Guess you beat me to the punch Don!!!
Kirk said sheepishly!:D

I think my biggest oops as a technician was on my own car years ago when I first started in the field , 1967 vw beetle rebuilt the carb and there is a needle for spraying fuel at idle , well guess what wasnt tight and where did it go right into the intake and stuck a valve open. Needless to say 1hour later I was lapping valves on that head. The biggest oops I have ever seen was at a shop ( no names) I was there on an interview, me and the boss were talking and heard a boom like a bomb dropped. We went to look and a new model sl 129 body had fell off a lift , you can say I didnt return to that shop and I would guess that customer never did either.:eek:

two of them:

driving on the highway doing about 80mph while my hood pops up. it is scary since you are half a sleep in the morning and then you are swirving all over the place. I forgot to close the hood all the way from the day before.

i did an oil change and i forgot to put the oil filler cap back on the engine. guess how i found out ? i had oil come inside through the firewall and dirty my WHITE pants.

had my car up on jacks at an angle for so long that my battery went bad due to shorted plates:(

OK, I just gotta share this one!
 

My brother-in-law decided he was going to change the oil in his Subaru. Well he parked halfway in the garage and then promptly sat on the remote control for the door, which left a nice crease accross his roof :( (the days before all the auto reverse doors!) Then after he had drained the oil and refilled it he tried to crank the engine. There was this gurgling sound and the engine wouldn't start (thank goodness!) My sister said STOP EVERYTHING and call a mechanic. He had drained the transmission fluid and added more oil :eek: He now lets mechanics do what they do best!:D

Hi everyone.

I have a nice painfull one.

Some years ago I was working for a schoolbus
outfit.
The owner needed to have a lift installed to lift a
full size schoolbus atleast 7ft in the air.
This was a requirement by NY state DOT.

After the H size trench was dug the contractor
put wooden plates over the trench so one could
walk over them.
For some reason we had to remove the plates,so,
dummy that I was,I pushed one of the plates to the
side with both my hands.
But I wasn't paying attention and I dropped in to the
trench(just like in the cartoons,one moment I was
there,the next I was gone),hitting the plates edge
with my chest on the way down(7-8ft).
Luckily I was fine only knocked the wind out of me and
woke me that morning.
After this I stayed a way from that trench until the
lift was installed and the concrete around it was fully
cured.

Louis

Anyone else ever do this?
 

At the beginning of your Mercedes-Benz experience, not knowing how to put the rear armrest back up? I remember when I bought my 300D the rear armrest was down. Probably because nobody knew how to put it back into place! I had it for a few days before I actually thought about lifting the REAR of the armrest to be able to push it back. I tend to see a lot of pics of MB's with the armrest down, so maybe there are other people out there having this problem!

I was in an accident with my previous 1981 300d, very hard on the eyes but it ran like a top. It was my daily driver to and from work.

Another car hit me in a parking lot and pushed in the passenger side front wheel making the 300d undrivable.

This forced me to drive my 1973 MGB Roadster (convt) in Nov/Dec to and from work. Had enough heat, but this car was not made to ride in the winter and with the top up you heard the engine and a rattle occurring between the metal battery cover and the "floor" pan (located behind the driver's seat). The metal on metal noise got anoying quick. So before I went to work, I decided to put rubber grommets between the two to cushion the rattle. I started the car back up and it worked fine. I went into the house looked out the window and I can't see the car. I'm saying to myself, boy that car is small, I thought I parked it behind the family minivan.
Rushed to go to work, I leave the house and discover the MGB had rolled down the driveway bounced off of the two sides of a rock wall bordering my driveway and coming to a rest at the bottom, damaging both the left and right fenders. I had failed to put the car in gear or engage the parking brake.

Now I have a summer project.

Almost could write a book in this thread:(
When installing a new hood blanket I covered the engine bay, and fenders with a blanket so that the scraped off material during the prep process could be collected and so the overspray from the glue would have a resting place. With job complete we were admiring the work with some adult beverages. I walked around the hood to find there was just enough of a breeze to funnel the glue overspray under the hood onto the windshield.::eek:

Wow, good thread. Don't have time or space for all my oops, but probably the worst was an incident with our horse trailer. My wife and I had brought a load of stuff down from Iowa when we were moving to Oklahoma and had left for the return trip about 3:30-4:00 in the morning. Made it exactly 26 miles down the interstate when we found a good bump and the trailer decided it didn't want to be attached to the truck anymore. It was a bumper pull and it seems as though I did not get it seated properly on the ball when I locked it. It didn't have break-away brakes, either. When I saw it come off in the mirror (hard to miss that large of shower of sparks), I of course slowed down. It calmly swerved back and forth behind us a time or two, then passed by us on the right shoulder. It then scraped the concrete bridge railing for a ways, passed across in front of us, scraped the other side of the bridge, then slowly passed back in front and eased down a long embankment. Turns out other than scraped fenders, a small crease in the tongue, a bent jack, and the wire loom pulled in two, it was fine. After having it pulled out of the ditch, we got it back on the truck (being sure it was locked on this time!) spliced the wires back together and came the rest of the way to Iowa. Scary deal, though. Dang good thing it was 4:30 in the morning on a Sunday out in the middle of nowhere. Would have hated to see it come loose going around the 435 loop in KC at 10:30 that day!

I had quite a few oops and i'm only 19 :(

Last week, while friend was trying to remove a thermo switch from a BMW, the wrench kept on slipping off, so I decided to hold it in place while he twisted. BIG MISTAKE, when it was free, the force snapped and crushed my finger between the wrench and the neck where the hose connects to. I was traumatized by the pain (felt dizzy and wanted to vomit).

While working on the sunroof to see whats wrong, I broke the left angle lifter on my 87 300D. $70 boo boo. After I got everything installed, I tried running it and now bent the center cross member in which the two angle lifters connect to. There's another expensive one.

Another one was when i had the key in the on position on dad's 79 300SD, I then went to hook up the negative terminal on the battery. Biggest zap of electricity I ever saw, it melted a crater into the negative pole and the cable. Just a nasty reminder electricity is not nice.


Dad once changed the oil on the 300SD, but forgot to put the oil cap back on. Proceeded to drive from Los Angeles to Fresno. When he got there, noticed that oil was just running off the block and onto the floor, popped the hood, the oil cap was still sitting on the block but the engine was just about out of oil.:eek: :eek:
Luckily no damages to the engine (maybe the Prolong engine treatment helped?)

I had a poorly running gasser because the ignition had gotten pretty wet so I sprayed some WD40 on the coil while it was running. There was a lot of flames but didn't last long enough to do any damage.

Sunroof takes flying lessons!
 

This happened in October or November sometime... this is what I posted to diesel@mbz.org (i'm too lazy to retype it :rolleyes: :o


"About a month ago I decided to try to fix some of the leaks my sunroof was having and to get the sunroof to close itself. I made the R&R and for some strange reason the sunroof was slower than normal (yes I did grease it up). In my infinite wisdom I decided to not put the covering rails back on as I was going to fight with the slow moving sunroof later (all I cared was that I got the stupid thing to close!).

This weekend my Girlfriend and I went to her parents' house to visit with her Grandparents. All was going well, the car did its thing on the way down, but the sunroof had some extra wind noise. I wasn't too thrilled at that but I figured I would tackle it when I got back. No problem... On the way back up we ere cruising along and Jenn asked me to check if the sunroof was closed all the way. No big deal, was worth a shot, and there WAS a lot of wind noise. I go to push the thing forward and as I do so the sunroof came up out of its track and next thing I know the sucker is GONE. No *WHAM* or anything... it just went flying away! I looked in the rearview mirror, and sure enough there it was bouncing along on the road... I stopped and picked up the remains of the sunroof (don't forget the cable too! it got yanked away with the sunroof!). It was scratched to hell and gone, the rubber feet/pads/whatever that it ides on fell off on one corner. When it flew up in the air (my guess is a good 5-20ft up) it landed on one of the corners and bent that corner up pretty good and also warped the whole sunroof.

To compound the matter it was in the mid 60's, and my ACC amp is fried and was sitting on the kitchen counter... so we had no heat to compensate for all that cold air. You wouldn't think it ould be that much air, but going any highway speed with the sunroof open seems finds the harmonic of the inside of the car and this awful *thudding* would go on if I didn't have at least two windows rolled down a little bit.

Two hours later (at highway speeds) we gratefully arrived home and put a tarp on the car (as if the people in the apartment complex don't think I'm %^#$ up enough as it is). Am going to send out an email after this asking if anybody has a sunroof from a 116 chassis (white if possible) they might want to get rid of...

Word to the wise... if you work on the sunroof FINISH IT before you drive the car!!!!!!! ;)

Hope that everyone gets a good kick out of this! (gotta have something good about it!!)"


A kind lister sold me a sunroof that was dark blue. Now everyone thinks that I have a sunroof, while they didn't before (they think its dark tinted glass). Quite amusing, and it worked out well!


John

A few opps!
 

I had added 1q oil to offset the big leak of my upper oil pan before leaving to the dynometer. When I arrived at the dynometer I had my heater running and noticed a foul burning smell! Turns out it was about 2q worth of oil all over the engine compartment and the burning was the oil on the exhaust manifold.

EDIT: From leaving off the oil cap...

....and I think there is no need to mention my TD's "95mph bridge jump." :rolleyes:

My only OOPS! with my car was when I was replacing my foglight bulb. I was following the manual, and I did not follow all the directions, I didnt loosen up enough screws, and I was trying to pull the frame that frames the headlight and foglight off. I pulled, and pulled, until SNAP!! It came off. I broke the little stem that goes in the light assembly. It's not all bad. The frame stays in. If you pull it, it comes out and snaps back in. I learned my lesson. Take your time, and reread if necessary.:p
-Joe