Whats your most embarasing mechanical messup?

[tom slick]

these aren't too bad but i think they are funny. one time i needed to spray the carb with some carb cleaner. i carefully lined up my finger with the exact spot that needed cleaning, eased the nozzle down with finger and promply shot myself in the eye with it. i wasn't paying attention to where the nozzle was pointing. it burned for about 10 minutes and i learned my lesson the hard way.

a better story is when i had my wife help me bleed the brakes on my pickup after having the whole system apart. she was the "pumper" i was the "bleeder". she had never done such a procedure and didn't really have any idea what we were doing so i explained the routine. she starts pumping away then holds, i get nothing out of the bleeder. pumps, holds, nothing, again, again, again, 30 mins later nothing, no pedal at all and no fluid from the bleeder. hmmmmmm lots of air in the system i thought. send her out to get a mighty vac vaccuum bleeder, that'll fix it! while she's gone i push on the brake pedal and it has a small amout of pump up, that's odd. think about the problem for a bit then relize the answer, improperly trained assistant! she doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission and was pushing on the clutch pedal!!! it was confirmed when she returned with the mighty vac.

 

[TooManyWheels]

At the risk of turning a funny thread sad, after the post about unlabeled products, I HAVE to say this.

Whatever you do, DO NOT put industrial products in your kitchen refrigerator. A few years back, the daughter of my wife's boss was at the house of one of her playmates. Needing refreshment, the two girls got a container of chilled water out of the refrigerator. Unfortunately, it wasn't water, it was industrial strength hydrogen peroxide. The neighbor girl got serious scarring in her throat, but I believe she lived. The boss's daughter did not.

It is easy to think these things only happen to someone else, or in one of those "perfect storm" situations when a variety of "unlikely" factors magically occur in unison to cause a tragedy. This brought home to me how easy it is for these to happen.

 

[TooManyWheels]

On reflection, I have to add a couple more personal incidents which are funny now, but could have been bad.

When I was a kid I would ride my bicyle up the street and work on a circle track car of a neighbor. The style at the time was to wall off the rear seat area with aluminum, with a vertical panel behind the driver, turning into a horizontal surface at the window line. The battery on this car was under this compartment, with no access hatch. Since the car had no generator, the battery would be put on the charger all week. One of my jobs, since I was small was to crawl under there and disconnect and reconnect the battery.

You can imagine what happened, with explosive gasses gathering under a shroud. I shorted the terminals and the battery blew up right in my face. I was fortunate enough to be near water, and my eyesight is fine, but that was way too close for comfort.

And then there was that time I caught my hair on fire, trying to get a better look at the pipe I welding on at the muffler shop.....

 

[Matt89]

This is really stupid.

I was playing around with the drum brakes on the back of a Honda Civic. I was fascinated by how they worked (perfectly so why was I playing with them?).

I told my wife to step on the brake pedal (I forget why), but forgot that I had one of the drums off. The brake shoes went out all the way so I couldn't get the drum back on. After about 2 ours of cursing and trying different things I found the adjuster thing, got a screwdriver, and moved the pads in enough to get the drum back on. I have an engineering degree.

Of course, at 30K miles I also was fascinated with the distributor cap and decided to "inspect" it. Broke the screw putting it back on and had to limp back to the dealership for a new cap.

Of course nothing compares to the time I decided to do an oil change on our new van outside on a windy day. Did you know a good breeze can move and/or disperse the stream of oil coming out of the drain plug? Now I do. I felt like a freakin' rodeo clown with the drain pan and a roll of paper towels. If there's enough oil spilled you don't even need to take towels off the roll...just use the whole thing.

 

[DJ]

Loose fuel line at the rail after installing the motor, disconnected coil wire so I could prime the oiling system. Guess what happens when you have fuel squiring at 50psi and a coil jumping to ground.

. I was prepared so the only damage was a toasted hood liner and a couple vacuum lines. Ever since I don't just push the lines on I also pull back to make sure they seated.

My worst home disaster was one time the wife asked me to preheat the oven, so I turned it on and went to the library a couple minutes pass and I smeel plastic burning. Suddenly it strikes me there might have been something in the oven, we commonly put stuff there because our dog is LARGE and though he is very good we prefer not to tempt him. Well I open the oven to see flames, a box of baking soda was not enough so out came the little extinguisher we kept for just such things. Once it was out I found that there had been a tuperware container with cake in it and a loaf of bread, the tuperware had COMPLETELY liquified run through two racks and was on the element burning. You have no idea how hard it is to get plastic off a rack and the element cost me $50.