I just bought some grade 8 bolts for my frame. I bought 40 nuts and 40 lock washers. I bought 35 bolts. Doh. I guess you can't have to many extras but I paid for 40 bolts. I paid a dollar extra. Now what stupid mistakes have you guys done?

 

Gosh, I'd hate to ruin everyone's high opinion of me by actually admitting I have ever done anything stupid. Most of the stupid things I've done were a result of a lack of information and/or experience. There, that should cover my butt. Let's see:

I failed to realize the bed on my parts truck wouldn't work on my '53. It sure looked the same but the fenders mount two inches higher because it came off a truck from the 60's or 70's.

I nearly blew a hole in the side of my engine block because I thought the oil filter cover plate was stuck in it. I threaded a slide hammer into the mounting hole because I thought it was part of the plate. Uh, nope. It's part of the block. All those manuals and catalogs I bought didn't help one bit!

I neglected to heed George's advice on using vise grips to hold the punch when whacking out spring spindles. Of course, if I was coordinated enough to hit the punch and not my hand with the BFH, it wouldn't have been a problem. That's gonna leave a mark!

That's all I care to reveal at this time lest my reputation become too tarnished.

 

I'll have 2 that I'll actually confess to. One is to make sure your clear of your trucks frame before you try and sit up and get off your creeper in a hurry... I "think" I took about a 10 minute "nap" after that one, and had an imprint of my frame on my forehead (try explaining that one to people).

The other good one was when I was tearing down the rear end on my 1979 F-150 project.. I had the box off, and was trying to get the nuts off the U-bolts on the rear axle... well I locked onto the nut with my 1/2 breaker bar with a 20 inch handle... sat down between the frame rails with my back to the cab... braced my feet on the axle housing, and pulled hard.. next thing I hear in "ping" "pop" and I fly back into the frame cross member just 2 feet behind me... turns out I didn't get the nut off.. what I actually did was break the pin.. and the Y-yoke on my breaker bar... and got a pretty nasty looking bruise across my shoulder blades... moral of the story, don't use cheap tools.

Those are the two I'll admit to... the others (like setting either myself or my truck on fire) I'll just not talk about

Jon

 

OK Nathan I've made many. Probably the most expensive, I was putting together a 454 bowtie, it had a Cloys double roller timing chain with a 3 position crank sprocket. On a Chevy if you line up the crank and cam keyway like a Ford the 0" mark lines up on the cam timing mark. It looks almost OK but the cam comes out about 6 teeth advanced. It ran OK right up until he hit passing gear on a grade and it sucked an intake valve That one cost me a job it was the bosses truck One other one I was at the dragstrip, did my burnout, backed up, staged, and some how ended up in reverse when the christmas tree lit up, and I still red lighted. Talk about feeling stupid.

 

yeah but that one wasn't your fault. it was your boss's fault for driving a brand x truck.

 

Lets see, I was putting an engine and tranny in. The tranny had the passenger side 2 inches too low so I took my cherry picker and ran the hook through one of the bolt holes on the case. Started jacking and it wouldn't budge, looked everything over and it looked like nothing was caught, jacked a little more, nothing. Then I took a nice swing and BAM!!!! a peice of the bell housing sailed up over the trees in my yard. I was a little frustrated and threw the pump rod for the cherry picker and went inside for a nice shower. My sister stood with her mouth wide open at me as I threw the rod down the street and dissapared into the house.

Clayton

 

Besides whacking my head on the hood latch EVERY SINGLE TIME WITHOUT FAIL...
Welcome to my Dept. of Redundancy Dept:

1. started with 4:11 rear gears Day 1. Changed out to 3:50's, then 3:0's (thought it would solve an overheating problem; turned out I had a 2-core not a 3-core radiator); then went back to 3:50's and thats AFTER having the C-4 tranny rebuilt only to later replace it with an AOD.

2. had motor rebuilt (fine). Had RV cam removed for stock cam because RV was sucking too much vacuum and brakes were suffering, plus I just wanted "a stock, reliable powerplant". Now I want a hotter than stock cam (268?) and am going to an IFS with power disc brakes. Humph....

3. body/paint guy offered to do under the hood/engine compartment for an additional $500 while the truck was in the shop getting the rest of the body/paint done. I thought I was spending enough, so I balked. Another forehead-slapper...

4. ahh, that's enough torture for now considering I originally wanted a beater truck to thrash and run errands around in. I'm now into it for WELL over $15k.

Going for a stogie and a long beer, alone, on my front porch now. Befitting that it's raining like hell....

Daryl

 

Mistake #32(I have made many before this and many more after) Returning home with my truck on a trailer I went to unload the truck late at night (about 12 midnight). Undid the chains and tensioners but the truck was to far forward for it to naturally roll off. I gave the truck a steady push and after going past the pivot point of the trailer the truck started to follow the law of gravity and started rolling off of the trailer. I still had the cable winch hooked up and it started spinning like crazy. The truck was headed toward the side of the shed and I had to stop it. I watched as the handle of the winch spun like a plane propellor and tried to time my grab of the handle. I wasn't very successful, the handle hit my thump and bent it all the way back to my wrist and punched a couple of holes in my palm. My hand instantly turned black and started bleeding. The truck stopped just short of going through side of the shed. I had to tape up my hand and pack it in ice to finish the job. It took about two weeks for my hand to fully recover.

 

One of my many stupid mistakes or should I say life lessions. At work I was re sealing a holley carburetor for a small chevy dump truck. I dissembled the whole thing cleaned it real good. When I reassembled it I left out the tube that connects the two float bowl toghter. It rolled off the work bench. I put it back on the truck and started it. I got out of the truck to check for leaks, and did It ever. I quickly shut off the truck and went to look to see what happened. And then it happened It coughed and it exploded with the force to knock me on the ground. On my trip down to the floor I was thinking how nice it was working here. When I hit the floor I grabed fire extinguisher under my work bench and emptyed it putting out the fire. After repairing a few air brake hoses a few shinged hairs all was ok.

 

First off....Bob...that was a little too descriptive. I'm not finicky about blood and injuries but YEOUCH!

Anyway, stupid stuff I've done to my truck

1) Removed and replaced my intake manifold 3 times in one month before I realized I was using too much gasket sealer for the gaskets to make good contact.

2) Loaded 4 college girls into the bed of my truck a week after I had done a lowering job on it for a ride across campus (I know this one sounds pretty good so far ). About halfway across campus I thought I smelled burning rubber but I didn't think anything of it. When we reached our destination it finally dawned on me that about 450 pounds might be too much weight and when they jumped out I saw the damage. There was now a nice line in the sides of my new tires and parts of the inner lip on the fenders were almost gone. Oops.

3) Decided to lower my front end by loosening the torsion bars for a Goodguys show and didn't raise it back up for a week. Ended up wearing the inner portion of the tire tread pretty good. Oh well, I needed new tires anyway.

4) Got angry one time while working on the truck and decided to express my anger by slamming the driver door closed real hard. From then on I drove around with cracked glass. That reminds me I need to get a punching bag before I start doing frame work on my truck again....

anyway, there's plenty more, but I think I've procrastinated from homework for long enough

 

So Bob, did you learn about the old tire trick? I've done that everytime since I watched my truck drag my family down the driveway. Heh heh.

Clayton

 

Well, I could write a book about this but two things came to mind...

Was removing the carb from my truck to rebuild it. Unhooked all the wires and hoses and stuff, removed the 2 front nuts and spent an hour or so trying to pry the stupid thing off. Then I discovered the third nut hidden in the back...

Was going to replace both back window hinges on my S-10 Blazer. Got the old ones off and the new ones on OK, but the window wasn't aligned properly. So I loosened everything a bit and began working the window around and *BOOSH* I'm holding just the frame, with lotsa little pieces of glass around me...

Ah, I'll throw in one more -- my reminder not to lose my temper. I was on a riding mower, mowing a vacant lot, and ran over a tailpipe section that the mower hit hard enough to stall it. So I picked up the tailpipe and heaved it towards my pickup and it ripped a 3-inch gash in my palm. Fortunately it was just skin damage, no nerves or anything.

 

I thought I made a mistake once but found out later that I didn't:

 

must latest discovery.... er mistake...

hinges all look the same when they are rust covered and 50 years old.... but when cleaned up and and reinstalled... they are different... now which hinge goes where..........

Robert

 

better ask BJ...