About 15 years ago I was putting myself through university working at an oil change garage. I had been there for several years and was the most senior non-management staff member. One evening a mid-80's Jaguar sedan rolls in, I think it was a Vanden Plas because it had the V12. To this day I still don't have a clue why someone with a Jag would go to a quick oil change place. Anyways, the store manager decides he's going to work on this car personally upstairs, and he asks me to handle the downstairs part seeing as I'm the most experienced person in the shop. I go into the pit under the car and do the work, which really isn't any different from any other car I've worked on.

Underneath the hood is an entirely different story. It is a complete disorganized mess, and for whatever reason the Jag engineers have decided that the car requires two coolant fill caps, one on top of the radiator, and one that is very close to the engine, connected to the radiator by a hard tube that goes under a bunch of wires and hoses. My idiot manager thought this second radiator fill was the oil cap and poured two litres of oil into it before I came upstairs to have a look at the V12. I instantly saw that he was pouring the oil into the wrong place and tried to stop him without making too big a production of it. He insisted that I didn't interrupt him and finished pouring the two litres he was holding in his hand before turning to speak to me. I will never forget the look on his face at that moment, when I pointed out exactly what he had done and how I had been trying to stop him.

So we drained the radiator, obviously, and ran water from a hose through it for about 10 minutes before filling it back up, flushing it, and then draining it and doing the same thing over and over again. The "quick" oil change turned into a 75 minute production. The customer was remarkably cool about the whole thing. I would have been looking for blood, myself. We never heard from the guy again, which leads me to believe that there weren't any problems with the radiator. I'm just thankful that the motor was never started up, because not only would the oil/coolant have circulated through the entire motor, but we also would have been running a very expensive V12 without lubrication. If we had lost that motor I'd be willing to bet that every person working in the shop that night would have been fired.

That is a good one. I think it was this thread where I related I was handling the gas pumps by myself as well as doing an oil change on a car in the bay. To make a short story sad, I didn't tighten the drain plug except finger tight. I called a friend to handle the pump while I followed the oil trail. It ended at a driveway (a kid I went to high school with). He said it was getting very noisy, but I'm sure I'd remember if he had seized a rod or worse.
In the 70's I was doing a complete remodel of a house. Only had a 1/2 ton pickup with leaf / shock absorbers on rear. I had so many loads of plaster & lath to take to the dump that I routinely severely over-loaded it to cut the number of trips to the dump. I had a three inch pipe I filled with concrete that I hung under the front end so I had some steering. I broke the leaf springs on both sides. I'd like to give a rough calculation on how much weight I was carrying, but just don't know. Probably three times maximum safe load. I didn't save much money; took a lot of time to put in new leaf springs, plus the time I lost on the job.

I once worked with a guy who thought he could do anything. He decided to flush out the cooling system of his wife's car with one of those "T" connectors. He cut into the air conditioning hose and proceeded to flush the condensor. He didn't realize what he had done until the next spring when his wife said the air conditioner didn't work and he took it to the mechanic.

Another guy I worked with who was a chemcial engineer tried to change his oil at the engine bay at the plant. He drained the oil and replaced the plug. He filed it with 5 quarts of oil. The engine didn't have any oil but the transmission sure did.

A non car person asked me what needed to be done to his old/new car as far as maint. I told him to make sure the car got fresh oil every 3K miles. An 80's GM 350 will hold 12qts before major disaster.

Changing guide rods on the 89 300SE this past Saturday...... Pulling on the housing with a 1/2" drive socket.... it slipped off, hit me in the side of the nose, broke it in 2 places. I straightened it.... swelling went down today & can see the crushed bone. Todays MD consult ..........
Going for surgery Thursday! .... Do I get the Dumbass award for the week?

34 cars.... all my own wrenching, never injured... Its a #'s game....could have been worse.

just for the week?

just kidding.

tom w

Hmmmmm, maybe some ex Boxers are really ex Mechanics ? ;)