Worst DIY or mechanic stories
 

Hey folks,

I was having a conversation last night with someone about the worst mechanic or DIY story that we knew. This is an area where someone's technical knowledge ends and their "best guess" begins.
Theirs included a friend who didn't bolt their wheel back on, just screwed on their lugs with the intention of doing so, and that wheel popping off like the cap off of a shaken bottle of Coke.
Mine was about a brake caliper piston that wasn't seated properly and fell out on the road, causing a "ping" "ping" "ping" sound just seconds before the now loosened caliper started pounding against the wheel.

Lets hear your best mechanic or DIY'er horror story.

did you or someone forgot to tighten the caliper or it wasn't tight enough?
i would find the torque spec and use accurate torque wrench to do the job

Oh boy....

I've patched the sidewall of a tire before, worked beautifully.
I've heated up my tie rods red hot so that I could adjust them.
Drove my truck home with a staple as a fuse

And then there's the things you do out in the bush so that you can make it home...

a friend of mine threw spacers on his 300zx but didnt go with exteneded studs.. obviously one of his wheels fell off (will upload pics when i find them) and he didnt learn.. couple weeks later another wheel fell off.. anyways, since then he pulled the spacers and sold the car

Oh man where to begin. The first two cars I bought (1987 Celica GTS and 1992 Celica GTS) were well maintained, the third (1991 Celica GTFour RC) most certainly was not. Here's a short rundown of some of the messes I found, I can get into more detail later.

- PO had a small accident and had the vehicle repainted, the paint shop only told him afterwards that they found rust that should be repaired (they just painted over it)
- PO's mechanic told him it either had a bad headgasket, piston rings, or clutch. This same mechanic dug all the way down to the spark plug wires just to wrap them in electrical tape instead of replace them which was the real cause of the cars problems
- PO paid to have the turbo rebuilt by a turbo shop in the lower mainland, they snapped an exhaust manifold stud off and left it snapped, then they destroyed the intake coupler on the turbo inlet and "repaired" it using tin tape and a Tim Hortons coffee cup.
- Same turbo shop didn't replace the oil feed/return gasket so the old shitty one eventually started to leak.

I've got more that I'll add as I remember them.

I knew that would come up LOL.


First time doing a brake pad change on my first little beater car (EG). Put brake pads in backwards, took it for a test drive and brakes squealed like a bitch obviously. Had no idea why so left the car in the garage for a few weeks until I realized they were on backwards and fixed the problem.. lol

Came here to post this. :concentrate:

Lol how about the fucking paint on my front fender. Don't get body work done by a guy named vinesh that runs a cash only shop in Whalley I guess LOL. At least I got rid of the car.
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...ps85a7ec07.jpg

Thank you for your good sense of humour :woot2:

So it's grade 11 auto class right, we were doing our first oil change. It was a MAZDA 323, this car was ballin' out of control when we were done with it that year. So we boost it up on the hoist and began draining the oil.

We're looking up the specs on some shitty pc with a program where you have to load the floppy disc into it and the vehicle information comes up. I don't remember the name of it but it was a fucking hassle to wait for this thing to power up. Everyone was huddling around this thing for warmth cause the shop was below zero every morning. Meanwhile, the oil was draining into the drum

Without checking that the drain plug was back in and torqued, we lowered the car. Now you can see where everything goes downhill from there. We put about 5 quarts into the thing, not realizing it's coming straight out the bottom. just as this ultra downy kid goes and starts the car, someone steps in the puddle of oil. Now on this day, we just ran out of cat litter, I swear we used so many paper towels we could've put up 5 trees in Moldova and called it a day.

I'll never forget when our auto teacher (Mario*) kept reminding us that we're "1 beer short of a six pack" for the rest of the semester.

and that's when I moved in with my uncle in bel air.



*Gleneagle grads whatsup!

Installed coilovers on my car and didn't realize I installed the "auto-leveling headlight sensor" the wrong way on the control arms (circled in red in the picture below). My headlights were aimed upwards to illuminate the squirrels in the trees for a few days until I figured that out.

http://i976.photobucket.com/albums/a...s/snapshot.jpg

Hired Koju Takeda from Takeda Racing to do my MR2 engine swap. I gave him two complete cars. He swapped the engine into the subject car, but couldn't get the transaxles to connect to the transmission. He told me I had to take the cars back because he didn't have space in his shop but held them hostage unless I paid him. Then he dumped the cars in my driveway, unrollable and ran off.

Later I found out the ECU was connected all wrong, causing problems like the reverse lights causing the car to stall when warm, and the supercharger not functioning.

Looks like his shop is out of business now as the domain takedaracing.com doesn't exist.

well, not my first hand but i've had a customer come in asking for a box of 12mm washers so he could use them as wheel spacers. i told him no and refused to sell him them

i got a good one from high school mechanics. We were in groups tearing apart and reassembling engines, they were just some crap ones they used every year and were never meant to run afterwards but its still funny. anyways were installing the pistons and one of the other guys is having a hard time getting the piston rings to compress all the way, hes got the first 2 in the cylinder but the last one is catching. So he goes and grabs a mallet and smacks the thing until the ring breaks and a big chunk of the piston comes out.

:lawl: WTF? Worst DIY story for me was trying to hook up some LEDs under my front seats...somehow, a short happened a popped like 3 different fuses. NEVER AGAIN!

Someone should find the link to that "500hp eagle talon" that a guy built at home. Wouldn't make 200hp on the dyno

I work at a dealership, and had a truck come in on the tow truck from another local 'shop'. the truck went to the other shop for a no start concern. the 'tech' at the other shop literally threw parts at it hoping to fix it. after about $1000 the customer towed it to us.
Other shop replaced a fuel pump driver module, fuel rail pressure sensor, throttle position sensor and a few other fun things I believe.
I got to it, pulled codes, followed the correct pinpoint test and found a bad throttle body. replaced it, and the truck was like new again.

I couldn't understand the other shops logic at all.
edit* I spent about 45 minutes with the truck start to finish, they had it for days*

- I was in Auto class in gr 12. Friday.
- I had the last 2 blocks in the same class, so I decided to run out and buy new pads/rotors/drums/shoes to do an overhaul on my mom's car.
- Trusted somebody to put the drums back on before putting the wheel on.
- #didnthappen
- Torqued it down not realizing it wasn't even on because it ran steelies.
- Basically had NO BRAKES for the entire weekend while out with my friends.
- Drive anyway. #17&invincible
- Surprised we didn't die.
- Back into class on Monday. I attempted to take off the rear wheels. Wasn't happening. Rear wheels pretty much acted like a giant drum, and the shoes were just starting to grind into the wheel.
- Had my first experience with my trusty 2. No, not WD-40+Ducttape. Torch + Hammer.
- Fixed. Happy.

Lessons learned:
- Don't trust anybody to do anything right.
- Torch + Hammer. Problem solver.

I drove my Toyota the entire time I owned it without rear brakes, shit works fine.

put the screw that held my rotors onto my car, into the wrong slot.. ( I put the screw into the hole where you're supposed to impact the rotor out).. this caused a massive steering wheel vibration :\

i checked out a bmw last weekend and noticed some rust. the guy told me "its just some surface rust and we can grind it down".... No.

One of my shifter cables was secured by a paperclip lol. Good thing the shifter bushings I bought came with the correct pin.

worst that i have seen was a 1996 vw golf that had a radator fan that wouldnt turn on by the car itself so the owner decided to run a wire from the battery to the fan and out around the exterior through the window and screwed a manual switch to his dash....


yea so when the car seemed like it was too hot, he would flip the switch and the car would cool down lol

Almost similar to my first brake experience! My first time changing my own brake pads, I put the anti-squeal on both the back of the pads and the pads themselves...

Luckily I realized my error after sliding the first caliper :thumbs: