Post your OOPS!
 

I thought I would share a good oops that I had today.

I was installing a new rear view mirror assembly and if anyone has done this they know how hard it is to engage the spring back into the mounting plate. There are two opposing pins held firm by a heavy-duty spring that holds the black swan neck and mirror to the mounting bracket, which is attached to the inner roof. I was using a piece of wood and a rubber mallet to engage the assembly. Oh, it engaged all right but the piece of wood was too wide and I busted my windshield.

Thank God Massachusetts mandates glass coverage for all insured cars.

Anyway, there is my grief.

uhh, i took a random road and got my car stuck recently, does that count?? Biggest oops i can think of is cross threading some part of the injection system on my old century. Oh wait, i was trying to tightne up my headliner and ended up ripping a HUGE chunk of it out.... Thats all i can think of, i know i've done worse, my brain is just being kind tonight :rolleyes:
Ryan

I was beginning to think that due to MercedesShop everyone was oops free, never any mistakes.

By the way, what are OEM windshields for mercedes?

I got one from Adsit Co. (I hate that company by the way) for something like $150 which included freight. The glass wasn't perfect, but it was certainly an upgrade from the glass that was on the car. Don't quote me on the price, it was over a year ago. It wasn't a lot though.

Alex

OOPS Combo
 

This is kind of a dual fault oops, but here goes.

In my naivety, as I was buying my first Benz, I did not noticed that the bottom of the car had been treated to a rather brutal rust proofing / putty / chassis black job. This shabby job puttied right over the tire jack holes!

My oops (which caused me to notice this horrible putty job), took place while I was raising the car with a 3 ton hydraulic jack placed under the auto on what I thought would be a strong jack point (just behind the front wheel well). Well, as I was raising the car, the putty began to crack and crumble. Not too bad, but very curious and irritating.

So now I am challenged with trying to undo the poor rust cover-up job, and do it right. If not for anything else, so I can access my jack holes in case of emergency, since I don’t carry my hydraulic around in my trunk.

I know this has most likely been covered (pardon the pun), but can anyone offer suggestions as to how to ‘undo’ what has been done poorly, and do it right? I am a bit apprehensive about what is under all that chassis black and bondo.

The lesson here for me. Don't be afraid to crawl under a used car you are thinking about buying.

Show me one person who's never made an "Oops" doing auto work, and I'll show you someone who's never done any auto work. :D

Probably the biggest "Oops" I saw (the guy took a picture and posted it, but I don't rememebr where it was) was a guy on the Ford site I frequent...he was welding a sending unit for an EGT gauge into his exhaust pipe. He had just gotten the weld nice and perfect and clean when he realized that the flange (the moving part with the bolt holes to go onto the next piece) was on the wrong side of the sending unit. He had to pull it out and start over again. :(

Then there was the guy who was putting Herculiner on the rocker panels of his Ford Explorer...no gloves and then nature called...I think there were over 1,000 posts on that thread makin' fun of him...he was a good sport about it but I still felt for him...

Mistakes I've made? I know they exist but I can't think offhand of what any are...no I'm not being pompous ;)

How about changing the oil and forgetting to put the drain plug back in.:eek: No really I meant to flush the crank with fresh oil:D

My most recent oops! While changing a vacuum hose under the dash, I tugged a little too hard and broke the other end. It turned into a fiasco because I couldn't find where it broke from but the plastic fitting was still in the hose. Now the car won't shut off unless you turn on the heat. After disecting the whole center console I finally found that it was the vacuum switchover valve and have one coming from parts shop. Arrgh!

Once about 10 years ago I had a 68 230 finback and the distributor kept shorting out. It was really old and tarnished looking so I thought I'd clean all of the contacts. I took out all of the little screws and cleaned up everything real nice. I did not notice, however, that the one screw that goes into the side was shorter than the other two. When I put it all back together I was unaware that the wrong screw was too long and protruded inside the distributor interfering with the inner workings so, when I turned the key....ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!! The whole distributor twisted a few times and broke the cast aluminumn shaft. Fortunately I got one from a junkyard moments before they closed for a holiday weekend for $100 (I think...long time ago) and went about my biz.

No major blunders yet (a whole lot of minor annoying ones though caused by haphazard, rushed work), but I drop things ALL the time. ALL the time.

Alex

Replacing Hood Star
 

My most recent OOps was 2 weeks ago. Stopped at the MB dealer and picked up a new hood star to replace what vandals had destroyed.

Played with while waiting at a light, twisting the spring Steel and pinching the heck out of my finger. Lost the litle metal keeper from the spring.

Ended up returning to the MB dealer the next day. Paid another $30 and successfully installed the new star.

Any wannabe rappers need a medallion for their necklace?

--Craig

Most memorable oop's that comes to mind at the moment was a few years back.In the good old days you could get oil in ring pull cans,take it from me NEVER put your beer anywhere near where you leave your oil!!!Bear

Re: Replacing Hood Star
 

Not a wannabe rapper *lol* but I'm wondering, how much do you want for the star? Be cool to put it near my computer or something :)

Another good OOPS I had was leaving the oil cap on top of the air filter and closing the hood. Idented the hood from the inside up. I can't remember what car it was but it had a pretty large oil cap. Possibly my old Ford LTD. Duh!

my oops
 

While checking the timing on the 450 sl I placed the inductive pick-up on the #1 plug wire near the manifold .
The wife called me into the house .

When i returned to the GUYRAGE all i could smell was a strong odor of plastic.The pickup had to be chiseled from the manifold after it cooled

Razorman

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.

I had the instrument panel out of my '75 300D while I was replacing my blower motor. I got in the car to go somewhere and I still had the cluster out. I didn't think anything of it until about 100 feet when I realized that my leg was getting wet, and it was quickly getting warmer. I quickly realized what it was and placed my thumb over the oil tube to stop the flow. Boy! that oil was HOT by then. I turned around but I had to stop the engine (in the middle of the road) when it got too hot for my thumb. I had to put the cluster back in before I could move the car.

15 years ago I was working on my Turbo Escort. The fan belt was squealing slightly and I noticed that if slight pressure was put on the belt toward the inside (rear), it would go away. Unfortunately, I found this out by touching it with my finger. I had these great big thickly padded winter gloves. After a couple of touches, my finger was drawn with the belt and into the pully. Luckily, not all the way. But D*** it hurt! I turned the car off, closed the hood, went inside, and promptly lied down on the couch and about passed out from the pain. Finger ended up being just fine.

I stay away from moving parts now.

Yeah, I touched a hot rotor once. I have no idea what I was thinking.

Alex

Oh, where to start?

Biggest auto goof was in buying a French car. To show you how dumb I was, I did it twice. I was in college about 30 years ago and a film major who loved french films. If you love french films and are also car crazy, what car do you think I lusted after? A Citroen of course! I bought a DS19 (maybe ID19, I forget) for $300 from someone who posted an ad in the paper. All he had to do was turn the engine on and have the car lift itself up like some camel getting up from its nap and I was sold. The test ride was merely a formality. Unfortunately, when I went to have that car inspected so I could register it, the mechanic pointed out the almost rusted through frame. That car sat in front of my parents house for about a year. I would sit in it for hours at a time, dreaming about what could have been. I ended up selling it to a guy for parts for $100.

The second french car I bought was a 1985 Peugeot 505 wagon. Quite a handsome and comfortable car it was. Unfortunately, even though the engine, transmission, and clutch were all very nice, the rest of the car was not put together very well or with very robust materials. So, eight years later and with only 43,000 miles on the odometer, it went. It's somewhat ironic that my newish 300D is also an '85 with over twice that mileage but seems half as worn.

The dumbest hands on thing I've ever done was in carving a model airplane wing out of balsa wood with an Xacto knife while not wearing shoes. I of course dropped the knife into the top of my foot. Lots of blood which needed lots of paper towels. Luckily no permanent nerve or muscle damage.

Dan

A few years ago I was hauling some paint to put in storage. It was a 5 gallon can my roommate had been using to repair some shoe marks on the stairs. Being over educated and lacking in some common sense skills, he pried the entire cover off instead of using the spout. I set the can on the back seat of my 300D, not knowing that the top was barely on. I turned a curve, heard a thump and a gurgling sound...stuck my hand in the back seat and got a GREAT surprise! It took two days with a water hose to get approx. 3 gallons of WHITE paint out of the seats, door panel, and carpets. The inside of the car couldn't have been ANY cleaner, albeit with a few white spots.
The second best...bought some acid for the pool. The pool place gave me a faulty bottle (it had been previously opened). It turned over in the back floorboard of my mother's NEW Volvo. Ate through the carpet and insulation...almost to the metal. The pool place replaced all the carpets in the car.
I won't even begin on the mechanical stuff...like dropping a socket down IN the fan assembly and having to disassemble the front of the motor to get it out (was a Mazda with a timing belt...even broke that in the process).

Found this OOPS on the net and I think it deserves a mention in the Oops hall of infamy

http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/alb/alb01.html

Major diplomatic embarrassment,poor sod!! Bear:D :D :D

oh no!
 

While I was in the Marines in CA, a friend of mine was welding hangers for his exhaust on his 70's 340 Duster (a nice hi performance car) and the carpet caught on fire, burning his carpet and back seat. It was hilarious! We had to call the base fire dept and almost got demoted over it! Afterwards evertime we went riding in that car, we always raised his blood pressure by asking him what was that smell? and yes I broke my winshield wiper arm the other day putting on wiper blades.

My Oops
 

The biggest Oops Ive had was when I was hammering away(I hammer a lot of stuff with my trusty ball-peen) at the lower ball joint to pop the steering knuckle off. Well I half expected the thing to just sit there and let me bash away at it to relieve anger. Instead it came off pretty darn quick...... directly on my toe. Lets just say I said a lot more than just oops (good thing I had the garage radio on). My 2nd toe on the left foot sits funny now as a result of that.

Actually mine was yesterday. I was waiting to get out of a parking lot. There was a car in front of me, and I didn't stop completely and bumped him. The guy got out of the car, leaving the car in reverse, the it bumped again.

We pulled over and exchanged info because it was a rental car. There was almost nothing there to see, but the guy wanted to make sure and I respect that. Of course my w126 500SEL had no scratch on it. :)

Just yesterday.."I am a stupid idiot!!"
 

While replacing my oil cooler lines, the lower fitting on the oil cooler stripped (fully expected, but I did hope and pray, to no avail). I went to a local used part guy (50 cars in his back yard!!) and he didnt have any good replacements (all with stripped lower threads!!). But he showed me how he has them repaired. He had some good upper fittings removed from NG oil coolers....he grinds off the bad fitting and welds the good fitting into place (aluminum weld). I had the stuff to do this so I figured I'd give it a try. I brought the oil cooler down cellar, clamped to to the bench, and "went to town" with my hand held grinder. After grinding about half of the fitting off, I realized I ground off the good one!!! #$&*+?##@!!!

I'll get a good used one on Monday for $150 at another local junkyard!!



:mad:

One time my wife bought some new iced-tea glasses. They had these big paper stickers underneath them with a UPC code. I like to run new glasses through the dishwasher but I decided to try to get the stickers off. So far so good, ok? Well, the closest tool around was a razor scraper that I had been using while scraping some paint. So, here I am, holding this glass, scraping the sticker off, and the razor slips and *almost* cuts off the knuckle of my right index finger. It did slice a pea-sized chunk of flesh, and I probably said a lot more than "OOPS" when it happened. I still have a scar from that one.

Oops = fix it and move on.

Oh He## = will take a while to fix.

Uh Oh = you're going to have to talk to the boss, wife, banker, etc.


Today's first oops: Plugged coffee pot in and started it without any water. What was that burning smell?

Wrenching oops: Too many to list. Most recent was welding with a pant leg inadvertently tucked in boot. A big spark fell in and started my sock on fire at the top of my foot. Kind of stung, too.

daBenz

My biggest oops.
 

Blowing up the gas tank on my BMW. I thought after filling it with water and draining it twice the thing was ridden of fumes. I guess not. When i had to weld i did not feel comfortable being so close to it while i was welding. So i tested it to see if it was. I touched the flame into the hole where water was still draining out and the tank exploded while still on the car. Good thing for having rinsed it twice and a good amount of water still in the tank. I had drilled a new hole higher up to keep water in the tank while welding to make it safer in case of an explosion and it worked. The water dissapated the explosion a little. :D



Bedros

To bdemir:
One trick I learned from an old man I saw welding a gas tank was to take a hose off the exhaust of a running car and attach it to the inlet pipe of the gas tank and let it exhaust out the other holes. It removed all the oxygen from the tank and he brazed away. Personally it seems a little risky so I'll stick to epoxy.

Two days ago a buddy of mine (better not mention his name) came over to show me how to replace wheel bearings. We got talking instead of paying attention and pounded the race back into the hub. We kept talking and went to fit the bearing in when we noticed that we'd put the race in the wrong way. And now, due to the taper, there was no lip to remove it with. It was completely flush as were our faces. About an hour later.....

Don

Thought of some more...
 

I thought of a couple others I've done...

I was putting a new starter in my first car ('74 VW Bug - the car lasted me two whole months :rolleyes: ) and was thinking that I had gotten one of the mounting bolts tight enough. I asked my dad if he thought it was tight enough, and he asked me if I could get it any tighter. I told him that I thought I could, so I went ahead and put a bit more force into it...and immediately snapped the plastic outer ring right in half. Had to go buy another new starter. :(:(:(

This is probably the OOPS that did the most damage to me. At a job I was working at, I was trying to remove a hose from a thermostat housing. The hose was nothing we cared about and it didn't wanna come off, so out came my trusty Swiss Army knife to cut the hose so that most of it would come off. I sunk the knife into the rubber and proceeded to push down...somehow, the knife bounced off the side it was cutting, hit the other side, and folded...right into my right thumb.Took off a nice flap of skin and two Band-Aids couldn't stop the bleeding, so I had to wrap the wound up in duct tape. I kept the bandage on for 3 days and when I pulled it off, it was still bleeding. This time I let some blood flow while I finally cleaned out the wound some, put two more Band-Aids and another layer of duct tape (it was also the time when it occured to me that I may need stitches, but I assumed that it had already healed too much to make the effort worthwhile) and left it on another 3 days...and when I pulled the bandage off, it was fine...I still have the scar, though, although the layer of skin that the knife took off has grown back (took about 6 months for that)...

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