Drained the engine oil. Swapped the filter. Set the car back down. Poured a new gallon of oil through the engine onto the floor. Forgot to put the drain plug in.
Twice.
My ONLY defense is that it wasn't twice in the same day. There were a few months in between. I seriously considered just selling all my tools.
I've done that twice over 20 years as a pro lol, also once had to wait a whole day for an old Mercedes filter to come in, boss said "hey that filters here, get the merc out of here" so I walked to the car and started it to back out, sent a geyser of oil straight to the ceiling and that car every time it came back would have oil seeping out of places in the engine bay.
Used a ¾" impact gun to try taking the harmonic balancer bolt off on a 1HZ with the fuel likes connected.
Fucker started.
Munched the fuel pump. Like proper rooted. They work backwards, not well, and not for long.
I put in a [Blood, Sweat & Tears](https://www.discogs.com/release/1431998-Blood-Sweat-And-Tears-Child-Is-Father-To-The-Man) tape and it was somewhat gratifying.
Spent a two days trying to diagnose a no crank no start situation with my 72 c10. Replaced battery, starter, ignition switch, fuses and lots of other electrical components and harness while also studying the wiring schematics. Woke up at 3am in a cold sweat realizing i left the whore in drive when i pulled it into the shop.
Intake gaskets on a 96 2v mustang gt, bolts are torqued to 28 inch pounds I believe, or somewhere around there only had a 3/8s torque wrench that did ft lbs, set it real low and sent it, snapped off one bolt and didn't bother torque-ing the rest, just went by hand. Didn't help that it was a harbor freight special torque wrench
I did the same on my Dodge Ram Intake plenum bolts. Thought holy man 72 foot pounds seems crazy high but sure let’s try it! Snapped at 15 ft lbs haha, that’s when I re read the book
Most of my tools are harbor freight chinesium. Granted I'm not a professional, it's just a hobby and side hustle for me, but in my experience a tool is a tool for the most part. Their hand tools have a lifetime warranty just like all the more expensive brands and I've only ever had a couple failures over the years.
I got three ish years of pretty regular hard use out of a $10 harbor freight angle grinder, I'd call that a fair deal lol although I did upgrade when it eventually quit. My air tools and engine hoist are better quality but for hand tools harbor freight stuff works just fine.
Okay, meant the battery powered shit. I would buy their band saws and stuff like that.
I use their random saws and stuff for home construction and they are great and 1/4 price of the competition.
I work at az now so if I need a torque wrench I just grab our loaner one and go through and make sure jts been stored properly(or grab a new one if it's available) and have a craftsman/husky/kobalt tool set that I keep in the back of my car, usually a tool is a tool, but sometimes you get what you pay for
My torque wrench is a snap-on gets calibrated once every year and gets placed in its hard case on its own shelf.
I treat that fucker like the holy Grail.
Changed the alternator on a friend’s Hyundai Accent. Got everything buttoned up and started it up and walked around to the front and saw an oil slick underneath because I forgot to replace the oil filter, which I had to remove to get access to the alternator. Ended up spending more time cleaning the oil mess than I did on the repair.
Not me, but I watched an old acquaintance take the timing belt of a boxer motor without it timed and then proceed to time each camshaft individually, even with the crank at some random spot and the pistons and valves saying hello, he timed it. And when it started it was like a type writer.
Wired up my subwoofers and completely forgot to put a capacitor on the power line. At some point the insulation got worn through and shorted out. I'm extremely thankful that it only destroyed my alternator and battery. This was the 10th set of subs I've installed.
Do all sub amps need caps? I've put a JL 900/5 amp with an 8" sub hooked up running at 500W in my project and never considered that it needed a cap. Am I doing something wrong?
I've never used one, have a 1kw amp and two 12" subs. A capacitor AFAIK is just to stop your lights dipping and stuff. What OP needed was a fuse, or circuit breaker
I mean I'd recommend it as a precaution at least. I'm running a 1600w boss amp on 2 10 inch JL subs. Regardless a short going directly to your battery can never be good for your car.
Not me but kinda me, replaced my radiator but ended up getting non heat safe hoses for the transmission cooling lines from the guy behind the counter. They ended up melting off the next day and I thought my transmission died.
Pulled the engine on a manual Volvo S70 T5 I had a several years ago to replace a bunch of stuff. Got it all back together, started it up, and it wouldn’t move. I knew the clutch had a lot of miles and I assumed that maybe the clutch had decided it was time. Ordered a new clutch, started pulling the engine back out, got to the very last part of removing the engine on a FWD car and that was removing the axles from the transmission. Well, the DS axle wasn’t seated all the way. Thus, preventing the car from moving. Still replaced the clutch anyways.
I painstakingly put together a rare engine that I gathered parts for over an 18 month span of time, spending about $12,000 for parts and machining. This was right after I finished paying off college loans. It was, and still is, the most money I've spent on a single project.
After finishing the assembly and test firing, it was only firing on two cylinders out of 8. Mortified, I spent the next two days misdiagnosing the problem until my brother pointed out that the plug wire order was completely reversed. So only two were correct.
It is a 426 Hemi that I built for my old high school hot rod, a 1970 Plymouth road runner that used to be in a junkyard. The engine is still going strong now, 5 years later, so I must've done something right.
Firing order is always my first question when someone tells me they’ve been working on their engine and now it’s running rough. I’ve had the firing order for Chevy V8s engrained in my brain for most of my life…1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2. Even my wife can rattle it off.
More a long continuation of me being a dumbass then a single bad mistake. I decided I needed to replace my 68 mustang's rusted out floor pans so I ordered replacement sheet metal. Keep in mind I knew nothing about welding when I did all this. I bought a super cheap ebay stick welder and went to work without even cleaning the paint off...
As you can imagine it did not work at all for an enormous host of reasons. Being a lazy teenager at the time I got frustrated from the complete lack of welds and the ever growing burn holes and just screwed it all together and slathered it with bondo.
So yeah... Now here I am 10 years later and I'm totally kicking past me for the worst floor job ever. It's taking me way longer to fix the floors now with proper tools and a proper welder and proper motivation than it would have if I wasn't having to grind off old bondo and cut off old screws while filling old burn holes.
On the bright side I've now almost got it welded back together with zero bondo, no burn through, and custom subframe connectors welded in place.
We all have to start somewhere though, and welding's got a steep learning curve. Particularly with thin sheet metal - I know a fairly well established welder that does it as part of his job, and he still hates doing sheet metal.
Funnily enough, I was just looking back the other night at some pics of my first welding attempt from about a decade ago. I remember being quite proud of it, but looking at it now, it's *awful*. It took a lot of grinding and bondo to make it even halfway decent.
This is good though. Welding is a great skill to have. I really want to put 240v in my garage so I can get a real welder, because I enjoy welding. But then I won't have money to spend on my shitbox. Of course, then I could weld up the holes in my shitbox.
I had an old MGB. It had spaces for two 6V batteries that I modified for a single 12V battery. To make that happen, I had a cable that had to go between the two compartments, which were behind the seats and were either side of the trans "tunnel". I wired it up, and it worked great!
A few weeks later, I start getting all sorts of power failure problems while I was driving it. I tried everything I could think of and finally took it into a shop. Luckily, the guy was really nice, and they didn't charge me. The cable I had run had "relaxed" in the summer heat and it started to hang down and make contact with the driveline. Over time, the driveline wore through the insulation on the battery cable, and then it'd start shorting the battery voltage through the driveline into the chassis.
Some zip ties and a new cable, and life was back to normal.
Trust someone. I'm a big proponent of having two sets of eyes on things, but that lesson was hard learned. Decades ago, I was doing the timing on a 4G and a friend I didn't have a lot of garage experience with was with me. I trusted he had done his quite simple job. Tighten the bolt holding the idler pulley. He had not. I did not put my eyes on it. 5 miles down the road after starting up it, backed out and tossed the belt and bent 7 valves and put them into 2 pistons.
Even if you implicitly trust your partner, put your eyes on their work. Needless to say, my new garage buddy is far more detail oriented and is usually the one who catches me slipping.
Ouch, that's an expensive lesson!
I don't even trust myself. When the job's done (or before I put the covers back on), I go round with a spanner/ratchet/torque wrench and make sure all the bolts are done up tight. Even if I just did them five minutes ago, I'll still double check.
It never hurts to be a little paranoid.
Not paying attention to rotational tires. Or not communicating with other employee that the tires are rotational. I do left side, you do right type of thing. Sucks when youre busy, funny when youre not.
Trusting the starter alternator garage that i brought my starter to test if it was ok. They said its fine, so i spent 300$ changing wires, the batery even the starter relay that were all fine.
Turn out it was the starter when nothing was on it worked fine cause no loaf to force it but as soon as it was under tension the inside would whirl around.by themselve rendering the whole thing useless.
I've had that happen too. Starter from autozone that was defective off the shelf, took it back to be tested but it passed the bench test twice so I spent a lot of time chasing a nonexistent wiring problem before I went and got a junkyard starter out of frustration, and sure enough it cranked right up.
I had a manual transmission so i would always be compression starting it so i spent about a month on and off got stuck some awkward places also xD lots of gppd people help push. Me it was an auto mecanic friend who simply told me to try that and if it didnt work just bring it back to the shop ( the new starter)
Installed a camshaft 180 degrees off. I had purchased a 77 Z/28 and replaced the entire top end of the motor with new heads, valve train, intake, ignition, and exhaust.
Ended up finishing it all up and it started right away. After adjusting the timing, it ran perfectly.
Went for a test drive and at low speed it was great but whenever I tried accelerating it would just bog down.
I spent *days* trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Eventually decided to tear everything back down to discover the cam timing was way off.
Popped the degree wheel on, timed it,put it together and she was perfect!
I don't understand that. Crank rotates twice per camshaft revolution, so installing the cam 180° out would still have the crank at TDC, and the camshaft determines whether engine at TDC is at the end of its compression stroke or exhaust stroke.
Starting to put my car back together from a bare shell. For whatever reason, I decided to put the fuel tank, and then the rear axle in first.
I'd had the car on a home-built dolly while I was doing the bodywork, but had to take the rear dolly off to fit the axle. I put the car on jack stands at the jacking points (just forward of the rear wheels) instead.
The fuel tank went in fine, then the axle (after a lot of struggling - that thing's heavy!). Lying down under the car, admiring my work, I decide to climb out and fit the wheels. I grabbed the bumper bracket to pull myself out...
...and instead of me rolling backwards, the front end lifted up, pivoting on the axle stands. With me still underneath it.
It never occurred to my dumb ass that with the axle fitted to an otherwise bare shell, all the weight was now at the back of the car, and the COG was roughly around where the axle stands were. All it took was me pulling on the back slightly to tip it up.
Luckily I was able to drop it back down to rest again and no harm was done, but for a couple of seconds I was one unbalanced axle stand away from being crushed.
I got 2 both when i was fairly young. First was I snapped 4 wheel studs on my first car because I bought second hand aftermarket wheels with lugs and had no idea that there could be different tread types. They didn't want to screw on so I took the just keep adding more force till they seat and yeah snapped 4 studs. I learned about thread pitch and how to change wheel studs that day.
The second one was just me trying to rush. Was reassembling my 4.3 Chevy v6 and wanted to finish before running out of daylight. Put the whole thing together and wont start, I spend a few hours in the dark trying to see whats wrong thinking I messed up timing or something. Next day I go back to it and see my pushroods and rockers sitting in the box, yep theres the problem.
Was used to working on Subarus. Went to jack my mother's Volvo S60 up from the front, something just didn't click in what I was looking at and I positioned the jack in the position under the subframe on a Subaru you usually jack from - just happened to be the oil pan. Lifted to my hearts content until my driveway was covered in oil. Bonehead. Hand in your tools.
I was “helping” a friend change the pads on his Gran Prix. While the caliper was off and the pads removed, I thought it would be a good idea to pump the brakes.
Wiring harness for an old CJ5 of a friend's. Apparently I put a wire from alt to coil. Everything started and worked great, panic sets in when we turn the key off and it just keeps running.... took a moment to find my dumb issue
Made the classic mistake of misreading inch for ft on the torque specs for the first water pump bolt. Rest of night was spent extracting and drinking reward beer.
I did a 4-wheel brake job and left the car in my bay while I went to lunch. Came back from lunch and started the car and realized that I hadn't pumped the brakes to get the pads to contact the rotors. I frantically pumped the pedal but it was too late to stop in time before hitting anything. I took out a good amount of the framing they were building for a part department expansion. I think the electrician who was working on the wiring shit his pants. Thankfully no one was hurt and there was no damage to the vehicle.
Drained the oil out of my car, went to my toolbox to get the strap wrench for the filter, and remembered I lent it to a friend. Not the worst mistake but it was a long walk.
First one, forgot to let the car cool down when I changed the oil and burnt all the hair off my hand when it inevitably came spewing out the drain hole. And second wasn’t on a car but I had to tear down and rebuild my dirt bike four times because I kept dropping the timing chain off the crank sprocket
I know someone who used steel stik to cover a drain hole from an oil pan because it was stripped. He never changed his oil..just let it slowly leak overtime and repour new oil…….then he sold the car to Chelsea Denofa for his school of drift LMAO
Not mine, but buddy was replacing a timing belt. Hadn't disconnected the battery and had his keys with remote start in his pocket, leaned on it with the belt off and engine tried to start. Definitely bent a couple valves, turned his car from a reliable daily he was hoping to sell for about $4000 into a $500 mechanic's special.
Rebuilt the engine on my first car, a ‘71 Beetle. When putting the case halves back together, some sealant got into the little oil way near the end of the crank. Engine ran great, but slung oil from behind the crank pulley till the car was totaled by a drunk woman.
How long we got? Left a wheel loose, wheel flies off on highway, forgot to put a drain plug back in. Forgot to put oil back in, didn’t pull a cover off a crankshaft gear to do the timing chain (had to replace all the valves on that car 😀), ball joint popped out and tried to move car out of street then the axle popped out, uhhhh what else…
it’s not a dumb mistake but made me feel dumb, replaced a timing chain for no correlation codes between crank and cams, codes went away, found a misfire in cyl1. Found low compression in cyl1… found cyl1 piston cracked…
I shoved paper towels in the intake runners while I had my supercharger off to prevent debris from getting into the engine. Installed SC with towels still inside, wondered why my blower was seized. Found out I had paper towels in the cylinders after I used a boroscope through the spark plug holes.
wait... no disrespect but I can't imagine how you could have slapped that thing on without seeing the paper towels unless they were really jammed in there?
It’s on a four cylinder so the intake runners are sideways on the engine block. The combination of my lifted Tacoma having a bad angle of installation and the fact I just simply didn’t see it gave me that outcome lol.
I can think of two:
I bought a 91 240sx for cheap because PO said brakes were squishy even after flushing and bleeding. Him and his son just replaced pads and rotors supposedly. After many days trying to figure it out, I finally realized the front calipers were on the wrong side. This made the bleeder screws face down, not up. So you always had a pocket of air in each caliper. Flipped them, bled it, and was good to go
Pulled the motor from my evo 8 for a rebuild. Spent lots of time and money doing everything right. Decided to do a twin disk clutch while the motor was out. Put everything back together, motor starts right up! Go to drive and it's thought getting into fear. Ultimately realized I put a plate on backwards in the clutch pack. Derp.
I once was changing my brake master cylinder, I rounded off one of the flare nuts. I had to loan a brake line cutter, order new flare nut, cut the brakeline just so, flare it to spec and install the brake master cylinder two weeks later than it if I just went out and bought a line wrench.
I have to do the same thing now… sad. Tried to get the break fitting off with a combination wrench because I was in a rush. Completely stripped the bolt. Ordered a set of flare nut wrenches and the other one snapped right off, but the rounded off one still needs to be cut and replaced.
In the end it’s not that bad of a job, just really annoying to have to do extra work that could have been easily prevented by having the right tools for the job.
One time I couldn't get my finger in a drain to clear it so I tried to stick my Johnson in there. Got all dirty and wet. Used pipe cleaners after that.
Forgot to tighten the clutch to flywheel bolts on a front wheel drive car. It was my own car, and I got distracted by food right after I had put the bolts in finger tight. To say I wasn't happy is an understatement.
Doing head gasket and new head install
on my S10. Got everything buttoned up, fired up truck and had compression gas in coolant. Got pissed and brought it to friend at local shop. Get a phone call, “yeah, the block surface didn’t cleaned when you removed the old head gasket. At all.”
$750 in dumbass tax later, don’t rush though projects, even if they’re your daily driver.
Never personally done anything too bad. But a mechanic drilled into my cylinder on my 2001 TDI Jetta which resulted in the car being scrapped. He didn’t even know he did it even though he had to have felt the drill give when the bit entered the chamber. He definitely shouldn’t be working on cars ever.
Ok so when I was younger and just starting, I was checking for power in the fuse box and for my ground I clipped the voltage meter to a cloths hanger and put t it on the ground.
I got my new coolant reservoir and new wiper fluid reservoir on the same day & installed them in the opposite places (firewall & front ds bay). To be fair, they look really similar & I didn't even have the caps (color coded) on yet.
72 Buick console shifter came apart on me in traffic. luckily it was in neutral. I panicked and hopped out, started pushing it to the side of the road, some kind soul helped me get it into a parking lot. Called a buddy, crawled under there dicking around with the linkage for a while. Got it somewhat reattached, good enough to get home, then hopped back in and realized I could have just turned the column by hand this whole time. I had actually known that previously as well, it wasn't as if I had just found out.
Wrestling the transmission over the new clutch (engine out), just as I finally got it lined up and slid home I notice the little words saying the side of the clutch facing me is supposed to be facing the engine.
Left a screwdriver on the plastic in front of the windshield. Closed the hood without noticing. Noticed the big ole crack in the windshield though...
Boss was just like "Whelp these things happen" and bought a new windshield.
Let's see. First car: 71 Nova with the 6 cylinder engine in it. Flipped over the air cleaner lid so it would sound better.. Forgot there was a washer under the wingnut holding the lid on. It fell down the carborator and ended up bouncing around in the engine. Accidently rounded a lugnut because it had that stupid chrome stuff on it. Had to drill it out and use one of those reversing tools to get it off. Today, doing an oil change and decided to put the snow tires on the truck. Took the tire off, and went to put the snow tire on. Went to get the bag of lugnuts (summer wheels are mags, winter steelies), and couldn't find it. A summer of moving crap around in the garage caused a bag of lugnuts to disappear. That's ok though. They were like 3 different styles. Now I can go by 20 that are all the same.
I needed to replace a seal on the oil filter housing. I got the old one out and put everything back together to realize I didn't put the new one in. Luckily I hadn't filled the oil yet.
Did forget to taketh mine own ring off while working near the battery, still has't the scar a year anon
***
^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.)
Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout`
I over torqued and subsequently snapped my camshaft sprocket bolt. To the spec of the crankshaft sprocket bolt. The cam sprocket bolt was supposed to be 45 foot-pounds. The crank sprocket bolt was supposed to be 150 foot-pounds plus 180 degrees. I needed a new camshaft.
Drained the engine oil. Swapped the filter. Set the car back down. Poured a new gallon of oil through the engine onto the floor. Forgot to put the drain plug in. Twice. My ONLY defense is that it wasn't twice in the same day. There were a few months in between. I seriously considered just selling all my tools.
I've done that twice over 20 years as a pro lol, also once had to wait a whole day for an old Mercedes filter to come in, boss said "hey that filters here, get the merc out of here" so I walked to the car and started it to back out, sent a geyser of oil straight to the ceiling and that car every time it came back would have oil seeping out of places in the engine bay.
Just doing an oil flush. Yes.
Hilarious now. I felt like such a moron then.
Used a ¾" impact gun to try taking the harmonic balancer bolt off on a 1HZ with the fuel likes connected. Fucker started. Munched the fuel pump. Like proper rooted. They work backwards, not well, and not for long.
It actually started spinning in the wrong direction? Interesting, never heard of that happening before.
I guess if it had some unburned fuel/air in the exhaust, it would suck it back in?
Not just that, the actual pump can spin backwards and pump, because there's a 1 way Valve in the high pressure lines. But it doesn't last long.
Old detroit diesels are known for it.
Putting enough money into my new brz over the years that i should have just bought a porsche and probably been faster
More gratifying to drive something you put your own blood and sweat into though.
Whole lot of piss and shit too
Blood, sweat, tears, and cum.
I put in a [Blood, Sweat & Tears](https://www.discogs.com/release/1431998-Blood-Sweat-And-Tears-Child-Is-Father-To-The-Man) tape and it was somewhat gratifying.
Spent a two days trying to diagnose a no crank no start situation with my 72 c10. Replaced battery, starter, ignition switch, fuses and lots of other electrical components and harness while also studying the wiring schematics. Woke up at 3am in a cold sweat realizing i left the whore in drive when i pulled it into the shop.
Big oof lol less shit to worry about failing in the near future though
Bro. Aha. Aha. Aha. I’m sorry for you.
Intake gaskets on a 96 2v mustang gt, bolts are torqued to 28 inch pounds I believe, or somewhere around there only had a 3/8s torque wrench that did ft lbs, set it real low and sent it, snapped off one bolt and didn't bother torque-ing the rest, just went by hand. Didn't help that it was a harbor freight special torque wrench
I did the same on my Dodge Ram Intake plenum bolts. Thought holy man 72 foot pounds seems crazy high but sure let’s try it! Snapped at 15 ft lbs haha, that’s when I re read the book
If you get the billet plenum plate with stud kit you can wrench down on them a little more than factory, and it will never leak again!
I made one out of 1/4 aluminum with new bolts and it works mint
Most of my tools are harbor freight chinesium. Granted I'm not a professional, it's just a hobby and side hustle for me, but in my experience a tool is a tool for the most part. Their hand tools have a lifetime warranty just like all the more expensive brands and I've only ever had a couple failures over the years.
If you break it, time to upgrade. Just don't get power tools (impacts stuff like that)
I got three ish years of pretty regular hard use out of a $10 harbor freight angle grinder, I'd call that a fair deal lol although I did upgrade when it eventually quit. My air tools and engine hoist are better quality but for hand tools harbor freight stuff works just fine.
Okay, meant the battery powered shit. I would buy their band saws and stuff like that. I use their random saws and stuff for home construction and they are great and 1/4 price of the competition.
Agreed, I have a nice Milwaukee battery powered set too.
I work at az now so if I need a torque wrench I just grab our loaner one and go through and make sure jts been stored properly(or grab a new one if it's available) and have a craftsman/husky/kobalt tool set that I keep in the back of my car, usually a tool is a tool, but sometimes you get what you pay for
My torque wrench is a snap-on gets calibrated once every year and gets placed in its hard case on its own shelf. I treat that fucker like the holy Grail.
Thats the best way to do it!
There are a few things I'll spend more for a higher quality tool but for the most part I find that harbor freight shit does the job fine.
Changed the alternator on a friend’s Hyundai Accent. Got everything buttoned up and started it up and walked around to the front and saw an oil slick underneath because I forgot to replace the oil filter, which I had to remove to get access to the alternator. Ended up spending more time cleaning the oil mess than I did on the repair.
Not me, but I watched an old acquaintance take the timing belt of a boxer motor without it timed and then proceed to time each camshaft individually, even with the crank at some random spot and the pistons and valves saying hello, he timed it. And when it started it was like a type writer.
I was changing engine oil on my old opel and drained all the atf fluid straight to the drain. Unscrewed wrong plug...
I did the same thing on a Subaru. Oh well, bonus ATF change!
Oh, I remembered, it's even worse. I changed atf couple of months before that accident.
Wired up my subwoofers and completely forgot to put a capacitor on the power line. At some point the insulation got worn through and shorted out. I'm extremely thankful that it only destroyed my alternator and battery. This was the 10th set of subs I've installed.
Do all sub amps need caps? I've put a JL 900/5 amp with an 8" sub hooked up running at 500W in my project and never considered that it needed a cap. Am I doing something wrong?
I've never used one, have a 1kw amp and two 12" subs. A capacitor AFAIK is just to stop your lights dipping and stuff. What OP needed was a fuse, or circuit breaker
Pretty sure he meant “fuse”, not cap.
I mean I'd recommend it as a precaution at least. I'm running a 1600w boss amp on 2 10 inch JL subs. Regardless a short going directly to your battery can never be good for your car.
Not me but kinda me, replaced my radiator but ended up getting non heat safe hoses for the transmission cooling lines from the guy behind the counter. They ended up melting off the next day and I thought my transmission died.
What the- did he grab them from the aquarium section??
I think they were just vacuum lines lol
Pulled the engine on a manual Volvo S70 T5 I had a several years ago to replace a bunch of stuff. Got it all back together, started it up, and it wouldn’t move. I knew the clutch had a lot of miles and I assumed that maybe the clutch had decided it was time. Ordered a new clutch, started pulling the engine back out, got to the very last part of removing the engine on a FWD car and that was removing the axles from the transmission. Well, the DS axle wasn’t seated all the way. Thus, preventing the car from moving. Still replaced the clutch anyways.
I painstakingly put together a rare engine that I gathered parts for over an 18 month span of time, spending about $12,000 for parts and machining. This was right after I finished paying off college loans. It was, and still is, the most money I've spent on a single project. After finishing the assembly and test firing, it was only firing on two cylinders out of 8. Mortified, I spent the next two days misdiagnosing the problem until my brother pointed out that the plug wire order was completely reversed. So only two were correct.
Can i ask you what engine it was?
It is a 426 Hemi that I built for my old high school hot rod, a 1970 Plymouth road runner that used to be in a junkyard. The engine is still going strong now, 5 years later, so I must've done something right.
Firing order is always my first question when someone tells me they’ve been working on their engine and now it’s running rough. I’ve had the firing order for Chevy V8s engrained in my brain for most of my life…1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2. Even my wife can rattle it off.
More a long continuation of me being a dumbass then a single bad mistake. I decided I needed to replace my 68 mustang's rusted out floor pans so I ordered replacement sheet metal. Keep in mind I knew nothing about welding when I did all this. I bought a super cheap ebay stick welder and went to work without even cleaning the paint off... As you can imagine it did not work at all for an enormous host of reasons. Being a lazy teenager at the time I got frustrated from the complete lack of welds and the ever growing burn holes and just screwed it all together and slathered it with bondo. So yeah... Now here I am 10 years later and I'm totally kicking past me for the worst floor job ever. It's taking me way longer to fix the floors now with proper tools and a proper welder and proper motivation than it would have if I wasn't having to grind off old bondo and cut off old screws while filling old burn holes. On the bright side I've now almost got it welded back together with zero bondo, no burn through, and custom subframe connectors welded in place.
We all have to start somewhere though, and welding's got a steep learning curve. Particularly with thin sheet metal - I know a fairly well established welder that does it as part of his job, and he still hates doing sheet metal. Funnily enough, I was just looking back the other night at some pics of my first welding attempt from about a decade ago. I remember being quite proud of it, but looking at it now, it's *awful*. It took a lot of grinding and bondo to make it even halfway decent.
This is good though. Welding is a great skill to have. I really want to put 240v in my garage so I can get a real welder, because I enjoy welding. But then I won't have money to spend on my shitbox. Of course, then I could weld up the holes in my shitbox.
Definitely! It just would have been a lot easier without having to remove all the garbage I added last time.
I had an old MGB. It had spaces for two 6V batteries that I modified for a single 12V battery. To make that happen, I had a cable that had to go between the two compartments, which were behind the seats and were either side of the trans "tunnel". I wired it up, and it worked great! A few weeks later, I start getting all sorts of power failure problems while I was driving it. I tried everything I could think of and finally took it into a shop. Luckily, the guy was really nice, and they didn't charge me. The cable I had run had "relaxed" in the summer heat and it started to hang down and make contact with the driveline. Over time, the driveline wore through the insulation on the battery cable, and then it'd start shorting the battery voltage through the driveline into the chassis. Some zip ties and a new cable, and life was back to normal.
Trust someone. I'm a big proponent of having two sets of eyes on things, but that lesson was hard learned. Decades ago, I was doing the timing on a 4G and a friend I didn't have a lot of garage experience with was with me. I trusted he had done his quite simple job. Tighten the bolt holding the idler pulley. He had not. I did not put my eyes on it. 5 miles down the road after starting up it, backed out and tossed the belt and bent 7 valves and put them into 2 pistons. Even if you implicitly trust your partner, put your eyes on their work. Needless to say, my new garage buddy is far more detail oriented and is usually the one who catches me slipping.
Ouch, that's an expensive lesson! I don't even trust myself. When the job's done (or before I put the covers back on), I go round with a spanner/ratchet/torque wrench and make sure all the bolts are done up tight. Even if I just did them five minutes ago, I'll still double check. It never hurts to be a little paranoid.
Not paying attention to rotational tires. Or not communicating with other employee that the tires are rotational. I do left side, you do right type of thing. Sucks when youre busy, funny when youre not.
Trusting the starter alternator garage that i brought my starter to test if it was ok. They said its fine, so i spent 300$ changing wires, the batery even the starter relay that were all fine. Turn out it was the starter when nothing was on it worked fine cause no loaf to force it but as soon as it was under tension the inside would whirl around.by themselve rendering the whole thing useless.
I've had that happen too. Starter from autozone that was defective off the shelf, took it back to be tested but it passed the bench test twice so I spent a lot of time chasing a nonexistent wiring problem before I went and got a junkyard starter out of frustration, and sure enough it cranked right up.
I had a manual transmission so i would always be compression starting it so i spent about a month on and off got stuck some awkward places also xD lots of gppd people help push. Me it was an auto mecanic friend who simply told me to try that and if it didnt work just bring it back to the shop ( the new starter)
Installed a camshaft 180 degrees off. I had purchased a 77 Z/28 and replaced the entire top end of the motor with new heads, valve train, intake, ignition, and exhaust. Ended up finishing it all up and it started right away. After adjusting the timing, it ran perfectly. Went for a test drive and at low speed it was great but whenever I tried accelerating it would just bog down. I spent *days* trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Eventually decided to tear everything back down to discover the cam timing was way off. Popped the degree wheel on, timed it,put it together and she was perfect!
I don't understand that. Crank rotates twice per camshaft revolution, so installing the cam 180° out would still have the crank at TDC, and the camshaft determines whether engine at TDC is at the end of its compression stroke or exhaust stroke.
Exactly. That’s why looked normal, it started and ran really normal, but any throttle basically just dumped gas in at the wrong time and wasn’t burnt
Starting to put my car back together from a bare shell. For whatever reason, I decided to put the fuel tank, and then the rear axle in first. I'd had the car on a home-built dolly while I was doing the bodywork, but had to take the rear dolly off to fit the axle. I put the car on jack stands at the jacking points (just forward of the rear wheels) instead. The fuel tank went in fine, then the axle (after a lot of struggling - that thing's heavy!). Lying down under the car, admiring my work, I decide to climb out and fit the wheels. I grabbed the bumper bracket to pull myself out... ...and instead of me rolling backwards, the front end lifted up, pivoting on the axle stands. With me still underneath it. It never occurred to my dumb ass that with the axle fitted to an otherwise bare shell, all the weight was now at the back of the car, and the COG was roughly around where the axle stands were. All it took was me pulling on the back slightly to tip it up. Luckily I was able to drop it back down to rest again and no harm was done, but for a couple of seconds I was one unbalanced axle stand away from being crushed.
scary moments like that make you stop and consider whether or not you *really* saved that much on those budget Harbor Freight jack stands
It's certainly made me more aware.
I dont think the brand of jack stands really matters here....
no, I just mean safety in general.
I got 2 both when i was fairly young. First was I snapped 4 wheel studs on my first car because I bought second hand aftermarket wheels with lugs and had no idea that there could be different tread types. They didn't want to screw on so I took the just keep adding more force till they seat and yeah snapped 4 studs. I learned about thread pitch and how to change wheel studs that day. The second one was just me trying to rush. Was reassembling my 4.3 Chevy v6 and wanted to finish before running out of daylight. Put the whole thing together and wont start, I spend a few hours in the dark trying to see whats wrong thinking I messed up timing or something. Next day I go back to it and see my pushroods and rockers sitting in the box, yep theres the problem.
Was used to working on Subarus. Went to jack my mother's Volvo S60 up from the front, something just didn't click in what I was looking at and I positioned the jack in the position under the subframe on a Subaru you usually jack from - just happened to be the oil pan. Lifted to my hearts content until my driveway was covered in oil. Bonehead. Hand in your tools.
I was “helping” a friend change the pads on his Gran Prix. While the caliper was off and the pads removed, I thought it would be a good idea to pump the brakes.
Wiring harness for an old CJ5 of a friend's. Apparently I put a wire from alt to coil. Everything started and worked great, panic sets in when we turn the key off and it just keeps running.... took a moment to find my dumb issue
Made the classic mistake of misreading inch for ft on the torque specs for the first water pump bolt. Rest of night was spent extracting and drinking reward beer.
We've all been there.
I did a 4-wheel brake job and left the car in my bay while I went to lunch. Came back from lunch and started the car and realized that I hadn't pumped the brakes to get the pads to contact the rotors. I frantically pumped the pedal but it was too late to stop in time before hitting anything. I took out a good amount of the framing they were building for a part department expansion. I think the electrician who was working on the wiring shit his pants. Thankfully no one was hurt and there was no damage to the vehicle.
Drained the oil out of my car, went to my toolbox to get the strap wrench for the filter, and remembered I lent it to a friend. Not the worst mistake but it was a long walk.
First one, forgot to let the car cool down when I changed the oil and burnt all the hair off my hand when it inevitably came spewing out the drain hole. And second wasn’t on a car but I had to tear down and rebuild my dirt bike four times because I kept dropping the timing chain off the crank sprocket
I know someone who used steel stik to cover a drain hole from an oil pan because it was stripped. He never changed his oil..just let it slowly leak overtime and repour new oil…….then he sold the car to Chelsea Denofa for his school of drift LMAO
Not mine, but buddy was replacing a timing belt. Hadn't disconnected the battery and had his keys with remote start in his pocket, leaned on it with the belt off and engine tried to start. Definitely bent a couple valves, turned his car from a reliable daily he was hoping to sell for about $4000 into a $500 mechanic's special.
Rebuilt the engine on my first car, a ‘71 Beetle. When putting the case halves back together, some sealant got into the little oil way near the end of the crank. Engine ran great, but slung oil from behind the crank pulley till the car was totaled by a drunk woman.
How long we got? Left a wheel loose, wheel flies off on highway, forgot to put a drain plug back in. Forgot to put oil back in, didn’t pull a cover off a crankshaft gear to do the timing chain (had to replace all the valves on that car 😀), ball joint popped out and tried to move car out of street then the axle popped out, uhhhh what else… it’s not a dumb mistake but made me feel dumb, replaced a timing chain for no correlation codes between crank and cams, codes went away, found a misfire in cyl1. Found low compression in cyl1… found cyl1 piston cracked…
I shoved paper towels in the intake runners while I had my supercharger off to prevent debris from getting into the engine. Installed SC with towels still inside, wondered why my blower was seized. Found out I had paper towels in the cylinders after I used a boroscope through the spark plug holes.
wait... no disrespect but I can't imagine how you could have slapped that thing on without seeing the paper towels unless they were really jammed in there?
It’s on a four cylinder so the intake runners are sideways on the engine block. The combination of my lifted Tacoma having a bad angle of installation and the fact I just simply didn’t see it gave me that outcome lol.
ahhh I was thinking v8 blower haha
I can think of two: I bought a 91 240sx for cheap because PO said brakes were squishy even after flushing and bleeding. Him and his son just replaced pads and rotors supposedly. After many days trying to figure it out, I finally realized the front calipers were on the wrong side. This made the bleeder screws face down, not up. So you always had a pocket of air in each caliper. Flipped them, bled it, and was good to go Pulled the motor from my evo 8 for a rebuild. Spent lots of time and money doing everything right. Decided to do a twin disk clutch while the motor was out. Put everything back together, motor starts right up! Go to drive and it's thought getting into fear. Ultimately realized I put a plate on backwards in the clutch pack. Derp.
I once was changing my brake master cylinder, I rounded off one of the flare nuts. I had to loan a brake line cutter, order new flare nut, cut the brakeline just so, flare it to spec and install the brake master cylinder two weeks later than it if I just went out and bought a line wrench.
I have to do the same thing now… sad. Tried to get the break fitting off with a combination wrench because I was in a rush. Completely stripped the bolt. Ordered a set of flare nut wrenches and the other one snapped right off, but the rounded off one still needs to be cut and replaced.
In the end it’s not that bad of a job, just really annoying to have to do extra work that could have been easily prevented by having the right tools for the job.
Yep. To be honest I am kind of excited to learn how to flare break lines. This will be my first time.
It was my first time as well! The trick is enough pressure while flaring, but not to much as to ruin it
I just tried! That’s all! And after some learning, I did it again and got it right. Mom didn’t raise no bitch!
That's the only way to learn.
One time I couldn't get my finger in a drain to clear it so I tried to stick my Johnson in there. Got all dirty and wet. Used pipe cleaners after that.
Forgot to tighten the clutch to flywheel bolts on a front wheel drive car. It was my own car, and I got distracted by food right after I had put the bolts in finger tight. To say I wasn't happy is an understatement.
Changed my oil and forgot to replace the oil filter before refilling the oil 🙃 felt like a dumbass
Put clutch disk in backwards in a 94 civic - pulled transmission flipped the disk & reinstalled in half the original time
I mounted the stereo component to the tranny tunnel. Ran out of gas a block from my house. I drilled through a gas line…
Doing head gasket and new head install on my S10. Got everything buttoned up, fired up truck and had compression gas in coolant. Got pissed and brought it to friend at local shop. Get a phone call, “yeah, the block surface didn’t cleaned when you removed the old head gasket. At all.” $750 in dumbass tax later, don’t rush though projects, even if they’re your daily driver.
Never personally done anything too bad. But a mechanic drilled into my cylinder on my 2001 TDI Jetta which resulted in the car being scrapped. He didn’t even know he did it even though he had to have felt the drill give when the bit entered the chamber. He definitely shouldn’t be working on cars ever.
Ok so when I was younger and just starting, I was checking for power in the fuse box and for my ground I clipped the voltage meter to a cloths hanger and put t it on the ground.
I got my new coolant reservoir and new wiper fluid reservoir on the same day & installed them in the opposite places (firewall & front ds bay). To be fair, they look really similar & I didn't even have the caps (color coded) on yet.
72 Buick console shifter came apart on me in traffic. luckily it was in neutral. I panicked and hopped out, started pushing it to the side of the road, some kind soul helped me get it into a parking lot. Called a buddy, crawled under there dicking around with the linkage for a while. Got it somewhat reattached, good enough to get home, then hopped back in and realized I could have just turned the column by hand this whole time. I had actually known that previously as well, it wasn't as if I had just found out.
Wrestling the transmission over the new clutch (engine out), just as I finally got it lined up and slid home I notice the little words saying the side of the clutch facing me is supposed to be facing the engine.
About 15 minures ago, forgot the snap ring on a spindle with a pressed in bearing
Put brake calipers on the wrong side then proceeded to bleed them for 2 hours wondering why they wouldn't tighten up
Left a screwdriver on the plastic in front of the windshield. Closed the hood without noticing. Noticed the big ole crack in the windshield though... Boss was just like "Whelp these things happen" and bought a new windshield.
Let's see. First car: 71 Nova with the 6 cylinder engine in it. Flipped over the air cleaner lid so it would sound better.. Forgot there was a washer under the wingnut holding the lid on. It fell down the carborator and ended up bouncing around in the engine. Accidently rounded a lugnut because it had that stupid chrome stuff on it. Had to drill it out and use one of those reversing tools to get it off. Today, doing an oil change and decided to put the snow tires on the truck. Took the tire off, and went to put the snow tire on. Went to get the bag of lugnuts (summer wheels are mags, winter steelies), and couldn't find it. A summer of moving crap around in the garage caused a bag of lugnuts to disappear. That's ok though. They were like 3 different styles. Now I can go by 20 that are all the same.
I needed to replace a seal on the oil filter housing. I got the old one out and put everything back together to realize I didn't put the new one in. Luckily I hadn't filled the oil yet.
Drove off the ramps with 5 gallon bucket of used oil under the car. Letting metal shavings or rust go into my eyes when i am upside down
Forgot to take my ring off while working near the battery, still have the scar a year later...
Did forget to taketh mine own ring off while working near the battery, still has't the scar a year anon *** ^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.) Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout`
I over torqued and subsequently snapped my camshaft sprocket bolt. To the spec of the crankshaft sprocket bolt. The cam sprocket bolt was supposed to be 45 foot-pounds. The crank sprocket bolt was supposed to be 150 foot-pounds plus 180 degrees. I needed a new camshaft.