once he was out of view i stomped on it and took off. What i didn't realize was that the off ramp was attached to the corresponding on ramp and i got nailed doing 100mph in a 55 section (the highway was empty).

I read about that in Hot Rod magazine once years ago, I've been watching over my shoulder at on-ramps every since.

Holding box in one hand, pulling clip with pliers in other. Clip pops off (with amazing force!), pliers/clip/hand comes straight toward my face..... after slicing through my lip, the clip embeds itself in my gums above my front teeth.

Ouch!!

[seqcgr]

Originally posted by Bill Douglas
I once did an oil change and forgot to put the drain plug back in. I thought "My God, this car takes a lot of oil".

Thanx, I just laughed myself silly!

[Eugene at Pelican Parts]

Originally posted by Teutonics
Replacing fan in evaporator box, trying to remove one of the spring clips that had one ear broken off (couldn't use circlip pliers with ear missing).

Holding box in one hand, pulling clip with pliers in other. Clip pops off (with amazing force!), pliers/clip/hand comes straight toward my face..... after slicing through my lip, the clip embeds itself in my gums above my front teeth.

Gross... there should be a warning sticker on those clips. When I did the same, one almost shot my eye out!

[addictionMS]

not a porsche story, but we were racing our RX7 in a night enduro, and we smelt something burning, so we started cutting the wires to the lights thinking we were drawing too many amps and over heating the wires. well after about 2.5 hours I out there at Buttonwillows, and it is getting harder and harder to see, I attribute it to additional dust on the track. But I finally get past the car in front of me and realize I have no lights to see where I am going, so here I am headed around Talladega headed towards the lost hill, and I can't see, can't stop because there is car right behind me, so I guess my way around the track and make my way to the pits.

Next morning, we are looking to see what happened we notice there is no fan belt on the car, so we lost our water pump and boiled the car dry (the burning smell) and we also lost the alternator, so we ran the battery down and lost the lights.....all this because we did not realize the gauges we have in the car had lights, and we could have hooked them up to see them.

Tough little car though, kept running, put water in it and put on a fan belt and drove it a bunch more.

Jim

[surflvr911sc]

'nuff said.

[johncj8989]

I passed on a true '74 2.7MFI car once. $12,000.00.

I am stupid.

[Jdub]

When I first took possession of the car, I did the classic dipstick thing -- I read the dipstick. Hmmm, low on oil I thought...

Then there was pumping the gas pedal to get it to start. That was fun. Thank God for the popoff valve.

John

[CamB]

Porsche

Was worried the 911 had leaked a considerable (rather than little bit) of oil over 3 months without use. Put a considerable (rather than a little) oil in the tank. Fired it up, made a LOT of smoke - and oil overflowed out the drain hole in the airbox and all over the engine then floor. Shut it down. Cleaned it up.

Ran the engine for 10 mins with the breather poking into an oil container. Decided that that was enough to puke the excess out. I removed the oil cap and started hunting around for the dipstick (I had taken it out earlier). Turned around to see oil puking out the oil filler and onto the engine and floor. Shut it down, cleaned it up.

BMW

Neglected to do final torque of rear wheels after putting car back on the ground. 80(!) miles from home, a knocking sounds started up in the left rear. Didn't have a wheel brace - had to borrow one from a passing car!!! Note this was on the way to a tarmac rallysprint!

[JCR]

Had a 944 about 12 years ago (don't ask why). Driving home from the gym, at night on a 2 lane road, raining fairly heavily. Traffic suddenly stopped. As I got to the bottleneck, I realized there was standing water over the road, looked about 7" deep. (some of you know where this is going). Everyone was making it through fine by going real slow. My turn (no choice really - there was no way around it) so I go through ... the car dies - crank it over... nothing. So, ankle deep in water, I push it into a parking lot about 20 yards down the road and walk home.

Next morning I get a ride back with a Pcar nut friend of mine. Our GENIUS diagnosis is - some electronics got wet and the overnight drying will take care of it. We open the hood, I crank it over. Starts immediately but is runing very rough - he says "give it some gas" to which I agreed. When I do... HOOO BOYYYY...BAAANG... REAL LOUD!!! I get out of the car, look under the hood to see a f*#king 1" hole in the engine block and oil SHOOTING out of it! Friend says "you may want to go to the dealer for that one".

The damn thing still ran though. When I did show up at the dealer, there was another 944 there with the same problem, happening on the same night!

Well, since then I learned 944s have a snorkel air intake low in front of the front wheel. There are no holes along the path to break a vacuum. Just sucked water all the way up into the combustion chamber and... well let's just say I had a little physics lesson that day. Water doesn't compress - it snapped the connecting rod with the additional revs, sending it through the engine block. Had I known this at the time, I could have removed the plugs and pumped the water out by cranking it over.

Anyway, a happy ending... my insurance covered the $7,000 engine replacement. If you have a 944. drill a small hole in the intake snorkel, it's all you need to prevent water sucking. (Who engineered this thing?)

[Eugene at Pelican Parts]

Originally posted by Jdub
Then there was pumping the gas pedal to get it to start. That was fun. Thank God for the popoff valve.

John

Just the other week, I adjusted my mixture for the first time. I wasn't sure if I was actually turning the hidden screw, but I apparently enriched it... a lot. Blipping the throttle by hand, I suddenly hear a loud POP right under my chest. Thank god for the popoff valve.

[Early_S_Man]

Cam,

What exactly IS a 'wheel brace?'

[Jdub]

Warren:

I believe that is South of the Equator for jack or chock.

John

[Bill Douglas]

What's a jack or a chock?

A wheel brace is the wrench to use on the wheel lugs/nuts.