bunker

Lol, to this day I still jack under the "do not jack here", thank God nothing happened yet, yup just did it yesterday.

Lets see, some more LOL.

Doing a heads/cam on my 93 Trans AM a while back, put everything together & go out for a drive, I say to myself, damb this thing does drink gas now, so I get off the HWY & see smoke comming out of my hood, I look at the temp guage & its fine, so I'm like, man I should pull over at home & see where coolant is comming out of, shut the car off, put the hood up & hmm... fuel everywhere, on the hood pad, headers steaming etc... Yep, the return line never really clicked into the fuel rail LOL.

Let a friend help do a heated o2 conversion on my 93, lets just say when I put the thing in ignition, turns out he hooked the relay up wrong & 5 hours of wiring turned into 1 big cooked wire.

Doing an oil change with the same friend, he tells me to hurry up already, ok so I did, turn the car on & no oil, pressure, he says to give it some time, yeah then he yells, shut the car off, 5 quarts of Mobil 1 is gone on the floor, looks like someone fergot the brand new filter that was sitting on the back seat, but someone is already mentioned that one lol.

After doing the alternator on the same 93 TA, I used a ratchet on the tensioner to get the belt off, after I was finished I fired the car up, ran great but there was a really loud buzzing noise comming from under the engine bay, so ofcoarse I go to rev it but this time I thought about it, maybe I should rev it, so I turn the car off & look under, yep the wratchet is still on the tensioner, good thing the way the engine was turning was not engaging the wratchet to turn LOL, lets say I like this cheap Canadian Tire wratchet that didn't sieze up even while wratcheting at 800 rpm, I'd like to see Snap On go through that test LOL.

Did some work on my 95 Trans AM this time, hmm... put my 17" ZR1s on, drove for 3 days with loose lugnuts on the left rear wheel, I was wondering what all the wooing noise was, I thought it was the rear end going, good thing it didn't come off.

Thats all, there is much more but my fingers are tired.

ChuckZ28

I dont know which was worse for me. One time I thought that underdrive pulley from BBK was cool so I put it on, and I forgot to stack it with the stock pulley in front. Well those bolts are just long enough to cut a good amount of material from an opti. After that I was wondering why my car was running slower for the next couple months. Needed a new opti
My other one was when I decided while changing my alternator to pull off a bunch of grounds and clean them. Well It was all good untill I connected everything back together and went to hook up my battery and it started arcing so bad it welded the positive wire to the positive terminal and began to melt, then smoke started to come. I found out that attaching the positive lead and negative lead to the little red + box isnt a good idea. I also found out that thermal runaway doesn't take very long to work its magic. I needed a new battery, negative cable, battery screws.

carlos64030

My dumbest mistake would have to be when I put my new motor in, I realized that I forgot to put the clutch fork back into the tranny. After my install was complete, I decided 2 months later to finally pull the tranny so I could put the clutch fork in.

scoobysnax83

I heard of that happening to someone else on this board. That sucks...

jim88iroc305

broke a hose while driving. saw it was the metal heater hose. got some clamps and short piece of hose from a nearby station. clamped together filled with coolant. on way home guages lit up. got home but fired headgasket and heads as result of heat. shoulda just flat bedded it home with AAA; but no, I knew how to McGuyver it.

izzyz28

Alright, I have one more decently good one. I was at the track last year and a buddy of mine had an LS1 Trans-Am that he was racing that day.(Still had the temporary plates on it) He had a nitrous kit on it, an it had a fuel safety shutoff, so to purge the nitrous he would disconnect a wire from somewhere, and then activate the system to purge it. For some reason he had his airlid removed. Remember this. Anyways he goes to make a run, and when he comes back the car is making a ticking noise. It's not very loud, but it is definately there. We're all peering under the hood listening, and I see a wire lying by the throttle body that is disconnected. I ask him where it goes and he tells me it goes to his pressure switch. I then ask him for the little screw that secures the wire to the terminal. After checking all his pockets he lifts the lid off the airbox, and lo and behold- the screw is gone Needless to say his day at the track was over. Moral of the story- your air filter is not a toolbox, especially if you just descreened the MAF hours earlier.

Izzy

lantern's97Z

While changing the carpet out in my z I had a lamp in the car and it fell over and burnt the passenger side seat And i just had the driver side leather replaced due to the wear problem with the seat. I knew That was gonna happen. What a dumb ***.

Brent94Z

The "DO NOT JACK HERE" applies only to the fiberglass fender... not the honeycomb pad. The honeycomb pad is where you are supposed to jack it from. GM could have made this a little less confusing

Haskin Z28

well i was in a hurry to take my old z28 to the track, and i had really wanted to clean my ancient air filter on my moros cold air kit..well, of course being the cheap individual that i am i didnt go out and buy the K&N air filter cleaning kit me and a friend just cranked on the high pressure air hose and went at her..needless to say the filter looked like swiss cheese, but hey i slapped it bhack on and ran an 8.40 at 83 with headers and gears!

Fatdog

Well,we all learn from our mistakes,and we will know better next time,Ya right,
Like when I first bought this beast,and my brother in law suggested I buy a electric buffer to make the car shine like a mirror.Started on the fender(drivers side,with car wax.This car is red,but all I got was some ghost white reflecting back at me.Then he says,well,maybe this car has clear coat.Da.da da da da.Had to have the fender and hood painted and reclearcoated.$600.00.
I just go back into the house,and it's beer time,and watch tv.Can't get into too much trouble doing that.Ya right.

Eddie95Z28

Maybe I am missing something ? What went wrong ?With waxing your car with an electric buffer ?

lt1camaroman93

ive got a very very expensive screw up. I had just gotten my heads back from the porter, new lunati cam, new hardend pushrods and all the good stuff. so i get it all together and fire it up.. if runs for a min or and and im like, this thing must sound good when reved up. so i hop in the car and rev it up, forgetting there is no load what so ever and there was only a flexplate cause i hadn't put the trans back in, so 7k here i come real fast that it suddely turnned off and wouldn't crank anymone. A lifter pumped up and held a valve, Mr. piston meet Mr. valve at a very high rate of speed and broke the valve in half and then wedged itselfe between the head and piston. Cracked the piston, trashed the head, ruined the cylinder, all of that time and money and the thing ran for all of 3 or 4 minutes.. never doing that stuipd stuff again.

95_LT1_6SPD

letting a buddy help me install my headers. And he tells me he has it lined up perfectly ( i was supporting it from underneath cuz he has smaller hands ) so he starts all of the bolts, and starts tightning them down, and im over at the work bench taking the old emissions fittings off. and he says "are they supposed to be this tight?!?!" turns out einsten doesnt know when someone is cross threaded. 5 holes fuxed right up pretty good using a tap on the exhaust holes now though.

shoebox

Hmmm... I thought I had not done anything stupid in a while, but recently when I had put the engine back in my car, I wanted to give it a test crank before I had gotten every little thing back together. Everything for it to start and run was connected, but I had not put the radiator back on. I thought "No problem, it's only for a few seconds or so. I don't need to worry about coolant."

The thing is, my car is an automatic and I forgot about the tranny cooler lines. So, it fires right up and I hear this kinda gurgling noise. "What the heck is that?", I wonder. I wanted to keep the rpms up a little, so I held it at about 2k for a few more seconds. More gurgling. Shut it down and went around to the front. HUGE tranny fluid slick heading down the driveway. DOH! Plus fluid sprayed all over the front (that was previously all nice and cleaned up while the engine was out).

No harm done, just a big mess I did not need.

magius231

well mine wasn't working on this car but...

Way back when I was like 17 I wanted to change the oil in my 76 Skylark...it had been about...um...10,000 miles or so since I had done it ( ) so we figured out a plan to clean it out real good: We'd empty the oil, plug it back up, run some fresh oil w/ motor flush through it for 5 minutes, then empty that and replace with good oil. I jack the car up, empty the black tar that was supposed to be my oil, then dump the motor flush in the engine with 5 quarts of oil. Suddenly I see this pool of oil making its way out from under the car...yep - I had forgotten to put the drain plug back on. 5 quarts of oil and 1 can of motor flush all over the place