The Iceman Saga brought to mind several mistakes I have made thu the years. What is your interesting/funny/informative/breathtaking event of bad wrenchmanship?

 

yeas ago i had a holden (isuzu) gemini. HOT engine...stroker crank, 13:1 compression, ported head, twin webbers, avgas etc etc etc.

anyway one day i bought some longer intake trumpets/stacks for the webers and aparently i neglected to tighten all the bolts tightly. while driving one of the bolts worked itself loose and found its way into the intake manifold and into the combustion chamber!!!

smashed a piston, gouged a hole in the cylinder wall and destroyed the head

 

okay since I could fill a whole thread on my own with my exploits . I am going to leave this thread alone until the bleeding stops on the current wound.

 

Don't worry, ice, your airbox was a ticking time bomb anyway. Early box with no diffuser, wrong plug wires madly arcing all over the engine compartment, you know...

 

waiiiiit a minute .. those were new wires and bosch to boot.... they worked great .. when ... um .... er.... plugged in properly....

 

Well.....there was that time I turned my targa top into a 20lb kite or the time I tore my nose open with it and got a nasty scar out of it.

As for bad wrenchmenship.....well I once patched a hole in the muffler with some sheet metal and tie wraps. It sort of worked but apparently it wasn't good enough to pass safety inspection.

I am sure there are others I will remember soon enough.

 

I once forgot to torque the flywheel bolts on a Mini Cooper S. It departed the vehicle at an upward angle while at speed. It came through the windshield and landed in the back seat. At least I didn't lose it....

 

Well I'm obviously just going to have to try harder because other than not tightening lug nuts I haven't done anything serious stupid . , . Yet.

Ian - on the road in Atlanta via Blackberry

 

lucky you didnt wear it!!!

i've seen some nasty pics of what can happen when a flywheel enters the cabin

 

---Marty--- WOW, I think you are going to take the checkerd flag in this one. Hope your spectacular bit of misjudgement does not scare off more stories. Glad you lived to wrench another day.

 

wow Marty, decapitation by flywheel would not be a good thing.

About 20 yrs ago I had an old MG Midget. It was my first car, beautiful, had authentic wire wheels w/ knock-off center hubs and all....... but the horrendous design of the front steering spindles / kingpins on these old MGs were infamous for causing worn-out bushings and resulting sloppy steering and clunking road behavior.

So my brilliant idea was to swap out the symmetrical part of the driver's side spindle assy. with an identical & well-preserved piece from a parts car. Long story short, the exchange worked fine except that the replacement parts were from the passenger side of the MG parts car....... in my ignorance I re-assembled the suspension, slid my original wire wheel onto the new hub splines and hammered the new knock-off into place.

Soon after, taking a victory lap up I-71.... and the blasted LF wire wheel separated from the car--- worked its way off the splines & the wheel proceeded to pass me on the left berm as the Midget slammed down onto the lower control arm at 60mph. Knucklehead 18 year-old kid I was--- wholly oblivious to the basic requirement that a driver's side knock-off wheel must use a LEFT-HAND threaded hub and knock-off. No accident or damage except grinding off half the sway bar link. what an ijiot!

 

But I've heard that these English cars are so durable and rugged that they can keep on going even if they lose their wheels and flywheel. It's only the electrical system that cripples them

 

I was using a long pipe as breaker bar to loosen the oil filter (tightened by the dealership) on my VW Jetta not thinking about where my head is incase the bar slipped off.

All I remember is the oil filter cup slipping off and seeing stars for a few seconds

I am sure glad the pipe was only hollow aluminum.

3 nails, 2 addtional oil filter wrenchs, a drill bit and plenty of swearing helped me remove it.

John

 

I had a related British motoring experience as a student. Doing 30mph in rush-hour city traffic across a bridge the left front wheel of my 1973 Morris Mini van (still got it!) came off .... My bright yellow Mini skidded in sparks and luckily came to a halt without causing an accident or further damage to the car. The wheel however, proceeded across the bridge and hit the front of a parked bus full of people. It was the most embarrassing moment walking over there taking the wheel off the bus-driver with 100s of on-lookers
I then collected the wheel nuts I forgot to tighten the night before, now scattered around the bridge, and eventually got the wheel back on.

 

Interesting how most of these "incidents" involve British cars. If these posts help to prevent future mishaps, it was worth the experience.