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I’ve had my share. I did forget to tighten lug nuts on a friend’s car after checking the brakes and they lost a wheel.
I think my stupidest mistake was the time at a wrecking yard and I was pulling an LSD to put in my BMW and I didn’t have a support. I was lazily using my hand under the pumpkin to prevent it from falling. The last bolt came out and the pumpkin dropped to the ground, with my hand underneath it and a sliver of aluminum was driven in to my ring finger. I had to have it surgically removed.
Ouch, That must have hurt Greg.
I had a stupid moment, were i installed a keyless entry module into a friends car.
When you come near with the remote it opens on its self, and when you leave the car it closes down and rolls up the windows and putt on the alarm system.
While installing and testing things out, i walked away from the car to see if things are working. well no horn beep no windows rolled up, and neither it locked up.
On that moment my friend came back, as i was figuring out whether i had blown a fuse ore burnt trough a cable.My friend asks me after 15 minutes ore so.
“that square box with the cables is the battery right ? ”
Well Yeah, why ?
“then if the cable is not connected it wont start right ? ”enough said, right ?
I work on toyotas at a dealership. My manager has a deal with a fleet company that has F150’s. So one comes in, needs front brakes. I get the OK and start the job. Take the calipers off and such. Start taking the rotors off, and the damn things won’t come off. So I get the torch, heat them up, nothing. After about 30 minuted of pounding, I check Alldata to see what Im doing wrong. According to alldata, the rotor comes off like normal rotors do. So I go back and by a blink of an eye I have about 10 other techs standing next to me wanting to get a try at this stuck rotor to sho me off. So They all got their biggest hammers in their boxes and started to beat the s***t out of the rotors. Then my manager finally comes over and with his ford knowledge, he tells us that these you gotta get the axle nut off for them to come off as a whole assembly. I felt so stupid!
the mistake that sticks out in my mind, i droped the oil cap during an oil change coudlnt find it anywheres and ofc it happened to fall just perfectly between the fan and shroud, and i mean PERFECTLY through there, it was aon a trailblazer 2006 4.2l, the fan shroud was damaged at the bottem so i could almost squeeze the cap out, so i was told to careful pry on the shroud and the rad support to make room, Well low and behold they just had the truck undercoated with that veggy oil crap, and guess where the prybat ended up. i wish it with right through the rad rather then just nick it bin a better laugh then, but ye thats my momment.
another momment i can think of, playing a prank on someone, while doing block 1 or pre employment at collage someone was cleaning a drive on hoist(4post) well we put a fire extinguisher in one of the posts right where the controls were, well the look on his face when he put the hoist down was priceless, it was one of the smallest fire extinguisher’s u can buy, and was cdry chemical and we removed 75% fo the pressure before hand so ti wasnt a big mess, but eathor way when it started hissing and white smoke started flying we all laughed even the instructor.
I remember I was working on my Yukon, changing the exhaust pipes myself. I wanted to see what it sounded like so when I started it up, the exhaust pipes fell right off. I took it down the street and I noticed it was a little bit louder than it have should of been. I got out and looked and the exhaust was gone! So I went back to my house and there they were laying there. I forgot to screw them in! I had them just attach by a small bolt where the holes were too put the screws in.
My boss was doing brakes service on a handicapped van. When the job was done, along with a oil change + inspection. I forgot to pump the brakes and started backing out, luckily there wasn’t a vehicle in the spot I was directly heading to. After hitting the brakes at least three times, I reacted fast enough and quickly said in my mind, “This is not working!”. So I slammed my foot on the E-brake and it stopped. So I sat there, head on my hands over the steering wheel for like 30 seconds and proceeded to pump the brakes. And it took at least four more pumps, along with the additional three, for it to kick in.
Another one was when I was doing a oil change, was putting the new filter it, but I ignored the unusual feeling upon the new filter installation. The unusual feeling was the previous O-ring filter left at where the filter seats in. Of course, it wasn’t fully seated in so upon cranking the engine, it made a huge mess down at the filter.
I had a 95 chevy lumina that i was replacing the front shocks on. These cars have cartridges that can be replaced on the vehicle while on the ground, well i did it the way i supposed to except one thing…. I forgot to torque down the shock spindle nut it was on there finger tight! Needless to say the place i took it to to check the alignment wasnt happy when they lifted the vehicle and the shocks blow out through the bottom of the strut tower. Oppps , I blamed on my “mechanic” hahahaha. Cost me five hundred in the end
Mine is recent. I was MPIng a 2004 STI that was in for. An oil change and rotate (81.00. Alll said and done). Wasn’t thinking about how the caliers were Brembo (floating) and went to take the calier bolt off to check ad thickness and broke the head right off. Tried flame, easy outs, anything you can think of and it wasn’t budging, straight seized. We ended up having to buy the guy a 650.00 replacement caliper. Still haven’t heard the end off it.
The one I remember was when I was a kid working on the family car. It was a 1978 Corolla two door coupe. Well I was doing the spark plugs on the thing after an employee at Shucks Auto were we got the plugs from briefly showed me how to do them the correct way…So in order to try and keep the wires in “order” my mom came up with the idea of using duct tape to number them…only one issue with this I didn’t see at the time was we had no clue what the firing order was on the car…So I did that and put small strips of duct tape on the wires to try and tell me what order I took them out of. So I took all the wires out and replaced the plugs. Came time to put the wires back in and well the duct tape kinda fell off the wires! I couldn’t remember what order I had taken them out in. So I did my best plugged them back in and my dad came out to test my work. Well the engine cranked, but had this miss-fire sound to it kinda like a base drum being hit or an air compressor releasing some pressure. I decided to look at the owners manual to see if there was any hints as to what I did wrong. Well I found the actual firing order and got a good look at the distributor cap. Turns out I crossed the first wire with the 3rd one counting from the front of the engine. I switched them and after my dad turned the key, the engine came back to life. Felt re-leaved that I didn’t kill the only family car we had..after that; I make it a point to know the firing order of any car I work on.
Changed the oil and forgot to put the cap on. I drove it like this for over a week… what a mess under the hood. My second mistake was leaving a wrench on the engine, after a repair, and went out for a test drive. Luckily, nothing was damaged, but it made a ton of noise.
Hi there,
well first of all: Thank you Eric for being so inspiring and encouraging 🙂 Thanks to you I started doing some things on my car myself, which is a ’98 Nissan Primera (better known as Infiniti G20 in the US).
I haven’t done much so far but what I did wen’t quite well, except for one occasion. Nothing blew up but it was embarrassing nevertheless 😉
I wanted to install Plasma Gauges into my combination instrument. Having watched your videos a lot in the time before I was equipped with the FSM for my car and felt like I knew what I was going to do. I had to disassemble half of my dash board as well as the combination switches. Disassembling my dash and modding the CI went fine, tests were okay and I was putting everything back together. Right before putting back the last cover I had one connector left that didn’t go anywhere yet.
Well… after a while I found that it was the connector to the buzzer that warns you when you forget to turn of your lights… I was looking for the buzzer to plug it in… I couldn’t find it… I kept searching all the places that connector could possibly reach. I’ve spent over an hour doing this before resigning in shame as it was already pretty late in the evening (around 11 or so) and concluding that for now I’d just put the cover back on and shamefully ask in my favorite Nissan forum where the goddamn buzzer would be.
Turns out the buzzer was embedded in the cover. I facepalmed pretty hard in that moment 🙂
Not a mechanic related embarrassment but embarrassing nonetheless. Working as a welding apprentice I was given the job of cutting a chain sprocket off of a drive shaft. Over the top of the sprocket was a guard which had a nylon runner underneath. The way the shaft was positioned I had to cut it from under the guard.
Here’s me using an oxy/acetylene torch, 1/2 way through the shaft the nylon started to melt, unfortunately it ran down the guard and on to my forehead.
It took just over a month for the burn to heal which was The size of an Australian 20 cent piece.
Least to say the nicknames were: Spot, Ding-dong, doorbell etc…
[quote=”P1cwh0r3″ post=35234]Not a mechanic related embarrassment but embarrassing nonetheless. Working as a welding apprentice I was given the job of cutting a chain sprocket off of a drive shaft. Over the top of the sprocket was a guard which had a nylon runner underneath. The way the shaft was positioned I had to cut it from under the guard.
Here’s me using an oxy/acetylene torch, 1/2 way through the shaft the nylon started to melt, unfortunately it ran down the guard and on to my forehead.
It took just over a month for the burn to heal which was The size of an Australian 20 cent piece.
Least to say the nicknames were: Spot, Ding-dong, doorbell etc…[/quote]
I had a similar screw up during my sophomore year of HS in advanced shop class. I was just learning to gas weld (having just gotten done with TIG) and forgot that instead of a mask I was only wearing welding goggles and that my gas filler rod was longer than my TIG filler rod. When I finished my weld, I flipped up my filler rod… right onto my scalp. Burnt off a quarter sized portion of my hair as well… and I’ve been no good with gas welding since (tried many more times, just couldn’t get it).
I was seventeen working at a shop as a helper since I was sixteen.Change brakes,replace batterys,starters and so on with no problems.Then one day i come in to the shop and this beautiful 1979 gold mercedes four door v-10 was in a bay for electrical work for blower motor problems.Easy enough right….go under the hood remove negative cable,lights in the car dont come on…cool.Start getting things removed under passenger side glove box and there is a huge set of 8 wires bundled together with a wierd connector in the way of the blower.So I attempt to disconnect this thing……well as I pulled the connector apart all 8 wires fell together and sparked and fused together…..slowly burning in all different directions because of a second battery under the passenger seat……..I about crapped myself.Sad to say the fire took most of the cars electrical out.Total cost 10,000 dollars in all the wiring harness,took four years to pay it back.To this day my digital volt meter is always by my side.
When I was little I topped off my mom’s oil with 5 quarts, while my dad was out of town. Then another time I put a spare on her car and had not learned to cross tighten the lugs and the wheel almost fell off. Both incidents occurred before I had a drivers license. This last weekend I was doing ball joints on my brother’s HHR used may power tools but busted my finger open reassembling the joint requiring 3 stitches.
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