What's the most stupid thing you've done while working on your X?

[DMan446]

Luckily I have not had any probs with my X. But I remeber back when I was 17 and had my first car. '85 Ford T-Bird 3.8V6.

Ok, so one night after closing time at the good ole Burger King, I get ready to drive home. It is the middle of winter and I didnt let the car warm up first. So after driving for about 5 mins I notice im not getting any heat yet and it usually starts to get some kinf of heat in first few mins. So I look at the dash and the Temp is topped out on the H. So I pulled over and checked everything out. Had to call my dad and all that.

The next morning I found out that the thermostat had stuck shut and pumped all the water out of my radiator. Now the FUN begins. Fill it back with coolant and start it up, flushes entire fill out in like 2 minutes. Got parts, replaced thermostat and try again. Worked fine for a few days and the cheap **** AZ thermostat stuck again. This time warping the heads and blowing the head gaskets.

SO now with it sitting at home, I start to tear the thing down. Get all the acc. off and start working on the heads. Get them off and they have hair line cracks between the valves. Look at the block and more bad news. Scored cylinders.

So then my dad comes out bitching at me cuz I tore the thing down in the driveway blocking everyone elses car in and he had to go to work.

I decided to just get a rebuilt for it because of the damage. So, now in the back yard, I finish tearing it down got the old engine out and waited for my rebuilt to show up.

Now with rebuilt on the hoist and ready to stab in. I lower it in and try to line it use with the bellhousing pins in the tranny. Well turns out tranny is cockeyed and it wont line up. So after about 20 mins of lifting/lowering, shaking and shifting, my dad grabs a 2X4 and starts prying away. Still no luck. Now im getting :fire: . Then I notice my dad had pryed the 2x4 against the nipples for the heater core sticking out of the firewall. :fire: :fire: . So I end up loosing it. 45 minutes of trying to line the thing up to no avail then the heater core. So I yell at him for it and he storms off. While I was taking a time out to see if the core could be salvaged, i bent the nipples back in place. Looking everywhere I cant figure out why the tranny is sitting sideways and wont line up. THEN I find it. The stupid 3' passing gear actuater that runs from the drivers side of the tranny to the TB was wedged between the tranny and the lower firewall. So I grab the thing and it pops out of the way. Amazingly the tranny drops level, both alignment pins pop in the bell housing and both motor mount pins pop into the frame. So the whole thing just "fell" together. I about **** myself seeing this. All because the stupid kick down thingy.

After all this crap happening in about a matter of a week, I almost could not bring myself to even drive the thing anymore for fear of might happen next.

So about a week, blood-sweat-tears, and $1000 for rebuilt and parts, it was fixed. All because of a $3 AZ thermostat.

BTW, all there electronic parts built by "Wells" are crap.

 

[snocross1985]

Touched a brake rotor on the X after driving for 20 min. (ouch)

While working on my 81 F100 Got some brake cleaner in my eyes. That stuff hurts! (ALWAYS wear protective eyewear while using the stuff now)

This one really takes the cake - while working on the F100, was under it with my dad. He is using an 18" long flathead screwdriver to pry something. Sudenly it slips and the corner on the flathead screwdriver goes right in between my nose and my upper lip all the way through to my teeth. Thus peircing my upper lip. Dad thought it was pretty funny, that f-er furt bad!

 

[mabulok]

The dumbest thing I've ever done...

Taken it to the dealership.

 

[jgilbs]

this wasnt on my x, but i used to have an 89 corolla. the car was in pretty good shape - no rust, paint was in OK shape. except for the rims. they were all peeling and looked like crap. so i had the bright idea to spray paint them with silver spraypaint. So I jacked the car up in my garage with the factory scissor jack. Now, I have a gravel floor in the garage. Right now I can safely jack my explorer up, because the gravel has settled over the past 3 years. But when I had my corolla, we had just put a fresh load in there. I jacked the car up, and as soon as I got the tire off, The jack started tipping and fell over. The rotor almost crushed my thumb, if it werent for two pieces of gravel, both about a mm higher than my thumb that just happened to be on either side of it. I was this close to having my thumb destroyed. Now I always make sure the car is on JACK STANDS and i rock it back and forth to see if its stable before I get under it. On the plus side, the paint actually looked really good. MUCH better than how it looked before.

 

[V8BoatBuilder]

Taken it to the dealership.

HAHAHAHA.... best one yet!

 

[X~FACTOR]

Lesson for the day learned,Engine will not run with ziplock bag in place

HAHAHAHA!!!

 

[mabulok]

Okay, the stupidest thing I've ever done, to my explorer that is, trying to put a new oil filter on while the gasket from the old filter was still there. I "made it work" and when I fired her up, there was oil everywhere! At least it was clean oil!!! Must have spilled about 3 quarts before I figured out what had happened. Oh yeh, I just remembered I topped the power steering off with brake fluid once, on my mom's Honda civic. I don't think it really did any damage because it ran fine till the day we got rid of it!!! Just wasn't paying attention that time.

 

[thecos2002]

Pretty Stupid

My sister-in-law filled her Honda's gasoline tank with diesel .

 

[410Fortune]

I grabbed the shift lever and yanked the auto out of park while I was UNDER the truck, it started rolling forward. Not too ssmart, will never do that again!

I quickly forced it back into park, and it stopped, but it could have easily run me over.
I am under the truck ALOT just checking things out and adjusting this and that. I will not touch the linkage without e brake and wheel chocks again.

 

[snocross1985]

My sister-in-law filled her Honda's gasoline tank with diesel .

How did that turn out?

 

[FordSploderXLT]

Well, the most stupid thing I've ever done while working on my X was......
My rear bumper was all screwed up because I had to pull my buddy out, and I was trying to fix my bumper....so I put a frame bender between a tree and my bumper.....and left my hatch open.....remember this, cause this is the part that sucks. So I put my X in reverse, and tried pressing the bumper in with the frame bender and the tree, and uhh...well.....the frame bender cut through the bark on the tree, and slipped off, and there I went...backed into the tree before I could even stop..... Screwed up my rear hatch really good....I felt so dumb. However, the hapy ending is, I got a rear hatch on Ebay for $64.....So I guess thats good. And that my friends, is the most stupid thing I've done.

 

[ammo troop]

trusting a buddy that was helping me install my B/L to install and TIGHTEN the shifter extension, Got the B/L finished going to take her on a shakedown run, goes into reverse no problem, in to first ditto, try and hit second and pull the whole shifter out of the floor, in front of nieghbors...you get the idea

 

[Charlie's_93EB]

Well, I got a new one.

This was on the Civic Saturday, this hot girl I work with bought some new speakers for her pos Yoda Tercel. But she got 51/2" speakers for a 41/4" hole So I busted out my new air compressor w/with die grinder!!
I took apart the dash, ground the holes and since she was helping so much I told her to put the dash back together.

Meanwhile I aired up her tires, my truck tires, and the civic's tires. Since I need a rotation I break out more of my toys and put my 21/2ton floor jack under civic on a rail looking thing I was jacking up the front, got it up off the ground and looked back, it was up too, OK. inpacked wrench time, that was fun, and did the wheels back and forth, snugged the lug nuts up dropped the car and hand tightened them all.

Great right? No well the uinbody civic now has a 3-4" hump on the driver's side floor board :fire: hammer time

and by now she ran out a bolts....bolts? WTF i never run out of stuff i have extra, this how i know i done! after 10-15mins of looking have and there and under there. she found them, in ashtray. fun fun fun

 

[Crazy5711]

I was going out of town for a while and a "friend" of mine didn't have a car. I'm a real nice, generous guy, so I let him borrow the Ex while I am gone. I get back, and he busted the seatback adjuster handle off, broke one of the crossmembers on my roof rack, messed up my door handle, and to top it all off, he told people that it was HIS truck. And the gas was almost on E when I got it back. He also stole the rubber things in the cup holder. Needless to say I was very pissed, and really don't consider him a friend anymore. I don't let anyone but my wife drive the Ex when I'm not in it either anymore.

 

[tojan19]

I had a squeeking sound coming from one of my wheels and couldn't figure out which one. Since I've got all wheel drive I had to put the whole truck up on jack stands to rotate the tires to see what the squeek was. So I had it on stands, put it in neutral and turned the tires until I realized it was the back ones and my parking brakes had turned to crumbs, So i put the wheels back on, took the front end off stands, took the back end off and as soon as I lowered the jack the truck started rolling down my driveway. So I'm behind it trying to push to stop it. That didn't work. So as it's crossing the road I manage to jump in and hit the brakes. The truck stopped after it had crossed the raod and into my neighbors yard, about a foot before it went down a very steep hill and either into the side of a house or the woods. That required a bit of burboun to calm down after.

 

[friech]

My wife had taken my X on a road trip for a few days and I was home alone with some time to kill so I decide to pull in some maintenance work on her VW passat. I decided to replace the brake pads. While attempting to compress the caliper piston with a C-clamp, the clamp slips and tears the piston boot seal rendering this brake caliper useless. Keep in mind that this was my only source of transportation at this point. I decided to order a set of replacement piston seal from a import replacement part shop through the internet and had overnight shipping. The next day I had my new piston seals installed. Luckily, this happened on the start of my weekend and I didn't have to go anywhere.

 

[dmasini]

Decided I was going to put an Add-A-Leaf kit on the back of my old 97. So I loosen the bolts on both rear tires jack up the passenger side and get to work. Throught the process I find that this isn't going to be easy and I'll just buy some shackles instead. Put everything back together on the passenger side and park the X forgetting I had loosened the rear drivers bolts as well. The next day I get people flashing light and stuff and I'm like what the hell? It wasn't until I was coming back from work that afternoon that someone finally pulls up beside me to tell me the rear tire was whobbleing. I didn't even feel it! Pull into a parking lot and found two had backed all the way out and were just laying in the center cap. If it wasn't for that center cap I think all of them would have backed out. Not one of my brighter days...

 

[bikerchick4God]

In '81 changed out the wheel bearing on my '76 datsun. I was very proud of my work until, while driving, the rear is shaking real bad... I stop at the first shop I see. They pull the wheel and charge me $16 to tell me my lug nuts were on backwards!!
Just yesterday I put my idler pulley on backwards. The truck started but I noticed the belt wasn't sitting in the guide right.
I do this more often than I like... I made a 3' raggedy ann from a pattern for my daughter back in '80 and sewed one of the legs on backwards.
Maybe I'm mechanically dyslexic?? Hope it doesn't happen when I change out the battery some day.

 

[Josh]

I put PS fluid in the master cylinder thinking that PS fluid and Brake fluid were interchangable. NOT! After a test drive, I noticed that the brakes were nice and tight, however, they didnt want to release. I ended up melting all the plastic parts in my manual hubs.

 

[Con Seann3ry]

I've done the putting lug nuts on backwards on my first car when I decided to rotate the tires. I popped a tire and as the mechanics were fixing it and stuff he looked at me and goes "jesus, whoever the idiot who worked on this before stuck these lugnuts on backwards" and I was like "oh jeez...what a dumbass" then I drove it home and put all the lugnuts back on in the correct way.

This one was more recent, but when putting on my body lift I think I was like thinking about taking off a wheel to make it easier to get to the mount but decided not to after I had loosened it and was like "once i bust the torque wrench out i'll make sure to get that one"...needless to say I didn't and on my first test drive noticed the steering was kinda sloppy so stopped to check it out and realized that one of my wheels was almost completely off, the onlything holding it on was the two threads on my lugnuts that are kinda crossthreaded.
EDIT: Still not sure why i loosened that one up

My buddy once forgot to put his oil cap back on and had to spend like an hour cleaning his engine compartment after he realized his mistake.