Today was almost the worst .
It is sneaking up on 30 years of being a mechanic. Id be lying if I said that I did not make some mistakes along the way. Fortunately for me, most of them have been pretty minor in the grand scheme of things . No one has ever been hurt, I have never been sued, and it did not put me out of business.
I've made most of the mistakes that lifetime mechanics do . left a wheel loose a few times, dropped a nut down an intake manifold,and lunched a motor . Had a hood fly open on a test drive etc...
Having said that, I recognize trouble areas, and have a pretty good system going to where I keep screw ups to a minimum.
Today, I was working on a customers gt3 motor, we're pinning coolant pipes, replacing the two coolant elbows, rear main seal, and clutch. He has been coming down, and helping out a little after work in the evenings, and today a little bit. Good guy, good custome r, friend/neighbor, all around car/Porsche guy
I had the motor out, and up on my hydraulic table that I showed pics of in the other thread. I had it chocked up on blocks and balanced out really good, and also had jack stands with 2x4 's under it just so that there is no way one can come along, and knock it over .
We are only about 30 minutes in today. He is working on one side, and I am on the other removing some plumbing and wiring to get at where we have to drill and pin . In one split of a second I go from unscrewing an inverted torx screw holding a coolant hose to watching the motor spill off the back of the table backwards, and come crashing to the floor . Before my mind could even process what I just witnessed, I could see fluids start to pour from the motor .
I honestly screamed at the top of my lungs like a scared little girl " oh my f%$&ing god "
Poor ( enter name here ) who after this incident, warned me that he is clumsy, leaned on the release handle for the table sending the whole shebang crashing down.
Long story short, once my blood pressure settled, we got it back up and evaluated what had happened, and really , no harm was done . It landed on the boards that I had propping it up, and only bent two of the long studs that the trans hangs on to, and we knocked the cooling housing off , that was already unbolted and just hanging on to a hose. We did about $ 20.00 worth of damage, and I actually think I found a shortcut to doing those coolant pipes in the course of repairing our mishap.
All turned out well, and we laughed about it the rest of the day, but for a second I watched $50 k slip from my hands.
Got any stories you want to share? Did you get fired?
We are both also really lucky that neither one of us got hurt. I was wearing my flip flops
