Stupidest thing you have done

[TCMdocs944]

944 front seal job.


I mistakenly pulled the oil pump thinking it had to come out.

Did it without dropping the oil pan.....not really a problem.

Problem was when I went to seal the oil pump with something other than lock-tite 571.......



Get it all back together and it leaks like a siv......
Had to pull it all out and redo it with the proper porsche glue.

[bull4u2me]

Originally posted by binky
Stupidest thing...while replacing the hood struts on my pristine 944, I lifted the hood 1/8 of an inch too high and the corner cracked the windshield!!! BEWARE of this!

thanks for the tip.... I'm gonna change mine next week, and I'm pretty sure that with the kinda luck Ive been having lately, I would have done the same.

Live and learn!

[AaronM]

Originally posted by Verruckt
I once bought a Porsche 914, now that was stupid. What a POS!

Problems with 914's are caused by a faulty part between the steering wheel and the driver's seat. My 914 has been _far_ more reliable than my 924S, though the 924S has not been bad. Only issue with 914's is that they are weekend cars, not really daily driver material unless you live somewhere like Arizona or SoCal.

Aaron

[binky]

Aaron - you are sooo right about 914's, I loved mine, but it was my weekend go kart. I had it for 10 years and regret selling it to buy the 944. I like my 944, but the 914 gave me more thrills!

[scheistermeiste]

ya know, i just remembered the stupidest thing ive ever done working on my pcar... i think it was suppressed in my memory...

well one day i decided to readjust my ebrake. so i get it completely up on jack stands and do my job. right before im done my friend comes over in his Pr5 and parks behind me and starts working on his car. well i get all of the jack stands outand soon as the car hits the ground the car starts rolling backwards... i get up scream "OH $hit!" and start running around the car to the drivers side. i already knew what the problem was, i forgot to engage the ebrake after working on it. well right as i get to the drivers side door the car stops. i pause for a split second and am like "wtf?" then i quickly open the door and pull the break just in case. i look behind my and my car is about a foot away from the front of my friends new car and he is hanging upsidedown under his dash half in his car. i walk up to his door and ask him if he heard me. he gets up looks forward and is like "whoa! howd your car get so close?!"

well i turns out that when the car started rolling i left the jack in place on the ground and it stopped the car... thank god. the only injuries were the cuts along my fingers from catching them on the broken light/reflector on my rear cornerpanel.

[VINMAN]

After changing the front brakes on my truck, I stuck the wheel back on the front hub, my wife called me in the house for something. Went I went back outside, I let the floor jack down, started backin the truck out of the drivewa. When I turned the steering wheel, the front tire came off. The front of the truck hit the ground. I forgot to put the lug nuts on. Of course with my luck, my next door nieghbor saw it happen. I never lived that down.

[Panzer909]

My car stupidity is ongoing, really. But for a REALLY dumb story, read on........

A few years ago, I left home in the "S" and was in a real hurry, as I was late for a hot date. Realizing that I had no cash, I pulled up to a local gas station/convenience store where an ATM machine was inside. While inside waiting for the machine to spit out my cash & debit card, I noticed that a man in a raincoat outside pulled up in a Nautic Metallic 944S - just like mine!!!!


"Wow - what are the chances of seeing another car like mine around here", I thought to myself.

Wait a minute - I also noticed that MY car was....................gone. Holy ***** - that guy is trying to STEAL MY CAR!


Completely ignoring the cash eventually coming out of the ATM, I went into a tunnel-vision mindset. This was a time we all dream about - to actually catch the person in the process of stealing your car. An unspeakable wave of anger went through me as I walked right up behind the guy in the raincoat. He appeared to be yanking on something in the 944's interior. It also struck me as odd that a car theif like him was nicely dressed in a business suit under the raincoat as well......

Right before I was going to pounce on this guy, he turned around just in time with a stressed out look on his face. "Oh man, is this your car?!?" he asked.

"Yes it is - can I help you?" I quipped.



"Buddy, I noticed that your car's parking brake was not on as you ran into the store in a hurry. I was desperately trying to find the level in your car as it was rolling down the parking lot fast. It almost rolled into the highway behind this gas station. I saved your car's life, cheif."

"oh........uh.......thanks."

[86951]

Working on a car one night at a friend house, had a part clamped in a vise hitting it with a 3 lb hammer. Next hit was the vice falling on my foot, friend then tells me hey that vice is not bolted to the work bench. Thanks. 6 weeks later most of the broken bones were healed.

[toolboy62]

Once upon a time, when I was a poor college stoodnt, I bought a '67 Dodge Dart for $250. That actually wasn't stupid as it was a hell of a car for the $$ and was entirely rust free but it had a few issues, like it had no brakes, one front fender was mashed due to a drunken car/parked car interface, and the starter solenoid was wired up with zip cord and duct tape. I replaced the solenoid wiring with good 10 gauge wire and it amazingly began to start reliably. Found a good fender (it was green, car was white, oh well) in junkyard for $30. But when I attacked the brakes I found that the reason the rears wouldn't hold fluid was because the rear shoes were so worn that the pistons had actually come out of the wheel cylinders and were rolling around in the drums. Damn! Anyway, in the process of doing this I found that some of the wheel studs on the driver's side had been broken at some point and replaced with right hand thread, which offended my sensibilities (remember, now, on old MoPars the lug nuts are RH thread on the passenger side and LH thread on the driver's... and when you've got both on the same wheel, quick tire changes are not happening, not to mention that I wouldn't trust any tire jockey with it.)

So I called around a few parts places to see if anyone has any LH thread studs in stock and found one about 10 miles away. I go inside and ask my mom if I can borrow a vehicle to run to the parts store, as I didn't really feel like putting the drums back on only to have to take them off again. She says to go ahead and take my dad's truck (he'd taken her car somewhere that day.) I asked her "are you sure he won't mind, I can take the Scout, I'm just running to the parts store" she says go ahead and take the truck.

I feel obligated to mention that this is a '73 Chevy Stepside, which my dad and I had resurrected while I was in HS - it had (well, still has) a 350/4bbl, headers, custom duals, drop spindles, handmade (by yours truly) varnished wood bed floor, beautiful dark green metallic paint, you get the idea. I love this truck. So does my dad. Anyway, the quickest way to get to the parts store from my rents' place was down my absolute favorite driving road. Twisty, hilly, you know. So I'm cookin' pretty good down this road, thoroughly enjoying the ride. I did remember thinking that the handling felt a little non-crisp, but I chalked this up to me being used to driving cars, and this being a pickup truck. Anyway, as I'm coming to the end of this road, there's one last uphill corner - really almost a sweeper - and then a stop sign. I'm entering the corner at about 35 MPH (it's a good 60 MPH corner, but the presence of the stop sign kinda puts a damper on this) when the LF tire blows. I'm spinning, I'm spinning... when the truck finally comes to rest, I've hit an embankment with three of the four corners of the truck, and three of four tires are torn off the rims. D'OH!

I walk over to a nearby country club office and call and tell my mom what happened. She's fairly composed about the whole deal, she calls and gets the truck towed back home. I put car back together (sans new lug bolts) and live in fear of what my dad's going to say when he comes home and sees his nice pretty truck all bashed up in the driveway.

Dad comes home, sees the truck, asks what happened and when I tell him I see his face fall. Here apparently the day before he'd taken his "winter" rims and tires off and put his "summer" set on. Then he came in to eat dinner or something, and didn't bother to check the pressure in any of the tires, figuring he'd get to it later. Of course these were 60 series radials so you can run 'em down to maybe 8 PSI before they actually *look* low... So he wasn't pissed at me at all and when I offered to find him a new front clip and put it on myself he said dont worry about it, he'd have a friend of his at a body shop take care of it. But still, the whole sitch pretty much sucked...

To add insult to injury, I later found that the Dart had been the victim of a badly executed motor swap and it ate the tranny (actually blew the flexplate) shortly thereafter. I found that the alignment dowel pins were pushed out and that a brace was missing between the engine and tranny (got a real education on slant sixes from that car...) but when I got it back together the second (actually third, but that's another story for another time) trans failed while backing the car off the ramps. I ended up selling the car to a girl for $50 and she later told me she loved the car but ended up swapping *both* the engine and the tranny as the crankshaft had massive endplay.

Oh well... now I have a P-car, I have a higher class of automotive headaches

nate

[COLDBASS]

At a friends home,

Big Spaghetti dinner, several glasses of some forgotten Sauvignon Blanc, a Cold Bass Ale, dark cigar...