Dumbest thing you've done working on your vehicle

[robertc1024]

On my first car - '67 MGB I did a total motor overhaul. The gasket kit I bought had several extra gaskets - I guess for different years. Got the motor balanced, new Tilton aluminum flywheel etc. all together, put it in and it fired right up. No oil pressure. I put the wrong oil pump gasket on. Had to re-pull the engine and tranny to swap it out. Fortunately it didn't hurt anything.

Trailer towing: I borrowed my friend's golf cart trailer to haul some stuff around. I was taking it back to him and going down a fairly steep hill. Made a right turn and the trailer kept going straight into somebody's front yard. Note to self: safety chains are good, a 1-7/8 ball in a 2" receiver bad.

 

[koda6966]

Had some clearance issues putting the deck back on my lawnmower after servicing it for spring, so I jacked up the rear end with a scissor jack. Needless to say it toppled over and rolled on me. Good think it was just a mower.

 

[The_Dealer]

my grandpa was towing our samarai behind the rv going to the outer banks of nc. we looked in the drivers side mirrow and it was passing us. the guy that welded the tow bar brackets on, welded them on the bumper instead of the frame...the bumper brackets ended up breaking from towing it 250 miles. wasnt funny at the time, because my grandpa had to swerve into the other lane in a 38 ft motorhome and slow the samarai down with the back of it. looking back at it a few hours later we couldnt stop laughn...not to grandpa, make sure to have the guy weld to the frame next time

 

[The_Dealer]

jeez how could i forget. i was helping a friend do SOA, sye, shock hoops, resi bilsteins, etc on a friends YJ(which was at my house). we had everything welded in place and buttoned down. last thing was the steering, mainly the pitman arm. the whole time me and 2 friends were working on different things trying to get it all done in a week. we broke 3 or 4 harbor frieght pitman arm pullers, and broke an autozone and oriellys puller. the last puller only one ear broke off so i rigged it up. we heated it up...alot, which killed the seal(no biggie he was gonna replace it anyways) beat on it with a 5lb bfh while heating and using the puller. nothing we did could get the fawker off. he had to go to work, so i told him i didnt have anything to do i would get it off. i finally decided to take an angle grinder and grind straight up and down and then see if i could beat it off or use the jackleg puller to help. well if yall dont know pitman arms are super hard so i went through like 3 small grinding disks and couldnt find anymore. except a 7" cutoff disk. so i took the guard off and put it on. wow it was super close to the handle. so i took it off and held it by the base. crazy thing is it was cutting it like butter, and when i got almost all the way through the shaft it kicked back and went halfway down my thumb. like holding your thumb up it went longways, it hurt like fawk i got pissed and threw the bfh at the floor and a prybar slung up and barely hit the pitman arm and it fell off. i was lucky that the grinder was hot and when it cut me it "burnt" the wound shut. o well, i promised him id get it off for him

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Trailer towing: I borrowed my friend's golf cart trailer to haul some stuff around. I was taking it back to him and going down a fairly steep hill. Made a right turn and the trailer kept going straight into somebody's front yard. Note to self: safety chains are good, a 1-7/8 ball in a 2" receiver bad.

I hate ball hitches. I have all three different ball sizes but I still hate them. Had an improperly secured one jump off and ding a nearly brand new bumper, punched a hole right in it with the hitch.

Any trailers of mine, the ball hitch gets either unbolted or cut off and a pintle ring put in it's place.

jeez how could i forget. i was helping a friend do SOA, sye, shock hoops, resi bilsteins, etc on a friends YJ(which was at my house). we had everything welded in place and buttoned down. last thing was the steering, mainly the pitman arm. the whole time me and 2 friends were working on different things trying to get it all done in a week. we broke 3 or 4 harbor frieght pitman arm pullers, and broke an autozone and oriellys puller. the last puller only one ear broke off so i rigged it up. we heated it up...alot, which killed the seal(no biggie he was gonna replace it anyways) beat on it with a 5lb bfh while heating and using the puller. nothing we did could get the fawker off. he had to go to work, so i told him i didnt have anything to do i would get it off. i finally decided to take an angle grinder and grind straight up and down and then see if i could beat it off or use the jackleg puller to help. well if yall dont know pitman arms are super hard so i went through like 3 small grinding disks and couldnt find anymore. except a 7" cutoff disk. so i took the guard off and put it on. wow it was super close to the handle. so i took it off and held it by the base. crazy thing is it was cutting it like butter, and when i got almost all the way through the shaft it kicked back and went halfway down my thumb. like holding your thumb up it went longways, it hurt like fawk i got pissed and threw the bfh at the floor and a prybar slung up and barely hit the pitman arm and it fell off. i was lucky that the grinder was hot and when it cut me it "burnt" the wound shut. o well, i promised him id get it off for him

lol, I did something like that once.... was cutting rusted body mount bolts off my Choptop when I did the body lift. Two of them I couldn't get free and a 4.5" angle grinder disk wasn't quite big enough to zip 'em off, so since a 7" disk fits, I threw that on and was very careful. Zipped the bolts off fine. Then I found that my deep well socket was a lil too long. Being cold and in a hurry, I didn't bother to change back to the 4.5" disk.....

Right through a leather work glove. Zip. Still got the scar.

 

[Snafu]

So far the worst I have done was when me and my step-dad could figure out why my truck was dying when we would downshift on a hill (offramp ect) so we called a friend who works in a for dealership and he said the ignition module and the stator coil were most likely the culprits. Long story short I ended up buying a new distributor for no reason, turns out the heater core was leaking onto the inertia switch and was causing it to short out. I bought a new heater core and crammed it in to fit then bypassed the inertia switch and its been fine ever since... >.<

 

[adsm08]

I was rebuilding my distributor and ignition system trying to correct an issue that was causing me to burn up TFI's every year or so. I threw the roll pin that holds the cam gear in place in my ash tray so I wouldn't lose it.

Didn't lose it, but def forgot about it. 3 hours later when I put everything back together the dis went in without the pin, I drove it for a month before it started acting up, and another 3 weeks before I got my uncle's old car on the road.

I spent $1500 fixing the Olds and then my truck sat for 9 months while I pondered the problem. All that over a 50 cent part.

 

[CHKNFKR]

did a service on my fullsize and had the wheels off to do brakes. finished the service and brake job, threw the wheels on, realized i didnt have my torque wrench handy. so i left out the socket and started the clean up, i think there was a break in there somewhere. ended up packing up the socket and forgot all about not torquing down the lugs. took it on a test drive and everything felt good so i called it a night. the next day i took a 500 - 550 mile road trip. about the last 50 miles of the trip i noticed my brakes had softened up a bit so when i got back home i figured i'd give'm a quick bleed. sure enough the trip just worked some bubbles around. while i was down there i bumped the tire and noticed a problem. thank goodness the truck's 8 lug, and the lugs are something like 3" long.

 

[Twister]

I was having bad luck getting my freshly durasparked B2 to start, i finally got it to start after 2 months. I told my brother to come out and here it. So i started it and let it run for a minute, so i revved it alittle, and then it bogged down and almost died, i was like wtf. So i popped the hood.

I had left a towel on top of the carb without the carb cleaner and it was getting sucked into the carb, it was about half way in and almost was sucked all the way in.

 

[Sunk]

After rebuilding the motor in my old Gran Torino, I started it up without the oil pump drive shaft in the socket in the bottom of the distributor... I wondered why it was squeaking, lol. It ran after, but not that well.

When changing the clutch in my old '88, I dropped the starter on my face and I ended up with a nasty split lip.