What's your biggest, best, funniest most bone-headed move related to your car?

[Bob67Barracuda]

What's the dumbest thing you've done while working on your car? I'll start:

One summer not long ago I drove by myself in my '67 Barracuda to the family cabin. I figured it was a fine time to change the oil. I had a big jug of fresh oil and a filter, and got to work. Drained the old oil, changed the filter and poured in the new oil... forgetting of course to put the drain plug back in. So $50 of oil flowed right into the dirt under the car.

Now I'm kind of stuck. There are no other cars at the cabin, and O'Reilly is like 5 miles away. Thankfully, I had the old oil in a catch pan. So back in goes the dirty oil and off I go to the auto parts store for another $50 jug. The second time I remembered the put the drain plug back in!

Not the most expensive or damaging blunder in the world, but still, pretty stupid.

 

[mopar head]

I believe I did the same ONCE. lol, luckily I was using quarts and was over concrete and heard it right away.

 

[MadScientistMat]

Dropped a screw while adjusting points and forgot about it instead of making sure all parts were accounted for. The stray screw ended up breaking the distributor gear.

 

[ProjectBazza]

Not funniest, but “dumbest”, perhaps.

I didn’t even have my license yet, but while “helping” my dad replace an engine in his daily driver work truck (weekend changeout), late Saturday night I dropped something small (don’t recall) inside the intake valley of the brand new engine….AFTER it was already set in-place and bolted-in. (I think we were installing the intake at that time). It, whatever it was, fell “deep” inside the engine somewhere, and since we had been at it all day, dad gave-up and went to bed. But I felt so bad that I ended up staying up all night so I could jack up the engine (we had returned the engine hoist), drop the pan, find said small object, reinstall the pan, drop the engine again, install the intake…..You guys get the drill.

But, hey! Dad was able to drive it to work on Monday morning, and that’s what counts.

I’ve never dropped anything down a carb, intake, or valley since.

 

[barbee6043]

Mopar bud worked at the county highway "barn" and sometimes would fill a couple of empty gal. antifreeze "jugs' with their bulk oil for "home use". I was there at his place working on something, and he tells his "grown" 20 year old son to fill the old wrecker's radiator. Off at a little distance, I see him pouring what "almost " looked like that new NOT green antifreeze in the radiator. About that time, Dad sees it all and the cussing out begins!!!!
Dad tells him he can't really be that stupid!!???
Yes ya can!!!

 

[ProjectBazza]

Just remembered another boneheaded move I did…..

During the VERY FIRST test drive of my ‘71 Vega (350/350 combo), I forgot that I hadn’t tested and/or adjusted the transmission linkage, and somehow I managed to put it in reverse at somewhere around 20 MPH.

The SECOND transmission I put in a few days later, though…..

 

[halfafish]

When I was but a pup I had a 67 Dart with a 273 in it. I'd done a basic tuneup and it ran OK-ish afterwards. Then it was running rougher so I had my.mechanic buddy look at it. He said it's missing on one cylinder, it needs a valve job. So I tear down the top end and pull the heads. The very last thing I do is pull the spark plugs, and see the one in the #8 hole has some blip of crud filling the plug gap. No wonder it had a dead hole - I must have rubbed it through the skank on the outside of the engine when installing it.

By this time I figured I'm this far into it, might as well keep going and rebuild the engine.

 

[mopar head]

Not funniest, but “dumbest”, perhaps.

I thought I done the same, ss flat washer on air breather, I pulled it off at an angle and seen it slide off and couldn`t find it for the life of me. To be safe I had to assume it went down the carb, off with the carb, yadda yadda. New head and intake gaskets later I never did find that washer, until years later I swapped on some new fangled heads and noticed it stuck way down in the crotch of the header.

 

[1MeanA]

I spun on a new oil filter not realizing the old gasket came off the old filter and stuck to the engine. I lost a few quarts of oil in a hurry.

 

[mopar56]

About 28 years ago, I was changing the U joints on my 84 Ramcharger 2wd in my driveway (on my back of course) and for some reason I had a brain fart and once I popped the drive shaft free of the rear yoke it started to roll backwards because my driveway was on a slight grade and I didn’t block the wheels ( that was the brain fart ), so I’m holding the drive shaft as tightly as I could to keep it from spinning and as the truck is slowly creeping backwards towards my legs sticking out from the side I start yelling for my wife who was in the house, after what seemed like an eternity she finally heard me and came running out and I told her to grab a large rock near by and thrown it under the rear tire……SAFE!!!! Never did that again!

 

[dukeboy440]

Not the funniest but I had my body cart collapse and drop the car 3 feet to the ground….

I’ve also set another car on fire thanks to a leaking Mr gasket fuel filter

And blew up a brand new coil somehow…

 

[One Bullet Barney]

Most bone headed move related to my car.
Starting a family I guess!

 

[DartGTDan]

When I was a teen, I had my summer Cragar S/S wheels that I needed to swap to the winter wheels/tires. So, out comes the bumper jack on the rear bumper. As I started jacking up the rear, the car started to roll forward because I forgot to put the wheel chocks against the front wheels. I couldn't stop the car from rolling forward and watched the top of the jack skewer, in super slow motion, the passenger side tail lamp & housing. All replaceable parts at that time (expensive lesson when I only made $2.30/hour).


Now I use wheel chocks & a floor jack!

 

[abdywgn]

my first car that ran, a 67 Charger, I replaced the fuel filter and the short sections of hose before and after the filter. did I read the package as to what it fit? no, 3/8 is bigger, has to flow better. um, I came home from school one day and smelled gas. opened the hood, and the heat riser wells in the cylinders heads (318), were filled with gas. smart move here...grabbed the hose and sprayed it all down never thinking it could get on the exhaust manifolds and burst into flames. well, it cleaned the top of the engine a bit and I learned to read packages.

 

[PA Dodger]

I was putzing around on my freshly restored Charger. New paint, new engine, new everything. It's not in my garage where everything is handy, but in a separate storage area. I know the engine runs fine but this particular day it didn't want to start. I'm pumping the gas and crankin her over, pumpin and crankin, not getting anywhere. Must not be getting a hot spark. I didn't want to wash down the cylinders and load the oil up with gas so I pulled the plugs to clear the gas. I crank it over, dangling spark plug wire meets header, gas meets the amazing spark, now my new zero mile car is on fire. I'm running in circles shitttin twinkies with no fire extinguisher handy. Luckily there wasn't that much gas so nothing was damaged other than fenderwell paint getting darkened a little.
I would love to say that was when I was young and dumb but...

 

[mopar head]

With each new post it brings back a recall of a similar dumb thing I did.

 

[RAT ROD AL]

On time on my race car, on a brand new engine I obviously left the center bolt un-torqued. Got to the track , unloaded the car. Saw some buddies a few rows away. So I pulled my truck and trailer over there and walked back to my car. Started and as I idled over the engine started self destructing. WTF. Pulled the valve covers and found the rocker shaft busted in 4 pieces and bent push rods.

 

[ProjectBazza]

I'm running in circles shitttin twinkies…..

Sorry, but that struck me as pretty damn funny!

 

[like_A_pike]

I bolted up the float bowl with a pair of luv bugs inside. Ran like crap until I found them!

 

[Workingdog1]

Parked 64 pushbutton on sloping driveway, pulled E Brake, no Park cable hooked and engaged, door slammed by gravity and away it went down the driveway headed towards the neighbor's fence and vehicles. The significant other was sitting on porch and couldn't see as the motor home blocked her view as I yelled Oh Faaaaak !

Luckily it went into the wood pile. I was disgusted with myself and it it sat for 3 days.

When yanked/moved a #4 rebar holding tarp was a few inches from puncturing gas tank.

Considered myself fortunate as realized could have punctured tank, gone through fence plus untold damage/fire/carnage.

Minor win in hindsight lol. Somewhere a pic exists of sled on the plie. Ugh !

 

[Kern Dog]

Kudos to the members that put their egos aside to share their humbling experiences.
I have plenty of them, some by me, some by friends.
* I once assembled an engine then a friend asked me if I'd ran brushes through the crank oil passages. No, I forgot so I pulled it all apart to clean the crank and NOTHING came out. It was already properly cleaned by my machinist.
* I was given a set of 15 x 7 wheels from an 85 Z28 and wanted to use them on my 73 Camaro. They even came with the lug nuts but I didn't know that they had metric threads. For a couple of days I drove around, losing a lug nut from each wheel. Then as I left a parking lot on a cruise night, I turned right and peeled out....and the right rear wheel flew off. I pulled over and chased after it, then like an idiot I picked up the brake drum that had also fallen off. Yeah...the HOT brake drum.
* My first tune up....I pulled the ignition points out of my 69 Dart and put new ones in without adjusting them. It wouldn't start so I thought that the points were defective.
* The wife (girlfriend at the time) asked me to look at the CV half shafts in her car so I did. After deciding that they needed to be replaced, I put the tires back on and planned to replace them the next weekend. She drove off, then returned within a couple minutes. I had forgotten to tighten the lug nuts.
* I've screwed up the mixing ratio when painting cars and only figured it out when it was obvious that I was going to run out of one thing before the other when the stuff was bought to all be used up at the same time.
* I've opened the hood to work on one of my cars and spotted a tool laying somewhere underhood.....when I hadn't worked on the car in quite a while and wondered what happened to THAT tool/
* I've had coils wired backward.
This guy that I know...
He never built an engine that would stay in the car for long, he always screwed something up that required major work to correct.
The 340/416 he built was a collection of parts that he bought from a few different people through Craigslist and swap meets. The first build of that engine shook horribly. One 3 hour drive he lost the crank pulley, the shifter linkage ralled apart and he broke a power steering hose. It turned out that the rotating assembly wasn't balanced even though he trusted the guy that said that it was. He pulled it and had the crank welded up and put it back together and lost a cam. The cam was a solid flat tappet but he had hydraulic lifters in it. Again, he was told that it was a hydraulic cam. That in itself may not have been the problem, he may have just fell victim to cam failures like many of us have seen.
He was on a car cruise with build #3 and the air cleaner stud rattled loose and fell down the carburetor, landing in cylinder #6, splitting the wall. Another time he was on his way to a major car show and grease was oozing out of a front hub. He had wasted a wheel bearing, the second pair in just a few weeks. It turns out that he TORQUED the wheel bearings to some stupid number because he misinterpreted Inch lbs for FOOT lbs!

 

[barbee6043]

I spun on a new oil filter not realizing the old gasket came off the old filter and stuck to the engine. I lost a few quarts of oil in a hurry.

Yep, same deal but I did not do it!!!!!! Disclaimer!!!
I had a company truck decades ago, and took it to a Firestone store and got the oil changed right before my run to Nashville from Mo. I was taking a AAR engine to a bud. About 20 miles from Nashville the oil light came on and I stopped and checked it, NOoooo oil! at all! At about the 400 mile mark!? This was about 1989, and a 350 Chevy. Go figure.

 

[PA Dodger]

I had a high school buddy with great ambition and little common sense. He asked me if Id paint his car for him and I said sure just tell me when you want to do it With no warning, he shows up (driving the car) one fall evening with the headlights and tail lights pulled and all the windows taped over except a small opening on the windshield. My garage is full and I'm not prepared so he says we'll just paint it outside. By the time I get done spaying, it's late evening and the temp is dropping. Before I could put everything away he crawls under the car and cleans the grease off the bottom half of the pumpkin and sprays it too.
The next day he comes over and the car has the most unique frosted window looking pattern all thru the paint that George Barris woulda been proud of.
This is the same buddy who "rebuilt" his engine but didn't have money to buy head gaskets so he reused the old ones. But, he did have money to buy the cheap chrome valve covers.
This is the same engine where the car would disappear in a cloud of steam if he sat at a red light too long. He had to carry two gallons of water with him to keep the radiator from running dry and had to plan his trips based on where he could get more water while he was out.

 

[Scody21]

I was rebuilding the front suspension on my car. I got the spindles on in the calipers everything‘s all bolted up cotter pins in place. And then I realize I fucked up. I put the spindles on the wrong side. It all had to come apart…

 

[MOPARMAGA]

I did some work on a customer 1978 f350 had a 460, did a bunch of work and was cleaning up before reassembly.
I wasn't thinking about this, since I used a bunch of carb clean and the carb itself had flooded.
Anyways I am dumb,, somehow I do dumb **** anniversary style.
The front cover put a hole in the radiator, I had to shave my hair, beard, and burnt all the hair off of my right arm and couldn't hear for 2 hours.
Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom !
Don't use a torch to dry parts, when the oil pan is full of flammables.
I'm open for business...