Weekend mistake increases my Respect for Professional Mechanics...
 

This weekend I was wrapping up my job having just replaced my Timing Chain and Hydraulic Tensioner and Water Pump and pulled my IP to retime it. The hydraulic tensioner, was the easiest task of all, a Five minute job.
I thought.
Somehow, I neglected to scrape the portion of the gasket that covers the oil port to the Tensioner. The rest of the gasket I remember peeled off easily. The remaining portion somehow was invisible. So I popped in the new tensioner and gasket, secured the nuts and reassembled the cooling system and EGR parts that block it and started my Engine. I was almost going to take a spin, but I always like to put my tools away. Two minutes later I glanced at the car to see a huge Pool of Oil underneath the car--guess where it came from?
I can't believe how lucky I was in deciding to clean up my Tools first!

Now let me present the following scenario. You're a 45 year old Indy and your wife is complaining about your never spending time with Junior and the kid needs to have his father in his Life more. You're rushing to do this quick job at 3:30 PM and you make the same mistake I made, just out of absent mindedness. Even professionals make mistakes, too! All of a sudden you have turned a $140 profit into a $7000 loss--you owe the customer a new $2000 engine and 25 hours of labor to put it in!

I don't think I am a bad mechanic but I would never survive as an Indy and I have tremendous respect for those who make their living doing so! I would say i would make a mistake like this at least three or four times a year--and probably be out $20K....

I'm glad you caught your error before it became expensive. Learning: always run the engine in the driveway after maintenance before taking it on the road. Fortunately, none of us have ever made a mistake like that. :D

This is another great advantage of this forum, the opportunity to learn from others' mistakes. Thanks for sharing.

Lucky you caught that one:eek:

I use one of those round gizmos with the little "rubber fingers" in the "dye grinder" to go over matting surfaces before re assembly.

I have tremendous respect for the pro indy also. I used to hang around my friends shop quite a bit, he let me rebuild an engine there and I was always helping him do things, pushing cars in or out mostly:) One of the things he used to say was he "was responsible (Or potentially) for seven years after a job goes out the door" There was a bunch of down sides to being a pro indy that I had never considered.

No you wouldn't. The sting of the first mistake would keep with you a long time.:stupid: