Stupidest mistakes you've made working on a car?

[Welly]

Still laughing at the thought of Puggy pissing on a motorbike fire

There's some horrendous stories coming out; mashed fingers, fires, petrol and oil spills galore

[teamster1975]

I think the scariest one for me was when I was working on the hand brake on the 406 and the arse of the car started shifting on the jack!
Pissing on the bike is an excellent story puggy!

[puggy]

Ahhhh those were the days teamy !! a little info on the bike , it was a triumph terrier a 150cc version
of the 200cc tiger cub , quite rare in its day , wish i still had it worth a bit now i would imagine , then
again several of the other bikes i owned in them days would be, if only we knew then ........

[steve_earwig]

Like my dad's Shadow, how much are they worth now? Then he sold his to help buy his first house and calculates the percentage of that house to the percentage of his last house and considers himself much better off having sold it.

[no2lurch]

when i had my capri, i rounded one of the head bolts trying to take the head off by using a 6 spline star socket rather than a 12 spline jobbie. onlt did this after i took the rest of the bolts out so didnt want to ressemble! had to wait for a mates dad to weld an extension on so i could remove it and carry on with the job!

saw a guy pull a vectra onto his legs at a scrap yard trying to remove a rear drum. that was fun - luckily his toe tectors saved his legs!

my mate started to undu the top nut on the front strut he took off his capri without spring compressors - luckily i saw him and stopped him. god knows where the strut top would have landed or what it would have taken off his body!

[Doggy]

After one of it's 6 engine rebuilds, I flattened the battery trying to start my first car, an old HA Viva. Got it going with a tow, only to find a minor drip from the T-piece I'd put in to add an oil pressure guage. Tried to nip it up without stopping the engine, spanner slipped & I caught my knuckles in the fan, (pressed steel in them days), bloody sore, but I got away with bruising & grazes.

Undetered by this, I proceeded to help my bro reassemble his 3.8 mkII Jaguar after a head overhaul. He'd forgotten to mark up the HT leads, but with the sure & certain knowledge possesed by all youngsters who haven't yet caused enough mayhem, I confidently stated there was only one possible firing order for a straight 6, 1-5-3-6-2-4.

Despite the fact the leads definetly didn't naturally lie in this configuration, I waved aside his protests and fired it up......

Nothing happened on the first half dozen attempts, then there was a slight cough, then BANG!

Blew the exhaust apart.

Still convinced I was right, I finally resorted to the manual.......

Firing order for all XK engines is 1-5-3-6-2-4.

NOTE No.1 is the REAR cylinder

[FarmerPug]

I heard a good story from my grampa:
Some man built a conservatory for his harley davidson motorbike which he bought once he quit smoking, this thing was his pride and joy, it had a stand and got polished daily barely ever taken out, one day he wanted to hear the sound of the bike, so turned it on whilst still on its stand, he turned it on and the bike roared into life then he revved it and all was great, but the bike suddenly jumped into gear, and whizzed around the conservatory wrecking everything, all the glass was smashed and the man hurt his ankle and had glass on his face, the bike was badly scratched and dented sitting on its side with petrol pouring out, the wife called the ambulance and the man was taken to hospital, during this time the man was in hospital the wife cleaned up the conservatory of all the glass, and cleaned up the petrol with toilet paper and put it down the toilet, but it didnt flush. The man then returned from hospital to see his pride and joy ruined, and he was so upset he decided to have a cigarette, he went to the toilet and sat down and had a smoke, when he finished he threw the butt down the toilet BANG burnt the arse off him. The ambulance had to come back out for him so there he was sitting with his belly flat on the stretcher, when the paramedics heard from the wife what happened and they laughed so much that the man fell off the stretcher and he broke his wrist.
Not a very fortunate day

[Captain Jack]

Let's see... Oh, here it is.

[mjb]

Cocking up a V6 gearbox removal...


Then there's forgetting to drain the gearbox oil before pulling a driveshaft out

Then there's forgetting to put the drain plug in before putting 1.8 litres of £13/litre oil and a small fortune of Molyslip in the gearbox

There's forgetting to reconnect the reverse light switch after the above

There's forgetting to check the brake light switch after repositioning it... ( = no brake lights!)

And putting the coupé's PAS pipe clamp bolt on upside down was inspired too... Nasty BANG and an abrupt halt every time I try to go over something like a gate lock or collapsible bollard...

And the current one is putting my Golf in the garage, opening the boot to get something out, then jacking it up to remove the steering rack. Went to the garage to get a load of crap into a hire van to take to the skip the other day and couldn't open the door because the Golf's tailgate is in the way, and it can't be closed while the car's jacked up. D'oh!

[DaiRees]

Done a variety of stupid things working on cars, mostly to do with welding, grinding, cutting, trapping, slipping etc. One that springs to mind was the occasion when I was fiddling with the alternator on my old nova having forgotten to disconnect the battery first. Well the spanner earthed to the bulkhead via a gold ring I was wearing. The first thing to hit me was the searing pain as the ring cooked my finger, got the ring off quick before the finger swelled too much leaving a nasty painful blister. The ring still clearly displays 2 fused indents, one from the spanner and the other from the bulkhead!

[Welly]

I've had a burning ring before but not the sort you describe

[FarmerPug]

i was using a soldering iron when putting spot lights onto the vitara, i heard my phone ringing and picked up the soldering iron insted

[mjb]

ooh ooh ooh I've just remembered one of my dumbest moments...

Did a clutch change. Huge job. No problem... Went to drive it out of the garage, stopped, got out, locked up, then walked 10 miles to buy some gearbox oil...

[steve_earwig]

Oooh, just spotted that soldering iron one, I was once soldering something on a Flymo, it was on the ground so I was crouching (when I could do that sort of thing, damn leg ) I put the iron on the ground, overbalanced, put my hand out to steady myself and guess where I put it Right across my palm, took months to heal.

I remembered another moment of glory - the first time I ever fitted speakers was in an old VW Derby (Polio with a boot), I had the card of the driver's door and I was wondering why people fitted the speaker so far down the door, there seemed to be a good space up towards the front so I decided to fit the speakers here. I carefully cut the vinyl, sawed through the board, stuck the panel back, fitted the speaker and it all looked fine. Then I went to put the winder handle back and I realised there was something amiss...

[pclarejnr]

I was taking an old Citroen AX to scrap a couple of years ago, using an A-Frame, it was absouloutly Thrashing it down and I was in my bests (As is always the case), I decided that the parcel shelf would make a great carpet whilst I lay on the floor to attach the frame , I tried to gently pull the strings from the bootlid (to no avail), A good sharp yank was in order 'I thought ' the sharp yank swiftly pulled the boot locking catch into my head! , I woke up on the floor with blood in my eyes and my friend looking over me like a priest!..