You've probably all heard how I forgot and left the breaker bar attached to v.dampener bolt when I started the engine. Nothing scares the ... out of you like that. It is one of those alarming moments in the life of the back yard mechanic that will make your hair turn gray.

The worst moment of putting together a 300, or during maintenance, is when the distributor is going in or coming out. The rod that connects the dizzy to the oil pump has a habit of falling out before you get the dizzy all the way out. When you got the dizzy in both hands and are carefully and lovingly pulling it out of the block, and you hear that distant tap of the rod hitting the bottom of the oil pan, your heart sinks. Right then you know you have to remove the motor mount bolts and raise the entire enginge an inch, and remove the pan, drain the oil, just to retrieve the rod. It turns a half hour r&r into a 3 hour project.

The third incident happened while letting my 10 year old nephew help me. I allowed him to click the engine over with the remote starter to get to tdc. I had the plug out and was feeling for compression at the s.plug hole. 'Click again,' I'd say every so often as I referred to the timing mark.

Then I inserted a telescopic magnetic pick up device into the bore to feel where the piston was. And yep, as soon as I got it into the bore my nephew accidentally cranked the engine over. It was not the compression stroke. Valve opened and bit off the probe.

It was hard not to kill the nephew at that moment. After I cooled down, without saying a word, I had to use another magnet to remove all the debris. It took more than an hour of probing and modifying the probe, to clean it all out. He wants to 'help me' again some time.

 

LOL. I don't need any help like that...I am fully competent to make my own foul-ups, bloopers, bleepers and blunders.

 

I had one very unique scare working on my 300 while trying to set the timing. I refer to it as the "FORD CANNON" and I'll try to explain what I think happened. Not totally sure if stock ignition for a 95 is wasted spark or what so this may all be wrong but I'll shoot anyway.

The distributor plug wires were all backwards and what should have been the terminal for cylinder 1 wasnt so I had to pull the distributor, get cylinder 1 to tdc and start from there. Only thing I didn't take into account was that it could have been the compression or the exhaust stroke. Well one way or another, after a few seconds of cranking nothing happened. Then we turned it over a few more times and still nothing. A split second after we stopped cranking, the truck backfired with the fury of 1000 357 magnums all at once. It scared the living crap out of me, I mean I've fired actual cannons before and this felt pretty darn close to one. The neighbor was raking leaves and he started to make that "I'm gonna call the cops" face as we ran from the truck in utter fear.

We came to the conclusion that the distributor was sending spark right as the fuel/air mixture was being pushed out the engine and therefore caused a massive backfire. However, it could have been a regular old backfire. Either way we pulled distributor, turned motor over 1 cycle and tried again. It fired up fine the next go round.

 

I left a wrench on the damper pulley and started the engine... three times. Not proud of that at all. Paid the price the second time when the wrench came down and whacked the transmission cooler line, cracking the radiator.

 

I'm sorry to hear that. I hope it was easily fixed?

I also confess to putting p/s fluid in my master cylinder, after completely redoing the calipers, lines. I almost cried from that one.

I admire the build you are doing.

 

The backfire story makes me think of one that happened at my shop about 10 years ago . Cold , January , flooded out truck . New kid working on it , cranking for 10 min. or so . He got cold and fired up the kerosine blower heater . Muffler was full of raw gas , heater pointed straight at it !!!! Everyone in the shop took notice when the muffler EXPLODED ! Only damage was the muffler and a few pairs of underwear ......

 

That's great with the muffler. Speaking of shops, as a kid I took my jeep into a service station while on a trip to get the trans and rear end filled with gear lube. The attendant put it on the lift and hooked the nozzle of the electric pump on the trans, and ran outside to pump gas. I remember the machine going, 'chuck chuck bu', as it pumped. Well, the trans filled and gear lube was running out, but the kid was gone and we didn't know how to turn off the machine. My friend grabbed the nozzle and tried to put his finger over the end as it as pumping.

Quite a stinky mess.

I also remember getting hot due to a leaking radiator in a friends car, and we were stuck in the middle of the nowhere and we all had to pee in his radiator to get home.

 

The crack was right at the bottom where the cooler line connects. I had to drain the radiator, even jacking up the truck fore, aft, left and right to completely rid it of any fluid. I then took a stainless brush and some acetone to clean around the crack and sealed it with JB Weld adhesive putty. It worked just fine.

 

Thats some team bonding right there

 

I left my breaker bar on the pulley bolt too. Thought it was just me. I'm a bit of a klutz in automotive work. I'll stick to engineering I think.

 

Radiator issue: I'm glad you mentioned JB weld. I'm about to repair my radiator with it. I bought an aluminum cross flow and when I put in the temp sensor I created a pin hole leak on either side. I saw this article and decided to give it a try. I like how the JB is thinned so that it can flow deep into the fins, making it easier to work with too.


http://mzl.la/1FoluZd

 

*facepalm*

Power Steering fluid in the Brake Master Cylinder *doh* Luckily it was a top off and only had to replace the Master cylinder and Proportioning valve. But replaced the calipers and wheel cylinders too just to keep it all fresh and new.

Installing EFI, got the timing wrong and kept turning over the engine until the muffler exploded! Poor thing Split right down it's seem and scared the crap outta me! I'm sure the neighbors loved me even more after that

Forgot the Oil pump shaft when Installing an '96 distributor during my EFI install. Was running it for ten minutes wondering why the valves were making such a racket until it stopped running

Deciding to tune the EFI fuel curves and running at an insane RPM to get the VE map right, then wondering why the faint knock noise was getting louder...

New rebuilt engine install (Which my Pappy paid for for my birthday/Christmas but mostly think he really felt for me because of all the mishaps), figure I don't need to replace the NP435 transmission front seal because it was the rear main leaking everywhere. After test drive, smelly gear oil dripping from bell housing Gave me an excuse to pull the cast iron gear boxes to clean and paint... replacing seals as I went.

And this was just a tenths of the crap I've learnt on my way to being experienced

 

One thing that might work, is make your own lock-out tag for the ignition, some kind of Serious Reminder that Bad Things will Happen if the engine is turned over, power applied, etc. It doesn't take any longer to do this (or a lot less than replacing parts anyway.)

No wrong fluids in anything, though one time I was finishing up some project and mixed up the spray can that I wanted to use. Instead of lacquer it was Spray-N-Glue. It did not lay down very nice Lol!!

 

The most painful fubar I ever did was while in high school. A fellow there had a Honda 350 scrambler and he always raced it around just before class. I went over to his bike after he had parked it and saw the beautiful blue and straw coloured exhaust pipes. Naturally, like an inexperienced dummy, I grabbed them to see them better. That was in 1968 and I can still see the small pieces of flesh smoking on the pipe when I jerked my hand back. Now THAT HURT!!! It was also the beginning of my somewhat limited understanding of the automotive mechanical world.

 

Disconnected a drive shaft without setting the brake. Car was on an incline. Slid down the driveway with the driveshaft between my legs, lying flat on my back. Good thing my other car stopped us. No damage done.

Pulled a 5 speed tranny with plans to swap it out because it wouldn't shift. When I got it out I could easily see that one of the cables was frayed, and seized up. Replaced the cable and reinstalled the tranny.