Stupid things you did when you were young thread

I think most everyone learns about 'lectrcity the hard way. But the lesson I'll NEVER forget was "structural repair using sheetmetal." To this day, I always overbuild stuff, to the detriment of weight savings.

Thought I was a pretty advanced young little shade tree nmechanic because Dad had extensive shop facilities and garage space including of course welding equipment of all kinds he was only too happy to let me use, until another incident. More on that later...

So one of the neighbor's "gives" me a '69 Mustang coupe that was creating too deep a hole in the backyard, where it had been rusting into for about five years. Among many other issues which I eventualy "mostly" repaired, was a completely gone RF shock tower. Looked like pretty much all just sheet metal around there to me, so I patched it up - with WAY too thin stock and no bracing whatsoever. Of course, rather than test the repair at all, I just started driving it. Sure enough, about three weeks later I slammed on the brakes going about 40mph, the repair collapsed, RF tired folded back and I went spinning across three lanes of traffic off onto the shoulder, just missing a pole. Fortunately the only real casualty was my pride.

Even Dad was not above giving me worthless old cars, probably more for the entertainment value than anything else. One Honda Civic had given us good service up to the point winter road salt had all but destroyed it. "No problem," says I, and proceeded to weld away with the oxy-acetylene and all the scrap sheet metal I could find. Things were going well until I was re-joining a lower fender area near the firewall, when the "fire" portion of that wall took on a whole new meaning for me. I heard a strange popping noise, stripped off the goggles and looked up to see a large orange glow under the windshield! A couple minutes and two empty fire extinguishers later, flames were starting to lick out under the windows on both sides of the car. It wouldn't be long until the garage went up with it. Fortunately Dad heard the commotion, ran down there, fired up the tractor that was sitting nearby and yelled for me to hook up the log chain. We got it dragged out of there and extinguished with a garden hose before the tank blew. I wasn't allowed to weld insisde anymore after that. Go figure.