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well i was working at a garage and the boss remark how beautiful this truck was that i was working on well i finished up took 4 road test up highway well didnt shut hood good a nuff at about 60 mph it popt up rapt up over the roof smashed the wind shield i got out thankful for my life limpt the truck back to the garage and told the boss what i did two weeks latter im working on a car battery hold downs rotted told manger size and they were deliverd i put them in slamed hood shut rods from new battery hold downs were to long came right threw the hood i told my boss he said one more thing shut and pack up my box remember double check your hoods and clearinces
Lol’d hard at the “you took a fine time to leave me loose-wheel”.
Can’t say I’ve had any of these caliber, but as a DIYer I don’t do near the volume. I’ve done the usual simple stuff, that doesn’t cause damage, but makes you feel like you should be in the extra-special section of the short-bus for forgetting.
I stepped on the brake with the rear drum covers off and got brake fluid everywhere.
I changed the oil on my car and left the old oil filter gasket on and spewed oil everywhere.I’ve been amazed at the responses to this video, thanks to everyone that’s participated. Apparently we’re all human and make mistakes, go figure.
I’ve made a few. not just cars.
In when working on a TV PSU board’s and PC motherboards I managed to burn my fingerprints off for a few months. more than once. ( if you have patience you leave your hands in running cold water as long as it takes it doesn’t even hurt) I’m always cutting my fingers on computer cases.
As for as the cars goes. I’ve left the expansion tank cap off a few times, oil cap. Working on a neighbours Kia Sedona Diesel car which had a huge oil filter and had been running with out an air filter had some horrifically dirty oil. The filter slipped and I managed to get that dirty oil all over me. took half an hour of scrubbing to get that out.
worst one and expensive when you haven got money was 2 weeks ago on my 1998 mk4 golf , I was putting copper grease on the back of my brake pads because a few weeks earlier I needed to do a quick front brake disc pad change because I had a sticking calliper. 1 pad was down to 1mm left so it needed doing.
Any how greased the back of the pads up. Thought I was done but, I realise it said piston side on the pad through the alloys. whipped it all off again put the pads the right way round. just putting the second calliper bolt/slider in and cross threded it enough that it wouldn’t tighten an it stripped out the thread.
It was on a Sunday too and I needed the car later. I also have a lack of some tools, I wasn’t about to spend £90 on a drill, jig and tap in thread kit, so I gently drove it to the garage next day.
New calliper pins are only readily available at the VW dealer in my case £14 each and non stock item too. Next day they tried to drill it out to fit a new thread but it snapped, so I had to get a new wheel hub. 🙁 VW wanted £190 for a new one. I managed to get one at a nearby breakers yard, but without a breaker bar or the 36mm socket for the hub nut, I got them to remove it. but they gave me the run around, and they put it on a delivery van doing rounds and ending up at another branch when I said I’d go collect it at the yard :angry: . So ended up killing 2 and a half hour at the other parts store they where delivering it to instead of driving for 90 minutes home and back. fortunatly the wheel bearing was good, spair break caliper still attached which is also the one that was sticking.
In total the mistake cost me £160, but at least I have a spair break calliper if my old one keeps sticking.
Got me to London to see my fav NFL team the St louis RAMS at Wembley. 200 mile round trip on £20 of LPG :cheer:
I was changing the ball joints on a 1973 plymouth valiant when I was a 17 year old kid. I really didn’t understand the concept of torsion bars and how they work until I removed the nut and tapped on the ball joint stud a few times until the torsion bar unloaded violently. Scared the fool out of me. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb. I have never owned a car with torsion bars since.
I moved to Melbourne, Australia from Los Angeles 12 years ago and one of the things that I still do, when my car is in a parking lot, is that I will get into the wrong side of the car occasionally.
I know right?? I keep cracking up at all the “oops” moments I am reading. Its like my favorite thread.
I haven’t had any serious failures with cars but that’s mostly because I haven’t done much major work on them yet. I can relate to one of your stories though, I posted this on the comments of your video but I’m copying it here too:
I had the same thing happen to me with the wheel, in a Dodge truck. It PASSED ME ON THE INTERSTATE at 70 mph. Only thing, I didn’t put that wheel on! If I ever find the guy who did…! Cost me $1200 in parts: the drum flew off and got crushed and the shoes turned to dust. 3 of the lugs snapped and the other two were bent, and the rim was destroyed. And everyone had the same idea for that song, too. AAA saved my ass that day, I was 50 miles from home and the truck wasn’t going anywhere.
I had the front coil spring of a Olds Delta 88 wiggle out of a spring compressor once. I thought someone came into my garage and fired a shotgun. The spring just vanished. I found it in the yard. This made me a fan of macpherson struts & automotive machine shops.
well i havent had too many mess ups. mainly bc ive had my hand somewhat held in shop class. also because i go by the book. well heres my mess up i worked long long days at a shop i used to work at with a bunch of lifts, well anyways i was doing a brake safety inspect on a 06 grand cherrokke. first car of the day. found a couple bad things left it on the lift like i was told to because the manager wanted to call the coustomer and see what hed let us do. well end of the day comes 6 pm and i did the inspect at 7 in the morning and i go to move it, forgetting i pushed the pistions in the caliper i get in it turn the key throw it into reverse go to push the brake pedal all the way to the floor i panic push the parking brake and pump the pedal as fast as i could. luckily didnt do any damage to any other cars but scared me. another thing recently i did was i had a bad steerign column go bad and i got a junkyard one with keys. well instasll it go to stsrt it no crank no start. so i go and get another one thining bad switch right? wrong gm uses resistance values on these so i had to swap ignition cylinders :[ thats pretty much ALL i ever did wrong.
OK early this summer I had to change the battery out on my 98 F-150, well i got the replacement and as I was hooking up the cables I got to wondering if the polarity was correct, so i took the new battery back and got a different one, hooked it up and tried to start the truck, funny thing happened as soon as I turned the key on the wipers started running and so did the windshield washers, they were squirting water out. I thought I must have turned them on, wrong, tryed to start the truck anyway, nothing, radio went off, clock also. I also forgot to tell you that the dome light came on and wouldn’t go off. Lol smoked one of the 2 mega fuses, fried the alternator, radio fuse, and one more fuse in the panel to the ing switch. In my defense both battery cables are black and there is no red end on the pos cable. Muhahaha o by the way the first battery was the correct one. I should have kept it. 🙂
Well I experienced another epic fail today. I just finished working on my 2000 Ford Expy and was cleaning up my tools. I reached over and grabbed the air hose about 2 feet back from where it plugs into the compressor. I used the other hand to pull back the release. The air hose connector shot out of the compressor, swung around the perfect radius I had created and smacked me right above my right eye. I now have a grape sized knot above my right eyebrow.
Safety glasses saved my bacon. I even have a pressure regulator that I could have turned down before disconnecting. Never saw it coming. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb…
I was using a door hinge spring compression tool and was compressing the spring. All of a sudden it shot out of the tool and hit the wall.
I opened the oil cap on my friends corvette and closed it tight, or so I thought. After driving down the road a few miles, we heard this missing sound. Opened the hood and a minor amount of oil had sprayed everywhere.
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