What's your dumbest mistake?
 

What's the dumbest thing you've ever done while working on your car? I think we'll all feel better when we hear that other people do stupid things too!

My story is that I moved my fuel feed and return lines over on top of my header for easier access to my coil, and forgot to move them back! Two days later, I was puzzled by the raw fuel smell and opened my hood to find smoke boiling off my header from the fuel lines that were all but burned in half!!! Anybody got a fire extinguisher? Luckily no fire, but needless to say, I feel like an idiot!!! Anybody else?

my dumbest mistake was having the money for an LT4 conversion or heads/cam package last summer and not doing it. at this point in time i have no money to spend on the car and i look back at how stupid i was for spending it on gay stuff like food and going out when i could have eaten at home for free.

Hmm....back when I was just starting to work on these cars... I remember changing the driveshaft. There are 4 bolts for disconnecting the u-joint from the yoke. I only could reach two at a time and my car was on ramps. I had to turn the wheels somehow so that the driveshaft changes its angle. So I pushed the car a little and stopped it right in the middle of the ramp. As soon as I got done with changing it, it fell off the ramps. ;) Could've been easily crushed underneath it.

I've done a bunch of other similar things related to safety, or lack of it to be more precise. :o :D

wow it's a good thing I read this post I'm going to replace my driveshaft soon.

The stupidest thing hmm....well my friend one time thought he knew how to do electrical work. My alarm sys. speakers where mounted right above the manifolds and I guess the bolts got loose and the thing was sitting on my manifold. Didn't take long before it started stinking and smokeing. My alarm sys went crazy after I dis. connected that speaker and shortly after my car won't start. So my friend thought he could bypass the alarm. Well I tryed to start the car and the only thing that started was a small electrical fire. Needless to say I'm never going to let him mess w/ my electrical sys. again. Ended up being the chip in the alarm took a crap.
-b

Alrighty, I'll tell about when I did the opti. When I got everything back together and looking great I started the car to behold massive over-heating. Well ended up all I had forgotten was the water-pump connecting sleave! What a pain in the @$$!! So of course I had to take it back apart and reinstall it. At least I know that area of the motor real well now!

volunteering to help my friend install springs&shocks :eek: ...naw it was alright but hella tiring; now i know.

Getting fuel on my face/eyes when changing out the fuel filter. I couldn't find the schroeder valve to release the fuel pressure.

I'll tell ya, I don't know if anything stings more than fuel in your eyes.

Also, we didn't have the welder grounded very well when we welded in my subframe connectors. We ended up sending a bunch of current through the emergency brake cable, burning it in half! Not fun replacing. Not too hard, but not easy either.

Dan

1. Disconnected the powersteering hose to get better access to plug 2, during my header install, then after installing the headers, hooked everythinb back up with that hose. In excitement I start the car, to be met with a geyser of power steering fluid which soaked everything under the hood. :o

2. The infamous jacking of the "dont jack here" tab on the front fender. I swear it said "jack here" before i placed the jack there! The tab fit perfectly in the notch of the jack! As my fender started to bulge out, I quickly realized I was doing something wrong.

I had to park the car next to a curb, put the jack sideways and jack the tab back strait again. :o

When I put the heads back on after getting them ported and polished...while i was putting the pushrods in i ended up dropping one inside the intake so it had to be ripped off again..grrr.

Went to the parts house to get an AC oil filter for the Z......Ive bought so many that I thought I knew the right number without looking it up. I then proceed to change the oil and filter.....start the car up....pressure good.....get out and start looking around in the engine bay....then I notice a steam of oil running around my feet.......yep I had installed the wrong filter....duh.....what a mess that was to clean up.

Anyone broke a exhaust manifold bolt off? I broke one off in the header install...should have rocked the bolt back and forth. 2 grand later to have the head pulled and bolt machined out. I could be running 11's right now:mad:

Yea try using and "easy out" on a manifold bolt.........LMAO.......try drilling one out with a hand drill down in there after it has broken off at an angle none the less.


I should have kept that bolt and put it on my wall.........a 2000 dollar bolt.

^If it happened now i would pull the head myself, but at the time i didn't have the know how. O yea and it was at a dealor they wanted to give me a valve job for another 2grand.....i started laughing at him.....I was like you know i can buy a set off fully ported heads and a cam for that. Yea let me pull out that 4 grand out of my wallet.:rolleyes:

Another one for forgetting the water pump sleeve, I was doing an opti-install and once we were done i couldnt figure out why it was overheating. I turned around to my table to grab a smoke and there she was laying next to my cigarettes. A pretty water pump sleeve.
Another time when I was adjusting rockers and changing plugs, we pulled all the wires to re route them, well, while they were doing that I was adjusting the rockers with a bump starter. Turned over the motor to find out my nice OVC wires were in the way of the belt, Tore half off my wires up real bad. That one really made me mad!

Stupidest thing I ever did was wash my engine. But, that actually got me into modding my car, so it worked out for the best. :D

hmmm, let's see


1. Stripped the very last head bolt under the cowl on the driver's side. MAJOR PITA

2. Installed mac headers using only one 02 simulator instead of two (running rich is the understatement of the year!)

3. Drove from Virginia to Florida with one severed spark plug wire, AND the problem listed in #2.

4. Broke off a bolt inside the block.

5. Had to drop my fuel tank 3 separate times to get it right. :mad:

6. Doing my scanmaster install, I got dremel happy and ruined my vent cover thing. (yeah, the center one)

7. Removed spare tire for weight reduction and got a flat two days later.

My list goes on friends....