What is the worst mistake you made doing your own wrenching?

Worst mistake I made was thinking replacing the catback on my Subaru would be easy. It's just 2 bolts....

2 bolts that underwent years of heat cycles, covered in road salt.

They didn't acknowledge a week of daily pb blaster. Heated them with a torch, nothing.
Pounded socket on, breaker bar immediately rounded the nuts off.

Ok cutting time!
Of course my sawzall can't get an angle, so I spend what seemed like forever with a handsaw and finally get the bolts cut on the nut side.

Still can't pound the bolts through, they have become fused with the flange.

20 minutes of drilling, three hours total and I finally get the fucker off. 3 hours to remove 2 bolts, then 15 minutes installing the new exhaust.

 

Vice grips...to take it off...

 

I learned 3 lessons all in the same day.

1. Brake fluid is flammable.
2. How to use a fire extinguisher.
3. How to remove shit stains from my underwear.

It was a bone headed move and nearly burned down my ATTACHED garage.

 

We all have said shit shouldn't have done that .

 

Was being lazy working on my old motorcycle and set the tank on the seat frame. It fell off and put a big dent in an otherwise perfect tank. Ugh.

 

High amps in this case is not much.... 1 amp

Yes ONE amp...

Remember as voltage goes down, amps go up.

That transformer feeding your house might have a 5 to 10 amp fuse feeding your home at 200 amps, and probably several others as well, Depending on its rating. 7200v depending on your power companies system voltage, down To 120/240

 

At that point I'm of the opinion just throw the shitty drawers out. Underwear is cheap.

 

They were my lucky pair! lol

 

Maybe they weren't?

 

Fires also used to happen on unmodified VWs because the fuel filter would leak onto the distributer, I always moved it underneath on all my air cooled VWs.

 

And it did, right after it went through reverse.

 

Luckily this was the worst 1 for me. I broke & cross threaded 1 grade 8 seat bolt. Didn't want to deal with it so just went to a shop and had them take it out and rethread

 

My uncle was teaching me how to tune my ‘69 Valiant, he showed me how to connect the timing gun, then gave it to me and said point it at the pulley and to see timing marks on it. So I leaned over then put my hand on down on the car when I got zapped. I suppose I completed some circuit with that hand. My uncle casually says, “oh yeah, don’t touch the car.”

On my ‘83 SR5 Coupe it needed a timing belt and I decided it was something I could do. Wrong. I striped one of the bolt heads half way through the job and couldn’t drive my car till I figured out if I should go forward or put things back together as best I could. With my uncle having relocated out of state I ended up putting it back together and took it to a real machanic.

I look back and and am still glad to have tried. Up to that point I mostly only did oil, tires, greased, and flushed coolant. That timing belt was a bit much with the knowledge and tools I had.



Not mine, but close. Mine was two tone blue with aluminum wheels.

 

When I was a teenager I used transmission fluid for brake fluid in a Mustang I had....the seals all swelled up and locked the brakes up...

 

Uh, how? Car manufacturers put neutral between drive and reverse for a reason.

 

Its directly proportional. For example through a human body.
V =IR
If we are talking about for example step down/ up transformers then that applies.
Actually 0.1 amp can be lethal.

 

Man putting some of that stuff together will make a preacher kick out a stained glass window

 

Eh, maybe I was headed toward park, anyways, it was an exciting experience.

 

I lost my brakes once going down a slight incline and at the bottom of which was a T intersection. I was only doing about 8-10 mph, but I was about to hit a lady in a van. I jammed the shifter up into park to get it to stop. This was in a '98 Exploder. Loved that thing, even though I broke 3 door handles in 6 months. Eventually, the head gasket went and I parted it out.

 

Hah! Nice! I miss having a shit-box. I popped a brake line on a 87 Corolla AllTrak (station wagon looking thing with push button AWD, manual, fun as hell in the snow). I worked the downshift while my brother worked the e-brake. Managed not to hit anyone, coming off a freeway to a T, no cars but blew a red light. At least with a manual it was easy to get home!

lol, by the time it went to the yard, I had to crawl in the passenger side, only the floor vents worked, one window was plexiglass. The brake line was the killer, took a look under and was like "oh hey check out all the other rotted stuff", scrapped it, cleaned out the block, got like $350 back on a $500 car.

The good ole' days.