DIY blunders confessional thread

[sugarwood]

This is a slight derivative of this thread:
What is the most "Now I'm truly F'ed" thing that has happened during a 911 DIY ?

There is a lot of experience on this forum. Lots of skill. Many man years of wrenching.
But, part of that road to mastery includes making mistakes.
They can range from minor to major: forgetting to put on the oil cap back on, lowering a car without both the jack stands cleared away, or cranking the ignition while still in gear.

Care to share your memorable blunders?

I'll start with a very small one.
I was changing brake pads and was about to remove the retaining pins.
I stand up to get a different hammer.
I sit back down and the drift punch I was about to use is gone.
I looked for it for 30 mins. It is nowhere. It made no sense.
It is impossible for it to be gone. It exists somewhere on this plane. I checked my pockets 25 times.
I finally gave up and started imagining that it somehow teleported inside my engine case, where it would then grenade my engine.
The rest of the day felt like I had been robbed of my watch by David Blaine.

[NYNick]

I changed from winter to summer wheels in my garage once. Took the car, went out, drove 20 miles, played golf, drove another 20 miles and came home, put out the garbage and there, at the bottom of my long driveway on the blacktop was an all too familiar Porsche lug bolt.

Oops.

[sugarwood]

I found the drift punch 3 days later at a DE event, while emptying the frunk.
The universe was aligned again.

[DRACO A5OG]

Good God Man, there is not enough room on this page to list

Recently, dropped engine case with crank and rod on my thighs, lesson, case even stripped to the rods is still freakin heavy, lucky my thighs were in the way and slid down slowly to the moving mat below Wife could only watch the expression on my face in horror.

I had a flash of a cracked case and thought my legs were easier to fix, LOL. The love of the Porsche.

[GothingNC]

On my old VW I connected a wire from the positive to negative ground from the fuse box, had a nasty burn on my fingers when I removed the smoldering wire.

Just really glad it did not ignite any gas vapors from the fuel tank.

[sugarwood]

Originally Posted by DRACO A5OG

Recently, dropped engine case with crank and rod on my thighs, lesson, case even stripped to the rods is still freakin heavy, lucky my thighs were in the way and slid down slowly to the moving mat below :

So, you basically carried a car engine? Give this man a beer!

[zippy_gg]

After putting the engine back in the car and tested everything (the engine ran after replacing the fuel pump) I noticed I could not close the engine lid, something was interfering.
I looked for (custom A/C) hoses out of place, lid hinges, etc...
Finally I looked my fan and noticed that I have the strap tightening bolt on top, at 12:00 o'clock instead of 9:00 o'clock. Easy fix, fortunately.
Also while the engine was out, I reinstalled the intake manifolds BEFORE installing my new fuel lines... What a pill it is doing things out of order...
The list can go on for a while I am afraid...

[Taxi!]

Not technically a DIY confessional (since I was getting paid at the time), but one college summer I worked as a mechanic at a small garage that performed general auto maintenance in a rural community near Houston. Most people would just drop their car off for an oil change or a/c recharge and then come back after the work was completed, especially since the facility was just a medium-sized corrugated steel building with no waiting room or air conditioning.

But one older woman came by wanting an oil change and lube and said she'd wait while the work was being done. So she sat down in a chair and I started working on her car. After I rushed to finish, I pulled her car up to the door while my boss collected the payment. Just as she was about to drive off, I realized (you guessed it) that in my haste to finish the job I had forgotten to add any new oil. I was pretty embarassed to have to do that right in front of her and my boss, who didn't fire me but at the end of the summer did say he initially thought I'd be a better mechanic than I turned out to be. Probably just as good....

So if I ask a stupid question on another thread about how to do something, please remember this story and who you're dealing with.

[911tracker85]

Good God Man, there is not enough room on this page to list

that is how we learn.....

[yelcab1]

I think I will keep my blunders to myself.

[Laneco]

Did a 3.2 install in an older chassis. Starter wouldn't engage! Just made cheerful but completely ineffective spinning sounds. Pulled starter, checked starter, reinstalled. No joy. Took starter to a repair shop - they checked - it's good. Reinstalled no-joy.

The 3.2 has a ring gear for the starter and a second one that is for speed/reference sensors. They look a lot like. ALOT. But you need them BOTH - LOL! We had installed without the starter ring. Nothing dropping the engine and starting all over couldn't take care of...

Another 3.2 install in an older chassis... Fires right up and runs first hit WOOHOO! As it warms up, starts to smoke. More and more and more! Acts like it's overfilled. How can that be? It was dead empty including the oil cooler lines (removed and cleaned). Turns out that the oil I had bought was no longer in 4 quart containers, it was no in 5 quart containers. I had put TWO QUARTS more into the engine than I had thought. DOH!

Oh - and there's the time that Steve was welding custom seat mounts into a 911 and burned a hole in the fuel line inside the tunnel. Of course, as the fuel system was empty at the time, we didn't find out about the leak in the fuel line until AFTER the engine was in...

angela

[Dr J]

Ok here are two.

Put the oil breather cover gasket upside down after rebuild. Drove the car around and engine smoked like crazy. Took a while to find out where the oil was coming out of.

Took the tranny vent out and when reinstalled was 45 degrees off. Was slowly dumping out tranny oil for weeks.

[ChrisBennet]

It was cold in the garage, probably 50 degrees at around 2:00 in the morning.

I was putting my 911 motor back in the car for the very first time. I had the first autocross of the year in a few hours which is why I was working on it so late.
I gotten the motor in (a 3.2) but then noticed that I hadn't re-attached the wire holder/clamp near the flywheel.

The rear wheels hung down far enough that I could just fit my head into the wheel well and reach the clamp. I attached the clamp and then tried to take my head out of the wheel well - no dice. My ears were acting like barbs! I tried everything over the next several minutes. Finally I got my head out but in the meantime I was thinking that I was going to be stuck that way until the wife happened to go out to the garage - possibly for 8+ hours. There is probably some German word for a mixture of dread and embarrassment...

[911tracker85]

^^^^^

LOL why I stopped wearing a wrist watch when working on the cars.

glad the little pins break easy or may have had to do the 'cyote in a trap' and chew my arm off.

[Lake Guy]

Three memorable moments for me during my rebuild:

1) had car on hoist for front rebuild. Decided fuel tank had to go but there was fuel in it. I got a couple empty fuel cans, funnel, and a pair of side cutters. Cut the hose leaving the tank before the pump (needed to be replaced anyway) and started to drain what i thought was a few gallons. Once the hose was cut there was no turning back, filled the two 5 gallon cans, filled a small garbage can I could reach, frantically called my wife for more containers (two empty flower pots) and it was still coming. Then the power failed - Seriously! - and I was now sitting in the dark with the fuel still coming. Wife to the rescue again. Next time i pump it out.

2) got the car off the hoist and wanted to have a quick ride around town with one of my sons. Got a few miles away and started to hear noises when cornering or under power, noises got worse the farther we went. Stopped, discussed, decided we forgot to tight lugs on one wheel. Had no tools with us so limped home and made it.

3) reinstalling the fuel door with the fender installed and final paint is tough! I was working late and finally manged to get a plastic tie wrap to hold all the bits together so I could installed the assembly. Now I had to cut the tie wrap but no room to reach in so I decided I'd just heat it up and melt it. I had the small butane torch in my hand and was walking to the car when the sledge hammer hit me in the head. I was going to put an open flame inches away from the fuel filler neck with the cap removed!!! Luckily I realized this on the walk across the garage. I finally used the torch to heat a screw driver head (at a safe distance) and melted the tie wrap that way.

None of the above caused anything serious so thankful for that!!

[davetaylor]

On a VW I once drove 3 hours with a tie rod just laying in the spindle with no nut.

I had been swapping the tie rods when I had a small fire in the shop and threw it together just enough to push it outside and forgot all about it when I took the trip later that night. It fell out as I turned into the driveway at my arrival point.

[strictly]

with 25 years of working on cars, ive got a long list! I'm self taught, so you can be sure I graduated from the school of hard knocks. I guess that which dosent kill you can only make you stronger. I suppose the main thing is, never to make the same mistake twice.

So lets think, forgetting to torque the wheels done that a few times, I once had all 4 wheels come off at the same time! No ****, it was weird they came off, but not to the point of falling off, just off and then the car kinda caught itself on the rims. Wish I had taken a picture. lesson learned, always check the wheel torque even if just checking the oil lol

the list is endless, I cant even remember them all, but hey its nice to know we all make mistakes, that's what the forums all about - learning =)

[autojack]

I've done two notably dumb things in my motor vehicular career. The first involves my first car, a hand-me-down Plymouth Acclaim from my dad. After owning it for a few weeks I noticed that it always left a pool of oil wherever I parked it. Wisps of smoke also came out from under the hood occasionally. I figured oil leaks were no big deal, so I just checked the oil every few days and topped it up.

Older, wiser me now knows that leaking a quart of oil every few days is a pretty serious issue, but young ignorant me just figured he would get it fixed eventually. Then one day I was sitting in stop and go traffic when the engine quit. Smoke was coming out from the hood, and I realized it wasn't steam... Abandon ship! The car was in the far left lane on an elevated highway, and as I walked away from it it was clearly on fire. To make a long story short, by the time the FD got there through the traffic it was a MASSIVE fire. The car was burned to a cinder, it made the news, and a firefighter said to me, drily, "Well, it's made its last run."

The other really dumb incident involved my vintage Vespa. A friend had warned me to be careful torquing fasteners on it, because they strip easily. So after putting on new tires I gently tightened the M14 lug nuts. A few weeks later I started to notice that it made a clunking noise every time I went on and off throttle. I asked a friend to come over and take a look, because the bike was my first and still new to me.

This is hard to describe, but the Vespa rim is thin plate steel, and the studs are M14 as I mentioned, so pretty small. It's also a direct drive, so the torque to the hub from the engine is significant. My friend noticed right away that the nuts were loose, but when he tightened the first one, the stud snapped right off the hub! "What kind of cheap pot metal IS this?!" he yelled. It was then that we realized, by not tightening the nuts enough, the rim had worked back and forth against the studs and basically cut through them. The other four were nearly done. The whole wheel would have come off any day.

These days, with experience and the help of friends and great forums like this, I don't make many dumb mistakes. I'm really particular about figuring out the steps before I start a new job, using the right tools, and asking for help before I try to force anything. You should have seen all the fire precautions I took before changing my fuel pump!

[bigel]

So I'm in the process of removing my fuel lines after a failure on the first startup after disassembly...no, not rebuilding the fuel lines when the engine was out of the car isn't the stupidity of this story (debatable).

So in the process of fishing out the fuel lines I utilized lots of tools, muscle and my trusty mini-mag flashlight. This is where the stupidity comes in...so I lay that sucker on top of the alternator fan/shroud and...clink...dink...I knock it down into the engine compartment. But now I can't find the darn thing...wait a minute, you don't think...oh no!



If it's not clear what you're looking at in the photo above, I'll tell you...you're looking down the opening of the fresh air distributor tube; the nice shiny stainless steel tube that connects to the heat exchangers and runs up through the engine tin into the engine compartment. Yes, a perfect shot down the 8" length of the tube...and my exhaust is just installed and torqued to spec.

Well there is no way I am disassembling the muffler/cat and pulling the air distributor tube to get my flashlight back. Maybe I'll just leave it in there...what's the worst that could happen...no! I need to fish that thing out of there!

So I try a wad of duct tape fastened to the end of a long screwdriver...no dice, not sticky enough!

So then I try to fish it out with two long screwdrivers, a la chopstick style...no dice, not dexterous enough!

Now I am loosing it...I give up for the night and figure I'll sleep on it.

Next morning it hits me...shop vac!

But it's not going to be that easy. The flashlight is weighty for its footprint and, oh by the way, I managed to knock the little bugger laterally towards the passenger side and out of sight.

I hit it with the shop vac...try to fish the vacuum hose towards the flashlight's new hiding place...no dice, not enough suction! I'll need to get it back to where I can see the sucker!

So I jack the passenger side way up to the extent of the factory jack and start 'encouraging' the entrapped foreign object using a rubber mallet on the underside of the tube.

Finally, something is going my way...I can once again see the flashlight at the bottom of the tube. I now stick the cone-shaped nozzle of the shop vac down and can feel resistance in the vacuum.



However, as I gently pull it up with my prize, it falls back down...narrow cylindrical objects that are fairly heavy for their size don't cooperate with this short of game.

I won't be defeated, next I use a piece of 14 gauge wire fashioned with a loop on one end and am finally able to stand the flashlight up so that the face of the light is facing upwards...I then go at it with the shop vac cone attachment once more and FINALLY, the flashlight holds firm and I'm able to remove it from its metallic tomb!

What a waste of 2 hours of my life...from now on, rags in all exposed openings...not just those sensitive ones on the engine!

Bad flashlight!

[zippy_gg]

Originally Posted by Lake Guy

I was going to put an open flame inches away from the fuel filler neck with the cap removed!!! Luckily I realized this on the walk across the garage. I finally used the torch to heat a screw driver head (at a safe distance) and melted the tie wrap that way.

A soldering iron would also have worked great in your "application".