Rolling up to do a burnout at the track... winding the engine up a bit... dumping the clutch... and realizing that I forgot to turn the Traction Control off as my car shudders and bogs, and my face almost hits the steering wheel.

Yeah, and having an audience didn't help!

 

Man over the years I have done some really bone headed stuff , but have learned as well.

When I was 16 I rebuilt my first motor (1984) it was a SBC and I put the second ring on each piston upside down, it ran good, but can you say "skeeter patrol"!!!!

I hooked a shifter up wrong on my 82 Firebird S/S (LG4 with a T-10 4 speed,3.73 rear gears) , My dad still can't see how I did that (first was right and down if I remember right).
Then on the same car I got the bright idea of removing the smog stuff and left like 2 vacuume lines unplugged, it ran really rich until I found them. (black smoke everytime I went anywhere). Then there was the time I was building a Pontiac 400 and when on the initial start-up the floats inthe carb were stuck open, so the car wouldnt start. I left the key on and with the airfilter off and my head over the carb I turned the distributor just slightly, WHOOSH my eybrows and bangs were gone!!!....lol (I also had a nice red face).

Then theres the time we put a 31 spline 700 converter on a 27 spline tranny (nuff said , yes it will appear to bolt up)

Ever put headers on a Pontiac motor in a 70-81 T/A? can you say numerous stripped header bolt holes. (hard lesson)

Then in 93 after I bought my first LT1 car (93 T/A) I bought a March underdrive pulley. I was stupid and listened to a freind who said it was the balancer as well on an LT1, so we removed the balancer and installed the pulley directly to the hub. It ran good for about 2 weeks until the cam bolts vibrated out. (I should have gotten the clue when the supplied bolts were too long, but no I just bought some shorter ones.)

 

i havent done too much stupid stuff, usually forgetting to disconnect the battery when working on the car. well not always forgetting i just hate having to re-program the radio and such. on time was when i was taking of the alternator and was greeted with a flash of sparks, no big deal. another time was changing my friend's plugs on his LT1. dropped a wrench and it hit something that exploded in sparks (which lit up the area pretty cool cuz it was night and i was working in the dark.)

 

http://stlsr.jwitech.com/media/uploaded/boned002.jpg

that is the stupidest thing i've done.

 

I was jacking up a Toyota Celica... for some reason the car wasn't going anywhere, but the jack was. I looked inside and there was a hump about 6" high where the jack-plate was trying to come thru the floor-board.

 

Spending over $20,000 modding my Z28.

Mike

 

ROFL!

 

One time I was jacking up my aunt's Dodge Neon to change the brake fluid.....while jacking up the car I noticed that the car wasn't moving and hte jack kept on going. Turns out I was jacking on the GAS TANK!!!

-B

 

How did you do that???? !!!!!

 

my best was slapping one of my rear brakes pads in backwards when i was replacing them. talk about some nasty brake squealing. scratched the rotor up a little but i realized what i did before i did any real damage lol

 

very carefully. lol. tried pulling the hub incorrectly, didn't have the hub bolt in the threads, and then put the puller on, so basiclly the hub was pulling against itself. after taking a dye grinder to it so that a 3 jaw puller would work here is the final result:
http://members.aol.com/webbenizer/HubOff.jpg

 

Lol, yeah I can see that happening now...lol

 

Before I bought my car from my brother... he had broken his ankle at the beginning of basketball season, and his car needed an oil change. I was only like 12 at the time and I really had no idea how to do it, so a guy that works for us did it for him. Jacked the car up( don't know how he did it or where he jacked it) but the result was the jack slipping and landing underneath the oil pan. big hole in the oil pan, which was then fixed. I still think there is a small pinhole in the pan somewhere, I always find oil when I change my oil.

Dumbest thing I have done, Stereo work without unhooking battery. SHOCK!

 

College was a rough time for me:

When I was 18 coming home to S. Florida from Tallahassee for Christmas break my '84 Camaro lost the tranny. I was in Lake City, about 280 miles from home, and broke (needless to say about the college years, huh?). I left the car there and managed to get home. Came back a couple of weeks later with my dad and one of his trucks with a trailer. Arrived at 1:00 in the morning just to realize that I had left the damn keys back in South Florida. We brouth no tools, so even if I got into the car, I couldn't turn the wheel or get out of nuetral. That was 9 years ago, and I still have a very clear memory of my dad looking at me and saying, "What do you mean you don't have the key?" BTW- In a place like Lake City, you try finding a locksmith in the wee hours of the night.

Again in college, in an '85 Jimyy S15 w/ a manual transmission, I was running late for an exam. Pulled into a space, removed the key.... and the truck kept running. Now, there are at least three ways to make a manual vehicle stop running, right? Let's all just agree now that popping the hood and pulling off the coil wire is not the best one. I think I got popped about a half dozen times with high voltage ignition.

 

dropped the tranny to investigate an oil leak that looked like it was coming from the bellhousing. found out the oil filter seal broke and was sending oil right at the flywheel.

want to talk about fun? stab a 6 speed while the car is on jack stands by yourself.