I used to be heavily into Chevrolet Corvairs. Lots of oopses here, but the best one was--

I needed to rebuild both carbs. Took off carbs, stuffed paper towels into the intake ports.

Rebuilt carbs, put them back on at night, started the engine- heard a very muffled poofing sound in all 6 combustion chambers, and watched burning bits of paper fly out of the exhaust. No permanant damage, but I sure felt stupid.


I once rebuilt a Carter Thermoquad on my '79 Cordoba- (at night again, see the common thread here? )

two fuel check valves fell out of the carb upon reassembly. making the carburetor more like a toilet.

Something was fishy when the car started IMMEDIATELY. Engine went to fast idle, then nearly WOT. Looked at the cat convertor, saw it was red hot trying to process all that raw gasoline....

I'm sure there's more, but those came to mind first.

Happy Wrenching,
Nate




Nate

I couldn't figure out how, no matter how careful I was, I kept loosing tools, till one day I opened my hood and found a missing tool stuck in a fortunatly harmless crack.

Hearing that it was going to rain, I rushed out to cover my 300D with the, ahem, "water-resistant" Noah car cover. (Which I like, actually).

Ha! I thought; now it's protected! It started to rain.

Meanwhile, the temperature went down 30 degrees in the night, and we had a freeze.

Next morning, I casually flipped back the car cover --and left several feet of cover frozen to the roof!

Ooops...

oops!!!
 

When my kids were little, I couldnt be outside working on the car without them asking lots of questions, crawling over the seats, etc. So once I needed to remove the dash cluster on my 300D to work on some wiring connectors...a quick 30 minute job. I pulled into a parking lot about 5 minutes from home to do the work. After getting the instrument cluster off, I found that I needed a few additional connectors, so I wasnt ready to put the cluster back in...figured I'd drive home and finish. When I started the car...big surprise!!!...I was sprayed with dirty oil from the oil pressure guage line!!!! Ruined a good shirt and pants, but amazingly, no oil sprayed onto the carpet!!!

Where do I start??? Two of the better ones....A few years ago I was trying to replace the steering bellows on my old TR8 and needed to remove the balljoints (without the proper tools of course.) I figured a smart tap with a hammer would free it. It might of except I missed and managed to scrape off the threads and then could neither take it apart or reassemble it. Since it was Sunday and I had no hope of getting the parts I wired it all together and drove at about 2 MPH to a nearby tire shop and had them bail me out.
The other ooops relates to my bad habit of leaving tools lying around the engine compartment. Once after a valve adjustment I started the engine and a wrench went flying by....I have no idea where I left it to cause it to fly so nicely but fly it did, fortunately with no damage done.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh
 

was my reply to the sudden jolt of hi-voltage that coursed thru my body . this happened when i, feeling like a proper DIY-er, was removing the plug cables to find out which of the plugs was causing my car to stutter whilst the engine was on. i pulled the first one out successfully and replaced , but as i pulled the second one out , i mistakenly touched the metal part of it and triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig , i got the rudest shock of my life.

Promised never to do that again.

I also turned the engine over one time with the oil pressure guage disconnected. BIG mess. Spent hours with stain remover, towels, and a shop vac returning my carpet to normal. Oops. You only make that mistake ONCE, believe me!


I also have a problem with dropping tools...into every inaccessible nook and cranny of my car! Once I found a socket that I had dropped but couldn't find, in my fan shroud WEEKS later! :D

Mike

One of the many for me was doing a valve timing on my 1963 190D. I would put the car in gear with the injectors removed and turn the engine with the fan blade. Real easy, got it all done and then I changed the fuel filter and proceed to bleed the line of air with the ejectors removed from the car. I hooked up my auxialliar start button, hit it once and was promtly pinned between the car and the concrete wall of my garaged. I forgot to put the car in neutral. Was pinned for about 15 minutes, until I thought of turning the fan blade backwards and have the car slowly un pin me. NOt a pleasant experiance. My other opps was removing the flywheel off the same car. IT has these really shallow bolts that have a tendancy to let the socket slip off. Well it slipped and I drove my hand across the sharp edge of the fly wheal and ended up needing 6 stiches across my thumb.

Enough for now. I will post more when I can. I have plenty.

Henry

This wasn't me but I saw it happen. A friend of mine was working on his car back in the days when expandable metal bands were used on wristwatches. He inadvertently shorted the metal watchband between the positive post of the battery and the car body. It welded itself to both ends and for quite a number of seconds slowly burned its way into my friends arm. He has a permanent scar around his wrist in the pattern of that watchband.

Ouch.

Mike

when ?
 

What time does your friends wrist read?

Ooops
 

Many minor ones but none real serious. I can't remember them all cause they are an everyday thing. I do recall replacing the timing belts on my Subaru and left a socket and ratchet on the crankshaft pully bolt. When I started the engine the ratchet flew off and impailed (litteraly) itself into the dry wall on the ceiling of my garage.
I wonder though, If your dog sees you do something stupid or silly, do they laugh and think " man what a jerk my master is"? I know my ex does!

tragedy narrowly averted..
 

My near fatal mistake happened while changing out the water pump on my 95 e320.

As some of you know, the zinc-plated-bolts on MB's are relatively "soft" and will strip rather easily, which was what happened to me. I had failed to insert the allen deep enough into the bolt and stripped 3 of them before I figured out to switch tools.

I finally succeded by switching to a 6mm allen-deep-1/4"socket wrench to get the job done.

The only thing that has come close to that type of DEEP sinking feeling after a stripping a bolt was standing at the alter ready to say "I do." The warm burning sensation that methodically rises from yous knees to your throat, all the while breaking you into a cold sweat... :eek:

a BIG oops!!
 

My largest "oops" centered around my first attempt at having a diesel car. I had picked up on Ebay, a rather grungy old VW Rabbit Turbodiesel. I drove clear up to Minnesota to pick the car up. Once I got it home, I was tinkering under the hood to find what I thougt was a sticking injector (running rough and a mosquito fogger). While listening to the injectors through my handy dandy 2 foot 3/8" drive extension, I reached down and cracked the throttle open. I was immediately greeted with the sound of valves and pistons getting to know each other. :(

I then commenced to tear down the engine to get the head fixed, and do a rering and bearing kit while it was torn down. After a $400 head rework, I put the car back to gether. No fire. After exhausting all possibilities, I had to take it to a VW shop. Compresson was down to 150 pounds across the board. It was going to require new pistons to get rid of the nice new bowls that were made in the tops. At $1600 for a new set of TD pistons, The car got donated to the local high school instead of repaired.

I've told this before, but worth repeating. My 300D needed a new alternator. Picked up a rebuilt one at local parts place. Problem was, did not come with pulley. Ok, remove pulley from old one, install on new. Tighten down as best as could. That weekend, daughter's cheerleading squad is doing an away game-300 miles away! Pack family in Benz for leisurely ride in fine motorcar. About 50 miles from destination, hear tire thump and look in rear view mirror to see what looks like piece of blacktop I have just run over. Muttter about poor highway maintenance and inattentive driver (me) who does not see junk in road. Then I notice dash is lit up like Christmas tree and gauges are reading all over the place. Mechanical oil presure gauge still reads good (yes, I confess to having oiled my carpet too), engine temp high but bearable. Continue driving-better to be stuck somewhere than stuck in middle of nowhere. Get near destination, pull off at first exit, stop in gas station, pop hood, engine still running. Yep, no alt. pulley. waterpump sitting still with two belts just hanging from it, kinda out of harms way. Made it down the road to car rental place that was closing, get rental, leave sad Benz with engine finally shut off. Drove rental home, got Benz home on car trailer two days later. Buy used alt with pulley still attached from local salvage yard (swapped regulator, of course). Installed, start car. Car still runs fine two years later. At 358k miles, that is the most bullet-proof engine I have ever seen. I f it can hold up to doofus like me working on it, it can hold up to my 16 year old daughter driving it . And I feel much better knowing she has a solid steel tank for a car, sted some plastic accordian-to-be.