Biggest cock-ups

[H8RRA 0]

...amusing tales or horror stories. Thought of this when reading scarlets thread on the garage leaving a rag in the airbox. Anyway, i have 2 horror stories to list, all resolved but with some heartache. I'm sure theres some out there that resulted in total nightmares - SH!T - i've thought of a third - i'll get them down quick...

 

1.....me and chrisvr6nos offered to do my grandfathers fiesta plugs one time and while the plugs were out, decided to do the tappets ....................

two hours later, one rocker cover bolt into pot one, head off and new head gasket and grandfather wondering why his plugs took so long - a quiet, smooth fiesta with an amazingly pokey engine considering only the plugs had been replaced :roll:

 

2. ........bought polo for wife and did a general service - with a notchy gearbox, decided to top up the gearbox. Identified top up which turned out to be a linkage dowel. Dowel dropped, linkage fell off and tinkled around inside the box. One stripped down box and clutch later and quickshift into the bargain, wife has smooth, shortshift box but doesn't understand why i hate the car.

 

3. ................me and chrisvr6nos (theres a commom thread starting here) fitted rs2000 axle with 9" drums to my 1.3gl mk2 escort. Took it for a spin down the country roads of Bedale where i lived at the time to check the brakes. With a massive CLUNK! at about 70mph, the back end dropped and a rear wheel flew past us as i struggled to control the car without braking and popping out the brand new rear brake cylinders. Said wheel then bounced over a hedge, cut through the middle of an ongoing cricket game, through the wicket itself and off into the adjoining field. Got a lot of nasty stares from guys in white togs, eyeing the 3 wheel escort with 70yard gouges in the tarmac from u-bolts and drum backingplate that had ground down almost to the axle

 

Moral of incidents - plug up plug holes, buy a haynes manual before trying to identify gearbox top ups and always check your nuts when chrisvr6nos has been round :D

[Kevin Bacon 5]

...Said wheel then bounced over a hedge, cut through the middle of an ongoing cricket game, through the wicket itself and off into the adjoining field.

 

PMSL :lol: :lol:

 

My worst f'ck up in recent times is getting the cam timing a tooth out when taking my old 268s out.

 

I'm constantly leaving things on the floor behind the wheels and end up driving over them afterwards...phones, mugs, beer bottles, fag packets, tools, you name it.

 

I dropped a small nut into a cylinder bore once aswell, but left it in there in the hope that it would either melt or find it's way out, and thankfully it did as it ran for another 30K afterwards before I sold it.

 

I've heard of people filling up Golf/Corrado gearboxes with oil via the TDC cover :roll: And one classic I'll never forget is the YTS kiddie that filled an engine with oil.....literally....he kept going until it started pouring out of the top. The dipstick clearly didn't know what a dipstick was....

[blackcat 0]

I've got one.......

 

One day my boyfriend was jacking up my car using a trolley jack. It didn't look too stable to me so I lean down and point at it and say 'that doesn't look too.....(BIG CRUNCH).... safe'. Bloody jack had slipped and I now had a big dent in the sill of my car :x .

Luckily this was my previous car, not my rado.

Moral of this story.......Make sure the trolley jack is stable!!

[H8RRA 0]

.......me and chrisvr6nos (sounds familiar) rebuilt a mk2 escort engine and fitted an inline clear plastic fuel filter to enable fuel flow to be visually checked when - not infrequently - escort stopped running.

 

thrashed escort, complete with pet labrador in back seat, from bedale to sunderland and called into hairdressers to get haircut, leaving said escort parked in nearby petrol station.

 

sat in hairdressers as numerous fire engines flew by at unusually high speed!!!!!!! Exited hairdressers to find numerous fire engines station around my escort with severe engine fire damage and blackened windscreen with dog still sat in back seat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By all accounts, not only did the fire brigade have to deal with a spontaneously combusting escort in a garage forecourt potentially causing the biggest incident in weeks, when opening the car door, they found a rabid, terrified dog who had no plan to move so was left in the back to barbeque if things had got worse!!!!!

 

Moral of story - unless you want barbequed dog, don't fit plastic inline fuel filters that can melt on severely thrashed, hot rocker covers on which they lie - (Dont' tell the fire brigade).

 

PS. After visiting local scrapyard and wrapping cables, looms and pipes round waists and paying a fiver for a new battery, the escort was back on the road the next day complete with battle-scarred severely fire scorched bonnet.

[H8RRA 0]

theres more and more coming to mind all the time.......if you made them up, people'll would say your a lying b£$%$d!!!! they're so bizarre! :D

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I was just thinking the other week how clued up and skilled you and Chris are..... think I've changed my mind now :D

[H8RRA 0]

learnt by HARD experience kev:D :D

[Louie Lungbubble 0]

So you and Chris have never touched the Rado then, eh?

[H8RRA 0]

fitted chargers, nitrous, rebuilt engines, fitted different brakes,made quickshifts, de-locked handles, head gaskets - no failures, fires or abandoned cricket matches TO DATE!!??

[dr_mat 0]

On second thought, I don't think I want you to do my spark plugs any more H8RRA .. hope you don't mind... :)

[Louie Lungbubble 0]

or abandoned cricket matches

:lol:

Ahhh.... I've got this great mental picture of that!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

learnt by HARD experience kev:D :D

 

Aye, know the feeling well :lol:

 

Your cricket story is one of the funniest car related errors I've heard in years :lol:

[H8RRA 0]

its so unbelievable - we've wet ourselves over the years recounting it - the petrol station one was pretty unbelievable as well - if the station reserves had gone up, it probable would've taken out the hairdressers i was sat in and i'd have been none the wiser and dogless

[chrishill 0]

nothing on that scale (for which I'm thankful actually)

 

tinkering in the engine bay a few weeks ago with.... chrisvr6nos, had the drivers window down for some reason or another and the imobiliser tripped itself as its ment to. leaning through the window to the keys in the ignition i somehow managed to catch the 'arm' button on the fob rather than the 'disarm' button...doors lock..window starts to go up! cue a panic from me and hand darting in and out of the car at amazing speed as i try to decide if i should rescue my keys or not via a rapidly closing window which I'm not sure will stop if i get in its way!

 

I dont know what I was worried about, my spare keys were in the house 20ft away!

[H8RRA 0]

please fill in the remaining pertinent details,

 

I was doing task ................ with chrisvr6nos......... :D :D:D:D:D:D

[Chris VR6nos 0]

What's all this then, character assasination?

All i do is try and help people :lol:

There are more funny stories too and i'm sure they'll come out.

Paul, remember the MKII escort estate that siesed and spat all it's oil out and stranded us?

Or what about the 2 sexy young ladies we had in the car up Tunstall hill one late night in your dad's Cortina when it all went a bit Pete Tong!

 

 

Chris

[craigowl 0]

H8RRA, do you promise to stay south of Berwick?

 

Sh!t seems to happen when certain people are around. Years ago we had neighbours move in across the road from us. They had just come up from Flixborough, where an apocalyptic petrochemical disaster had happened, killing many workers and firemen. Their little boy was blown from one room into another by the explosion and ended up in his toy box. Amazingly he was unhurt.

 

While they stayed across the road from us, the boy who had croup (a severe type of cough) was being given Friar's Balsam to inhale. The bowl of scalding hot liquid was nudged and spilt onto his legs. I think that was the time they had to rush to Glasgow's hospital for sick children and broke down in the depths of the Clyde Tunnel.

Another time while they were visiting us here, my wife went an errand with Jean-Pierre, the father, who was driving. They ended up going down a no-entry road in error and collided head on with someone. Fortunately at low speed and with little damage to his £195 VW 412. (They intended to go to France in it. It broke down terminally somewhere in England [as I had feared it would] and they had to fork out for another banger before continuing their journey.)

Jean-Pierre had been a paratrooper in the campaign in Algeria - no doubt he took danger and injury in his stride.

 

Lovely people and still surviving, last I heard. They now run a guest house near Caen in France and the children have attained adulthood.

We do not know whether to live dangerously and go and stay a couple of nights with them!

[H8RRA 0]

hang fire - the common denominator is chrisvr6tractor in all of this affair!!!!!

 

Another one springs to mind, chris.

 

ME AND CHRIS VR6NOS were dropping off some chicks in wallsend (i'm glad the wife isn't on the board) in my fathers cortina mk3 estate - like a bed in the back, it was :D , when trying to show off, i made a qucik change from 2nd to 3rd and the gearstick and my hand travelled forward before slamming into the dashboard, said gearstick having abandoned the gearbox and said girsl abandoning us and us being abandoned in wallsend - not the best place to be - 20 miles from home :roll:

[Kevin Bacon 5]

LOL....the stories are just getting better and better....

 

ME AND CHRIS VR6NOS..... were fitting my new leathers during my lunch hour on Monday.....after faffing around squeezing the front seats into the car on my narrow drive and being 20 mins late for work as it was....I called time and jumped in to head back to work.....tried to move the seat forward....hmmm, no handle. Then tried to clip the seatbelt in, hmmmm, no seatbelt buckles. The person that sold them to me forgot to mention these key items had been removed, and king Berk here didn't notice their absence either, when A) buying the seats...and B) fitting the seats.

 

Moral of the story.....be alert and make sure your seats are usable before putting them in the car :D

[craigowl 0]

Further to our jinxed neighbours story.

The couple in question both worked in the hotel trade, meeting at the Coylumbridge Hotel, Aviemore in the mid-1960s. Around that time, some local guy bought a Corvette Stingray that had belonged to Cliff Richard. Maggie was given a hair-raising spin in the car. Shortly afterwards, whilst bombing down (or up?) the then new Cairngorm ski road, the car left the road, crashing and burning in a concrete culvert and killing the driver and passenger. Creepy or what.

[2cc 0]

Not a patch on the foregoing, and Chris VR6NOS probably wasn't even born then, but nearing the end of a seven month complete rebuild (engine too) of an MGB ragtop decided it was time to fill up with oil (you can see where this is going can't you) and see if she'd start. Initially puzzled by lack of slippy stuff on the dipstick, then realised I was stood in an Exon Valdez sized slick. Oh bugger! Now where's that sump plug got to?

Not my best nights work.

There's more, just haven't got the time right now.

[Exup Man 0]

Engine related but on my bike not in the car.

 

The day before I was due to leave for the IOM TT festival my bike developed a rattle. I had a good listen to several places using the stethascope screwdriver trick and came to the conclusion the that one of the buckets and shims was the problem. I couldn't get the parts in time so set off thinking I'd do it there. Made the journey from the midlands to the IOM no problem but on the coast road to Douglas traveling at over 100 MPH one of the cam sprokets dropped of the cam trapped the cam chain which then snapped and fell into the sump seizing the engine. It was the biggest skid I've ever done in my life.

 

Moral of the story never do tomorrow......

[Jim 2]

Most recent clanger was me and my old man trying to unload a full Daimler V8 block from out of the back of his car.. mum was on trolley jack duty.. we got the block onto the jack and the plan was to gently lower the jack and then put the block on a trolley.. so me and dad are carefully holding this block level and dad tells mum to twist the handle to lower the jack, except he neglects to mention she needs to do it gradually!

 

She twists the handle the full way, the block drops and my dad is almost going purple trying to support the weight of it all by himself before it falls onto the floor but he just about manages it and we get it onto the trolley. Wasn't too amusing ;)

[dazzyvr6 0]

me and a mate went to change a steering rack on a mk1 fiesta,my mate managed to get a brand new sttering rack for £10 but it was off a mk2 fiesta,it was just a bit longer but we managed to get it to fit,untill we went to drive it,as you probably guessed the wheels were pointing a bit out of line so they wanted to both go in different directions,was pretty funny to watch,and the screetching it made brought all the neighbours out...made quite a few cock ups on escorts mainly forgetting to put the thrust bearing back in after fitting gearboxes :) :roll:

[h100vw 0]

My mate Dave and I have had some top adventures in our time.........

 

The first one was with my Fix Or Repair Daily XR3, a 5 speed carb one. It was really not that bad a car and proved to be very reliable inspite of the lack of maintenance it received. This legeindary tale is about the gearbox. Due to too much ragging around town and the starship mileage it had probably covered. I was the 8th owner and it had 42000 'genuine' miles on it.

 

The input bearing was well gone. Me and Dave pulled the box out on a friday morning and ran it to ford to have the 5th gear removed, so the box could be split. The bearing was a fiver from ford including a new seal. Parts prices are the only plus side to running a ford.

 

Anyway, we manage to swap the bearing and seal in about 10 minutes. We then spent the rest of friday, saturday and most of sunday trying to reassemble the chuffing box.

 

By sunday afternoon curiosity got the better of my Dad and he came into the barn and said ' What are you pair of ***ts up to? You have been in here for the best part of 3 fcuking days'

 

I replies ' just changing this bearing and we can't get the box back together. We didn't want to trouble you'.

 

My Dad and probably everyone elses Dad have the built in ability to make all exceedingly difficult tasks pi$$ easy. Has anyone else noticed that??

 

So he took about 30 seconds to stick the casings back together whilst calling us all sorts of names and then heads for the door.

 

I called him back to refit the 5th gear, more abuse. Another 30 seconds with the acetylene and off he goes.

 

It still took another 3 hours to fit the box and finish up.

 

I vowed never to look inside another box as long as I live. That was 18 years ago now :roll:

 

Dave and I still mess with old cars now. Even though we could both afford not too.

 

Another notable event was around 1995 when we bought a MK1 1600 GTI that had had a battery explode. We got replacements for the melted bits and then flattened several batteries not getting it to run. Had petorl and sparks etc.

 

Next ingenius plan, we'll tow it back to work rather than driving all around Cornwall. We rent this trailer of a fella in Newquay and tow it with my MK2 GTI. We lined up the MK1 and as it ran down the hill I jumped in to steer it and hit the brakes. The tralire only had a single axle.

 

Have you seen the preview in your heads yet??

 

The weight of the MK1 pushing down on the ramps lifts the back of my MK2 about 3 feet up in the air. :( I was bricking it incase the trailer came off the towbar and dropped thru me back window.

 

A crowd had formed by this time to watch this pair of grockles scrapping 2 elderly volkswagens. We would have cleaned up on 'You've been framed' :mrgreen:

 

Eventually we got it loaded and back to camp. We tried all kinds of tricks to get it going. We towed it up the hill at work and shoved it down. I was 'piloting' and even at 30 in 2nd it wouldn't run, just the odd pop and bang.

 

The end is near.

 

The last attempt involved towing it round and round the carpark. Finally it started