Home Mechanic Cock-up
Discussion
I've told this story before on here, but it fits the topic so well...
Many years ago I adjusted the tappets on my Lada at my parent's house. Yeah, a Lada, I don't mean to brag. As I was fitting the rocker cover, I dropped one of the nuts and it landed on a chassis member that I couldn't reach. Ingeniously, I straightened out a wire coat-hanger and used it to fish the nut out. It fell out onto the drive and I finished bolting the rocker cover down.
Later that evening as I was driving down the M6 to the Midlands, the now-forgotten coat-hanger finally bounced into the radiator fan. This caused the fan to shatter into a million flying shards, some of which punctured the radiator. For good measure the water pump bearing collapsed as well. The resulting emission of noise, coolant and steam was something else. After opening the bonnet on the hard shoulder, I spotted the coat-hanger and realised what must have happened. I threw the incriminating evidence up the embankment. It's probably still there.
I didn't have breakdown cover (why would you if you drove a Lada?) so I had to call my dad to tow me the rest of the day. I think he must have got back home around 4am. It was years before I finally confessed to him.
Many years ago I adjusted the tappets on my Lada at my parent's house. Yeah, a Lada, I don't mean to brag. As I was fitting the rocker cover, I dropped one of the nuts and it landed on a chassis member that I couldn't reach. Ingeniously, I straightened out a wire coat-hanger and used it to fish the nut out. It fell out onto the drive and I finished bolting the rocker cover down.
Later that evening as I was driving down the M6 to the Midlands, the now-forgotten coat-hanger finally bounced into the radiator fan. This caused the fan to shatter into a million flying shards, some of which punctured the radiator. For good measure the water pump bearing collapsed as well. The resulting emission of noise, coolant and steam was something else. After opening the bonnet on the hard shoulder, I spotted the coat-hanger and realised what must have happened. I threw the incriminating evidence up the embankment. It's probably still there.
I didn't have breakdown cover (why would you if you drove a Lada?) so I had to call my dad to tow me the rest of the day. I think he must have got back home around 4am. It was years before I finally confessed to him.
xjay1337 said:
My car has a self contained nut and bolt on the battery clamps.
My last car, if you un did it too much it came apart fully. So you can thread it through a hook type wire connector typical with trickle chargers (what I was fitting).
So I got my socket set and went to undo the nut on the negative lead. But it didn't come off fully. So I undid it more and more and more. It got harder and harder. Then I realised... it's not coming off .....so wanted to do it up ... wouldn't go back up !!!
Cross threaded. Amazing. Been a long time since I did that.
Luckily Ebay came through with a next day negative battery cable and battery monitor sensor. (80 quid for a brand new one?!?!?!?!?! For a 6 inch cable f
k off. I paid 19 quid).
Still have an issue - as I can't connect the bloody negative lead from the trickle charger as I need to put a nut on top of the existing factory nut to sandwich the trickle charger lead between the nuts, and spare nuts don't have the right thread pitch so I've had to hit up amazon and buy a huge collection of 75 Wing nuts to try instead. When I actually need 1 nut
Piece of st.
Why not connect the negative charger lead to somewhere other than the battery?My last car, if you un did it too much it came apart fully. So you can thread it through a hook type wire connector typical with trickle chargers (what I was fitting).
So I got my socket set and went to undo the nut on the negative lead. But it didn't come off fully. So I undid it more and more and more. It got harder and harder. Then I realised... it's not coming off .....so wanted to do it up ... wouldn't go back up !!!
Cross threaded. Amazing. Been a long time since I did that.
Luckily Ebay came through with a next day negative battery cable and battery monitor sensor. (80 quid for a brand new one?!?!?!?!?! For a 6 inch cable f
k off. I paid 19 quid).Still have an issue - as I can't connect the bloody negative lead from the trickle charger as I need to put a nut on top of the existing factory nut to sandwich the trickle charger lead between the nuts, and spare nuts don't have the right thread pitch so I've had to hit up amazon and buy a huge collection of 75 Wing nuts to try instead. When I actually need 1 nut
Piece of s
t. finlo said:
Why not connect the negative charger lead to somewhere other than the battery?
There's nowhere else that the cable would reach to that would be suitable! I had thought of that, honest Annoyingly the ring connector isn't big enough to go over the other end of the negative side and the battery brace mounts to plastic.
I had the biggest load of cock ups today in a long time.
The morning started ok with some bolt shortening and fitting a luggage rack to a motorbike. It all went fine.
Then I decided to investigate a knocking noise on the car so I could get the parts ordered. Was supposed to be a quick wheel off prybar job.
1. found the inner CV joint boot was split. I suppose this could be lucky as my knocking noise is a suspension issue rather than a CV joint. Driveshaft was removed ok.
2. Decided to remove the driveshaft from the parts car and use that. Unfortunately found that whoever had last removed the hub nut had totally destroyed most of the threads on the shaft.
3. Attempted to remove the driveshaft from the parts car anyway with hope to use it to get the car back on the road. The inner shaft was siezed on and really would require me to purchase a slide hammer end attachment to get it off. If I was being honest with myself, I woudn't have been able to use the driveshaft in confidence anyway so decided to just leave it.
4. Checked the source of my original knocking noise. Confirmed it was the strut mount. Found that 2 of the 3 bolts holding the strut mount were stripped, so they turn, but don't back out. Decided to leave it as is and deal with it a better time.
5. Decided to remove the top mount of the strut on the parts car, as I could use the top mount from that once I get the 2 stripped bolts out. Ended up snapping a 7mm hex key in the top of the strut, with the end stuck in there.
6. Somehow managed to damage my estwing hammer while it was sitting on the bench. It never got used today, but at least one of the leather washers has broken off. It's an old hammer and chances are it was already perished and just fell off.
7. Decided to remove the top of the anti roll bar drop link off the main car, so that it will be easier to remove the strut once I decide to deal with the stripped bolts. Got the nut most of the way off but now sticking at the end, 15mm spanner at the back kept slipping, fighting with it, left it.
To tell you the truth, nearly all of these issues could have been avoided if I had just accepted that I wasn't going to get my car back on the road today, and wasn't trying to rush everything. I made a series of errors, jumped around between different jobs, getting frustrated and probably just introducing more problems.
I've now got the parts ordered for the car to sort the driveshaft and the top strut mount and should get round to fixing it over the next week hopefully.
The morning started ok with some bolt shortening and fitting a luggage rack to a motorbike. It all went fine.
Then I decided to investigate a knocking noise on the car so I could get the parts ordered. Was supposed to be a quick wheel off prybar job.
1. found the inner CV joint boot was split. I suppose this could be lucky as my knocking noise is a suspension issue rather than a CV joint. Driveshaft was removed ok.
2. Decided to remove the driveshaft from the parts car and use that. Unfortunately found that whoever had last removed the hub nut had totally destroyed most of the threads on the shaft.
3. Attempted to remove the driveshaft from the parts car anyway with hope to use it to get the car back on the road. The inner shaft was siezed on and really would require me to purchase a slide hammer end attachment to get it off. If I was being honest with myself, I woudn't have been able to use the driveshaft in confidence anyway so decided to just leave it.
4. Checked the source of my original knocking noise. Confirmed it was the strut mount. Found that 2 of the 3 bolts holding the strut mount were stripped, so they turn, but don't back out. Decided to leave it as is and deal with it a better time.
5. Decided to remove the top mount of the strut on the parts car, as I could use the top mount from that once I get the 2 stripped bolts out. Ended up snapping a 7mm hex key in the top of the strut, with the end stuck in there.
6. Somehow managed to damage my estwing hammer while it was sitting on the bench. It never got used today, but at least one of the leather washers has broken off. It's an old hammer and chances are it was already perished and just fell off.
7. Decided to remove the top of the anti roll bar drop link off the main car, so that it will be easier to remove the strut once I decide to deal with the stripped bolts. Got the nut most of the way off but now sticking at the end, 15mm spanner at the back kept slipping, fighting with it, left it.
To tell you the truth, nearly all of these issues could have been avoided if I had just accepted that I wasn't going to get my car back on the road today, and wasn't trying to rush everything. I made a series of errors, jumped around between different jobs, getting frustrated and probably just introducing more problems.
I've now got the parts ordered for the car to sort the driveshaft and the top strut mount and should get round to fixing it over the next week hopefully.
PositronicRay said:
Working on a steep drive, brake pad change. Forgot to pump the pedal before the road test, car shot off the drive with no brakes!
Kind of did this with a railway engine 40 years ago.Big diesel sulzer engine, class 47 for you train buffs. Reversed the engine off shared (not really allowed) and immediately got a green light and the signal to go drove about 30 miles all on the throttle occasional yellow light but otherwise a smooth trip came to a road crossing with red lights put the brakes on and absolutely nothing happened whatsoever. Let the dead man's go in still nothing. Fortunatly the crossing keeper Saw us and pressed a button to drop his barriers and put the red lights up so no harm was done but the consequences could have been enormous It turned out that the engine had new brake shoes fitted just before just before we took it out. Had I reapplied the brake a second time all would have worked perfectly as the slacker adjuster would had taken up all the slack in the linkage.Jefferson Steelflex said:
I got a call 30 mins later, “one of the pads is fitted back to front, sir”. How is that even possible? What sort of fkwittery is that? I’ve been doing my own car work for 20 years and I’ve done countless brakes, how on earth could I do that?
Don't beat yourself up.kwittery is that? I’ve been doing my own car work for 20 years and I’ve done countless brakes, how on earth could I do that? We once had a customer, quite a well respected company too, causing a massive stink because of a new brake kit we'd sent them which they said was suffering from 'poor efficiency and excessive noise'
They sent it back to us, every pad on the whole two axle kit had the backplates worn down and 2 perfect circles in the friction material.
So not only had they f
ked it up in the first place, they'd actually removed the brake kit, looked at it and still thought 'yes, we're going to send that back to the manufacturer with an angry letter as it's obviously faulty'I struggled to write the return investigation report without it sounding sarcastic
After watching loads of youtube videos and doing plenty of reading, today I finally got round to giving my Alfa 156 a belt service. I've never done a cambelt before but I've done a timing chain on my bike engine so I thought it couldn't be much harder.
I removed the aux belt, balance shaft belt, cam belt, replaced the water pump, replaced various tensioners and idler pulleys, installed new cambelt, then balance shaft belt and finally aux belt. I felt very pleased with myself after refitting the covers. Obviously I lost some coolant when I removed the old water pump so I topped it up.
This is when I discovered a steady drip, drip, drip of coolant under the car. I had to take the whole bloody lot off again to get to the water pump - I had pinched the O ring so it wasn't sealing. It was quite late by this time so my only option was to use the O ring off the pump I had just removed. Fortunately it was in good nick. This time I topped up with coolant and checked for leaks before refitting all the belts, covers and pulleys.
I gave up trying to install the aux belt in the dark so that's a job for tomorrow, then we'll see if I've got the cam and balance shaft timing right. I might add more to this thread yet!
I removed the aux belt, balance shaft belt, cam belt, replaced the water pump, replaced various tensioners and idler pulleys, installed new cambelt, then balance shaft belt and finally aux belt. I felt very pleased with myself after refitting the covers. Obviously I lost some coolant when I removed the old water pump so I topped it up.
This is when I discovered a steady drip, drip, drip of coolant under the car. I had to take the whole bloody lot off again to get to the water pump - I had pinched the O ring so it wasn't sealing. It was quite late by this time so my only option was to use the O ring off the pump I had just removed. Fortunately it was in good nick. This time I topped up with coolant and checked for leaks before refitting all the belts, covers and pulleys.
I gave up trying to install the aux belt in the dark so that's a job for tomorrow, then we'll see if I've got the cam and balance shaft timing right. I might add more to this thread yet!
Gassing Station | Home Mechanics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff