What's the biggest mistake you've made on your car?

[Skelo]

Following on from Bens' thread, about learning to work on cars, what's the worst mistake you've made on your car?

My most stupid mistake was while upgrading my brakes.

Changed the disks no problem, then went to fit the carriers/calipers.

They fitted great with no hiccups, then went to bleed the brakes.

They would not bleed at all, the brake pedal would always go straight to the floor

Spent hours checking/bleeding, then gave up and got my local garage to transport the car to them.

£150 later, i was informed that i had put the carriers/calipers on the wrong sides. I had put the left on the right/right on the left!!!

Certainly paid for that embarrassing mistake !!!!

C'mon then, own up to your prize mistakes :blink:

Cheers
Dave

 

[MasterAuron]

Only real balls up I've made in my time is in this thread. :embarrest:

Aside from snapping the odd little thing etc etc.

 

[herb]

my first on the road car a mg metro now i thought i would check the oil and it was in need of a little top up so i bought 5 ltrs of oil put it in and i couldnt see the oil through the filler cap so i went out and bought another 5 ltrs put that in and still couldnt see any oil so i went to buy another 5 ltrs but this time i drove the car got to the end of the street and it died and i looked in the rear view mirror and the street was filled with white smoke

lets just say kids dont ever over fill your car with oil its not good!!!

 

[HDi fun]

my first on the road car a mg metro now i thought i would check the oil and it was in need of a little top up so i bought 5 ltrs of oil put it in and i couldnt see the oil through the filler cap so i went out and bought another 5 ltrs put that in and still couldnt see any oil so i went to buy another 5 ltrs but this time i drove the car got to the end of the street and it died and i looked in the rear view mirror and the street was filled with white smoke

lets just say kids dont ever over fill your car with oil its not good!!!

Nice one!

Who needs a diesel?

 

[dpsubaru]

Welding underneath the car when it has plastic fuel lines. We were welding on the opposite side of the car and the fuel lines were pinned to the far side but the heat transferred acros the floor and up it went - luckily we had a fire extinguisher in a nearby garage to put it out but the car was a gonna.

 

[Chris Green]

my first on the road car a mg metro now i thought i would check the oil and it was in need of a little top up so i bought 5 ltrs of oil put it in and i couldnt see the oil through the filler cap so i went out and bought another 5 ltrs put that in and still couldnt see any oil so i went to buy another 5 ltrs but this time i drove the car got to the end of the street and it died and i looked in the rear view mirror and the street was filled with white smoke

lets just say kids dont ever over fill your car with oil its not good!!!

Oh yeah - been there! Thought I'd check my wife's Suzuki SJ oil level. Knowing that it'd probably need quite a bit, I poured 'quite a bit' in to be surprised by the fact that it had no impact on the dipstick. Poured some more, still no show on the dipstick.

Turned engine on - glug glug, splutter!

Well, how was I to know that something was stopping the dipstick being pushed all the way down?

I drained it down to a sensible level and turned it over with all the plugs out to get rid of anything that had worked its way into the cylinders (good job I stood back!), and then with the plugs back in, went for a little drive to clear it out. After a mile, my embarrassment wouldn't let me drive any further. I even came back through my own cloud. Got a garage to tow it away and I think they used some kind of fume filter over the exhaust to get it dried out.

I wondered afterwards whether forcing the exhaust through a hose held under water would have had the same 'desmoking' effect - after all lots of boats do it.

Oh yes, and my other claim to infamy came when I failed to re-grease a spark plug thread before putting it back into an ally head. All was fine until the next time it came to take the plugs out, and out it came bring a nice coiled swarf of aluminium with it! Needless to say, it was a 'head-off' job involving enlarging the plug holes to take a reverse-thread steel sleeve -and all for the lack of 1p's-worth of grease!

 

[obi_waynne]

I made loads of mistakes on my Rover. It was silly things really. Uprate the engine power and the gearbox dies, replace gearbox and the clutch dies, fit a power clutch and the cable keeps snapping.

I learnt that you should do a job properly in the first place rather than hoping the other standard components will last. When fitting a new engine get it reconditioned and fit a new water pump and oil pump.

If a car dies because it has not been looked after then cut your losses and sell it rather than throwing endless amounts of money at it trying to keep it on the road.

 

[StevieDB9]

biggest mistake, buying a vw :toung: