Mistakes along the road of life and our cars

[JIPJOBXX]

Worst mistake on a car repair

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I have been fairly fortunate as I have never had anything really go bad. I have blow up two batteries by mistake and had a rear wheel on a model A Ford fly oft and go right past me. But over the long haul I have been pretty fortunate. Oh wait a minute when I was in high school I had a 31 Studebaker and I installed an electrical fuel pump back by the gas tank. Well when I ran the lead wire to the pump I ran it right over the exhaust pipe and well you guest it? It shorted out but not right away but up in the mountain of course! My brother came to my rescue and he still remarks about that incident.

[TodFitch]

I did leave the cotter pin off the rear axle hub nut... Fortunately I was going slow when the hub, drum and wheel decided to part company with the rest of the car.

[Oldguy48]

My worst experience was : My Dad's Dodge A100 van had a collapsed gas tank because he replaced his lost gas filler cap with one that was unvented. The vacuum created by the fuel pump actually partially collapsed the gas tank. I had the bright idea that if I pressurized the gas tank, it would "pop" it back out. Bad, Bad, Stupid idea. I stuck an air hose into the gas filler, with a rag wrapped around it to kinda seal it. Sure enough...the pressure popped out the gas tank pretty well, but when I tried to slowly release the pressure...I ended up with a blast of gasoline right into my eyes....followed by a trip to the local hospital's ER. Felt like a propane torch to the eyes. OMG. Fortunately, there was no permanent damage, but it was an experience I never want to repeat.:eek:

[Joe Flanagan]

Wow, that sounds painful. I have heard stories of wheels parting company with the vehicle, as Tod puts it, and going right past the driver, who wonders where the heck that loose wheel came from.

[JIPJOBXX]

Well it was a rear 21" tire and all the car did was drop down to the asphalt. I retrived the tire and put it back on and away I went. I remember it just crussing by me!oh well when your young and things like that happened it just was something new to experience.

[mr63inaz]

As a matter of fact just the other night trying to get the plymouth to fire. hooked everything triple check for got to put fuel line in the can. doh! good thing I have a couple batteries.

[1just4don]

I was wrenching something under the hood and leaning in. dropped a wrench across both battery terminals at once. The kaboom was deafening and the whole top of the battery came off and slammed me right in the face. If that wasnt bad enough the acid was my new eye wash. I really thought i bought the farm at that exact moment. A little while later I felt my arm to see if I was really alive or just plumb dead!!

Even with NO top half of the case,,I drove that car to a parts place and bought a new battery,,,after I regained my sight that day!!

[BobT-47P15]

Oh yeah.......if the posts are still connected, they will start with no top

or missing most of the top, like mine in the brown coupe.

I was trying to start the thing in 14 degree cold weather....jumping it from

my late model Caravan (12 V). Had cranked it over several times....was

getting ready to disconnect the jumper cables.....thought "I'll just try

it one more time" -- boom. Battery acid all over my freshly painted engine

and other stuff under the hood. Glad your eyes were OK.

[Dave Bohn]

Grabbing the metal sparkplug wire connector on a flathead V-8 Ford while the engine was running. That woke me up - my arm tingled for a half hour.

[Barabbas]

Yep, did it all the time. One of my sons had a Dodge Shadow that refused to start, so I tested the spark in the time honored fashion of putting a paper clip in the spark plug wire. As I got ready to touch the clip to the top of the spark plug I told my son " Well if you see me jump, you'll know that the ignition system is working"----the problem was a bad fuel pump.

I seem to have this habit of grounding myself to the body when I'm testing the spark

[Fireball]

At 18 I flipped over my buddys Beetle real bad, the b-pillars broke from four spots and we had no seat belts. The battery under backseat got loose and hit my head. Nothing major to us but the car was totalled.

2001 I was racing my Super Gas Barracuda at European Championship Drag race and the engine blew up and the flying oil caught fire, I was in a hurry to get out the car when the speed exceeded 130mph and my ankles were on fire. The day before I blew up the tranny and the day before that the engine on my tow truck let go so that was a perfect weekend. Nothing happened to the trailer:p

[JIPJOBXX]

I was lucky when the battery blew up in my Model A. If you do not know this the battery is located under the floorboard on the drivers side. Well I do not know what I dropped it blew apart in the middle. Lucky as I was leaning over it. The other battery was in a Ford Chateau Van and I left something on the battery and closed the hood. Well again a wrench or something touch both poles and boom and instant dent in the hood.

Now I worked for the shipyard and when they charged batteries on an older submarine they always did that on the weekends. Hydrogen gas is really explosive and I have heard of those batteries blowing up! Oby the way our tooling we used while changing out those submarine batteries were made of Beryllium (None sparking).

[martybose]

Grabbing a rag to snuff out a carb fire on a racecar, only to find out that said rag had just been used to soak up the excess gasoline when they pulled off the float bowl to change jets. Very spectacular!

Marty

[DutchEdwin]

Last December I was setting up an wind tunnel experiment with my son. As the airspeed was not high enough I decided to put an extra fan in front. As with that it was almost good I reached out carefully to orientate the fan a bit. On that moment it tipped over, having my middle finger stopping the steel blades. Didn't hurt until I got into the ER-room 1 hour later and still did the two weeks after that. I'm lucky though, I can move the finger again, but it kept me out of the garage until two weeks ago.

Tomorrow I plan to start my engine for the first time after the overhaul.

Leaning over it for setting the timing with the radiator fan spinning keeps crossing my mind...., and my wife reminding me of that incident.

[JerseyHarold]

The first car I ever bought at auction was a 1963 Lincoln that had cigarette lighters in each rear door. When I got the car home, I pushed-in one of the lighters to see if it would work. It didn't pop out, so I pulled it out of the socket and stuck my finger on the element to see if it was hot. It was!!

[P-12 Tommy]

I was wrenching something under the hood and leaning in. dropped a wrench across both battery terminals at once. The kaboom was deafening and the whole top of the battery came off and slammed me right in the face. If that wasnt bad enough the acid was my new eye wash. I really thought i bought the farm at that exact moment. A little while later I felt my arm to see if I was really alive or just plumb dead!!

Even with NO top half of the case,,I drove that car to a parts place and bought a new battery,,,after I regained my sight that day!!

Boy, You're lucky you still have eyeballs!

[aero3113]

I have a friend that was working on his car, I think he was taping up some wiring using electrical tape. He used a razor blade to cut the tape and put the blade on the fan shroud. He started up the car to make sure everything was good. While looking under the hood the razor vibrated off the shroud and into the fan then it shot up into his NECK!!! I forget how many stitches he had to get and now has a nice scar.The doctor said that the cut was just mm's away from his jugular vein. Doc also told him he was lucky to be alive (should be a scene in a horror film)

[JIPJOBXX]

Boy I feel lucky compared to some of these accidents!

[Niel Hoback]

I'm not sure I like this thread. I have been holding off posting replies, sort of, because my stories are rather long. The real reason is because your stories constantly remind me of how much more stupid and painful some of the things I can and have done. Even though I have plenty of scars to remind me, they all scream "stupid". I have a perfect imprint of my watchband burned into my wrist as one piece of proof.

[JIPJOBXX]

One of the classic mistakes and I think alot of guys do this! Is to jack a car up on soft ground and have the jack start to slide out. And then your trying like hell to keep from doing that and in all flustrations you just let it go!!!! Been there, done that!!!!!

[mrspeedyt]

my most stupid thing might be forgetting to tighten the lug bolts on one wheel of my car trailer....the wheel came off the left side on a busy two lane highway:eek:...finally rolled off the right sholder without hitting anyone... it wasn't until 25 miles later that i pulled over to check things over...my wife, (who was following me at a distance) caught up to me and told me.... what a shock!!!

Edited February 20, 2010 by mrspeedyt

[DutchEdwin]

I'm not sure I like this thread. I have been holding off posting replies, sort of, because my stories are rather long. The real reason is because your stories constantly remind me of how much more stupid and painful some of the things I can and have done. Even though I have plenty of scars to remind me, they all scream "stupid". I have a perfect imprint of my watchband burned into my wrist as one piece of proof.

Niel, You couldn't be more right, SCARS....THE REMINDER OF REALY STUPID THINGS WE DID

Although, walking around for two month with a stretched middle finger after my accident had his fun moments

[Fireball]

one of the classic mistakes and i think alot of guys do this! Is to jack a car up on soft ground and have the jack start to slide out. And then your trying like hell to keep from doing that and in all flustrations you just let it go!!!! Been there, done that!!!!!

:d:d me too!

[greg g]

I have by comparison lived a boring life. Except for the part where the taxi ran a stop sign knocked me off my motor cycle. Foorball sized road rash you can guess where.

[JIPJOBXX]

Well we all must be doing something right as we would not be here to be reading this and kind of thinking about safety. I have been lucky when its come to car crashes as I have never been in a bad one. I have had allot of cars that look like they may have been through a few wrecks but only one that I recall. I even ran when I was younger in the D-Derby a 1950 Merc boy would I love to have that car but it was just a big slug as far as I was concerned back then:cool:.