Al9

had a sapphire cosworth about 10years ago in mint condition,one day noticed black specs of tar on one side of the bodywork,so when washing it decided to use a brillo pad you guessed it, scratches galore, i was gob smacked stood looing at it for about an hour.what a numpty

his-n-her-scoobs

iTrader: (5)

A friend of mine named Alf had a hearing aid beige Rover SD1 2600, his pride and joy. His ever loving wife, bless her, decided to clean the bugs off the windscreen, bonnet and lights with a piece of scotchbrite, still a relatively new invention in the early eighties. Oh how I cried laughing. Oh how poor Alf cried...

Paddi70

After fitting a new set of headers, I was filling up the coolant and wondering where all the water was going??? On the 4th liter I found it all in the engine

I had fitted the coolant pipe under the coolant tank onto a breather pipe other side of the turbo and was happily filling away.

The water was everywhere, turbo, intercooler, thought I'd well and truly fooooked. After and good couple of curses, and kicking my toolbox about a bit, I set about stripping out all, again.

Thankfully engine had not been turned over, so stripped all, and drained, flushed and drained again.

Hell, I think it even goes better

Myles

iTrader: (40)

I had an oil pressure switch go on my Golf GTi, so I thought 'easy job', which it should have been. Old one removed from the block, then for some reason, I turned the car over(I can only presume to see if the oil pressure warning came on!). Oil came gushing out of the hole where the switch was! Its amazing how much oil can be pumped out in the space of two seconds!
When I bought the Golf, I couldnt work the windscreen washers. It turned out that the stalk was not working, so the old owner had fitted a switch on the dash. Unfortunately, this didnt work either. Until one day, I flicked the switch with the drivers door open. It worked! When I had a look, it appeared that the old owner had wired the switch through the interior light switch wiring in the door!

stann01

my first car a talbot solara (yeh i know!)
decided to take the carb apart to see what it looked like inside, oh so that what it looks like i thought, put all back together and yeh it would not start.
went in home "dad the car wont start" !
he said what have you done? nowt i said!
he quick as you like said its ok i`ll tow you up to your unlces (his brother whos a dab hand on cars)
he hooked me up and off we went, by about the fourth junction he had to come to a stop at which point i had used up all the pressure in the brake servo!! he said my face was a picture when i poughed into the back of his shiny datsun estate lol.
he calmly got out chucked off the tow rope and drove off
about ten minutes later he came back and im still sat there behind the wheel gripping the steering wheel as hard as when i went into the back of him, he got out and said you better get out and look at this damage
he said why didnt i stop? the brakes didnt work i said lol, he said why didnt i use the handbrake? coz you never told me to lol!!
anyways he bit his lip and continued towing me to my uncles and quick as you like he had the carb apart and it turned out i put the float back in upside down he put it in the right way and hey presto vrooooom!!
gota give my dad credit he does laigh about it now and a few days after even went to the breakers to get me a new headlight and indicator.

Smurf2k

iTrader: (6)

Thats why I used to leave the Nut on the column whack the steering wheel loose then take the nut off fully to get the wheel.

I learned that by watching a colegue get a nice shiner lol

Flaps

iTrader: (1)

Once when polishing my splitter, I sat back to admire my work, grabbed what I thought was my beer and took a big gulp of black turtlewax. Oh how the wife laughed!

Turbo2

My brother crashed his 1965 MG Midget and had the bodywork repaired and the whole car resprayed at a garage a couple of miles from our home. It looked lovely. I volunteered to sit in and steer it when my brother decided to tow it back home for final fettling (put bumpers, chrome trim on etc.).

Unfortunately I failed to stop in-time for a right-turn and it rolled straight into the tow bar of the lead-car and crushed the front valance. He wasn't best pleased, so I did the honourable thing and blamed the MG's brakes and claimed that the rear drums must have been contaminated by oil when the car ended up on its side in the original accident. I may have been half-right?

We turned round and towed it straight back to the bodyshop for yet another repair, much to their amusement!

windyboy

The most recent thing I've done was replace a worn rear wheel bearing.
A mate sold me the bearing (it was still attached to the wheel hub (is that the big round thing that the wheel goes on to with the brakes shoes etc in it ?)). Also the brake shoes were better than mine so I decided that it would be easier to replace the whole hub as it was only held on by 4 bolts. Little did I know that those 4 bolts were tightened by Hecules or somebody similar, after about 2 hours of banging a spanner on the bolt with a sledge hammer whilst a spanner on the other end of the bolt was wedged in place, and then giving up on that I decided to wedge the spanner in place and use a jack to rasie the other spanner and loosen it (one of these spanners was a newly aquired 19mm racket spanner that I'd cycled 3 miles to Halfords to purchase as I didn't want to take the car of the axle stand).
Eventually I gave up and opened the hub to look at the bearing and it dawned on me that it probably would be easier to take the bearing out of the hub, then I relaised that I didn't have a socket big enough so I put all of the bits back onto the car and a short drive to another mates and 30 minutes later the beearing was replaced and the car was running quieter again

windyboy

uk300scoob

iTrader: (24)

have you still got the wagon @ windyboy

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

One of my mates took the opposite aproach to removing the steering wheel on his classic gl wagon. He decided that he would hit the end of the column with a lump hammer and completely buggered up the thread Much much filing later trying to find some good thread the steering wheel was back on

mr_D

iTrader: (12)

i love this thread.


i was in a hurry before trying to get my ibiza back on the road for a show the following day and it was late at night on a sat and i had bought the most expensive oil i could find for my car! was tuned alot! so i finally start finishing up at about 9ish and start to refill with oil. dull me hadnt put the plug back in. i should of guessed after the second dip stick check that something was wrong. but no i carried on until it was too late and i had nothing left before i clicked.

when in college my instructor was going on about safety in the worshop and decided that we should remove jewellery. well we did. but he didnt and he started doing something to a mondeo and his watch crossed the terminals on the starter motor. well as we heard was a scream and a flash. was funny!
he had welded every joint on his watch together and had a nice imprint in his arm (bet he wished he had listened to him self)

uk300scoob

iTrader: (24)

i was getting a mate to fit my headers on in his garage and when i got there got the undertray taken off and oem headers taken off realised that the up pipe that i had put on before doesnt match up with the new headers so i had to get in mates car drive back to house good few miles away get the new up pipe which i thought the one on car will be pointing in same direction so when i got back had to take old up pipe off b*stard to get at some nuts off and always risk of snapping them off, so fitted new headers in the end. so advice to people when you buy new parts and keep bits aside you think you wont need and bits you already have on car and you think they will fit dont take chance just be sure and bring everything that came with it with you.lol plus after fitted the exhaust system i had the up pipe gasket blew as soon as i drove it down road so back to the garage and up on ramp up pipe taken off again and sealed wat a long day that was

G-Man1982

iTrader: (7)

audi 1.8 turbo.... put the intake pipe back on after changing turbo.... somehow a small jubaly clip got stuck in there and compleatly mashed my brand new ko4 turbo id saved up for for ages. didnt even get to drive it! lol

smiffy07

Had a puncture once pulled over into layby to change it and put one of
those stupid space saver wheels on, chucked the punctured one in the boot and drove to the garage,
on arriving was asked by the mechanic "have you got the locking wheel nut apapter"
ah ..... that would be the one that was still on the wheel when i left the layby in such a hurry then !!!
wont be doing that again !

scoobwrx94import

went to replace the rear quarter windows after tinting them on my 306 turbo diesel and laid it next to the wall and i thought to move my car closer to the wall for shelter as was raining and i backed into it and smashed it gutted took me ages tae

Turbo2

I used to keep my Turbo 2 in a lock-up. I would park it in there in-gear and with the handbrake off. One day I came to take it out. I started it up and let it warm up a bit, whilst I walked away to attend to something...

...CRUNCH!

I had forgotten to apply the hand-brake and the car just rolled out of the lock-up and into a gate post across the alley at walking pace. That little oversight cost me quite a lot of money. I ended up scrapping the damaged old front bumper (which I still have as evidence of my stupidity), having the front of the car re-jigged and then sourcing and collecting an original 2nd-hand replacement bumper from the other end of the country, which then needed to be fitted and painted. Still it did look better after all of this!

. Literally!

scooby-tc

iTrader: (2)

When changing the clutch on my Mk2 Cavalier i managed to leave one of the 3 clips that compress the clutch for removal in place.Bolted everything back together and started the car everything was fine,until i pressed down on the clutch and the last remaining clip that i had left on catapulted itself through the gearbox casing leaving quite a big hole in the bell housing.Fortunately the bonnet was still open otherwise the clip would have gone through that aswell

The Trooper 1815

iTrader: (31)

In a former life my mate, "Taters", had a shagged tank engine when we where on Ranges in Hohne in Northern Germany.

A Challenger Mk1 Tank is fitted with muff couplings. These connect the rear drive sprockets to the gearbox and are pretty hefty things.

To remove the engine you have to disconnect these by inserting a muff coupling tool which is a bit like a long starting handle, through the centre cap and winding them out. This allows the engine, after much other shananaging, to be lifted out.

Now it's late at night and the pressure is on to get the beasty back on the road. People are tired and the Sqn OC is giving him **** over the radio.
In his rush to get things done he forget to remove the muff coupling from the left hand drive sprocket before making off down the range road to the next firing point.

He opened up the sides of two German cars like bean tins before the German roozers stopped him

We renamed him "Ben Hur"

chocolate_o_brian

iTrader: (22)

eh?

dunx

iTrader: (3)

I got lucky.... I found mine !

dunx

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

I'm sorry, but I've just gotta ask - how exactly do you put wheelnuts on any other way than the right way?

hodgy0_2

its a fair question -- the wheel nuts on an old style mini were tappered on one end (to match a corresponding cup in the wheel) but the other was flat

I screwed the flat side to the wheel so it did not mate properly to the cup on the wheel

a bit but not exaclty like the pic below -- the top tapers correct but on old style mini the bottom was flat (and an open thread - thus allowing it to be screwed on the wrong way)



you can just make the cup out in the wheel below

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

hodgy
That's the wonder of 60s technology, I suppose

Which leaves me owing a story:
I recently had to re-gasket the sump on my scoob because of a slow but messy and irritating leak. Anyone who's done this before will know what a fiddly pain-in-@$$ job it is with the engine in-place, thanks to the row of bolts cunningly recessed between the back edge of sump and chassis cross-member, and the oil pick-up pipe being a very tight fit through the slot in the sump base after it's bolted on, and the dip-stick holder being attached at an angle so it can only be removed once the sump is already part way off.
Anyhow, when it got towards the end of the job I was concentrating so hard on waiting just the right amount of time for the gasket gunk to dry after spreading it around the sump, that I forgot to re-fit the dip-stick holder when I bolted the sump all the way back on. Queue more extreme tight-space issues, which ended with having to get out the tube-benders and re-shape the bottom few inches of the holder just to get the damn thing back on. Leak all fixed now, but dip-stick was a bit reluctant to slide in and out until I filed off 1 or 2 mm down the edge.

Should be another 250k before I have to do it again (I hope), but I'll know better next time

hodgy0_2

what all these sorry tales tell me is that we are all human and do all fvck up sometimes

that's why I would rather do the simple stuff myself, at least I know when i've fvcked up

pacenote

Couple from way back:

Changing rear brake cylinders on a mates cortina, put some mole grips on flexi pipe above axle to stop all the brake fluid draining out. Bled brakes after, took ages didn't figure why. Mate has car back. Awhile later gets call " brakes are funny and rear wheels are red hot "
Oops I'd forgot to remove mole grips.

Been working on the rally car, escort tc IIRC, the bonnet was fibreglass and was held on by 4 bonnet pins with retaining clips, popped the bonnet back on for road test, took off down the road and noticed bonnet flapping, before I could stop bonnet lifted right off car, shot about 30 ft into the air and disappeared over roof of car. Bit of a shock for the car behind. I'd forgot to fit the retaining clips to bonnet pins.

scooby546

iTrader: (1)

Great thread this...

I've had a few, but one that springs to mind is when my previous fiat uno refused to start one night. Turned out it was a flat battery, so decided to give it a push start, as the country road I was on was on a slight hill. So I set it up and got a couple of mates to push the car to start it rolling down the hill... all went okay until I passed beyond the reach of the house floodlight and suddenly couldn't see where I was going - realised too late and veered off the road, then hit a telegraph pole! Thankfully not very fast, only broke the bumper and one spotlight - I opened the door and all I could hear was laughter must admit i did find it funny at the time

Trout

iTrader: (1)

I have hurt myself laughing...

...too many to list - but here are a few.

Once moved the axle stand away from the axle - lowered the car and hey presto a remodelled car floor!!!

On my way to a rolling road day at Powerstation I made one final adjustment to the wastegate and dropped (and lost) the circlip. Drove all the way there (50 miles) as a 2.0l normally aspirated Scoob - praying that they had a circlip that might fit. Really helped get my off boost mapping optimised!

Turned our they had and so I very briefly held the highest rated Scoob in England at 346bhp - those were the days - when Scoobs were supposed to meltdown at 300bhp!

Finally in one of the many years of the Trout Mobile being on Team Subaru at TOTB we were still mapping at 3.45am on the day (*) having fitted a new and improved turbo. After an earlier fire due to oil spillage on the header wrap we had a slight overheating problem.

For some sleep induced reason of complete stupidity I decided to loosen the pressure cap on the header tank.

I did say STUPID! Of course it blew off, soaked me with boiling hot coolant and the cap disappeared into a very dark night. We were so tired we started laughing hysterically and could not stop.

I went out with a torch and amazingly the cap had come down from orbit and had landed on top of the engine in plain sight! Our TOTB efforts were saved.


* One of our fellow competitors was also putting in some final preparations for TOTB which as you know is held in York. We phoned after this incident at about 4am and said, 'Where are you?'

The reply, 'We are on the M25 - we drove down to do a couple of circuits to run the new engine in and do some final mapping'.

That afternoon they had been finishing the car...

...in Leeds!

M444GY

iTrader: (72)

sort of a car fixing horror storiy

was doing some suspension work on my old fiesta when i needed to go to the shop to get a bolt so i jumped onto my brand new 800 quid mountain bike , came back , put the bike behind the car and yep u guessed it , i ran the ******* over when i reversed the car out of my garage mangleing the thing to scrap , i still remember going , what was that noise to me mate who looked equally confused as me untill i realised my error lol


doh

TimH

iTrader: (11)

Needed to replace the rubber donuts on the prop shaft of my '74 Alfa Bertone 2000GTV. Handbrake was a bit dodgy, so left car in gear when it was up on wheel ramps.

Undid prop shaft bolts...meaning gearbox no longer connected to rear wheels, so being in gear rather irrelevant...and lack of handbrake meant it rolled down the ramps

Car was lowered (thanks to the gung-ho use of an angle grinder on the springs a few weeks earlier) so not really enough clearance even for the slim 20 year old I was at the time...I could not move, was pinned to the gound and could barely breath. Never shouted so loud in my life until, thankfully, a passerby came to assist and lifted the car enough, by hand, for me to slide out.

So very very nearly a Darwin Awards moment...