So what's everybodies best Gearhead Blunder?

Mine would have to be the time I replaced the battery cables on my '76 Monza. I measured twice, and ordered the right length. Spent a few hours cleaning up the wires and area the cables would route. After hooking the cables up, positive to positive to starter solinoid, and negative to negative to block. Got in to turn the key, got no power to nothing. Fuel pump wouldn't turn on with the toggle switch mounted in the center console. I spent a few days with a test light tracing where the power was 'lost'. I had power to the solinoid and could jump the solinoid to crank the motor over. But couldn't get the thing to start or crank with the key. I had a friend look at it and we couldn't figure it out together. So I put a for sale sign in the car and let it sit for about 4 months when my dad decided to take a look at it early one morning. I woke up at about 10am to the sound of my car starting up and running. I quickly got dressed and went to see what was going on. After asking my dad "So, what was wrong with it?". He walked over and pointed to a wire connected to the solinoid on the firewall and said "When you cleaned up the wires, this one got tucked behind the others and you forgot to put it back on." DOH! After that the only problem I had with the car was rocker arms falling off (damn f*rd SOHC POS). Well, that's my story. What's yours?

Charles

BTW, after I couldn't get the car running I ended up buying another car (isn't that how it always goes?), an all original '75 Vega Kammback.

I set the 76 on fire while trying to adjust the valves while it was running and I wasn't using any oil deflectors. Damn near suffocated under the hood and then it cought on fire! :D :oops:

I used a water hose to put out the fire, it was the only thing handy. Don't try this at home folks! It takes a trained idiot to pull this off.

Too many to tell and some i don't want to admit.

Chris

HA!! i dont have any "Blunders" i am a mechanical god!!! :cool: i cant really think of any really bad that is... never set anything on fire, never forgot any wires(that i know of) all though there was the time when the car fell on me and broke my arm... who'd of thought a wicker basket couldnt hold up an elky! :lol:

Well let's see....i was about 16 years old at the time, didn't know squat about workin' on cars (my most challenging repair up to that point was changing spark plugs :-D ), and the timing chain and gears needed to be replaced on my '74 Nova. A friend of mines dad was very knowledgeable about car repairs, but he had just had back surgery, so he couldn't do the work himself. My buddy (who was equally as incompetant as myself) and i decided we would do it ourselves. His dad walked us through what we needed to do ("disconnect battery, remove alt. , etc, etc."). Fast forward to the next day--we had done all the dis-assembly, got the new gears and chain bolted on, but we couldn't get the timing cover back on !? His pop wasn't home to consult so we figured it out ourselves....the cover fits easily without that seal at the bottom!
We then proceeded to put the harmonic balancer and all the accessories back on and were now ready to fire that bad boy up!
Started up the car(which was surprising in itself) and realised that we had struck oil....or so it seemed. After we cleaned up the HUGE spill, we tore the front of the engine apart again, and did the job correctly (ok...i guess that seal on the timing cover is there for a reason....didn't know to loosen a few pan bolts to aid in the installation :P ).
Anywhoo...everything worked out in the end and that was my first of many "learning" experiences :? .

Mine was changing from a straight 6 to a 289 V-8 in a 65 Mustang. Rounded up all the right parts (so I thought, I am 17 at the time). Manual transmission. Put everything together, hit the starter, and Hummmmm, starter runs great but engine, she no move. That is when I discovered there really is a difference in size in flywheels between a 289 and the 302 bell housing that I had. Starter was missing it by about a quarter inch. Eventually rounded up the right flywheel and went on to break two rear ends with that strong 289. Ahh, but that is another story.

I was going to try my first re-wiring job on a '65 Chevy Stepside pickup I had just aquired (first mistake - assuming I could do it). There had been a major short (almost a fire) under the dash while the previous owner had the truck, and most of the wires were melted into a blob of plastic coating with lotsa wires coming out both ends of this blob! 8O

I bought a new harness from JC Whitney (second mistake - more on that in a minute). Now this wasnt like on my 72 Elky for instance where there are 'many' pieces of harnesses under dash, hood, rear, etc that can be replaced. This was just an old truck with simple gauges and AM radio, etc, and simple lighting, so how hard could it be? (repeat of first mistake - thereby making third mistake). :oops:

Well it all came as one big bundle of wires with a 'generic' wiring diagram. Now back to the JC Whitney part....those with JCW experience may understand this, but their catalog of course says things like 'clear, concise wiring diagrams and instructions included' and also 'tell us all the details of your truck model so this will match perfectly with your needs' :mad:

sure it will! PT Barnum said it best 'a sucker born every minute' and I was one at that time!! :x

anyway, I get this big mess of wires with a simple wiring diagram, and no tags on the wires identifying where each goes....rather, the 'instructions' (all 8 lines of it) tell me the color of the wire matches the ones indicated on the diagram, so basically hook each color end to the appropriate connection point in the truck, as shown on the diagram.

Sound simple enough after all, right? Well here is mistake #4 (and in hindsight the stupidest) because I go ahead and try instead of returning this crap to JCW and getting a refund! :oops: I was to find out later that because I tried to hook it up and stuff I could not return it!! :mad: :mad:

Anyway, I had to cut all the old wires off because of the melting, and so I had no existing to go by. I found as I tried to follow the diagram when it said like 'connect brown wire to front left turn signal' that, lo and behold, there were TWO brown wires, and THREE orange ones....with no way to distinguish between them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ended up selling the truck - mass of new wires hanging out from the dash and all - at a real loss, but learned several valuable lessons.

:cool:

It's 1973 - I'm 16 and ready to install a Holley 4BBL on my Dad's pride and joy: a 1966 289 Mustang. The carb swap went amazingly smooth, just one thing I forgot to do - measure the bolt for the air cleaner, which popped through the hood, the first time I shut it! Boy was the old man pissed...

Talk about POPPING THROUGH THE HOOD! I bought a 37 chevy coupe (in pieces) when I was 14 and starting 'learning' how to rebuild and put it together as a poor boys hot rod.

I found a 54' chevy corvette six cylinder motor, decided to rebuild the head. Bought the big C-clamp to compress the springs and get the valve keepers out and then the valves. I bought the hand crank gizzmo and the compound and spent many nights resurfacing the valves.

I didn't know to mark the valves, springs, caps and keepers so they'd go back in the same valve stems. One of the valve keeper sets just wouldn't fit, so I got out a file and filed away for hours until that last valve went together.

The very next weekend I JUST HAD to go to the drag strip. (Yes, I was racing before I had a drivers license, nobody checked in those days). The very first run, still in first gear but wound out really tight, the valve keepers I filed down failed. The valve dropped down into the cylinder, hit the piston at high rpm. It shot back up, hit the valve seat, the valve broke away from the valve stem and the stem turned into a missle. It shot up through the valve cover and and then up thought the hood like a bullet.

It was my first drag race (at Edgewater Drag Strip in Cincinnati), I thought I was cooler than the other side of the pillow, and the motor continued to blow apart. Of course I didn't let off the gas.

The valve hitting the piston made the piston break, it fell apart in the cylinder, the rod dropped into the pan and keep on swinging around. We took the motor apart afterwards and couldn't believe how bad it was.

THAT WAS THE LAST SIX CYLINDER I'VE EVER OWNED!

Elky77

nothing real major yet,but i have a story:

i was working on my elky in the garage one day and went to pull it out and it wouldnt start. being the expert mechanic at the time (not!) i figured it was the starter solenoid. i got a new solenoid and installed it. the thing was when i would take the starter out i would let it hang by the wires until i got it bolted to the block. i got the starter put in and the car still didnt do anything. finally i had my uncle look at it and he eventually found that one of the starter wires was broken,due to me letting the starter hang by the wires. we fixed it in one night but i sure felt stupid. now i'm more careful when changing starters :o

More than 30 years ago, when I was in the military, my buddy asked me to help him change a carb. on his 55 chevy. The carb was leaking lots of gasoline onto the top of the intake. We drove the car to an auto parts store, bought a carb and installed it in the parking lot before all the gasoline had evaporated off the manifold. (We were in a hurry because the girls were waiting for us). When attempting to start the engine, it spit back through the carb (I did not see any flame) and ignited the gasoline.

Just think. Parking lot, no fire extinguisher, no outside phone, small volunteer fire dept. 25 minutes away = one car burned to the ground. GULP. We had to hitchhike bact to the base.

Ding! I think we have a winner! Total destruction of the car by fire has to count for something.

Too many to tell and some i don't want to admit.
No comment :oops:

When I was 18 and didn't know nowhere about anything, includeing cars as I thought I did I took apart a 250 inline 6 to rebuild. Well, I didn't mark the main caps or rod caps. Needless to say it spun a bearing with in a month. :oops:

I think setting a 57 Chevy 210 on cinder blocks without wheels on it. Didn't think drums could cut conctete blocks. I was wong

I was 15 at the time

Ding! I think we have a winner! Total destruction of the car by fire has to count for something. Would that be called a "Car-b-que" ? :P

Why just last winter I felt like taking my CJ7 to work in a heavy snow, Instead of my 2002 Wrangler. I hit some heavy duty snow, hard enough to splash up water on the distribtor, which ment I was running on 5 instead of 6 clyinders, something that doesn't happen when you are driiving a TJ. Time I got to work I was so pissed off I threw my seat belt off, right threw the plastic window. Was a nice ride home :)

When I bought my namesake, it had a bad bottom end 4.3
I got a smacked up AstroVan from a friend at the time, took the good motor and tranny out. (Will shoot myself if I ever have to pull another motor out of a van)
Ended up needing to change intakes and mixed up two bolts
Quickly had milk in the oil pan...

Fast forward a bit....

SBC 400...

I ran the electric fuel pump to get the lines primed and left the fuse in the harness for the electric fuel pump...

mechanical carbs and electric fuel pumps do not dance together.

Ended up smoking a bearing with gas in the oil...

Through it all, I still did not get rid of it.........

Runs great now with a little 305... But....327 lined up waiting in the wings!