if anyone had been with me, i couldve claimed that this time...my dumb ass did the exact same thing with a chevy truck when i was about 17....youd think maybe id have learned a lesson...not me, buddy....i make mules look like pushovers

I had the happen..........on a 1968 Fiat 500D not sure why but in the dark on a two lane road with no shoulder BAM! put a fresh dent in the hood when it hit the roof. Somebody stopped on a Bike and gave me a bungee cord to hold it down...........only time that ever happened to me...that was in early 1988 in Italy.

...you said it yourself: FIAT

That car litterally had parts fall off of it driving down the road......

Seriously....I went through 7 air filter assemblies..or parts thereof and 4 ehhaust systems in the 6 months I owned it.........I had to look everyday to see if all the parts were there when I got home every night.

THing leaked a quart a week.........never had to change the oil because it got a fresh 4 quarts every month as it was................

We all make mistakes, I am great at snapping off bolts. :D It takes skills to snap a bolt the way I do. :D

Hopefully you can snag a good hood, that is silver. Or you could have the new hood painted to remove all of the rock chips ect. Your SD could look better then ever. :cool:

And then there was the moron in Saint Helena who was rudely reminded that he left a 27mm socket on his crank pully bolt when he started his car.... :dunce2:

Dad and I have had the hood fly up on our 79 for pickup. Thats a big hood heh. Luckily it was at about 25mph so I hopped out and shut it. His fault :P

I ALWAYS either lower the hood to its safety latches (since they are accessable without getting inside the car) or close it all the way. I have left my fair share of tools in the engine compartment but I don't like the top of the valve cover because stuff likes to fall off CONSTANTLY and I don't like loud noises (oversensitive hearing)

Did it take out your windshield? That unfornately won't be cheap either....
Atleast you are okay...and other than that...you car didn't get anymore damage (hit something or someone).

I rolled my 69 bug up on its top and over onto its side at 45mph off the side of a road DOWN a reasonably steep hill nearly hitting almost 3 trees...I didn't have to clean up my clothes afterwards because not much scares me anymore (both a good and bad thing :P) and I have been thought a lot of unhappy experiences. I believe my first words were "you okay andy?" to my passenger who was with me..dangling above me held by a seatbelt. He was, asked for a little bit to compose himself as I ran a mental checklist of what was important/needed to be taken care of now that the car was on its side.

I guess I would make a good rally driver as my mind leaves no time for freaking out or worrying...its just...rational thought...heh

Thanks for sharing though...I know its not really fun to push your mistake out into the public...espically when its a car you just restored 3 months before its accident heh

I'm not sure if we are restricting our discussions to stupidity with vehicles, however, I will digress to a story on stupidity with houses. This story is worth it because of the potential consequences, which probably outweigh most things that can harm you with a vehicle.

I needed to change out an electrical panel from fuses to circuit breakers. It's Sunday. No big deal, I figure. I'll just carefully break the seal on the meter and unplug the meter so that there is no power to the panel.

I get to the house and it's the old style meter that does not unplug. There are leads that attach to lugs beneath the meter. Two lugs and a ground going in and two lugs and a ground coming out. Well, I say, this shouldn't be a big deal. If I'm very careful, I can just unscrew the lugs and pull the wires from the two power leads that go into the meter. How difficult could that be? Of course, if I screw up, and I contact the metal housing that surrounds the meter and lugs, I am toast, of course.

So, I work with one hand (figuring that I might burn myself, but won't kill myself) and I remove one lug and pull the wire out, very carefully. The wire is something like 6 guage so it's fairly stiff. I'm sweating bullets, but the wire does come out. OK. Phew. Now the second wire. I loosen the lug carefully and I go to lift the wire carefully out of the lug. This is also successful, but very intimidating.

Now, when the panel is installed, I must now reinstall the wires into the lugs. It appears that one of the lugs has rotated slightly and the head of the lug is now within 1/8" of the ground lug, to its immediate left. Now, I'm fully aware that if contact is made, there is basically unlimited juice that will be provided from the power company until the panel melts down into China. :eek:

So, I'm really nervous and sweating bullets and shaking somewhat and the screwdriver contacts the housing and does a mini exposion. :eek: OMFG, what the hell happened? Am I still alive?? Apparently so. But, still not smart enough to stop here.

So, I have nearly blown the top off the lug, but, I continue onward to try and get the wire into the lug and tighten it down. After about one hour of delicate "surgery", with me shaking the whole time, the job is completed.

Talk about stupidity. :rolleyes:

Well, I was much younger then. ;)

Mistakes???
 

A high school chum:
Replaced his front wheel bearings on a 1970 F250.
He forgot the inner seals and did not pack the new bearings.
Left Flint, Michigan headed for Kentucky.
Driver spindle burned off south of Ann Arbor, Michigan. :eek:
Passenger side broke off when the tow truck dropped vehicle weight on it at the shop. :eek:

Jazzed him for years about it, threatened to have a T shirt made just for him, "I R SO SMART"... :eek:

I havent done anything tooo moronic YET, however, back in 1997 when the C280 was nearly brand spankin new, my mom had a little incident backing it out of the garage. Our garage is about 30 years old, and it has 2 separate doors. If anything is blocking the spring mehcanisims for the doors while opening, the door, naturally, will start closing again. SO, as my mom is backing the car out, the door is still opening... however, somthing had fallen, blocking the door spring, and the door started closing again :eek:

As you can imagine, this was not a pretty sight! The door had closed back down on the glass, and hit it at just the right angle with enough force to crack the window... at the same time my mom is freaking out and panicking, and quickly pulls back into the garage, letting the garage door to continue to close onto the car... dragging down from thhe rear window to the trunk, putting some beautiful deep scratches in the paint on the top of the trunk!!!!!

Ended up replacing rear window, and the trunklid re-painted. Also cleared the area near the door springs of anything that could possibly block them....

We look back and laugh about it now, but at the time it was far from humorous! ;)

I guess my mom wasnt a moron in that story, but whatever blocked thhe garage door spring certainly was! LOL

some pretty funny stories here, just another facet of mercedesshop....between these stories and a couple glasses of Chivas Regal, im starting not to feel so bad about todays debacle

SPeaking of meter heads (the eletrical type)
Ya know those babies can explode when you plug them in? Always a nice factory option :P
Their little installer has a nice safey cover...
I don't like live wires...but am comfortable with them.
I got my fair share of shocks as a child and well...recenty :D

The stairway switch plate cover is missing (constant house remodeling) and I constantly poke my finger directly into the housing past the switches when headed to the restroom...always a nice "wake-er-up-er"

not really a big deal.. but..

well... one morning my car didnt want to start.. so i opened the hood and checked all the connections.. nothing.. opened the fuse box and laid the cover inside the engine bay.. .checked the fuse.. rolled them side to side to get contact.. went inside the car.. started it.. whoopdeedoo!... went out.. slammed the hood.. went on to my merry way.. then got to work.. once i reached the parking lot.. i quickly (yeah quick is the operative word) remembered the fuse cover... well.. to my dismay.. the two long screws with the handle that goes through the cover is now gone.. and i have a fuse cover that i cannot secure in place to cover the fuses... good thing for duct tape.. ehehe. until now i still havent removed the tape or the cover... hehehe.. :D

OK, I'm really embarrased to admit this but here goes anyway.
back in my younger days :rolleyes: I used to operate heavy machinery. A co-worker of mine told me that turbine oil was good to use in cars too. Yeah I know now but I didn't know then. So I started to use it regularly.
My wife decided she wanted to take a trip to visit her mom for a week in Michigan but I had to get her and my young son to Newark Airport in like less than an hour. I figure no problem. I had a nice Malibu Classic 350 engine. Could easily get to Newark from the Bronx in less than an hour. So off we go. halfway there the engine dies. SOB! I wound up leaving the car there and we took a cab home. Eventually I sold it for almost nothing. It was a darn nice car too. Learned the value of good oil and reguilar changes way too late!

Almost the same thing happened to me again some years later. Though this time it wasn't my fault. I was driving in Vermont on a ski trip when I threw a rod. I had a cloud of black smoke a mile long following me through the pristine beautiful country roads! I did get some angry looks! I wound up abandoning that car too and thus starting the amazing journey back to New York. Hitchhike, bus, hitchhike, train, bus, walk....

Danny

I was helping a friend tow a really nice parts car (Mercury Tracer) back to his house from a car donation center. I was in the tow vehicle and we went as fast as 65 mph at times. We were almost at his house (still on the expressway, at night) when the hood opened and slammed into the windshield. Now I'm steering the car while looking through the cresent by the wipers.

Danrned shame. One of the reasons he acquired the car was to put the windshield on another Tracer he had.