techman1

Driving home one weekend. Windows open, spring is in the air, spirited driving! Had the 993 about 6 months. Love this car, makes me feel young! Cute lady pulls up next to me, and points to the rear of the car. I can not hear clearly, all windows open, other cars and the new RSR mufflers. Thought she was saying "Cute car!"

Got home, revving the car in the garage, feeling young, and full of myself! My daughters come out to see what the commotion is, and start screaming "Oh no, what did you do?!!"

Turns out the lady in traffic was trying to let me know the taillight had fallen out, and was dangling by the wires, right in FRONT of the muffler! Big hole melted in the lens, and stuck to the muffler.

You could hear my ego crash from 3 houses away!

Mike J

I had this happen to me too - but the taillight was not damaged! I was driving up to a Porsche event (quite quickly) in the interior of British Columbia, and Rob C. was behind me. He was trying to contact me on the two way radio - but I was too busy on the neat corners on the road - so I ignored him. Turned out my left taillight had fallen out and was dangling by its cord. I later stopped after the corners and sheepishly but it back in - no damage to the bumper or the light though! Lucky!

chaoscreature

When I was working as a professional mechanic I made a few mistakes.

The most embarrasing one was doing a brake job on some ladies car. It was a simple pad swap which doesn't flag much time so I tried to get it done quickly.
We used the in ground lifts with the padded rack to lift uni-body cars, well to get over it you need a bit of momentum. I gave the car a bit of gas, went over the ramp but forgot to pump the brakes... I madly stabbed at the brakes with my right foot and searched for the E-brake with my left (it was a hand-brake) to no avail and ended up backing her car into another customers car right in front of both customers! Fortunately the cars were plastic and no damage was done, but holy crap that was embarrasing!

Marc Shaw

A few years ago I was very proud of myself having just done an oil change on my - new to me - 911.....that is until I started it up and it puked most of the oil on the floor as I cross-threaded the filter.

Marc

geolab

Two weeks ago was installing headlight leveling on my Litronics. Noticed my headlight **** bulb was fried,
went and purchased another one. At the shop, the seller told me to try the teeny weeny leds, so I took some leds as well.
replaced all my **** lights to leds so that i could try them at night. Headlight-defrost-front fog-rear fog.
At night I found that they were dim, and the rear fog light **** does not light when I pull the ****, neither did the rear fog lights...
Next day changed back to filament bulbs, still the rear fog light did not light when pulled.

Dismantled
rear center light,
passenger seat,
Front fuse box,
half the dashboard

6 hours later, PST2 testing all harnesses, cables everywhere....no avail.

I suddenly remembered that for the rear fog lights to work, you need to put ON the front fog lights.
pulled the front fog ****, and then the rear fog ****, lights on both **** and rear center reflector

Was so pi**ed, I left everything as is, came back the second day to clean the mess.

Nollie

After dropping my engine and putting everything back together I would get an intermittent CEL regarding a cylinder 1 or 5 misfire, usually during high rev situations. I made it through most of an autocross season like this, then someone posted a similar problem and it had to do with the sparkplug wires being out of order. I went and checked, sure enough 1 and 5 were switched; my pride was bruised a bit, but the car ran better.

badabing

One of my first ever attemps at a DIY was changing a distributor cap on a 1986 560 SEL. This was long ago, the car was only a few years old, and probably didn't even need it. Just wanted to see if I could do it.

Well, I did it and I was so proud of myself until I slammed the hood closed only to find that I left the old part on top of the air cleaner and it practically went through the hood.