unhooked my camper from the truck on a slight incline without wheelchocks and it was fully loaded back was heavier so the tongue shot straight up as soon as i unhooked it and started rolling backwards down the street my wife was just pulling out of the driveway and all i could do was hang on and yell for her to help didnt get any help but got it stopped about 30ft later she made sure to let me know i was an idiot just incase i forgot that too
oh ya i started a thread on this one put my old mufflers in the trunk and went around a corner too fast on the way home now i have 2 small dings from this inside out on my left rear quarter FIRST DAY DRIVING CAR SINCE NEW PAINT UGHH this is why i want internal trunk panels haven't put anything back there since makes me sick to look at it from the drivers side its all i see
OK here's 2: A long time ago (15-20 years) I was changing upper balljoints on a '67 Mustang. Whacking at it like mad with a pickle fork separator and my head in the wheelarch. Suddenly it lets go. Comes out like a rocket and embeds itself 8 foot up in the wall. My blood ran cold. Must have missed me by inches. :shock: Could have had a severely disfigured face or even be dead. Now I always, always leave the nut on the bottom of the stud when removing ball joints. On a lighter note I was checking the rear turn signals on the '67 Chrysler wagon about 3 years ago. I had a faster flash on one side. I engaged my then 6 year old son to help me. Called out 'Ok left turn' checked the left hand one fine. Called out 'Ok turn right' Our driveway is on a slight slope. (You know where this is going) No flashing but car starts to roll forward. Oh Sh*t, run to the open door to hit the brake just not in time for the peaked bumper of the Chrysler to come to a stop against the front licence plate of the the '93 Caddy and put a golfball style dent in it. Perfectly logical to a 6 year old. Pull down on the left lever to indicate left, pull down on the right lever (the shift lever) to indicate right! Now I know whay they introduced neutral saftey switches! :laugh: Nick
Years ago I had a 70 GTO. Spent the winter in the body shop having everything fixed, rear wing added... Got it home, Dad and I tore the interior apart, new carpet, scrubbed, scrubbed... Finally done, everything buttoned up, weather warm, had to go for a cruise. Grabbed the smokes off to a buddies house to harass him and his AMX. Drive was a few miles, smiling ear to ear. Get to my buds and he was shocked at how great the car looked. He was amazed at how everything looked especially the burn hole in the back seat from the cig I tossed out the window... One good note, last smoke ever.
I was using a slide hammer once to remove a bearing race from an axle housing. I'd never really used one before so I just grabbed the end of the bar and grabbed the slide hammer and went at it. Apparently, there's a "T" at the end of the bar that you're supposed to hold onto while using the slide. I, however, placed my grip firmly on the bulge at the end of the bar. It only takes one hit to realize that my hand wasn't where it was supposed to be. I made the biggest, most painful blood blister on the webbing between my thumb and index finger!!! I was beating my hand on the ground, because it felt like it was on fire!!! Lesson learned. -Josh
I once took my car to get painted to a guy who was supposedly cheaper. Only for him to later get caught in it driving around town him and his buddies drunk. Not a big deal though, I got the car back, cleaned out the beer cans , bottles and cigarettes and took it to a professional.
When I was in University, I had a 92 Mustang.. 4-banger.... The trans was acting up so i decided Id dry a fluid change. Having next to $0 funds, I decided I would suck the fluid out of the dipstick tube instead of dropping the pan. I had an inline pump thingy with a rubber bulp you could squeeze to suck the fluid. I guess it would work great with water but not for thicker trans fluid. So I ended up using the ol' suck with your mouth method.... Lemme tell ya.. sucking the smell/fumes of burned trans fluid will give you the heaves...I had a friend there and he did nothing but laugh at me... I didnt get sick, but geez did I urge... another one... That same friend...wanted some work done on his car... For some reason he had his dads jeans on. well previous to this, I knocked over a can of Rust Checks (like WD40) off the bench. Broke the tip and all the gas escaped. The can was still almost full so I put a hole in the can and poured it into an empty manual pump spray bottle. It was the bottle left from some type of cleaner/de greaser... so the next thing I see my buddy, spraying this on his jeans... he had got grease on them... I laughed at him and told him what was actually in the bottle... he was not impressed.. and neither was his father! LOL That same friend again... we were on my girl friends fathers Honda 3-wheeler... we came to a steep hill, I told him id walk up and he could drive it up...he got almost to the top, when we heard a snap.. the chain broke... and with hardly any brakes... lets just say he came to rest at the bottom of the hill after being flung off the bike... I could go on and one about this friend... he's a great friend and would do anything for you...but stuff just seems to happen when he's around LOL
About those ramps....went to change the oil in my 4 banger 5 speed mazda with some particularly slippery metal ramps. Tires kept spinning trying to drive up slowly, so I got some momentum and drove right off the front of them. They hit the jack points so hard I thought the car was going to break in half. Got out to see the tires hanging about a half inch off the ground. Oh and also, as a sixteen year old kid with a new license and an orange 70 skylark custom: Used scotch brite to clean mud off the rockers :blast: ou: Raced one of my high school buddies past a Dunkin Donuts...287$ and the full rage of my dad later....:spank:
OK, so here's the story of my thumb. No big deal compared to a lot you've already read about. I got this Jeep with a 327, and the guy who sold it is telling me all the goodies and machining that he put into it. Supposed to be a nasty little Vette motor from back in the day. Only he built it, didnt quite finish, then let it sit for 10 years. I get it home and start looking closer at the motor. Pulled the plugs and 3 of them are rusty. WTH? So I tried to turn it over with the crank bolt and a socket, only it was kinda tight, so out comes the breaker bar. It would turn over very reluctantly but only about 2/3 of a revolution. I couldnt figure out what was stopping it, so I just put more behind the breaker bar. Well, I pulled on it pretty good, and it slipped off the bolt. My thumb kept it from denting the rusty fenderwell. The fenderwell looked like when you squish a fat tick. Yeah, it hurt. Come to find out, a mouse had crawled up the header and past an open valve into a cylinder and lived for who knows how long. The movement of the crank was the piston travel below where the cylinder was a bit rusty (see pic below). Later, Thanksgiving Day 2008 to be exact, I was pulling on that damn breaker bar again, trying to get the water pump off (I think), only this time my wrist found a nice piece of rusty jagged metal and laid me open. It was one of those moments that you know you've just hurt yourself pretty good. I squeezed the chunk of skin and meat and went and told my wife she needed to take me to the ER. The doctor that stitched me up was wearing a suit, on his way to Thanksgiving Dinner. Well so were my wife and I, at her sisters house. I still take crap about finding a better way to get out of visiting with the inlaws... click on pics
Ouch for the thumb. Double ouch for the wrist. But it's the being late to dinner that hurts the worst! Christmas eve (years ago), I'm messing with the trunk of the LeSabre. Decided to fill the trunk lid with the expanding foam "Great Stuff". Still a couple hours before we needed to be at the preachers house for dinner, so ... I'd never worked with it before and didn't know that it would ooze out of every hole, crack and orifice, nor did I realize it would quadruple in size.:shock: Worst, I didn't leave enough time for cleanup of the trunk floor, fenders, rubber weatherstripping and skin. I had that stuff everywhere - and didn't have a solvent to remove it from my skin.ou: Ended up taking a knife and scraping my hands as clean as possible and wearing a long sleeve shirt to dinner -- and we were almost an hour late! I keep boxes of latex/nitrile gloves in the garage and car now! :Smarty: David
Back when my brother-in-law graduated from Wyoming tech he brought home a nice clean 72 Nova from Colorado. We immediately took the 307 out and dropped in a well built 350 his dad had built for him while he was away at school. We got it all hooked up and just had to adjust the timing and when we turned on the key the floats on the carb were set to high and gas started running everywhere. We took an old shirt and sopped up all the spilled fuel, readjusted the floats, and commenced on firing the car. Well she backfired real good and the carb flashed and a small fire started. My brother reached back and grabbed a rag to snuff the flames but before I could tell him to stop, he managed to put out a carb fire with a t-shirt well soaked in gasoline. Not having an extinguisher handy, I ran outside and grabbed a garden hose and put it on a real wide fan mist and put the fire out. We then got the shop vac out and suctioned all the water out of the carb, turned hte key again, and she started right up and idled at 800rpm. We both shrugged and still laugh about it to this day. Lesson Learned: I now have a fire extinguisher handy in the garage.
Last summer I had just swapped a good th350 into by 69 Skylark a few days before, and wanted to show what the "weak buick" could do compated to my brother's 5.9 Dodge. Took it out on a backroad for a burnout contest, wasted my brother's truck with an 85 yard non-posi burnout.. Point proven. Thought I'd drive it home to him not to underestimate the old buick, so time for another burnout.. Started nice, lots of smoke, them bam! Ripped the tread off the right rear (thought the tire blew out) and put a baseball size hole in my lower quarterpanel where it hit while coming off. :ball: Lesson learned.. it dont pay to show off.:Smarty:
OK, fine. I'll go again. A friend of mine was painting a Honda CRX for some girl in his dad's pole barn/ makeshift paintbooth. I was just hanging out and actually got to paint and clearcoat the roof because I'm tall and have really long arms. Well, we were just talking and whatever when a bug landed right in the middle of the roof, and got stuck in the fresh paint. I tried to just grab the bug without getting into the paint, and, aside from it's legs, I got the bug out. My friend noticed a little bit of paint on my fingertips from retrieving the bug, and he hands me a paper towel. Obviously, the paper towel was for my fingers, but I wadded it up and dabbed it onto the roof to wipe off the bug legs that were still in the paint. As soon as I touched the paint with the paper towel, I froze. It was like stepping on a land mine!! I was stuck and didn't know what to do about it. My friend is glaring at me from across the roof of the car, and we're all freaking out!!! We tried to fill the crater in with paint and clearcoat, but you could see the edges of my mistake. -Josh
I have already posted in another thread so I'll just send you there. Always remember that if your radiator has a small leak, don't forget to check the level before you embark on a road trip. ou: I'm famous for having parts left over.....o No: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?t=197689
Probably some repeats here but it saves me the time of retyping my own screw-ups. http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?t=192628
