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I started changing the brake fluid (two man bleeding) on my car at a rear drum (8mm bleeder), so grabbed a 9mm open wrench to do the job. I felt that it wasn’t turning much after a while… :whistle:
To all the noobs like me out there, use box-end with the correct size whenever you can! 😛
one more fail I can re-call in my vary little (for now) wrench time…I was working on our latest car(dont have it any longer for this reason) I was under the car after it had recently been operating trying to get the oil pan off…I kinda forgot where I was for a split second and hit my nose on the hot exhaust pipe…IT HURT LIKE HELL!!!
Right now I am trying to fix a stumbling/surging problem on my car. It was right before I started watching Eric’s videos, but I didn’t diagnose the problem. Now I am putting the intake manifold and throttle body back together and I don’t remember how the coolant lines exactly go to the manifold and how to get the throttle cable exactly how it was.:lol: I forgot the tip about taking pictures of my set-up before starting work on it.
I needed to move truck ( no engine ) into the shop. Only the new guy around. He was happy to help. He jumped in to steer ,while i pushed with the fork lift. Pushed the truck up the drive way into the shop. The new guy forget to apply the park brake. The truck rolled back, heading towards another parked truck. The truck it was rolling towards was a kenworth with a custom candy color paint job and fresh chrome trims.
My Dad was showing me how to service a 4-barrel carburetor on a 1978 Mercury Marquis wagon. (It had the 460/7.5L V-8 and was a testament to steel.) After adjusting the carburetor he was cleaning off the gum and varnish on the butterfly valves, linkages, and the body. In slow motion I see the fluid start pooling on the intake manifold and start boiling. A wisp of vapor makes it to mouth of the carburetor and WHOOSH, and a big flash, as the engine backfires through the carb, the engine dies, and the entire top of the engine is engulfed in fire with thick black smoke. We sprint in different directions to get a fire extinguisher, me to the basement and he to the kitchen. Unfortunately, he got back first and sprayed ABC-powder all over the engine. I was a step behind with a CO2 extinguisher. Needless to say, the thick, yellow powder was very hard to clean-up and sometimes I would get it through the ventilation system when I hit a big bump. Thanks Dad!
The next day I’m happily driving the car and starting to go down a very steep hill on my way to school. The car stalls and I’m left to handle a 2.5 ton, land-yacht with no power brakes and no power steering. I was standing on the brake pedal with both feet, with all my weight (150 lbs) and trying to keep it straight at the same time. The hill was 5 blocks long, with a flat spot at each intersection. At the end I got air off the last two intersections. I truly learned the meaning to “white knuckling-it” and I had hand cramps for the rest of the day as a reminder. :woohoo:
Same car, same Dad, different day. “Dad, my brakes feel funny and soft and they smell like burning.” Hey says he’ll look at it next week. On a trip down a very steep hill I see orange sparks coming from under the front of the car, reflected in our neighbors’ windows. He says that he guesses I was right, as the calipers wore through the rotors completely in a few spots and were almost welded together. :whistle:
I learned from my Dad to be careful with car repairs, what not to do sometimes, and to not be afraid to get a little dirty and try and fix things yourself. I miss the old man!
Same car, I was doing a tranny service and trying to drop the pan. I was getting the car ready for a big, weekend field trip with 5-other students. Three bolts in a row break as I was trying to loosed them. I go inside panicked to my Dad. He calmly assesses the situation and recommends an impact wrench, which worked better. He takes the next morning off of work to go to the Auto Parts store to buy helicoils and save my bacon! He was the best sometimes. 🙂
I put intake gaskets in my mom’s blzer in my garage. Went to fire it up, and heard the most ungodly clang-wham-smash I’d ever heard.
Seems when you forget to tighten the fan and start the engine it flys off into the radiator, whodathunkit?
New radiator, fan, fan clutch, shroud, and waterpunp later it’s still going
No ones ever installed a part due to a check engine light being on to find out that wasn’t the problem??? I must be the worst tech ever.
Actually I bet that happens so often that it isn’t worthy of note, lol. Especially if you have X vehicle known for Y pattern failure which throws a certain code, and then the real problem turns out to be Z.
Replacing the transmission on a Neon last week, ohhh there were so many little things. For example.. Who would’ve thought you need to hoist the engine and put an axle in while it’s outside the car to replace it? And who would’ve thought you can’t change plugs without removing the valve cover? (The holes in the cover are quite smaller than a spark plug socket) Not necessarily a fail on my part but just a fail in car design, at least.
[quote=”PsychoticMechanic” post=46351]No ones ever installed a part due to a check engine light being on to find out that wasn’t the problem??? I must be the worst tech ever.[/quote]
Probably more common than you think especially before ODB2 tools with live data capture became affordable for DIYers. I know I did it more than once.
I also overshot my car ramps once and landed on the pinch welds 😆
wow eric fire!! haha
I’m a DIYer. One day, my friend asked me to change the engine oil. he has an accord. I dug down under the car and found that the drain plug is somewhat weird. It is supposed to be a hexagonal bolt, but it was square 3/8″ bolt. anyways, I took it off, and drained all the oil.
After refilling, we did test drive. the car was suddenly jerking. we returned to the garage, and googled an oil change can blow a transmission. :woohoo: and somehow I pulled out the tranny oil dip stick. yes, the transmission oil was all gone banana: banana:
here’s why I made the mistake. I have a RWD car, and have never been under a FWD car. So, in my world, there is only one drain plug in the engine block, and the tranny is supposed to be waaaaay back there. unfortunately, the first drain plug I found under my friend’s car was the transmission plug.
Oooooohh, man… so, you drained all the transmission fluid (without realyzing that it was red) and then overfilled the engine with oil…? or did you put oil into transmission?
Well either way, it really was a fail… interesting story.
I once changed the air filter on my car (00 Hyundai Elantra) and forgot to connect the MAF sensor. Well, I was cranking and it never started. I was about to call a tow truck and a few friends to help me out, but then I just went under the hood again, just to see if I closed the air box correctly, and looked around saying “hmmm… I see less cables this time… OOOH, WHAT A M**** DUMB I AM…”, then reconnected everything and it started right away.
I also had been driving with a completely trashed tire in the city, like if nothing was happening. Well, I didn’t realize that I had a flat wheel, and I was also driving a bit fast (between stoplights) and only after I felt huge vibrations comming from behind on a really nice tarmac I just stopped and I just can’t stop laughting… I had almost no tire, just the rim was left.yes I overfilled the engine oil. I guess about 8 liters of oil total was in the block lol and yes, I saw the oil is red, but thought my friend got a red oil from somewhere banana: another clue was that I got the oil cap open so the oil should be drained smoothly, but it was not.
it is nice that you did double check right after you got the problem. you could blow your engine with air filter change banana: banana: the problem always comes from where we were hahaha
also nice to hear that you survived with the trashed tire lol it could be very dangerous if you hang some sharp turns or enter the freeway. I have the experience too. I washed my car at a self cleaning and heard a pop! sound when I am getting out. I just thought I step on a piece of plastic. the car felt fine. I drove slowly and took a local (about 2 miles) because it was middle of rush hour. the next morning, my tire was damned with a nail haha
just wondering, so MAF sensor is attached to the air filter on hyundai elantra??
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