Wow that was dumb...
 

I know as mechanics we have all had our moments when we stood back and went BRILLIANT!!!

Shortly after picking up my 300CD I was doing an oil change and basic maintenance wiping out all the oil in the air cleaner and I was like, hmm don't want to get anything in the intake, better plug that. Well I buttoned things up and took her out for a drive, to my shock it was doggy and had no power. I went to the video store for a quick drive and on the way back I gave it hell away from a stop light. At which time I looked in my rearview mirror to see the hugest plume of smoke ever and suddenly it dawned on me that I didn't take that rag out... No harm done, and it actually seemed to be more peppy afterward, maybe the engine just needed to be wiped out.

So what have you done on your car that made you say DOH!!!

:eek:

Are you saying your car injested and processed the rag with no ill effects!!!!!

-Jim

Yeah, it was one of those blue paper type shop towels. My car was an NA car so no turbo to damage. It happened a few times in the 7 years I worked at a heavy machinery service facility. Pretty funny when it does though to see these flaming rag bits flying through the air everywhere.

I've dropped plenty of tools down into the belly pan on my car. Adds a good 20 minutes to any job ;)

When troubleshooting my no boost situation last year, I had to take apart the airbox to access the wastegate transducer. The airbox has an airflow sensor on it, so that had to get unplugged. When I finished doing what I was doing down there, I put the airbox back in place. Cleared all codes in the EDS and took a drive...still no boost. Stood there in front of the car fiddling with things while I thought about what else it could be. Then I saw the empty receptacle on the airflow meter and noticed that I had trapped the plug underneath the airbox. Removed it again, retrieved the plug, put it back and the boost was back :D

Paper! Ok, I can handle that.

-Jim

I cross threaded my pre-chamber retaining ring and blew my injector and ring into my hood. That was a WTF?!?!?/DOH!!!!! and AW ****!!!!!! all in one..

hmmmmmm i wonder if that is the source of the inside out dent on my hood :eek:

:laugh::laugh4::clap::laughing::lol::D

I don't care who you are, that's fuuunny...


I spent days and nights prepping and cleaning etc. putting another engine in our '82 300SD. Everything worked great, that was July. Come fall when here in Canada tempuratures start to head towards zero, I realized that I had forgot to plug the cord back into the block heater before installing the manifolds and putting the engine back in the car. That cost me a starter the one winter and lots of electricity running a fan heater under the hood all night. I tried putting one of those magnetic heaters on the pan but it fell off and all I was left with was the cord and a small piece of plastic from the heater housing. I've now bought a thin stick on pad but the fan has gone throught the rad and the car is parked for now...:o

Any time I do something that needs to be undone before operating the vehicle, I lock the keys in my tool box as a reminder. Just today, that extra step preventing me from starting the engine with a ratchet wrench still attached to the crankshaft bolt. If the keys had still been in the ignition switch, I would have broken something.

uh
 

When I was in high school, I installed a block heater in the upper radiator hose.

Happens all the time, an 8V92Ti sucked a fleece through after one of the mechanics left it hanging on the turbo. Chewed it right up, just some smoke.:D

ONe time I was replacing the rotors on my 74 240d and ruined or lost a couple of the allen head bolts that hold them on. I said...."Oh well, the wheel lugs will hold them on" ....so I buttoned it up congratulating myself on my genius (all the while ignoring a litttle voice which was saying wait a minute).

So about a week later one of my kids called me and said the left front wheel was kindof locking up all on its own. So it was a DOH!

The rotor sheared off the three bolts and lodged itself aginst the rotor and so forth. I had to have it towed home.

Fortunately no big damage done. I was sooooo lucky it happened at 15 mph rather than 50 or 60 or 70!

Tom W

nothing yet to report... being taught mechanics by an Air Force Maintenance Chief... (my dad) makes you REALLY REALLY REALLY follow procedure...
by the book, record what is not in the book for the next guy... look for a better way to do it, and WRITE IT DOWN. make copious notes, put everything back where it goes BEFORE you are finished. cleanliness next to godliness.
all that being said,... I have left entire toolboxes worth of tools inside cars in my days... and I have found my fair share of tools on cars I have worked on behind others...

Doesn't break anything... just loosens the bolt on the crankshaft. Found that one out through experience... requires something like 250lb/ft to tighten.

last weekend I was showing my 300D to JackG. when I popped the hood my mighty vac was sitting on the driver inner fenders wedged behind the ice cube relay cover. at least I did remember to reconnect the trans modulator line I was testing. :rolleyes:

The first 616 I rebuilt I left the two main oil gallery plugs out, couldn't figure why the oil pressure wouldn't come up:o

years ago in my dads shop we had an early 70's buick electra in it had those wheel covers that looked like spoked chrome wheels.well my dad had it on the hoist and started taking the lug nuts off.man he hammered on those things,said my god whos the bufoon that tightened these on.thats when i told him to take the wheel cover off.what got me was he didn't break any of those fake nuts off.

I like Catmandoo's story best of all. My dad and I laugh often talking about doing stupid stuff in the old days. How many here have cut sawhorses in half?

Not long ago, zzzip right through the beveled 2x6 "saw horse top" DOH, I think about every time I'm carrying them, one is heaver because?? Oh yah....It has a 2x4 scabbed on underneath:D

I have not cut sawhorses in half but I have cut more than one electric cord in two.

THAT is the real reason they came up with cordless stuff!

Tom W

Well, about a quarter century ago, I installed a salvage-yard Fintail Kuhlmeister AC unit in my '61 Ponton 180. Back then R12 was cheap and unregulated, and many add-on AC systems used barbed fittings with clamp-on hoses, but my salvage-yard compressor only came with a high-pressure fitting attached to a short chunk of factory crimp-on hose. Not having the correct barb fitting, I cut off the hose and collar, then carefully ground some shallow grooves in the fitting to give the new clamp-on hose something to 'bite' onto.
First warm day that AC was really cranking as I pulled away from a traffic light. Then there was a loud bang, as if someone had fired a shotgun under my hood, and the front of my car was enveloped in a large white cloud. I held my breath as some of the cloud forced it's way through various openings in my firewall into my front seat area.
Then I installed the correct fitting!

Happy Motoring, Mark

Well, now that we've all done dumb things, here's mine!:D While working on my Benz and putting it back together after a valve adjustment, I assembled the linkages to the throttle incorrectly. I had the throotle stuck at wide open and after what I thought was carefully checking everything out to make sure I hadn't "missed" anything, I got in and cranked 'er up and put 'er into drive.

Well, fortunately I was out in the back yard, but only half out of my carport when it took off like a rocket! Man she loved that valve adjustment!:D Before I could stop it it went through the back yard gate, which was closed, and out into the desert with the rear wheels spinning in the dirt and going through the cactuses and creosote bushes at about 60.:eek: Now before I could shut it down, I went through a soft sand gulley and went airborne over the other side, but I turned the wheel hard while in the sand and shut it off and put it in neutral.:o

It took me a bit to figure out what went wrong and while the gate was "open", the horses got out and, oh well, I just went out on Stormy and rounded up the other two!:(:D

Back when I had my old 200D, for some reason, I decided to take off the oil fill cap while the engine was running. It seems the timing chain was directly under the opening on that engine. It painted a stripe of black oil about 6 inches wide and 20 feet high on the side of the house. :eek:

That's a good one Knight.
It beats anything I've ever done, well maybe. 20 some odd years ago while I still had my 67 Cadillac, I was adjusting the idle and timing on the car in the garage. I set the parking brake and put the car in drive while it was running. It seemed to be holding until I set the idle and wham! It got away from me and crashed partway through the garage wall.:o The only thing that kept the car completely going through was the low concrete stem wall the back wall of the garage was built on. The car actually suffered no damage but the garage wall cost a few $1000 to rebuild.:eek:

Fortunately, creosote bushes and small cactuses are soft so no damage happened to my benz!:D Sure did get the neighbors up to see what was going on though!:o Felt a bit like doin' the Dukes of Hazard when I came out the other side of the gully-wash though!:D

dang
 

These are getting better and better. Dukes O' Hazzard, working on a car while it's in drive with brake set, maybe someone will post one where he's under the hood with his wife driving it down the street. "Hold the throttle right there honey....." Bet we get a "forgot-to-reinstall-the-oil-pan-drain-plug-story"

oh, oil drain plg? so common its not worth telling.....dumping about the fourth quart in when I noticed the oil running around my feet....

I am pretty sure I have done this more than once....not lately though.

Course I have filled my truck with gasoline (its a diesel) twice in two years though.....that wastes a half day draining out and refillng with diesel.

Tom W

Just as I was just about finished buttoning everything up after replacing the leaking gasket between the turbo and the manifold on my old RX7, I managed to drop a small nut down into the impeller. With that car, you practically have to disassemble everything on one side of the engine to get the turbo off, and I had visions of another 3 hours work to get it out. As I was going through every Anglo-Saxon expression I knew, my wife calmly suggested I use the shop vac to suck out the bit of hardware. A minute later, the nut was safely in the shop vac, and life was back to normal.

OldPokey's got a smart wife.

I was having difficulty getting my hands on/around the power steering fluid filter to remove it, so I decided to use a screwdriver, stick it at an angle through one of the holes, and lift slowly up to take the filter out with it.

Dummy me used a screwdriver with a removable bit. next thing I know i've dropped a screwdriver bit right down into the power steering pump reservoir, and halfway down the hole at the bottom. FINALLY got it fished out with a magnet.

Also managed to bend some sheet metal and crunch some chrome with the spare tire jack, but that's another story. The most damage I've ever done to the car other than sliding off the road... the most damage I ever did with good intentions, was that spare tire changing problem.

That reminds me of a time when I was changing the oil on the F150 work truck. Drained the oil, removed the spin-on filter, replaced the plug, spun on a new filter and filled the engine. Everything read good on the dipstick and I went to start it with my brother standing outside looking for leaks. Everything started OK, and I let it idle for a bit to let the oil make its way through everything. Gave it a good rev, and I hear a spraying sound along with my brother frantically waving his arms and yelling. I immediately shut it down. Looked under the truck and there was oil dripping everywhere; looked like it was coming from the filter area. Drained what was left of the oil, and unscrewed the filter. The gasket from the old filter had stuck to the flange and I didn't check to see if it was there when the new filter went on. The two gaskets held back the relatively low idle oil pressure, but once I revved it, they gave way and coated the underside of the engine compartment with oil. No damage done, the oil pressure gauge didn't even move before I shut it down.

not that big of a deal but about a week ago I was fixing the air cleaner mounts and forgot to line up the oil drain thing. I put it all back, closed the hood and then It came back to me