Great! Watch me crack my trans in half. Can't say I've seen that one.

Good thread deadphoenix52.

I have a feeling there are quite a few members that need just a little nudge to share.

$5000 fails, and engine bay fires FTW

 

Yeah, it wasn't a major error like some of these on here. I just recently blew an engine on my friend's BMW. She comes over and says the temp gauge is reading hot. I drive it around and as soon as it climbs I pull off and feel the radiator hoses which all feel normal and pressurized. No coolant loss, so I think there's no way that a 15 year old water pump sheared and quit circulating water. Sure enough it was the water pump, and I feel like an idiot still for it. Luckily found an engine for it and dropped it in there, and put a new water pump, radiator and thermostat in there.

 

well, i have one now... i just sold my 82 gsl to my buddy. He came and got the car last night arought 11:30. I had to replace the trans this weekend because reverse didnt work. I got it all back together and the starter didnt work. After hours of dicking around i found the problem to be a bad battery cable. All is good, car drives and works as it should. Half hour after he leaves my house i get a phone call. Three wheels are on the car, one is 300 yards into a soybean field!!! Thank god no one was hurt, we found the tire, and no police happened to be driving by! Car is basically fine, but the fender is ding'd up a bit. I was in a hurry trying to get the starter working and only hand tightened the front wheels! That will NEVER happen again.

 

^ epic bump.

nice. glad no one was injured.

 

It's been long enough that I hardly remember the noises the car was making, but my wife's accord wagon was making a ticking/clicking sound while under way and it would get worse on a left hander. Talked to two, TWO mind you, transmission shops who both said "new transmission" or "rebuild" to the tune of $2500 at the cheapest to $3500 from the numb-nuts who would not put in anything but genuine Honda stuff. I'm thinking, "It's only a $2000 car with 225k on it. Dump it." Problem is it is a wagon and is perfect for us with the kids, weekend trips, etc. and they are hard to find. I've checked wheels for bearing problems, no problem there upon grabbing wheel and rocking it. (Both mechanics had it up on a lift and checked that too.) So I have a buddy in a town a few hours away and he used to be a Honda tech. I buy a $500 used tranny, drop the old one, we install the new one along with a few other items to be done over a weekend and give it a try. Noise is still there. Spent 500+parts+$for buddy+fluid, etc. Total is over $800. I turn to my buddy and say, "Well, I guess we may as well replace the bearings since that is all it could be. Less than $200 later and just a couple hours and... guess what? Problem fixed.

I guess the only redeeming part of this is knowing I didn't spend $3500 for numb-nuts to replace the transmission with a GENUINE HONDA for no damn reason.

 

I've got two that I probably shouldn't admit to but here goes:

1. Was at a friend's house one day and decided to tighten the rear brake shoes against the drums because they weren't making enough contact. I take the wheels off, take the drums off, adjust the shoes and put it all back together. I drive off. About 10 miles away I reach work, by which time the car has started shaking side-to-side pretty violently for some reason. I get out, touch one of the lug-bolts on the driver's rear tire and it falls out in my hand! I had hand-tightened them while the rear end was in the air and forgotten to torque them down when the car was back on its wheels! I was a lucky sonofabitch that day!

2. I had three used 12a engines that I wanted to take apart to salvage enough parts to build one. I've got the first engine stripped to just the block, oil pan and strainer removed, sitting on cardboard and chained down so it won't move. I've got a 3ft breaker bar and the flywheel socket ready to take that freakin' nut off. I place the breaker bar, get a friend to stand on the engine and try to turn. It's not coming off. Oh well, these things were "torqued onto the engine by King Kong himself" so I'll just have to try harder. I try harder. No luck. I finally stand on the end of the breaker bar (so that's 3ft * 200+lbs = 600ftlbs of torque) and it budges a little bit. So I jump. And jump again. And then my friend points out that we're turning it "righty tighty" instead of "lefty loosey" and asks if it's reverse threaded. Nope. I just tightened that nut on there with easily over 700ft/lbs of torque. Dammit.

 

While trying to hypermile my 88 regal when I was 16, I would shift the column lever from drive to neutral, the last time I ever tried it, I managed to skip right past neutral and strait Into reverse at 40mph. Needless to say, loud clunk , immediate stalled engine, and she never ran quite right after then

 

Hahaha, damn that sucks.
I went to autozone to get the 54mm nut and realized i got the 54mm outside diameter nut by accident.. wasted $20.. so i then used the blow torch and a vice with a bit of leverage to get it off.

These stories are quite bad...
I'm 18 now and when i first got my learners licence in South Australia two years ago, i had a day off school and both of my parents were at work.
My step-mum left her BMW 528i at home and i was really hungry so i decided to drive to the shops up the street.
After i got my food and was ready to go back home, i couldn't figure out how to turn the car back on! i sat there for about 20 mins stressing out and trying every-which way to make it start up. Then it clicked! i had forgot to put it back into 'park' and press the brake while i crank it. I had it started up finally and was so relieved that when i was pulling out into the intersection to head back home, i put it in reverse and floored it!
A split second later i knew i had fucked up really really bad... I had the middle of the BMW teetering on the edge of a 10 ft drop. Lucky for me, a passer by with a pick-up noticed me and i told him how i didn't have my license and it was my parents car so with that out the way he hooked the front of the bmw up to a really thick rope and he floored it trying to pull me out.
After about 3 seconds of pulling, the rope snapped and i was beginning to come to terms with just how much trouble i had put myself in. People were coming out of their homes and i had an audience of about 20 people.. i was really surprised no cops had shown up. The guy in the pick-up said he would goto subaru around the corner and get his while he was on his lunch break and get a huge chain while he was there. sure enough, they were back about 5 minutes later and they pulled me out and i gave them $50 each and i got on my way home! to this day, two years later, my parents have never discovered the scratches on the bottom of their car.

 

This is the next most stupid thing i've done with cars, as far as i can remember..

I had bought a Holden vx from a wrecking yard when i was 14 for a project.
When i was 16 i had fixed all its front-end damage and it was a really great car to drive, except i was on such a tight budget at the time, i was driving it without getting a wheel alignment.
It was truly a nice car and i loved it. I got it for $1200 and i was trying to sell it for $6000 when i had done the work on it.. one day when i was 17, i was drinking up with a bunch of mates and we decided we needed music but we didn't have any.. i was the only one with a car and i agreed to drive to my mates house about 10 miles away to get an mp3 player.. on the way back, it was raining, and i had about 20 beers in my system so i wasn't exactly thinking clearly.. i kinda had it in my head that i was a race car driver or something and was taking these windy roads to their limit. i spun-out thanks to the speed, wheel alignment, bald tires and wet roads at about 60miles an hour and went into the on-coming lane.. facing a new toyota pickup with a trailer, i managed to drift around it using the tiny amount of control i still had in the car. then i was still going about the same speed, if not faster since i was going down hill.. i was then facing huge trees, so i slammed the brakes on and hit a sedan full of a family. it was dark and my engine was still running, i was about to get outside and do what i could to help, but since i was in shock, i took the advice of my friends and drove away. my car ended up having more damage to it than it did when i forst got it so i sold it for $1500, but i feel guilty that i never knew what happened to that family i hit.. if i did choose to step out of the car, i would have most certainly been thrown in jail for a long time and wouldn't have been able to get my license for about 10 years and had thousands of $ worth of fines to pay... Needless to say, i lost my license from speeding a few months later and almost two years later i found out i have a brain tumor causing me to have minor seizures and fits so i'm never driving a car under the influence again!

The end

 

My horror story only goes back about 3 years ago. I'd finally got my 85 to a really good, clean, and dependable condition (except for the paint job). I decided it was time to start "upgrading" the car so i started by replacing the busted front shocks with tokico blues.

After a whole ordeal of trouble getting the damn things to ship, involving my friend's dad who at the time worked for fedex, he had to drive well out of his way because some idiots decided to ship it to a different place instead. I finally was able to take some time and install the shocks. it was a Saturday night, and i HAD to make the local rx7 meet the next day. i had never replaced any shocks on any car prior to this, but i read up a lot on it and i felt quite comfortable with the task ahead. took the old ones out, installed the new ones no problem, probably record time for a newby at about 20 minutes each. including some front lowering springs that i had got off a buddy prior to this.

about 2 months later i noticed the unmistakable knocking noise of bad shocks. I took them back off and sure enough they were busted again, my mistake: some people recommend a bit of anti-freeze or oil in the cartridge to dissipate the heat. well in the dark and the midst of all that had happened i put oil in the cartridge as i was out of anti-freeze but didn't realize that i had put old gasoline-infected oil that previously came out of my 7 and it ate up the seals on the strut and let the gas out .... my $120 dollar mistake.