Dumbest things done while working on a car

[AE86less]

None taken. I always seem to forget you cant really convey mock-seriousness in writing

It's important to be able to laugh at your own pain and suffering!

[Dell'Orto]

Also been working under the bonnet and gone for a test drive, only to come back and find half the tools I was using still lieing around the engine bay. (x too many to remember)

Crap, I've done that too. Lost my 10mm spanner the other week

Managed to lose a 10mm SnapOn ratchet spanner one day under a bonnet only to find someone elses under the bonnet of a different car that came in to work the next day

I found a combination 12/13mm Snap On ring spanner in the MR2 after I had the Link put in

[XERO]

nOt me but my brother when he was doing his certificate in automotive engineering...

Drove the customers mitsubishi pajero from riverhead to kumeu, about 5km's with the handbrake still on, left rear caught on fire and ended up torching the whole vehicle... poor guy

he also knocked the oil catcher on a pole for doing cars on the hoist over into a convertible sitting next to the car he was working on, oil all through the interior...

He's now a truck driver

[Silent Knight]

I'm sorry but how do you not notice that you are driving with the handbrake on?

[XERO]

I'm sorry but how do you not notice that you are driving with the handbrake on?

Two thing's I just mentioned, A. it was my brother Driving...

B. it was a pajero with a sh*t handbrake, he just thought it was slugish...

[solitaire]

I'm sorry but how do you not notice that you are driving with the handbrake on?

Two thing's I just mentioned, A. it was my brother Driving...

B. it was a pajero with a sh*t handbrake, he just thought it was slugish...

Tis true... mid 90 Ford Futura Station wagons will do 130k's with the the handbrake on fairly well....

[KwS]

and that, is exactly why i always check my lever is down. Back when i had a marina, it didnt have a handbrake light like my current car... so you could very well leave it on.

My mate did the oil cap off after topping up thing. drove half an hour without it... untill we got to the gate of the farm i lived on and noticed smoke coming from the front of the car. shut car off, pop bonnet, small flame on top of exhaust, and oil EVERYWHERE. luckily, oil cap was still sitting on the rocker cover

That car was unkillable... even when it was only reading a drop on the end of the dip stick after that incident, he drove it 15 mins into town to put oil in it. Good old 4age!

[solitaire]

Yeah man... in my younger poorer years i ran the level for about 2 days with pretty much no oil... whenever i topped it up it would keep leeking out... hole in in sump or something aparently... thats the only time ive seen the oil pressure gauge read zero...

Shes still running like a champion today, you cant beat toyota reliability!

[DRFTIN]

Its funny the amount of tools you can pick up lieing around the corners of Ruapuna when changing courses and doing a track clearance.. obvious some were a bit too rushed to get on the track..

like the spanner Rex got through his tyre in the middle of the front straight... that could have ended worse than just a stuffed tyre


i've got too many of these to list... bonnet pins off, rad cap left beside it etc
and the countless times i've left the trailer coupling sitting on but not attached, or the brakes still on, or the jockey wheel still down

but the worst is treating my car to some new coolant one day, got 30 mins up the road and heard a funny ticking noise, then the car died....
when you do up the clamp on your bottom radiator hose (why the hell does my car not have a rad drain?) make sure you put it on the radiator outlet dont just do up the clamp onto nothing or all the water falls out
about $4grand and 16 months later i finally finished that trip

[thaphatty]

I've also got a blood nose from pulling the steering wheel off into my face

High Five! come so close to doing that. now i leave the nut on a bit so it doesnt get you. Hurts so bad getting hit in the scnouzer

[ee904age]

Putting the 4AGE into my EE90, hooked up all the fuel lines etc did all the wiring and went to fire it up, no go. Thought Id check the fuel lines first, oops had the feed running to the return end of the rail. Undid the clamp but hose was still super tight. Leaned right over it to get some leveage and bang, off it comes. About 200mls of petrol with 50PSI behind it right in the eyes. Had to run blind from garage to house tripping over jacks, tools, dogs etc to wash it out.

Never again!

[RS13]

Nothing serious here.. been hit in the face when I dropped a spanner onto a running fanbelt, dropped an RE4 auto RB20 trans onto my hand from about a foot whilst doing a conversion, hand swelled up but still had to finish! That was painful.. but other than that, after owning almost 50 cars and worked on hundreds of others, I've never really cocked much up, certainly nothing as simple as an oil change!

[KwS]

oh oh... while i remember.

Way back with my first car, it was low on oil, and it was house moving day. I checked the oil, noticed it was real low (the fact it was parked on a real steep drive slipped my mind too), so went and got 4L of oil... and poured the lot into the engine.

Needless to say, i didnt care much for that car, and boy did she burn some serious oil from then on. Must've $&#$% the rings or something with that. Oh well, she still drove, even though the oil kept fouling the plugs. Good old 1GEU and damn it still sounded good when on all 6 cylinders. i miss that exhaust (and when it was only on 5 cylinders, it sounded like a subaru )

[matt4u]

The first oil change I did the car was low on oil, drained teh engine, replaced the filter, filled it up, woundered why the oil was so black so soon. 100k later the gearbox blew up

had entire intake, fuel rail the lot off my 5m. put it all back together and realised I had forgotten to do up a hose clamp on a waterline under it all, so all apart it came. After I got it back together I was turning it over by hand with a ratchet off the crank, lead for cyl 6 got caught in a belt and ripped in half. Oh well, put the other 5 leads on, backed it out of the shed on 5 cyls and parked it. Saw a line of wet stuff. One of the injector seals was buggered and was pissing fuel through the engine bay, Withe a lead missing. Mmmmm arcing coil and fuel, I am very lucky..

[MasCam]

Not me but we used to live on the outskirts of Invercargill the first house down our street off the main road.

We heard a funny noise outside one night and went out to see a couple of young guys on the outside lawn in a datsun 1200 looking confused. We got a torch to see what was going on and under the bonnet and it turns out that they hadn't forgotten the oil cap, they had forgotten the entire ROCKER COVER!!. There followed a fair bit of "I thought you did that"

[Quint]

they had forgotten the entire ROCKER COVER!!. There followed a fair bit of "I thought you did that"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA



I remembered some more mishaps...
Car was cranking, but no boom, so the fuel wasn't getting from the tank to the cyls, so had to find out if it was actually making it to the fuel rail, so was under the car taking off the banjo bolt and telling my brother to 'crank it over to see if theres fuel pressure' oh yea.... there was. Fuel is really tickly in your eyes

Also seen someone blow up their ECU by not unplugging it while they were doing some welding on the chassis. They were sad pandas.

[rwd_mayhem]

this is all funny as.

after i put my 4age in i thought id go 4 a drive was so excited i forgot the rad cap, wnt back put it on and when 4 a bit of a skid got back and realised there was no oil in gbox o well! nxt day the big ends started getn noisy, apparntly it was low on oil as well. gutd ill tell ya

[Sick Puppy]

I'm sorry but how do you not notice that you are driving with the handbrake on?

Two thing's I just mentioned, A. it was my brother Driving...

B. it was a pajero with a sh*t handbrake, he just thought it was slugish...

Tis true... mid 90 Ford Futura Station wagons will do 130k's with the the handbrake on fairly well....

So do AE 82 FXGT's... Managed to break an oil cap by leaving it on top of the engine and closing the bonnet on it...

[RomanV]

I've done a few stupid things in my time.

1. Turbo clutch plate spline diameter does NOT match that of the input shaft of an NA gearbox. Queue destroying of spline, and a large racket when the car started up. (D'oh. engine/gbox back out, had to buy new clutch/flywheel)

2. It sucks getting the cam timing set up wrong, on a car that needs the engine out just to get the timing belt cover off. (Engine/gbox out again for that one)

3. Forgot to put cam shaft oil seals in, while rebuilding engine. Luckily I figured it out while the engine was still on the engine stand. (Not that I've ever had it running )

4. When you dont do up clutch cover bolts properly, your clutch doesnt work any more. (engine/gearbox out again to fix that one. )

[Lloyd]

What engine needs taking out to get timing covers off?

You must be an angry man to break a clutch like that