stupid mistakes made with your car maintenance

[stevej37]

Now that I've found and fixed the year old rattle in the Fit....onto the next mystery problem.
Tried the windshield polish...just makes it brighter. Pic taken this am and the stuff in the corner is ice..it was 16F
Any ideas?

[VINMAN]

Doing a radiator flush on my Bronco. Got it all nice and clean. Dumped some anti freeze back in. Started it up. Grabbed a half gallon I had sitting on the shelf. Took the cap off, quickly turned the jug over in the funnel and walked away. Came back , WTF is that smell?? Realized the half gallon of antifreeze was 90w gear oil I had dumped in it.
About 20 gallons of Purple Power later, it was sorta cleaned out.

Needless to say never had rust in my cooling system ever again...


.

[Superman]

I have made most of the mistakes I see here. I learned that the clutch fork in a 915 bellhousing PULLS rather than pushes the release bearing. And at the time, a new fork was $150.

I have put lots of fluids in places that particular fluid should not go. Drove cars with lug nuts that were finger tight. I replaced the clutch in a 4WD Pathfinder (not easy) only to find the problem was a mis-adjusted pedal. If I were a private pilot who maintains his own aircraft, I'd be dead.

And yes, use the KISS principle. Drive train noise? Must be a transmission problem. Or a rock under the hubcap.

[Superman]

One more thing: The spindle-fell-off story is perhaps the most frightening car story I have ever heard. Cars are designed fairly fail-safe. Brakes don't just fail catastrophically. There is no redundancy with spindles. This is why we never repair them. Spindle welding is a no-no.

The weight of a front axle on an old 911 is miniscule and there would be even less pressure on a front tire if it were wedged upward into the wheel well. Making it barely possible to drive one with a broken spindle, I see. That story makes me shiver.

[Nostril Cheese]

Was collecting all the old oil from pans into a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket. Stepped away for a few minutes, came back to see the garage floor covered with oil. The roommate's cat (who normally avoided me) jumped into the bucket for some reason. Of course, nobody is home and I'm allergic to cats.

I have to grab this cat by the neck, put it in a plastic bag and then look up online, one handed, how to clean oil off a cat.

Washing that cat in the sink was one of the worst experiences ever. Trying to keep it from licking itself afterwards was literally painful.


ALWAYS cover open oil containers.

[Embraer]

Set a 500w shop light on the intake manifold of the Cayenne GTS...5 seconds after buttoning it all up after changing water pump and thermostat. Ran into the house for 2 minutes to take a leak.....came back into the garage to the smell of burning plastic and the sight of melted intake runners.

Expensive mistake.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Originally Posted by Superman

One more thing: The spindle-fell-off story is perhaps the most frightening car story I have ever heard. Cars are designed fairly fail-safe. Brakes don't just fail catastrophically. There is no redundancy with spindles. This is why we never repair them. Spindle welding is a no-no.

The weight of a front axle on an old 911 is miniscule and there would be even less pressure on a front tire if it were wedged upward into the wheel well. Making it barely possible to drive one with a broken spindle, I see. That story makes me shiver.

I've had the lower ball joint on an old 911 separate on me. Since all the weight is supported by the torsion bar and the lower arm, when the ball joint pops out of the socket, the wheel collapses up into the fender.

Fortunately, I was close to home, and it happened at slow speed, so I walked home, put a skateboard/dolly something under the right front and drove it home on a skateboard.

[Joe Bob]

Originally Posted by stevej37

^^^ Do you remember the older Chev engines that had the canister that stayed with the car for oil changes?
They were notorious for people leaving the seal ring up in the block and adding another one.

My Austin Healy Bug Eye had the same thing. You'd think they would have stopped doing stupid designs like that by now......

[Bob Kontak]

Chevy 1500 crew cab, Z71, lifted. Doing rotors and pads. Have to pull in about a foot and a half more forward than usual to have the shop door clear the rear bumper.

I can't get out as I have a two post lift and the front truck door hits the main lift beams when opened leaving maybe a foot of clearance to exit cab. I can't do that at 64 and husky. I look in the big back seat. It's clear. I do the acrobat routine over the center console between the seats to the back, grunting and groaning. It was shameful.

I gear up mentally after the work was done to do the reverse and get back in from the rear seats to drive it out but it was worse going in vs out. I'm finally in the driver's seat, sucking wind and yelling out loud in my empty shop, "Are you effing kidding me?"

Then I straightened my largeness, arched my back to dig for the keys and............empty pockets.

[A930Rocket]

Rebuilt the engine in my 69 Mustang and changed the oil after breaking it in. Forgot to install the new filter, but didn’t see it until after start up to check everything. Like the oil filter. Made the mad dash to turn it off.

[WPOZZZ]

Back in high school I used to work on cars. My cousin came to Honolulu from an outer island to go the University of Hawaii. Her Accord needed an oil change so she brought it over to the house. Man, whoever did the last oil change, sure tightened the drain plug really tight! So I bench pressed it and my finger got smashed between the socket wrench and the subframe. Split my right index finger right open. Quite a bit of blood and when I got it to stop bleeding, I could see the fat layer under my skin. It was pretty trippy, but I drove myself to the urgent care about 5 minutes away. The doctor came in a put a stitch in. The worst part was the shot to numb my finger. The needle went into the split and I thought my finger was going to blow up when he injected the liquid.

[Aurel]

I had rebuilt the engine on my 911sc and it was running really great. Had a cat bypass on the standard exhaust, which made it sound really nice too.

But somehow I wanted to convert to SSI style heat exchangers because of all the power increase and how they were supposed to free the motor into a revving monster.

So I got me a pair of old heat exchangers on evil bay and did the conversion, which I completed with a 2 in 1 out muffler. To be honest, it felt like the engine lost some of its torque, just to move the max power to higher rpms.

But the worst part is, one of the oil lines I had to replace sprung a leak which destroyed the bearings in my freshly rebuilt engine.

I wish I had left good enough alone, but I had to rebuild it again. Thankfully, my first rebuild was just top end, so I had the opportunity to do bottom end that time, and the heads were still fine.

[porsche tech]

Many years ago after having done a million 911 clutch jobs, I decided to see how fast I could complete one. Early 80’s vintage 911 and I think I finished in about an hour (back when you could do it without pulling trans). Hopped in to fire it up and quickly realized I had not transferred over the starter ring gear. Oops.
Also burned up stuff more than once with a drop light (as someone else posted). 42 years on the job...included lots of bone headed mistakes! Ahh the good old days.

[Seahawk]

Rebuild the carb on my 1968 VW Bug. Forgot to tighten the nut on the bowl.

Guy pulls up next to me and says my car is burning. I had a fire extinguisher (Thank you, John Muir!) and put it out before any real damage occurred.

I was back, sheepishly, on the road later that day.

[fastfredracing]

Originally Posted by porsche tech

Many years ago after having done a million 911 clutch jobs, I decided to see how fast I could complete one. Early 80’s vintage 911 and I think I finished in about an hour (back when you could do it without pulling trans). Hopped in to fire it up and quickly realized I had not transferred over the starter ring gear. Oops.
Also burned up stuff more than once with a drop light (as someone else posted). 42 years on the job...included lots of bone headed mistakes! Ahh the good old days.

zzzzzzziiiiiiiiinnnng. I have done this also .

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Originally Posted by porsche tech

Hopped in to fire it up and quickly realized I had not transferred over the starter ring gear. Oops.

I've never done that, but I'm quite competent in reinstalling old starter ring gears (with one or more broken teeth).

Funny how when I turn the car off, karma always finds a way to line the missing tooth up with the starter.

[Ctopher]

I decided to put a short shifter on my 96 300ZX Slicktop during the week around 10pm at night in the apartment parking complex. I pull the center console and begin to remove the shifter and made it as far as getting the new one mostly installed before I dropped a wrench that fell between the exhaust and body. Well with my TRex arms there was no way I could reach from under the car so I shoved my arm deeper into the whole between the shifter and car body. I could almost put my finger on it but needed to twist my hand around the other direction, couldn’t do it with my left hand, I was sitting in the drivers seat at this point. So I decided to rotate by putting my feet on the roof and lay head facing up in the passenger seat to get the right angle. I pushed and shoved and was finally able to put a finger on and drop the wrench to the ground. Well at this point I realized my wrist had swollen from all the twisting and shoving I had done and it was much larger than before and I couldn’t pull my arm out. Of course PANIC ensued and of course the best reaction is to pull harder and harder like a monkey with its hand stuck in a jar! Well that made it even worse. I panicked for bit more and after all the yanking wasn't doing anything I was able calm myself down. Of course this is before I had a cell phone and it being during the work week the place was dead at 1am. Well I laid in the passenger seat with my feet up on the headrest for another hr or so, I imagined what I was going to tell the first person that I saw in the morning getting ready to head to work. Lol. Finally deciding that embarrassment of asking for help or worse the fire dept showing up and cutting on my car to get me out I tried forcing my hand/wrist into a different position and finally yanked hard enough to rip a lot of skin and get my hand out.
I might have learned something from that, not to keep a phone or tell people what I was doing....it’s to use the little gripper tool, magnets on sticks to push/get tools instead of shoving your hand down a little hole.


CTopher

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by Ctopher

Of course PANIC ensued and of course the best reaction is to pull harder and harder like a monkey with its hand stuck in a jar!

I would have screamed like a little girl. Just the thought of that freaks me out. You did well. That hour just laying there must have been strange.

[Ctopher]

Originally Posted by Bob Kontak

I would have screamed like a little girl. Just the thought of that freaks me out. You did well. That hour just laying there must have been strange.

It was a test in controlling ones fears for sure.


CTopher

[oldE]

Back in my younger and more foolish days, we had two Renaults. (I think that qualifies right there) They went through brake pads at an astounding rate. One day after a quick pad change, we headed for the in-laws. About twenty miles into the trip we both noticed a worsening vibration. I asked the wife to pull over and got the lug wrench and tightened the nuts which I had neglected in my haste. Close one. Those cars only had there studs per wheel.

Best
Les