DIY Mechanics Fail Stories
Discussion
1. 1st car - removed carb housing and the gasket disinterated. So i stuck an exhaust one back in, reassembled it and drove 40 miles. Got out of the car and let the gf drive it home. She rang from the side of the road 5 mins later - just as the fire engine arrived......
2. Took intake manifold off my MG ZT CDTI to clean up an oily leak. Put 4 wads of kitchen towel in the exposed inlets to prevent anything falling down there. Went out to get something and came back to see the car has moved 4 foot the right ! Gf has fired it up and shifted it. Spent next hour with various took trying to encourage the kitchen towel back up the sooty inlets. Amazingly none of them made it past the inlet valve. Gf said she didnt notice anything odd about the car.
3. Car sitting on two scissor jacks at front - on gravel ( yes i know... ). Q - slow motion swivel and drop onto floor without wheels on. Just standing there wondering what to do next - no room to get another jack under there now... and a bloke doing a 3 point turn nearby pulls up and says he has a bag lift in his boot! Didnt even know what one was but he just got out, stuffed it as far forward as possible, stuck it on his exhaust and the thing raises the car - wheels on sorted.
2. Took intake manifold off my MG ZT CDTI to clean up an oily leak. Put 4 wads of kitchen towel in the exposed inlets to prevent anything falling down there. Went out to get something and came back to see the car has moved 4 foot the right ! Gf has fired it up and shifted it. Spent next hour with various took trying to encourage the kitchen towel back up the sooty inlets. Amazingly none of them made it past the inlet valve. Gf said she didnt notice anything odd about the car.
3. Car sitting on two scissor jacks at front - on gravel ( yes i know... ). Q - slow motion swivel and drop onto floor without wheels on. Just standing there wondering what to do next - no room to get another jack under there now... and a bloke doing a 3 point turn nearby pulls up and says he has a bag lift in his boot! Didnt even know what one was but he just got out, stuffed it as far forward as possible, stuck it on his exhaust and the thing raises the car - wheels on sorted.
I once wired up a classic mini cooper with fuel injection to carb conversion as the fuel injection is limiting the car tuning. I got everything working electronic wise but car backfires... after a expenisve garage bill, the distrubtior is 180 degrees out...
and putting a hole on the rusty floor with brand new jack... £300 lighter and new soild floor...
and putting a hole on the rusty floor with brand new jack... £300 lighter and new soild floor...
Faust66 said:
10 bonus man points are hereby awarded for covering up your mistake.
'When working on a car - no matter how big or small the job - at least once you MUST get confused about righty tighty/lefty losey...' I reckon this text may be the fabled missing page from all Haynes manuals.
I’ve told this story before on PH, but what the hell;
While back I was doing a basic service on my Amazon. As I was putting a new set of plugs in, a couple of foxy lasses from the student house at the end of the road walked by and said “we like your car”. “Hmmmm” thinks I, “not gonna pass this opportunity up”.
So, I was having a bit of a chat with them as I continued working – obviously I was being my usual charming and debonair self, stating that I was restoring the car, it’s a lot of work but it’s worth it blah blah blah.
Unfortunately as I was tightening the sparkplug in number 4 cylinder (near the battery) I was distracted somewhat by their skimpy attire and the metal handle of my socket driver made contact with the positive terminal of the battery with the predictable FZZZZZZZ! and large spark.
I jumped backwards about 3 feet banging my head on the bonnet and almost landed on my arse, whilst swearing profusely the whole time.
Sadly, the nice young ladies have never stopped by for a chat again.
What made it worse was that my neighbour (ex mechanic) witnessed the whole sorry incident and mentions it on a regular basis. b
d.
I shuoldn't laugh, but it's always funnier if accident #1 makes you jump straight into accident #2 'When working on a car - no matter how big or small the job - at least once you MUST get confused about righty tighty/lefty losey...' I reckon this text may be the fabled missing page from all Haynes manuals.
I’ve told this story before on PH, but what the hell;
While back I was doing a basic service on my Amazon. As I was putting a new set of plugs in, a couple of foxy lasses from the student house at the end of the road walked by and said “we like your car”. “Hmmmm” thinks I, “not gonna pass this opportunity up”.
So, I was having a bit of a chat with them as I continued working – obviously I was being my usual charming and debonair self, stating that I was restoring the car, it’s a lot of work but it’s worth it blah blah blah.
Unfortunately as I was tightening the sparkplug in number 4 cylinder (near the battery) I was distracted somewhat by their skimpy attire and the metal handle of my socket driver made contact with the positive terminal of the battery with the predictable FZZZZZZZ! and large spark.
I jumped backwards about 3 feet banging my head on the bonnet and almost landed on my arse, whilst swearing profusely the whole time.
Sadly, the nice young ladies have never stopped by for a chat again.
What made it worse was that my neighbour (ex mechanic) witnessed the whole sorry incident and mentions it on a regular basis. b
d.
Trying to jack car from the rear. Poor trolley jack can't lift the car high enough to get the wheels off. Decide this is to do with the slight slant of the drive. Frustratedly drop the jack, get in the car, pull onto the road, come back onto the drive the other way around. Say "can't work out what all that knocking was". Forgot to re-tighten bolts, doh! Always seems a bit more worrying when you have bolts rather than nuts. Also had to hunt for the locking wheel bolt key which had been left on. Fortunately it hadn't gone far.
Still couldn't jack the car quite high enough but found that a few pieces of old carpet under the jack lifted it just enough. That's clearly a story for the other thread though
Still couldn't jack the car quite high enough but found that a few pieces of old carpet under the jack lifted it just enough. That's clearly a story for the other thread though
Can't believe a similar experience to this hasn't been posted:
Changing the rear brake shoes on my old Astra, had to jack the car up at the side of the road as Mother too miserable to let me put it on the drive.
Whilst taking the old pin/spring/washer assembly off it slipped out of my hands and down the Drainage grid I had parked the car with the rear wheel positioned perfectly over.
Changing the rear brake shoes on my old Astra, had to jack the car up at the side of the road as Mother too miserable to let me put it on the drive.
Whilst taking the old pin/spring/washer assembly off it slipped out of my hands and down the Drainage grid I had parked the car with the rear wheel positioned perfectly over.
Overhauled the forks on my bike, forgot to put the copper washer back in that seals the bolt that goes in the bottom of the fork, so next morning I go in the garage to find a pool of fork oil under it where it's been dripping all night. Bike up on stands, faring off, mudguard off, calipers off and front wheel out to take the fork leg back out...
Decided to get some steel wheels and winter tyres for the car last year. Come the spring I swapped back to my alloys...or rather 3 of them, didn't get the locking wheel nut tool on quite square when doing the 4th wheel and sheared off the pattern that fits in to the bolt. So I now had a car with 3 18" alloys and a 16" steel fitted. On Sunday afternoon when nowhere was open to see about a replacement. Luckily the local dealers had one in stock when I managed to get to them the following saturday.
Not me but a mate. Changing the oil on his series landrover and decided to leave it to drain overnight. Forgot all about it the next day until it siezed on the M3.
And it's not just the amatures...
Put my ZX in to a local Citroen specialist for a service, and driving it then next day noticed a clunk when I went over a bump at speed. Jacked it up to have a look and discovered they'd left out the front caliper bolt on one of the front brakes. Every time I went over a bump the front of the caliper was lifting and being smacked back down again by the wheel! Lucky it wasn't the rear bolt they'd left out!
A mate's Mrs recently picked her car up from a service and found it was making a clunking noise on corners. She took it back to the garage and they had a look at couldn't find anything wrong. So he took a look at it when she got home, and all the bolts on one wheel were loose!
Decided to get some steel wheels and winter tyres for the car last year. Come the spring I swapped back to my alloys...or rather 3 of them, didn't get the locking wheel nut tool on quite square when doing the 4th wheel and sheared off the pattern that fits in to the bolt. So I now had a car with 3 18" alloys and a 16" steel fitted. On Sunday afternoon when nowhere was open to see about a replacement. Luckily the local dealers had one in stock when I managed to get to them the following saturday.
Not me but a mate. Changing the oil on his series landrover and decided to leave it to drain overnight. Forgot all about it the next day until it siezed on the M3.
And it's not just the amatures...
Put my ZX in to a local Citroen specialist for a service, and driving it then next day noticed a clunk when I went over a bump at speed. Jacked it up to have a look and discovered they'd left out the front caliper bolt on one of the front brakes. Every time I went over a bump the front of the caliper was lifting and being smacked back down again by the wheel! Lucky it wasn't the rear bolt they'd left out!
A mate's Mrs recently picked her car up from a service and found it was making a clunking noise on corners. She took it back to the garage and they had a look at couldn't find anything wrong. So he took a look at it when she got home, and all the bolts on one wheel were loose!
Decided to change the clutch cable on my 306 GTi-6 a few years ago having slowly escalated my repertoire of car DIY'ing. Took all of 10 minutes to take off the old one. I soon came to the realisation that this was a stupid idea, but it was too late. I had no choice but to continue, and install the new one. 12 man-hours later over 2 days with much swearing and the new one was in, courtesy of chicken wire, fairy liquid and the power of Grayskull. Whoever decided where the aircon pipes went clearly hadn't spoken to the clutch-cable route designer. The utter bds.
ds.Zoobeef said:
My one, embarrassed to say I took a clutch out a car to find it was the slave cylinder at fault which was on top of the box held in by 2 bolts :/
I did this a few weeks ago. It was an epic fail on 8 counts.1. I wasted £175 on a new clutch and transmission fluid I didn't need.
2. I wasted an entire weekend trying to fit it on the driveway.
3. I bought, modified and destroyed a clutch alignment tool that didn't align anything.
4. I put it back together Sunday evening without tightening down the pressure plate and packed it off on a flatbed monday morning to a sympathetic local garage at a cost of £30.
5. The garage charged me another £90 to tighten the pressure plate up through the starter motor hole.
6. Got the car back and the clutch was even worse.
7. Not only was the slave cylinder on the front of the box held on by two bolts, I actually had a new one in the garage prior to buying and attempting the clutch.
8. The release bearing is now rattling, no doubt due to poor installation on my part.
I don't trust my own diagnostic skills any more, and I am never, ever doing a clutch again.
Most recent incident was replacing the wiper linkage, managed to reattach the arm 180 degrees out on the motor so when I had finshed the job and reassembled everything, i hit the switch only to see the wipers try to sweep down onto the bonnet! Very red faced I spent another 2 hrs removing and refitting (6hrs total for a half hour job!)
New discs, pads and calipers on the rear at the weekend - i will be back here on Monday I suspect.
New discs, pads and calipers on the rear at the weekend - i will be back here on Monday I suspect.
A couple, ok 3 from a Hillclimb M1 Fiesta (road legal) many years ago.
"What's the wetness on my jeans" says my mate when out for a shakedown in the dark after a engine rebulid, ahh ok, the pipe fitting to the back of the gauge was hand tight resulting in 2 pairs of jeans written off & a big clean up (luckily no carpets)
Distributor trouble at an event when didn't mark the leads & ripped the cap off in a hurry, all sorts of trouble sorting it out until someone who knew what they were doing came in about.
& the classic "whats that wobble", yes hand tight wheel nuts.
Tripple Doh.
"What's the wetness on my jeans" says my mate when out for a shakedown in the dark after a engine rebulid, ahh ok, the pipe fitting to the back of the gauge was hand tight resulting in 2 pairs of jeans written off & a big clean up (luckily no carpets)
Distributor trouble at an event when didn't mark the leads & ripped the cap off in a hurry, all sorts of trouble sorting it out until someone who knew what they were doing came in about.
& the classic "whats that wobble", yes hand tight wheel nuts.
Tripple Doh.
I crashed my old kit car - spun the back into a kerb and broke a big chunk off an alloy. Swapped a front wheel onto the back and chucked a random wheel onto the front as I needed to drive it to my parents place the next day.
Back wheel rubs. Bugger, thought I, I've bent something major. Many hours of head scratching, poking around underneath, unbolting and re-bolting various suspension bits. Phoned up my dad to consult him - first thing he asks is what the offset of the wheels is...
Back wheel rubs. Bugger, thought I, I've bent something major. Many hours of head scratching, poking around underneath, unbolting and re-bolting various suspension bits. Phoned up my dad to consult him - first thing he asks is what the offset of the wheels is...
Changing the clutch years ago on an Astra. Haynes manual describes a procedure where you could use 3 clips placed round the engaged clutch to hold it engaged, pull the layshaft out and then drop it out via an inspection hole at the bottom of the gearbox.
All going great until I start to pull the clutch out. One of the clips pings off and the clutch gets wedged half in half out. After lots of swearing and scratching of head I had to remove the gearbox to get the bloody thing out and replaced. The Saturday morning job turning into an all weekender with me refitting said gearbox late into Sunday night so I could get to work the next day.
All going great until I start to pull the clutch out. One of the clips pings off and the clutch gets wedged half in half out. After lots of swearing and scratching of head I had to remove the gearbox to get the bloody thing out and replaced. The Saturday morning job turning into an all weekender with me refitting said gearbox late into Sunday night so I could get to work the next day.
Changing a bent rear suspension on my old a6 quattro (on the drive with about a foot of snow on the ground) I managed to undo the outer end and remove it from the hub, then couldnt undo the inner end (seized by corrosion).
Easy I thought! - I'll just pop it back on and get it down to the garage.
It wouldnt go back on though as the arm had "sprung" back a little from its mangled state.
I then had to drive the car to the garage with the NSR wheel flapping backwards and forwards!!!
The snow and Ice helps when one wheel is going in any old direction though.
Easy I thought! - I'll just pop it back on and get it down to the garage.
It wouldnt go back on though as the arm had "sprung" back a little from its mangled state.
I then had to drive the car to the garage with the NSR wheel flapping backwards and forwards!!!
The snow and Ice helps when one wheel is going in any old direction though.
1) Changing the steering rack end on the Megane, undid the top bolt, (didn't take it off all the way), and after some pushing, hit it with a mallet to get it loose.. Then the nut would not come off as I had deformed the bolt .. hacksaw out.
2)e36 Track car. Had a fight for a few weeks attempting to get the rear bearing out, broke 2 pullers and anything else I attempted. In the end took the arm off and took that to a garage. They had to use a 2 ton press and loads of heat to free up, damaging the drive shaft in the process.
I then put the new bearing in, did something stupid and broke it. So out it came again.. Then it all went swimmingly.
3)First time I changed brakepads I ended up taking ages to get the pistons back to put the new pads in.. (I didn't undo the brakefluid cap).
2)e36 Track car. Had a fight for a few weeks attempting to get the rear bearing out, broke 2 pullers and anything else I attempted. In the end took the arm off and took that to a garage. They had to use a 2 ton press and loads of heat to free up, damaging the drive shaft in the process.
I then put the new bearing in, did something stupid and broke it. So out it came again.. Then it all went swimmingly.
3)First time I changed brakepads I ended up taking ages to get the pistons back to put the new pads in.. (I didn't undo the brakefluid cap).
And then there was the other time a few weeks ago when I "bricked" the car with my laptop via the OBD2 port.
The EWS module stopped talking to the CAS module which meant the car turned over but no starting.
I had to tow the car to the BMW specialist who then re-programmed the car in a little under an hour - about 5 minutes before they closed for a 3 day weekend- phew!
The EWS module stopped talking to the CAS module which meant the car turned over but no starting.
I had to tow the car to the BMW specialist who then re-programmed the car in a little under an hour - about 5 minutes before they closed for a 3 day weekend- phew!
As a youth I'd done several minor services, exhaust and brake changes but never dabbled in any engine work ...
A few years back I bought a z3m coupe and the bottom end bearings went. I didn't have the money to send it to a garage so I thought, I'm an engineer how hard had this be. I systematically stripped and de greased the engine and organised it on selves in the right order of strip. Replaced valve stem seals, every gasket, oil pump, tensioners, piston rings, bearings and all stretch bolts. Put it all back together bar fitting the vanos and then had to sell it to a friend as I no longer had space for the car. He then sorted vanos fired it up and the one thing I had missed was tightening up the plate that holds the rear oil seal in place which filled the gearbox bell housing with oil.
Not the easiest car for your first rebuilt but not a bad effort, it now still runs :-)
A few years back I bought a z3m coupe and the bottom end bearings went. I didn't have the money to send it to a garage so I thought, I'm an engineer how hard had this be. I systematically stripped and de greased the engine and organised it on selves in the right order of strip. Replaced valve stem seals, every gasket, oil pump, tensioners, piston rings, bearings and all stretch bolts. Put it all back together bar fitting the vanos and then had to sell it to a friend as I no longer had space for the car. He then sorted vanos fired it up and the one thing I had missed was tightening up the plate that holds the rear oil seal in place which filled the gearbox bell housing with oil.
Not the easiest car for your first rebuilt but not a bad effort, it now still runs :-)
Back in the early 90's, I had an early XR3 with the 1.6 CVH engine. The tappets were very noisy so I decided to replace all the hydraulic tappets, take the head off, clean & polish the valves & ports etc. Basically give it a good going over.
Got it all sorted & looking shiny & put it back together but the bd thing won't start. I tried everything - spray stuff in the carb, fuel down the plugholes etc but no joy.
Rather than admit defeat & ask my mate the mechanic, I decided to cheat & call the AA.
Bloke comes out, pokes around under the bonnet & asks me if it had been working ok. "Yep mate" says I, "it was working like a charm last night but just wont start this morning". "Hmmm" he says, followed by "If it was working last night, it looks like someone broke into your car overnight, took the cylinder head off & put the head gasket on upside down".
Luckily the membership was in my fathers name so it's not affected my ability to get AA cover.
Got it all sorted & looking shiny & put it back together but the b
d thing won't start. I tried everything - spray stuff in the carb, fuel down the plugholes etc but no joy.Rather than admit defeat & ask my mate the mechanic, I decided to cheat & call the AA.
Bloke comes out, pokes around under the bonnet & asks me if it had been working ok. "Yep mate" says I, "it was working like a charm last night but just wont start this morning". "Hmmm" he says, followed by "If it was working last night, it looks like someone broke into your car overnight, took the cylinder head off & put the head gasket on upside down".
Luckily the membership was in my fathers name so it's not affected my ability to get AA cover.
Get a call from my wife, her Saab 9000 wouldn't start down outside my sons school. Depth of winter, off I trot in the cold and dark. Turned the key sure enough nothing, so up went the bonnet and an hour later after checking everything my brother and I thought it must be an ignition fault. I jump back in the car and guess what? it's an auto and was left in drive, of course it wouldn't start.
We really kicked ourselves as it was so obvious but we never checked before steam rolling into things, I've never had the heart to tell my wife either, my brother love him backed me up when I told her it was a flat battery.
We really kicked ourselves as it was so obvious but we never checked before steam rolling into things, I've never had the heart to tell my wife either, my brother love him backed me up when I told her it was a flat battery.
First car was a mini 1275GT changing the top engine stabilising bracket, I over torqued the bolt and snapped it in the engine block. So dads suggestion, drill it out and tap it, so drill drill drill then water as I broke through the water jacket, gulp.
anyway, sawn off bolt and plumbing tape and job was a good un, think it even improved the design.
anyway, sawn off bolt and plumbing tape and job was a good un, think it even improved the design.
A friend (honest, not me!) put a new clutch in his Sprite, so it was an engine out job. When finished, he tidied the tools up and one socket was missing, couldn't think where it was, assumed it must be under the car.
Started the engine, huge rattle, clatter, bang. then he remembered where the socket was, still on one of the clutch to flywheel screws. Engine out again.....
Started the engine, huge rattle, clatter, bang. then he remembered where the socket was, still on one of the clutch to flywheel screws. Engine out again.....
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