Jolly Green Monster 2

Working in the garage tonight and it reminded me of a mistake I made once whilst working on a car, which got me thinking.. and I came up with two accidents / mistakes which I am willing to reveal and are amusing... now!

Once drained the oil and refilled only to find I hadn't refitted the drain plug.. one wasted can of expensive oil and a stained driveway later! doh

Once when changing the themostate on a car I dropped a bolt into the water channel.. into the head.. doh!
One quick job.. became a long and complicated one

Lets hear your garage mistakes then?

JGM

snowy95wrx

A workmate of mine did an oilchange on his BMW and used an oil system flush to clean it out . He did`nt bother reading the instructions on the can and ran the car with Engine Flush instead of oil for 2 MONTHS and asked why his 2.5 l 6 cylinder motor sounded like a tractor now !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

snowy

BOB.T

I think I might win this

I had a Mondeo on a two post lift, it had heavy rear end damage so I was stripping parts off ready for it to go for jigging, panel etc....I'd got everything inside, out from the seats backwards, the bumper was off, lights, rear suspension...pretty much a bare shell from the B pillars back actually! The ramp was right up at the top and with a mate we were taking the fuel tank out...well the car wasn't happy about this and tried to get off the ramp! It fell off the ramp and landed on it's headlights! The front looked as bad as the back Needless to say it never got repaired, we were all secretly chuffed cos none of us wanted the job anyway I didn't even get a bollocking

Jolly Green Monster 2

LOL...


I used to work with someon that had a read temper problem.. who would often come to wokr with dents in his bike and then when he got a car dents in that... where he had got annoyed working on it and taken a hammer to it in frustration..

He once broke a keyboard in half over his knee because his PC crashed!..

JGM

oj

Many years ago, young and keen, I helped a friend do a service on his car, oil change etc.... I completed the task in good time and did the usual tidying up but forgot about the drained oil still in the can under the car... So when I moved the car, I reversed straight over the oil can and make a complete mess and spent hours cleaning up.. his parents wasn't too impressed.. Make me laugh though..!! Guess what he never asked me to do the job again..

OJ...

john_s

iTrader: (1)

A few years ago i had my rover 214 jacked up with an axle stand under "just in case". I moved the axle stand & let the car down, only i'd not moved it far enough, and caught the sill on the axle stand on the way down!

Wasn't tooooo bad, just through to bare metal...

Oh and i was doing some welding yesterday, and the sparks had landed on a pile of sawdust and set fire to it. I couldn't see the smoke & flames with my welding mask on, only noticed when i flipped it up. Quick stamp out and things were back to normal again!

Ooops.

John.

Brun

Me and my mate were doing a bit of rust repair in his gararge when we spied a massive spider in the corner just below roof level.
As we were both pi55ed and not too happy about sharing the gararge with the 8 legged monster we decided to cover it in WD40 (for scientific reasons of course). This didn't really do much for our amusement so we figured a skillful cremation was in order
The amount of WD seemed about right to do the deed, so out came the *** lighter
One ******* great ball of flame later saw us both racing down the back path to get the garden hose in order to fix the overgrown BBQ.
Under control you might think! - Nope One swift turn of the tap made sure it came off in my mate's hand
The end of the story saw a bit of luck for us. Luckily the fire hadn't got hold of the wooden roof and had just burned what WD it could find.

We now stick to the tried and tested method of lob a brick at it and run like girls.

carl

Not mine, but I read in an old 'classics' magazine once about the dangers of not insuring a classic car that was off-road as a project.

IIRC some guy had a MkII jag he was restoring, and when doing some welding managed to set fire to the carpet and the whole lot went up. And he was uninsured

worley

My brother was transfering petrol from a fuel tank using an old fuel pump and a car battery. After a very short period the petrol vapour ignited and set fire to his paper overalls. Fortunately my Scoob had a fire extinguisher and was unlocked in the driveway.

Suffice to say the paper overall burned through quite quickly, but no injuries though. He never replaced the extinguisher (ungrateful sod).

chockymonster

Working underneath my alfa 75, trying to remove the rear diff and prop shaft.
Removed all but one of the bolts from the prop to the diff and then undid the supporting bolts from the prop shaft.
Thought behind it was to allow me to lower the prop shaft with some control.
All went well until the remaining bolt holding the prop fell off, only problem was me laying underneath the car when the propshaft fell, fortunately it landed on soft material . I think it took about a week for my voice to drop afterwards

T5NYW

iTrader: (4)

A dealer not to far from me due to security needs to fill up the workshop with all the scoobs

One night they for put cars up on ramps, cars under and to the side of ramps. Unfortunately someone forgot to put the locks in one ramps, they came in the next day to a Scoob with flatten roof

Tony

dazzaTypeR

Working in Max Power offices once and one of the jurnos was talkin to some guy who owned an ICE centre.

He was telling him of a punter that wanted to mount two huge subs in the back of the rear seats and about 8 big ol speakers in the parcel shelf...

Turned out the guy chopped so much metal out of the cars rear end that his 25k M3 had to be written off it was so structually weakend.

NotoriousREV

My Mini Clubman 1100 was smoking on the overrun and was fouling a couple of plugs regularly so I decided that the valve guides were worn and had to be replaced so off came the head.

Carefully reading my Haynes manual, I took the rocker cover off, carefully removed the rockers, drained the coolant and oil, pulled the pushrods out being careful to keep them in the correct order, undid the other bolts and hoses etc. and pulled the head. Success.

Took the valves out, replaced the guides with no problem, regound the valves/seats and refitted. Success number 2.

Got a new gasket kit, refitted the head with no problems until I came to put the pushrods back. One pushrod was sitting a little lower than the rest but at first I though it was just the cam position so I refitted the rocker arms. Turned the motor over by hand and it was obvious the pushrod wasn't even reaching the rocker arm. So I sat and thought for a while. *Obviously* the cam follower was knackered (it had been running on 3 after all).

So a quick check in the Haynes manual revealed that to change the followers was a cam out job, which is almost an engine out job so I figured I'd replace the cam with a sportier one while I was at it.

A week later, I had all my new parts, hired an engine crane and borrowed a trolley jack and axle stands. After a day of bashing and generally mincing about under the car I decided I wasn't going to get the engine out in the time I had the crane for so I had to think of Plan B pretty quick.

It was at this point I noticed something in the Haynes manual I hadn't seen before. 1100 A series motors have 2 cam inspection covers. 2 bolts later and I'd locted the cam follower which of course wasn't knackered but had clung to the bottom of the pushrod and fallen into the cam gallery Within half an hour the car was running again, what was a simple job had cost me £200 and a weekend of grease monkeying. I'd only paid £75 for the car in the first place [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Still, I learnt a lot and a year or so later went on to build a pretty potent 1430cc A series motor and install it.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

When I was about 10 years old this happened.....

My dad is a bit of a DIY mechanic and as so had a pit put in our garage to allow him to work under cars. This time he was working on some old car doing a bit of welding. A spark must have ignited part of the car (possibly a fuel spillage when draining the tank) and up it went in flames above his head. He quickly moved the car back and climbed out from under it. He managed to get out of the garage and shut the door...

..at this point I was playing out with my mates and when we saw the fire engines coming past we followed them on our bikes......straight back to my house. We thought it was great with two fire engines to look at! After the fire had been put out, the garage which was at the side of our house was black! As was one wall of the house which the flames had been licking up. I'll never forget the look on my mothers face when she came back from her Saturday shopping spree.... I think it was safe to say my dad was in the dog house for some time!

dnb

I've done a similar thing...

My mother-in-law's Rover decided that 3 was a good number of cylinders to run on, so I set to work fixing it. It turned out to be a broken valve, so it got replaced - involving much cursing of my new large (and highly expensive) spring compressor that wouldn't latch, so it tended to attack my nose when in use. In the end, I took it back to the shop, and the very helpful chap there lent me his own and gave me a refund as the thing clearly hadn't been made right!

Problem #1 overcome. Now for the next bit. Feeling sufficiently pleased that I had sorted out the valves, I proceeded to glue the camshafts back into the head with new oil seals and everything. I then put the head back on the car. No problem so far...

After fitting the cambelt & manifolds back on, I thought that I'd try to make the engine run before I put all the covers, wheels etc back on. It didn't want to start! Not at all... There was clearly fuel (I could smell it) and spark, but it didn't want to play. I contunied for the next couple of hours, blowtorching the plugs and so on until it dawned on me - the immobiliser! Grrr.

I finally managed to get the thing to idle the next day. But there was no power in the engine, and it tended to stop as soon as you tried to make it rev, and it would backfire through the inlet manifold! Not good. I checked the cambelt alignment - it was perfect.

It took a day back at work and a chat with my father-in-law to realise what I'd done. I'd fitted the cam sprockets while the head was upside down, so they were on the wrong way round, so the engine was nearly, but not quite, 180 degrees out. I felt like a prat then.

Still, at least the car's still running, even though it makes the "tea tray noise" and the starter motor's giving up...

iain atkins

LOL, this reminds me of the time one of my good friends from London made a silly error.

Was about 7 years ago. . . . . . . . . .

He had a Golf driver, and had just put in some 'Redex Petrol treatment', and dropped the cap into the fuel filler hole - opps.

Anyway 3 weeks pass, and he's getting pissed off with having to dribble fuel in (took 20 mins to fill up lol), so he goes back to his parents house. . . . . . .

Parks the car in the garage next to his fathers new Bentley, and proceeds to try and get the offending cap out of the filler pipe.

He tried Coathangers - didn't work, hooks - didn't work. He then came up with the bright idea of using the Henry hoover to suck it out

Result: -

One Henry Hoover with a 3ft blue jet flame coming out of the back, and one blistered passenger side Bentley door LOL. His Dad wasn't best pleased.

Mind you, could have been a lot worse.



Iain

MartinM

Many years ago and actually not that funny....

Took all the cell tops off a battery, and then proceeded to undo the terminal connectors with a spanner. Dropped the spanner and it fell across both battery contacts. Mixture of big sparks and the hydrogen/oxygen mix from the cells in the immediate vicinity caused a minor explosion that blew the acid out of the uncovered cells into my face...

...and as it all happened so quick, didn't have time to close my eyes

Face in washing up bowls of cold water, visit to A&E, lots more eye washing, leaving A&E with both eyes covered with pads....

Jza

My godfather restores classic cars. He'd just got a shell for his Sunbeam Alpine back from the sprayers.. looked amazing... when a gust of wind blew the garage door into the wing and dented it whilst we were puhing it in.

He nearly cried.... 2 years work and we f**cked it in 2 secs

Jza

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

I saved up and decided to put a cheap radio, (not even any preset stations!!) into my Ford Anglia. After fitting it, and it's speaker,(it was mono), I noticed that it crackled when the engine was running. I already had suppressed plug leads, and a local dealer told me to put a suppressr in the main coil to distributor lead too.(The king lead??)
I bought one and took it home to fit. The instructions told me to cut the lead in the centre, and fit the two ends to the ends of the suppressor, then refit the lead.
I went in to get a pair of sidecutters to cut the lead. On coming back out again, I noticed it was nearly dark, but decided to go ahead anyway, as I couldn't wait. I couldn't see very well, so I decided to turn on the car's headlights and work in the light reflected off my dad's white garage door.
Then I relaised that I'd quickly flatten the battery, so I had the bright idea of starting the engine to keep it charged, and this I did.
I then proceeded to cut through the lead
I picked myself up from about 8 feet away in a rose bush!
How my dad laughed when I told him.
Alcazar

swaussie

This would come more under the Disaster or stupid category.

4 years back I was doing some farming in Australia in one of the new 450hp John Deere rubber track tractors ( that look like bulldozers ). It has GPS navigation so you could set it to run a straight line and sit back and relax. I had just taken over from my dad and refuelled it when I set the GPS and climbed out on the mud guard to have a smoke.

Coming to the end of the run I went to get back in to turn her around but I had accidently locked the door when I got out. Panic set in big time. To cut a long story short it ploughed into the fuel truck dumping about 1000 litres of diesel onto the ground and then ploughed itself into a ditch ripping off the right hand track. I had to smash the window to get in to stop it. The carnage was scarey but no-where near as scarey as my old man when I called him on the two way and told him..... expensive cigarette.

carl

Heh, heh, this reminds me...

When I was at university we built a rocket for a rocketry competition. It was pretty decent (just over Mach 1 in <2 seconds, about 8 foot tall). It had a blunt nose and a precision-engineered 'aerospike' which, IIRC, Royal Ordnance had designed and made for us. We were supposed to investigate the performance of spike-nosed projectiles in transsonic flight. After we assembled everything we walked out of the door with it and caught the spike on the top of the door frame, and bent it.

We got it straight again, but it wasn't quite so 'precision engineered' as we'd done it with a pair of pliers....

Kippax

when filling the coolant up on your scoob, dont put your finger in the steel lipped coolant tank hole to test the level especially when your mobile phone and tools are further away than the length of your free arm.

GV27

I recently left a paper shop rag in my intake and my turbo ate it. New turbo time.

The worst disaster I ever witnessed was on my dad's 325is. He'd been in a wreck that nearly totalled the new car. Close to $20,000 damge IIRC. Well, it was all done with the body work and it was down at the suspension shop getting the suspension fixed. I happened to drop by to watch. They had it up on a lift and I guess a new guy put it up there. Right in front of my eyes it fell off the lift right on to its side! Back to the body shop........

Chris

Alberick

With reference to my DIY jobbie "converting 99 UK to double DIN dash".

Dismantled the whole dashboard including the lower parts right & left (glove box etc), inserted the new dash emoved & replaced all the bits, installed new ICE unit, remounted dash just to find out that I did not connect the unit to the power plug...

Luckily, I did not have to dismantle the WHOLE dash gain...

Scott.T

iTrader: (2)

How about this one....

Had a slight water leak on my 3-Door Cosworth, so started it up and left it running for a while in order to pressurise the system.

I new the leak was in the region of the Cambelt cover, so I started to remove the top bolts of the cover.

Now normally I would of used by ratchet drive and the required Torx bit adaptor to remove the cambelt cover bolts, but on this occasion I had lent the Torx Adaptors to my brother in law

So I used a smaller torx adaptor designed for a screwdriver attachment and a 6mm ring spanner.

Anyway, the car continued to warm up, and I continued to undo the top bolts, when oops... the Torx bit dropped out of the ring spanner, and landed on the cam cover...rolled through the only gap between the cam/rocker cover and the cambelt cover and fell inside.

It then proceeded to fall right down to the crankcase pulley, jammed and snapped the cam belt....ping...ping...ping....clatter clatter clatter....just a few bent valves and a full head rework then followed.....costing just a few hundred pounds !!!!

Bugger...Bugger...Bugger I cried (litrally)

Oh! and the torx bit when removed...was unmarked.....

Kippax

scott, that is just the worst.

Jolly Green Monster 2

I feel so much better about my few disarsters now..

Cheers guys..

Scott I am not suprized you cried!! no way!

JGM

AJKS

Forgot about this one (well I try to anyway). A couple of years ago I was installing a 6 disc stacker in the car. Its a real small unit and it was a bee's appendage width from fitting beautifully in the dash box on the passenger side (MY98). I did some measurements and realised if I just 'removed' part of the back wall inside the dash box the stacker would nicely fit. I ummed and arhed for ages and decided 'stuff it' - when I come to sell the car I'll work out some way to fix what I was about to do! Anyway I beautifully and neatly cut a slot for the stacker to back into. Oops - little did I know there was a useless (non structural) bracket right behind it and it stoped the stacker sliding back enough to allow the dash box lid to close. Bugger. By this time its midnight and I had a 3 hour drive the next morning for a race meet - no where near enough time to dismantle the whole dash to get to that bracket and teach it a lesson. If it was the rally car giving me agro like this (a 1974 Datsun 1600 – so who cares…) I would have had the angle grinder sitting in the car without blinking – but with the WRX I had to give it a serious think! 20mins of agonising later my safety goggles are on (heh, I really wanted to listen to CDs on the 3 hour drive!), the car is decked out in sheets and I’m trying to slice and dice that bracket with all the skill of a surgeon carving kidneys… 20mins later the jobs done, all complete (I was extra careful and took things very slow!), except one sharp burr left to grind. No worries, burr removed in one last satisfying flick of the grinder and in the excitement of a job well done (when I expected major casualty) I pull the angle grinder out with reckless abandon (still spinning its heart out) – right into the dashboard. Ooops. So now I have wonderful 1” long, 2mm deep gorge in my dash. But heh, changing CDs is a breeze!

adam

SiPie

Calling Turbo Bob

Confess.....god dammit

[Edited by SiPie - 5/7/2003 10:33:49 AM]

AJKS

When I was 16 I bought an old clapped out VW based dune buggy to restore and muck around with. The guy I bought it off was a bit of a spanner muppet but was unwilling to accept such a decision from nature and was quite vocal in expressing that he did all the ‘work’ on the buggy himself. As we were towing the thing he made a passing comment that the back wheels were squealing a bit – but he’d fixed that… So, 2 weeks after buying it its family vacation time and I convince dad that towing the dune buggy on its trailer 1200kms to where my grandparents live (a small sleepy farming seaside town with lots of huge sand dunes right on their door step) would earn him a worthy fathers day present next year! So, 1st day we are there I fire it up (after mucking around for 5 hours with the carbs and spark) and hoon around in the back streets (heh, it’s a quiet little farm town – no one will care I think) having a laugh. So I’m having fun, the buggy has run without stopping for a couple of minutes so I reckon I should quit while ahead and call it a win for day one. So I head back grinning, ready to wipe that ‘it’s a bomb and will never work’ look off everyone’s faces. I’m punting along the long driveway of the house thinking it would be a really impressive end to the inaugural outing to fly up into the garage (a huge metal shed – enough room for 6 cars), wack the brakes on at the last second and come to a smoking/screeching precision stop in front of everyone. At this point it did dawn on me that I had never even touched the brakes, let alone use them in anger (the roads around the town just curve an meander around – no need for brakes), but being 16 and full of adrenalin (and stupidity), I decided ‘bugger that – the pedal didn’t go to the floor when I checked them before starting the car’. So, I’m flogging down the driveway, watching the concerned look on everyone’s faces, and than stand on the brake with moments to spare knowing that my spectacular stop would have to change that expression to one of admiration - it changed all right, but to one of ‘alarm’ as I go flying past them at a bloody rate and into the back of the shed - wacking the back of the shed wall out by at least a foot. Ooops. Besides spending the next day with my tail between my legs helping my grandpa panel beat the shed back together, we stripped the brakes down. Apparently the spanner muppet decided to fix the squealing rear end by packing the brake drum out with grease…

Anyway, you’d reckon I would have learnt about being careful near shed walls, especially considering every time I saw my grandfather after that he’d remind me about his ‘not quite right’ shed, wouldn’t you? Apparently not. 7 years later I am doing up a car to sell to help fund my big trip overseas. The paint work was shocking and after spending ages cutting, polishing and waxing it was looking pretty impressive. I’d spent a couple of weeks by now getting this car ready to sell and I was pretty impressed with my efforts. All good I thought; its finished. So I proceeded to put the car into the far corner of the garage right up against the workbench ready for its lucky new owner. Me being ever so careful (with the events of my dune buggy parking as fresh in my mind as the day it happened) I rode the brake (it was an auto) with my left foot as I edged it closer and closer to the bench. Bugger! All of a sudden I feel slight contact with the bench leg so I mash the ‘brake’ pedal with my right foot. Ooops – my right foot’s currently on the accelerator. Tires spin on the slippery garage floor and collapse the leg right under the bench, the bench comes crashing down on the front of the car – paint cans and tools from the bench fly everywhere! One smashed headlight, two scratched panels and one huge dent later I decide from now on I’m parking on the street.

When I was 21 I was rebuilding the engine on my Suzuki RGV250 motorbike. Pulled the engine out, stripped it down, inspected and measured a few things up. Went down to the bike shop and spent a small fortune on new pistons, rings, little end bearings and power valves (a few years later I bought as WRX and realised pretty quickly that performance motorbike repairs are chicken feed dollars). Me being the tight **** student (not to mention an little naive and hopeful!) didn’t want to spend another 40 bucks on head gaskets… Spent a day putting everything back together, gave the starter a kick and everything fires up first go – ‘yeh, I’m getting good at this stuff’ I stand back and gloat. Only to start thinking ‘what’s that green liquid drizzling out between the heads?’. #$#@! Another day spent stripping the bike down, $40 on gaskets plus more money on another bottle of new coolant…

Then there was this other time…



Adam

Oh yeh, I think it would take me a couples of pages to share the adventures and experiences Ive had building/maintaining rally cars - so I wont!

[Edited by AJKS - 5/8/2003 12:16:49 AM]