The stupidest thing I have ever done...

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I still feel stupid , just not alone. Thanks for sharing your tales. It takes the anger away reading that things like this happen to others as well. Keep them coming
 
If you aren't making any mistakes or having any accidents, your not actually getting anything done. Now get back out there and continue your learning curve!
 
Kent mosby said:
I still feel stupid , just not alone. Thanks for sharing your tales. It takes the anger away reading that things like this happen to others as well. Keep them coming
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Ok, here you go then.
I R&R'd a 4x4 trans and transfer case and when I got done I tripped over the converter laying on the floor.:D

Once pushed really hard on a top radiator hose in a van with my thumb trying to get it off the water neck and when something finally gave it was my thumb.
It was folder over backwards parallel with my arm and I had to pull it back into place and finish the job.

Drove a windy road to work every day in a Fiat 850 Spider usually going way to fast and one day had two people in the car with me and didn't take the extra weight into consideration.
Rounded the first big corner and the rear of the car started to wash out which would have directed us straight into a telephone pole sideways.
Seeing as how there was no way I was going to let that happen I straightened the wheel and flew right off the high side of the banked turn, over a 4 foot barbed wire fence into a freshly plowed field.
It handled the jump pretty well and scooped up a tractor bucket load of dirt with the front end and totally buried itself in poison oak so tight we had to roll down the windows and crawl out.

I found a gate and opened it to get back out on the road and once on the pavement again every single wheel bolt was loose and the car felt like it was going to fall down like a wobbly newborn calf.
All three of us had poison oak worse than we have ever gotten before.

All said and done, it was still better than hitting that pole at 70 sideways.:D

My Brother jokingly still disagrees about the pole being the worst possibility, because at some point he must have scratched his nuts with poison oak on his hands.
 
Sorry guys, its not that I don't feel for ya but right now if I don't laugh I will cry. My wife fell in the back yard on Sunday and broke her shoulder, she is 77 has dementia and is in the final stage of COPD. There is nothing I can do to make things better for her, things are pretty cut and dried. I really needed to read all of these just to make me laugh, thank you all.
 
Red63440 said:
Sorry guys, its not that I don't feel for ya but right now if I don't laugh I will cry. My wife fell in the back yard on Sunday and broke her shoulder, she is 77 has dementia and is in the final stage of COPD. There is nothing I can do to make things better for her, things are pretty cut and dried. I really needed to read all of these just to make me laugh, thank you all.
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Oh man. Sorry to hear that.
Hopefully we have brightened your day . at least for a minute.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one, twenty five years ago I raced my Plymouth fairly intensely, I broke a ring and pinion on Saturday so I loaded up and went to my shop to set up a new gear set and build a 727, I had the all parts needed and enough time for a good thrash. Well about 3 am we all went home with the transmission, driveshaft and rear gears bolted in thinking that we'd come in and finish up the small stuff and go back to the strip. So I come in in the morning and the first thing I notice is the converter on the bench. Duh
 
I filled my Valiant up with gas and left for Detroit... Went 100 miles and the car died... Had it towed home and replaced the engine...

While trying to start the newly installed engine I found out that I was out of gas.... :BangHead: :BangHead: :BangHead:

$300 tow, a day and a half to change the engine, all for running out of gas... :mad: :mad: :mad:

Ever since then I always run the clear plastic fuel filter instead of the metal can so I can see if I'm out of gas.... Lesson learned... :realcrazy:
 
When I was about 17, we (me and my younger brother) were checking the play on the rear gears on a differential (on the car). My brother, being 3 years younger, didn't know much about cars. I held onto the ring gear to feel the amount of play between the pinion and the ring gear and asked my brother to gently rotate the axle back and forth out where the wheel bolts onto. He grabbed the axle flange and gave it twist and sucked my fingers in between the ring and pinion teeth. DAMN right I Yelled!!!! Those damn gears had no respect for my fingers....it was as if they had sucked putty between the pinion and ring. Blood...YES!!....Pain, YES!!! Couldn't blame my brother, he didn't know any better...BUT I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER!!!!
 
I just remembered the first idiotic car related bumble. When I was 16 I had a 1966 dodge dart. First car. That idiot light that is for oil pressure. I ignored it. I replaced the motor in a single wide apartment garage by myself. No dad around to help. 43 years later I have a 73 scamp keeping me busy.
 
About 20 years ago, a guy who was friends with my neighbor spent a ton of money building a nice Ford big block. Forged rotating assembly, high dollar rods and pistons, trick aluminum heads, the works. They assembled the engine in my neighbors garage, and were absolutely fanatical about keeping the shop clean, no dust, everything left in boxes or bags until the last minute... etc. They paid an unbelievable amount of attention to keeping things clean and building that motor as perfectly as they knew how. Every last detail was triple checked, re-measured and checked again. Nothing wrong with any of that, but I used to kid them about how long it was taking. Final assembly of the engine probably took 80 hours. The finished engine was finally installed in a cherry 1970 Torino. I guess the anticipation and excitement finally got the better of them... the night they were going to start it for the first time, they called me over to watch the fire-up. They had primed the oiling system, and even primed the fuel pump. Ignition timing was estimated to be as close to perfect at they could get it without running the motor.
My neighbor carefully poured a little premium fuel into the carb, and the proud owner jumped in and turned the key. The engine fired almost instantly, and immediately went to wide open throttle. Both guys were so shocked, they stood there sorta frozen, just staring at the thing going full throttle. It probably took me 15 seconds to run across the room and rip out a handful of spark plug wires from the distributor to get it stopped. In all their meticulous preparations, no one had thought to install a return spring on the throttle linkage. So much for a brand new high dollar motor.
 
Got married the first time?

Seriously, had to think about this, have had a couple stiff belts of whiskey by now.

My best friend and I had stripped my 74 Torino after it was totalled for the second time, and we decided to tow it to the auto wrecker that was located about a mile away. The car was a shell, no wheels or drivetrain, and he had a Dodge Powerwagon, 1977 or 78, with 38 inch tires on it as a tow vehicle, I decided to go for "one last ride" in my car,so I sat in the driver's seat, no door, as he dragged me down a gravel road, around a 90 degree right turn, and through a water filled ditch, and another quarter mile down gravel, through another ditch and into the auto wreckers yard. He was laughing so hard he almost couldn't reach the door lock when he saw how pissed I was through the dirt that completely covered me. It's been about 35 years since that day, and now we both laugh our asses off when we reminisce about that and other stupid **** that we survived. We could probably write a book about all the stunts we lived through. That's what a best friend is for.
 
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The stupidest thing that I ever did was my first wife. The smartest thing to ever come out of her mouth was my ****.
 
Same friend, around 1983, we decided to make a trip across the border into the U.S. one weekend, for something to do. We got to the border, myself, my best friend, another friend, and his girlfriend, in my car. It was after midnight, probably between 1 and 2 a.m. when we attempted to cross into North Dakota, and the Border patrol asked for everyone's ID. Things were pretty lax in those days, but ID was usually a driver's license or birth certificate. Turned out that buddy had left his wallet in his car, which he had lent to his sister, and she had taken it across the border for a weekend getaway herself. Border Patrol agents decided that since he did not have any ID, they were not going to allow my friend to leave the building, he couldn't go into the U.S. or return to Canada until he provided some form of identification. I volunteered to drive the hour or so south to the city where his sister was believed to be spending the weekend, and try to locate her and his car. My other friend stayed at the border, and his girlfriend came along for the ride to keep me company. We drove down to the city of Grand Forks N.D. and even managed to find his car after about an hour of searching motel parking lots. So now it's around 3 a.m. in a foreign country, and I'm breaking into my friend's car, and stealing his wallet, then driving the hour and change back to the border to pick him and my other friend up, get him through the border, and then drive back south to go and have breakfast, hang out for a few hours, and then drive the 2 plus hours home later the same day.
 
Just for grins, you aught to bolt it up with some tires on it and set er down on the ground. Take a photo. Maybe start a new trend!
 
Dana67Dart said:
Just for grins, you aught to bolt it up with some tires on it and set er down on the ground. Take a photo. Maybe start a new trend!
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Engine is on a run stand now or I would be tempted.. No driveshaft either.
 
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