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Fri Sep 12, 2008 3:50 pm

ive took 6 hours to assemble a custom rollcage on a toyota, and wore just welding goggles. the mask they had kept pinching my ear, so i used the goggles. BIG MISTAKE.

i had a buddy help remove my engine, and in the process one wheel came off to pull the engine out of the side.

we forgot to tighten the lug nuts..... two miles later, the wheel flew off.
FLEW off.

big mistake of going custom instead of resto.

biggest mistake ever.... not doing what i originally wanted to do, which was to get a baja bug and beat it up. i got into street rides, and spending $$.

Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:23 am

Sold a 70 camper with blown engine on craigslist. All replies went into junk mail. Dropped price a couple times before I looked into my junk mail. Took a lot less than I could have. :(

Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:38 am

beatleeater wrote: Sold a 70 camper with blown engine on craigslist. All replies went into junk mail. Dropped price a couple times before I looked into my junk mail. Took a lot less than I could have. :(

:lol: That's a winner right there. ;)

Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:54 am

Drove my 71 Super on 3 cylinders after cyl #2 kept blowing out the spark plug. Plugged the hole with a spark plug, filled the indentation with JB weld, pulled the plug wire to it and ran it for another 10,000 miles. Sold it to a friend who wanted to restore it (don't think she has) but it was still running when she got it.

Same bug, shredded the belt, used duct tape to "make" another, drove it another 5-6 miles to a service station that had the proper sized belt. Always carried a spare after that.

Tried to mount the spare of my 76 Bay under the front of the bus on the "stone guard pan". Mounted nice and pretty, drove it on the highway and right about 45 mph the front of the bus started vibrating and got worse quickly. Pulled over and the pan was seriously bent, if I had kept going it would have ripped off, I'm sure. :shock:

All those happened 15+ years ago... I'm marginally smarter now. :wink:

Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:19 pm

beatleeater wrote: Sold a 70 camper with blown engine on craigslist. All replies went into junk mail. Dropped price a couple times before I looked into my junk mail. Took a lot less than I could have. :(

That almost also happened to myself and my girlfriend when we were selling her Beetle.

Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:36 pm

I used to trust the rear hatch struts. Damn near knocked me out the last time. Fool me three times, shame on me.... :lol:

Props... Yo

Wed Sep 17, 2008 6:52 am

I decided to drive my 74 Super home the night after I bought it, I found out that the lights didn't work properly, the windshield wiper blades were shot, and the only brakes it had was the handbrake. Talk about an adventurous drive home in the rain!

Wed Sep 17, 2008 7:03 am

I somehow managed to put my right rear wheel on backwards, once.

Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:20 pm

The throttle cable broke on my baha bug so I sat on the rear bumper running the throttle while a friend drove my bug home. I also had a fuel pump go bad so I hung a small gas can above the carb and gravity fed the engine and drove home. Only in a bug!

Dave

Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:42 pm

Using an angle grinder without a face shield on and had the piece of work get caught on the grinding wheel and flip up into my face. Hit me right in the upper lip and broke it open. Never again will I grind without using a face shield. Oh yea, done the welding in shorts thing too. While I'm at it, I forgot to torque the lug nuts on a baja I was driving, the rear wheel fell off and rolled all the way down the hill we were going down. A guy in a quad picked it up and brought it back to me and asked if I had lost anything, I couldn't stop laughing, good times though.

Steve

Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:59 pm

Its sept 81. First semester of trade school-auto mechanics, of course.
Decide to redo ALL the brakes on my 66 Impala. Didn't like the price
the shop quoted me, so decide / conned into doing it with my new friend and claasmate. His highschool graduation gift is a full set of tools and the
biggest box I had ever seen at the time. Its all snap-on too, as his father and grandfather were master mechanics for a big GM dealser at the time.
We spend all day and into the nite, finish the job and even bed the pads in( 4 wheel drums). Father even goes over the job with us, using his own checklist. Gives us a big thumbs up-He's so F*#&ing proud!!!
Driving home on the Belt Parkway near Coney Island (lived in Brooklyn, then), still remember passing this done up76 Coupe Deville. Little history
for the young ones- the style then was chrome basket wire wheels ( Appliance), black limo window tint, boomerang tv antenna, hand painted
pinstriping with a champagne glass painted on the trunk as well. I'm just about to honk and wave at the Caddy, when I see something bouncing across the three lanes and bounce over the guardrail into oncoming traffic. The terrible schreeching noise and my chevy drops on the right and pulls toward the concrete barrier and stops 20 feet behind a broken
ambulance. We are a section of the highway thats a bridge, across from the big tank ( for those from the area!) . Tha ambulance broke its rear
axle and had been waiting about two hours for a tow. Ten minutes later,
the wrecker arrives, hooks me and pushes the ambulance to its depot.
1.30 in the morning, he pulls up to my house, with all the lights going,
refusing to unhook the car till I pay him the $ 75.00. Have to wake my dad and asks for the money, which he gives me-he's half asleep. All the
neighbors are outside because of the sound of the rig and the lights, they
all are about to go in, when my father EMERGES fully dressed to the nines. He is now questioning me about what the hell happened,and the 75. He's screaming that I should have just put the spare on, and nursed it home.
I didn't caused it scared the shit out of me, especially with all the sparks.
We never found the tire, or read about any casulties- I mean it BOUNCED
across the highway. It took me a week to find a replacement wheels- it had 14" camaro ralleys. The drum although was flat spotted, actually
lasted a while, and hung in the garage wall for years after. Me and my
dad used to laff about it after, he was always amazed how I only waited ten minutes for the truck.
Unforunately, it was not the last off my BRITEST moments, some day I tell about losing the rear tire off my bug on a high school running track and the cops. Hope you get a kick out of it.

Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:16 am

I tightened the lug nuts on the left rear tire of my bug with a small ratchet wrench. I lost the tire while leaving a VW meet I was attending. :oops:

Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:46 am

I am guilty of some fairly common errors but they still SUCKED:
-forgot to tighten a rear tire and saw it rolling past me at 25 mph
-shorted out a Compufire by swapping the leads to the coil
-grinding without goggles, tiny metal shard in eye
-first time I used Corroless got it on my arms and hands and had an interview later in day... the label is correct, it is hard to remove from skin!

I probably have mentally blocked out at least 2 more...

What is equally important is what I do about the above errors.
I double check all lugs before putting away the clicker wrench, I labelled the coil with a visible + and -, I have a set of goggles in the grinder case, etc.

Social Darwinism can be a bitch...

Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:52 am

I thought of another, I was removing a nice pair of seats and the hardware for the adjuster out of a 73, and the long spring slipped out of the needle nose pliers, it wouldn't have been bad if the tip of my finger hadn't been in the way! It sliced almost to the bone, luckily it was like 30 degrees that day, so it didn't bleed much. lesson learned!

Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:00 pm

Cool thread. I actually took some notes and will do some checks tomorrow.

I was changing brake pads - tried to pull the spring with pliers. I was pulling hard, very hard ... the pliers slid of the spring and I pulled them right into my face (thick eye-brow in blue, black and green, looked kind of wicked though). :twisted:
That was maybe 3 years ago.
A couple of weeks ago I heavily pull a wrench, the nut came of the bolt and and the head of the wrench ended on my upper lip/front tooth. My tooth survived luckily.
NEVER PULL ANYTHING TOWARD YOU WHEN YOU WORK ON THE CAR!

Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:08 am

A few yaers ago I was a pizza delivery boy, I had an old corrado and my front right tire was completely shot, but I didn't have money to buy a new one until I finished the night... I was going on a delivery way out in the country and a big truck in front of me was going 35 in a 55... so I decided to pass him.... got up beside him and blew my tire.... never felt worse about my life.... my girlfriend had to pick me up and take me to the house, and to make it worse I left their 2 liter of pepsi in the corrado... I wish I had a better way to end this story.... but I dont

Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:33 am

Summer 1989 or 90?...maybe 91.
Me and 6 friends in the old 71 bus to go tubing down the Apple River.
Pulled into a gas station in with a heavy gas leak same time as the gas truck was there filling the tanks.
Trail of gas on the ground and a puddle under the bus.
Couldnt find the leak source, so I had a buddy hit the starter as I crouched behind the bus to watch.
As soon as he hit the key the whole ass end of the bus was on fire, the ground was on fire- I was on fire as I was standing in the puddle.
Everyone around us either jumped in their cars or ran- it was actually pretty impressive. I got the fire out with the extinguisher from the station- had to get a rope tow home and rewire, new carb, etc.
That damn casting plug on the carb had blown out- fire messed up my new Nikes.

Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:15 am

Atlantic wrote: Cool thread. I actually took some notes and will do some checks tomorrow.

I was changing brake pads - tried to pull the spring with pliers. I was pulling hard, very hard ... the pliers slid of the spring and I pulled them right into my face (thick eye-brow in blue, black and green, looked kind of wicked though). :twisted:
That was maybe 3 years ago.
A couple of weeks ago I heavily pull a wrench, the nut came of the bolt and and the head of the wrench ended on my upper lip/front tooth. My tooth survived luckily.
NEVER PULL ANYTHING TOWARD YOU WHEN YOU WORK ON THE CAR!

Oh, NOW you tell me! 12 years ago, I was pulling a hose out from inside the rear wheel well in my '72 bug. The damn thing didn't want to come out so I pulled harder. It finally broke free and I fell backwards. While falling, my wrist slid along the edge of the fender. I still have a scar where the fender scooped a chunk of meat out of my wrist.

Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:24 pm

moxnix wrote: Summer 1989 or 90?...maybe 91.
Me and 6 friends in the old 71 bus to go tubing down the Apple River.
Pulled into a gas station in with a heavy gas leak same time as the gas truck was there filling the tanks.
Trail of gas on the ground and a puddle under the bus.
Couldnt find the leak source, so I had a buddy hit the starter as I crouched behind the bus to watch.
As soon as he hit the key the whole ass end of the bus was on fire, the ground was on fire- I was on fire as I was standing in the puddle.
Everyone around us either jumped in their cars or ran- it was actually pretty impressive. I got the fire out with the extinguisher from the station- had to get a rope tow home and rewire, new carb, etc.
That damn casting plug on the carb had blown out- fire messed up my new Nikes.
Hi, Neighbor!
I'm in NE Minneapolis, just down the hill from you.

I picked up a gutted 60 Sundial to use as a trailer for an out-of-state move, and as a project once I got settled.
I headed out, but about 5 or 6 miles down the Interstate, the car started struggling to maintain speed. Even flooring it wouldn't speed up. So I pulled over to check things out, and discovered the engine in the bus was hot! :shock:
I'd left home with the bus in gear, and it was seizing from spinning whatever RPM 60mph is in 2nd.
It had a knock when I put it in to move, but I'm sure it was pretty well ruined after that.

Wed Oct 01, 2008 6:07 am

Bsquare- Aha you would be the Squareback I've seen tooling up and down Johnson St?- Very nice! I also checked it out in teh show in June.
I have a softspot for Squares- my folks bought a red 70 new and pops drove it for 14 years (still running sold to ARCC student for $200)
See ya around town
Stefan