mine is cheap kingchrome, purchased from bursons. to keep my ISO rating it needs to be calibrated (by a professional) each year and for the last 3 years it has come back with no problems, and thats pretty much a daily user
phew! for a minute i thought it was gonna be one of those "the trans wouldnt sit right so i did up the belhousing bolts hoping it would pop into place and ended up smashing my pump drive in the trans" my mate did that once.
i have done two stupid thing: i had a supercharged corolla with a busted alternator. So as i was driving the car died so i pulled over and decided to buy a new battery. Got the new battery and connected it the wrong way. Even though i thought it was friggin hard to put the clips on (one is smaller then the other) not even looking as to whether we were doing the right thing, we decide to smash the terminals on the battery. I ended up frying 2 of the main fuses and melted some wires. I thought i fried the Stinger v4244 that was in the car. I s**t myself. Another time when i was younger, i had my mums car. The engine was hot and i swang by my mates house who had a s13 turbo. he was just degreasing his motor. Hes like try some! so i did. I went sick with the stuff and the whole engine bay lit up in flames. Lucky there was a hose near by. Again, i s**t myself. LOL
ok, not quite as good as the above. but..... I swapped the front half of a tailshaft to get a good centre bearing, changed universals, got oit all back together and.... it was too long! forgot to measere! pulled all apart and put the old one back in! Oh but th worst, I forgot. me and a mate rebuilt a 186, all new bits got it all together, drove it for a couple of hundred ks and the big ends were rattling, turns out we got he big end and mains torques mixed up (supposed to be about 135 for mains and 45 for big ends) no wonder it didnt last long!
yeah it was a 6 and i had undone the blots and left the starter siting on the egine mounts it just got jamed up lol
Stupidest thing i ever did was talking on the phone to the girlfriend whilst setting up a battery to charge with the phone held in between the shoulder and the face talking about subjects that annoyed me, end result was putting Negative on Positive and Positive on Negative and watching a flash discharge running all the way doing the active cable into the charger and blowing it up. I struggle.
^I've done that. Same day I drove a Falcon ute off a jack and cracked the sump with it. That was the shittest day.
My latest adventure. Jack up the car set up stands stick wheels under it - bricks at the rear wheels. Grab all tools needed place them under the car. With lowered cars it takes the boot jack first, Then the jack under the K frame. Remove all jacks and set down onto car stands. Right ready. No... Forgot to loosen the wheel nuts first.
i have a box of 8mm alpha-numerical stamps which i use to punch the 17 digit vin numbers into import cars. so there is 26 letters in the alphabet, and 10 numbers 36 in total. i use the first stamp, hit it slighty off-center and it goes flying into the engine bay somewhere... "oh FFS" says i, as i peer in to the engine bay to see if i can spot it, anyway, my lazy elbow nudges the WHole box of 36 stamps into the engine bay after it. nice.
Haha, its cool to see so many stories. I havent had much of a history with fixing my car, but I do have two stories. My car was overheating something serious from air let in the system from a cracked heater tap. Me and my father replaced the heater tap with a pipe connecting the coolant going out of the engine to the coolant going back in. The genius decides to check the main pipe going to the top of the engine and disconnects from the radiator side not realising that I was there. The massive pressure catapulted the Overheated coolant right at my chest instantly giving me second degree burns which burnt through my shirt. Ive still got some skin that turns red with heat on my chest. Also i was having a looksee on the other side of the dash fascia. I broke the Hazard switch inwards. 80 dollars or auto electician fees and some heavy duty clips, and its fixed.
My mates father was working in the engine bay with a screw driver in his hand. The gas struts gave way, hit the back of his head and the screwdriver went through his eye.
Yeah happened many years ago when i was younger. Obviously he's completely blind in that eye. I tell you what im always careful to this day about having stabbing objects in my hand under a bonnet...
Easy fix - I never have to worry about this because I have A BONNET STAND! Old fashioned, but trustworthy I also know a guy who stabbed himself in the eye with a screwdriver, just a careless slip while working on an S13 from memory. His wasn't serious, it went around the eye I think, and all recovered ok. Sam
I was replacing the turtle shell engine cover with splits, as I was tightening up the nuts with my trusty Holden Interior Screw and Socket Leathermen set (has all the screwdriver heads for all the screws in a VT/VX) and the socket fell off, down into the engine bay. Heard a big metal clunk and now I think it's a permanent fixture between the sump and the sump guard. I'd dropped that same socket almost the same spot when I had a V6 VT, but as it's a smaller engine with more room, and no sump guard plate, it fell through, eventually. Back when I was first driving I had a 1974 Mk1 Ford Escort. It was such a fun car. Well, it had a 2L Pinto engine and a small radiator, so it would regularly overheat. I had three radiator hoses split on that thing. I was working in the parts dept at a car dealership one day one of them split, I ordered the replacement hose and asked the mechanics to fit it during the day. Come the end of the day no-one had done so. If they had they would have discovered it wasn't the right hose. So at 7pm I'm in the parking lot with a razor blade, a torch and some coolant cutting this wrong hose to make it fit. I eventually get it connected, after being rained on for 45 minutes, fill the radiator with coolant and drive home. Just as I pull in my street the hose comes off, dumping coolant all along the road and up my driveway. Yay! Stupid thing here? Don't trust mechanics to do you a favour... ever. So, the next day is a weekend, thankfully, so I get my dad to buy the RIGHT hose and more coolant. Again, it's raining all day. Hooray for flat head screw hose clamps. Anyway, the flat head screwdriver slips out of the hose clamp, and into my left middle finger. Hurts like all hell. Covered in radiator coolant and sludge, raining, muddy because there's no concrete at my folk's place... and bleeding. I've still got the scar as a nice reminder of that weekend. I now HATE the smell of radiator coolant.
who else on here has stabbed a wire with their test-light to check for voltage, slipped and embedded the pointy end right into the soft pad of your finger?
i just brought a test light a few weeks back, took it out of its wrapper went to test a wire and you guessed it stabbed my finger.... i swear i should give up working on cars
hurts dont it? and takes about two days to heal. its no wonder the fusebox in my VK looks like a birds nest. my finger was swiss cheese after installing the alarm/central locking
