I've still got the receipt from a Fiat main dealer after a similar catastrophe:
"One bleeding screw". Honest!
|
|
|
First ever proper car was a six month old 1983 white MK1 XR2. Had been driving around in a MK1 Escort before that. This was my pride and joy. The newest car I had ever owned.
Driving home from dealership, there was a rattling from the glove compartment. Looked like an old bolt. I lobbed it out the window into some roadside bushes. Several months later I had the car in for its first service. Phone rings. Hello sir, can you tell us where your locking wheel is, we need to get the alloys off to check your brakes. Arrrh! Whoops,thats what it was for.
Edited by scribe on 14/09/2008 at 20:25
|
|
First car, Morris Minor, 1968/9. Soon realised engine was shot, and burning oil. So I tried a potion designed to restore worn bores to health, after semi-mechanic friend had reground valves and pointed out palpable notches in the bores. Engine wouldn't turn over at all after my dosing with the goo. Thankfully the starting handle could rotate the poor engine, and eventually it kicked into life. It kept running, with liberal oil feeding, until rust and lack of cash forced its scrapping.
|
|
Also a Morris Minor, 1956 vintage. After rebuilding the engine couldn't work out what the curly pipe left over was, oh well I thought, it can't be important. Filled it up with oil, started the engine and waited for the oil pressure light to go out. I was still waiting when the engine seized. Turns out it was the pipe that sucked the oil from the sump to the rest of the engine.
|
|
|
|
Driving home from dealership there was a rattling from the glove compartment. Looked like an old bolt. I lobbed it out the window into some roadside bushes. Several months later I had the car in for its first service. Phone rings. Hello sir can you tell us where your locking wheel is we need to get the alloys off to check your brakes. Arrrh! Whoops thats what it was for.
I did exactly that with a Peugeot 309. The dealer had to drill the nut off.
|
Our garage door was very sticky so I investigated. The metal wires holding it up seemed to be sticking on one side so I cut one thinking that this would improve matters. This made it tricky to open evenly so I thought "I'll cut the other and just take the weight myself to lift it up".
Result: garage wouldn't stay open by itself. My better half had to hold the garage door up (very heavy for a delicate flower like her) while I ran into the garage, jumped in the car and had to drive out at high speed, not easy given the approach to our drive.
Wouldn't do that again, cost a few £££ for a local garage chap to sort out
|
During my apprenticeship (Horticultural engineering) I placed an alloy part in to a 'hot' caustic soda bath (we used this on cast iron bits to clean paint oil etc., so why not alloy based ones I thought, but never thought to ask why....) and went for my lunch.
It was 'waiting' for me on my work bench and had a note from the foreman telling me, amongst other instructions about alloys versus caustic etc., advice and a final 'this will be deducted from this weeks salary' stuck to it - with a few other pink fluffy dice words on it too added by my work mates :(
|
Aged 18 ( quite a wee a while ago ) lying under my MG Midget changing the starter motor. I had had dimwittedly put a jack under both sides. Of course it fell off the jacks pinning me to the ground and rather more inconveniently prevented me from breathing.
Everyone else was out and anyway I couldn't get the breath to shout. Still don't know where I got the strength from but somehow managed to sort of bench press the car up and back away from me and slither out.
|
I once sheared a glowplug on a Perkins Prima. No one could extract it and it (eventually)had to be electo-burnt out with the head on a bench. Never been near a Glowplug since. £500.
Too much Coppaslip and perhaps not enough torque and a sparkplug fired out of the head of a 2CV in Fortwilliam like a bullet, taking half the threads with it.
Over- tightened the oil drain plug on a Yamaha 500 - splitting the removable alloy plate on which it was mounted. Sunday of course. Took the plate off, cleaned it up and used some sort of plastic metal as a filler in the spit - which was fine until the next oil change.
Fitted four enormous orange plastic mudflaps to a Fiat 126. The result was top speed reduced from 65 mpg to 60..
Triumph twin, (1966) finding TDC with a pencil through the plug holes - engine vibration so bad that it shook the connectors off the zenner diode..
Best of all, Doing the ton down Bullcliffe hill from Bretton roundabout (long single carriageway downhill, woods on both sides, bumpy road surface ) laying flat on the tank - gave half a turn on the steering damper.
Never touched that again either.
|
|
Sorry, That should read 65 *Miles Per hour* - re the Fiat 126
|
|
Back in the early 70s my uncle and his clapped out Austin 1100 came round for lunch. My friend and I removed his spark plugs, put a good sized shot of redex down each bore and put the plugs back in. He got 2 miles from our home and was stopped by the police - apparently they couldn't see the car just the smoke. He had the car towed back to our house and called his garage. We confessed and ended up paying the tow fee and cleaning his car every time he came to see us. I should have quit while I was ahead with the half a bottle of fairy liquid in the windscreen washer bottle.
|
|
|
What an exciting life you lead, Oilrag. You aren't in the trade by any chance? :-)
|
SWMBO was complaining that the heater in her mk2 Astra was taking an age to warm up. Sure enough, a quick test drive confirmed that the thermostat was clearly stuck open. 5 minute job, I thought.
Down to the local parts shop, five quid for a new thermostat, and broke out the toolbox.
Third thermostat cover bolt snapped like a carrot, leaving the thread flush inside the housing.
Rang the local breakers. Thermostat housing in stock and only a tenner. Jump in the Cavalier and go pick it up. Get back and set to work.
Thermostat housing runs around the side of the head, behind the cambelt. It won't come out with the belt in situ. Try to shift the water pump (which doubles as a cambelt tensioner on these engines) and it's stuck. In desperation, I slip the belt off the cam pulley, change the housing, and slip the belt back on. Fit the new stat, refill the coolant, turn the key and she fires up. Lovely.
Become aware of a mini waterfall running down the side of the cylinder head. Switch off. Swear a bit. Slip the belt back off, unbolt the new housing, and the gasket which looked OK was in fact split. By now it's late, she needs the car for work in the morning and I can't get a gasket. Improvise with instant gasket, refit everything and it's fine. Take the car for a run - everything's perfect. Heater warms up quickly, gauge sits bang in the middle, no smells, no leaks. 5 hours has passed now since I started this five minute job.
That night, someone steals the car and writes it off!
|
Crossed the leads when jump starting my car. It still ran but the electrics kept surging causing the car to cut out every 5 mins.
Managed to get it to a local garage with a second car/driver and set of jump leads.
Bought a replacement alternator from internet breaker with a months warranty on it. Garage fitted the new alternator but said that the car was overcharging, they swore blind that the replacement alternator was fine and then took over a month to 'trace' the electric fault.
Handed the car back without getting to the bottom of it, I got it home changed the alternator myself with a second internet breaker job and it was worked fine.
To my shame it wasn't the first time I'd crossed jump leads, when it happened last time (on a different car) the battery light was flickering when the engine was running, so I assumed that it might just need some more juice, gave it some gas and blew the dash bulb which is part of the charging circuit.
Had to not only change the alternator but also had to strip out the dash and replace the bulb.
I now try to avoid jump leads whenever possible, as I'm clearly too stoopid to use them.
|
|
Many years ago I owned a 3.5L Rover SD1. Decided to do an oil change, and thought I'd be clever and do it over a drain. You guessed it, when it came to remove the sump nut the thing slipped through my fingers down the drain with all the old oil. Served me right for contaminating the environment. Never did it again this way. Always use a tray and dispose at dump.
|
|
You don't lose the sump plug when you use a handy rabbit hole...
|
That night someone steals the car and writes it off!
Thief probably fell asleep because the heater was working too well.
Edited by ifithelps on 17/09/2008 at 21:26
|
|
DP that's hilarious!!
Edited by nick1975 on 17/09/2008 at 21:38
|
"What an exciting life you lead, Oilrag. You aren't in the trade by any chance? :-) "
No. You can sleep safely in your bed Andrew ;)
I was once though, as a teenager and very briefly before going to University. I saw enough in the workshops (Main Dealer 1966) regarding disrespect for peoples cars, to continue with a lifetime of DIY.
|
I can laugh about it now, but I was ranting for ages at the time. It was written off by vandalism rather than the driver. Every piece of glass broken, every panel kicked in. :-( Then, just to completely finish it off, the recovery driver dropped it from about 4ft off the ground as he was winching it up onto the truck. That did the front suspension in.
The other amusing (with hindsight) part of the story was that I staggered out of the flat bleary eyed the next morning to go to work, jumped in my Cavalier, and drove off to work, not noticing the big car sized gap where it had been parked the night before. SWMBO, who left the house half an hour after me in the morning called me at work to inform me it had gone!
Cheers
DP
|
Half an hour ago. Mowing the lawn. Must have clipped the edge of the gravel with the rotary mower blade. Pebble flies up and smashes glass in rear door of my car.
For the love of......
Autoglass coming tomorrow....
:-(
|
Just discovered I have to pay £60 excess for the blinking window. Dunno about Jack Dee voiceover, more like that Roscoe P. Coltrane frustrated squeal........
:-(((
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 20/09/2008 at 18:46
|
|
Did the same to a patio window with a pebble thrown from a strimmer. Fortunately my neighbour was able to source what turned out to be a non-standard glazed unit....what a nightmare that was.
|
I was in Germany with the forces in the early sixties. Our unit overhauled aircraft. I had a Mini and to this I had fitted an old Jaeger clock. There was unfortunately no method of illuminating it. One day I was in the ?Electrics Bay? waiting for the servicing of an electrical component for our aircraft to be completed when I noticed a cupboard which contained several large jars of green luminous paint, all throbbing gently and no doubt emitting all sorts of nasty radioactivity. I asked if I might have a smidgen of this to paint on my clock hands. The reply was not encouraging - it consisted of two words, the second being ?off?.
On evening duty some time later I found myself in possession of the hangar keys. In the early hours I crept in to the huge spookily silent building, the moon shining eerily through the few windows. I soon found the Bay and the cupboard with the jars, still throbbing like ?Alien? eggs. The quantity in the jars was far too much for what I wanted, but what to decant the stuff into? I remembered the jam jars we used for paint in our servicing bay. I set off across the hangar floor making my way gingerly round one aircraft after another. Then I tripped on a towing bar some thoughtless person had left out. The jar flew out of my hands and shattered, a large luminous pool spreading out over a 6 foot radius. I then had to commence a massive clean up, but everything I touched became luminous, there were luminous footprints, a shovel I used became luminous, bits of rag etc.. I used everything I could think of to mask the stuff, even soil from outside which I put on it and swept up.
I was there until about 6am and utterly exhausted. On parade next day I was mortified to see I had still missed some splashes, but nobody seemed to notice. If the electrics people missed the jar I never heard about it. Just about every car these days has a clock as standard. People don?t know how lucky they are. I even had to wind mine up too.
|
when i was in the army i used to drive terex framesteer dump trucks which had orange rotating beacons on the roof of the cab unfortunatly with the beacon in place the hieght of the truck was about 3 inches higher then the door of the garage so we had to make sure we twisted the mounting bracket downwards to give the needed clearence when taking these monsters out of the garage................at least 6 replaced beacons (and a rather battered garage door) later i finally started to remember to move the beacons before moving the truck. it was rather expensive as each driving infraction cost us a crate of beer at the next squadron bash.
i wont tell you how much beer i had to buy when i started one of the trucks up not realising someone had taken off one of the steering rams and i managed to empty almost all the oil out of the hydraulic system onto the floor.......needless to say i didnt even try to claim i had done the pre start visual inspection that time
|
Autoglass guy has just been. You know the tiny wee piece of glass that fits behind the wind up bit on the back door of a Mondeo estate? The chap told me it's called a vent piece. Well he has replaced it but to my surprise it's a sealed unit with its own frame. I see where they get the price from now. The total uninsured bill would have been over £250 !
Still hurts though......£60 quid, I mean £60 quid....that hurts a Scotsman.....
:-(
|
Another window story. Driver's door window on my Montego was getting stiffer and stiffer and finally seized about three inches from fully closed. I was getting angrier and angrier. I shut the door in disgust a teensy bit too hard and the window shattered into a million pieces.
The heaviest downpour in southern England for 50 years started about 30 seconds later. (I did not have access to a garage in those days.) It took me ten minutes to start the car and by the time I arrived at Autoglass I resembled Leonardo di Caprio in the last scene of, erm, what was the name of that film...?
|
It all started with me thinking I'd check the spark plugs on my Suzuki triple.
Whip 'em out, gap & clean them, then pop them back in. Funny, I think, the left hand plug isn't tightening very easily, but it's going in. Get the plug box on it and .... bother. It's stripped the thread in the head.
So I try and remove the head, but one of the cylinder barrels will not separate from the head even though all the nuts are off. The steel through-stud has corroded into the alloy head.
Off to the dealers for two hours of heat, hammering and swearing, it eventually separates. Helicoil on the plughole, back home, new gaskets, start to tighten it all down and .... bother. Two of the cylinder studs have finally let go in the barrels.
So head AND barrels off, for some brass inserts in the cylinders. Altogether, £120 of engineering work plus many skinned knuckles. All because I wanted to check the spark plugs ... which were fine.
|
This really ought to go in FT's red herring thread as well.
I took my last Skoda Estelle, a rust-free, low-mileage 130 that went very well once its ignition and carburation had been sorted out, to Prague in 2001 or so to get its rear stub axles replaced because they had become noisy. To my great surprise irritation the parts weren't available there, and all the car got was a 'service' it didn't really need. Even before the German border on the way back the car was refusing to idle, and the trip back to Paris was unpleasant. I thought the car had suffered exhaust valve seat recession hammering across Germany absolutely flat, and investigated in a Paris underground car park. Sure enough it had, the exaust valve clearances having closed up almost completely. Changed the plugs and plug leads too. But the car still wouldn't idle except when cold on choke. I assumed the exhaust valves had got burnt and were no longer sealing properly. Thinking I would get steel inserts put in the valve seats, I obtained a couple of head gaskets and then, in a freezing, muddy, waterlogged Sussex barn, swopped the head for one off another car I had lying around. The idling problem persisted, and eventually I did what I should have done on the outskirts of Prague a couple of weeks earlier: took the carb out and blasted all the holes with an airline, something one often had to do with Estelles. Bingo! and Pink Fluffy Bleedin Dice! Car went properly again. But now it was using a bit of coolant, more and more in fact. Either the replacement head was warped or one of the cylinder barrels had dropped a bit. Anyway the head gasket was leaking exhaust into the cooling system. By then it was nearly Christmas. The car was driveable but needed new coolant more and more often. On Christmas eve, on the way to the country with a load of stuff in the car, the engine finally cooked itself on the A29 at one or two in the morning of Christmas day. Had the car towed to Sussex later but haven't been able to face doing anything to it since.
Perfectly good car trashed by fond, mechanically capable owner owing to successive bees in bonnet. I hang my head in shame.
|
Bought some nice new Bosch plugs for my MK1 Astra, drove to a farm that i knew the owners of, so i could use the workshop.
Took out the old plugs -
Put in the new bosch ones got to the 4th plug -
Leaned on the ratchet, that i was using, and crack - sheared the head of the plug.
I had to then take all the others out, put back in the old ones, and drive back into town to purchase another set and VERY carefully put them in.
DOH!!!
|
Many years ago, I had BMW 316 that, although old, had been carefully looked after. I cherished that car, cleaned and polished it every week usually on a Sunday afternoon (as one does......)
Well, one Sunday afternoon I got finished early and thought 'what can I do now'? I know, I take a look at the old spark plugs.
The engine on a 316 of 1979 vintage was an incline 4 with the plugs and (sharp) exhaust manifold fairly close to the offside chassis rail. The required a plug spanner with universal joint to remove them and even then I used to skin my knuckles on the exhaust heat shield. Plug 1, 2 and 3 came out ok and they were fine. Number four plug by the bulkhead was a real pig to remove and while giving the plug spanner a final heave, duly snapped the plug off. Luckily I could get the spanner on the remainder of the plug but did not have a replacement for it.
A phone call to work next day and I arranged a half day off to walk three miles to the local car spares shop, three miles back and soon my BMW was running well after her new set of Bosch spark plugs.
Never went near the plugs on that car again, although I still have fond memories of tail happy handling in the wet................
|
Villiers 9E engine in a bubble car.
Dismantled head and barrel to fit high compression piston, re-assemble engine. Result, piston hit head.
Remove head, and shaved material from area of problem, resulting in lowering of compression ratio.
Dismantled head, barrel and piston to open inlet, exhaust and transfer ports in barrel and cut away piston to increase power. Re-asemble engine. Result, increased vibration loosened needle height adjusting screw in carburettor which got sucked into engine destroying expensive high compression piston.
|
|
Hahaha, although I bet it wasn't very funny then! Fancy performance tuning a bubble car, though. The only trouble with those sorts of mods (did you pad the crank?) is that they reduce the power band width considerably, leading to big gaps between gears...
|
Last weekend, took the "new" Harley (1947 vintage) down to Saundersfoot for its first official trip.
Bike had been standing for a couple of years, so like a good boy I'd removed the carburettor, stripped and cleaned it. To do this you have to disconnect the gearchange linkage (hand change, foot clutch set-up) all done, replaced, job sorted.
Set off down A40, wifey needs fuel in her bike so we pull into garage; change down to enter forecourt, gear lever has free movement, remember that I was just about to tighten that last nut on the linkage when wifey had called me in for a cuppa.....
...... having scrounged a nut and bolt and sorted that, we proceed to Saundersfoot where the Harley decides to cut out. Inspection revealed a broken wire at the battery terminal. Easily sorted; grab pliers, strip covering from wire, note that someone has fitted an in-line fuse to the system. Stand up to light cigarette, bend back down, wonder where in-line fuse holder has gone, notice drain by right foot, closer inspection reveals fuse holder at bottom of same. Step back and tread on sunglasses, breaking same.
Cue convincing Victor Meldrew impression.
We did make it to the event, and home, without further incident.
|
This sounds like a script for a bad sitcom but I promise every word is true.
Scenario, It is 1976, my good friend has recently passed his driving test. We are all 17 or 18 years old. It is Friday night and my pal has arranged to meet his girlfriend at her house. An 18th birthday party has been arranged at another house 15 miles out into the country. The deal is that my friend is allowed to borrow his girlfriend's mother's brand new Mini to get the young couple to the party.
He arrives to pick her up to be met at the door by her mother who disappoints him with the news that his girlfriend is feeling unwell. The kind lady though takes pity on the lad and suggests he take the Mini anyway so that he at least can attend the party. No really, she is that trusting.
Of course she sets out the caveats. No drinking, no speeding, back by 2.00 and most definitely no lifts to others or smoking in the car.
Well, he's 18, it's Friday night, he's got the use of a new Mini and he's at a party....
The night wears on and he has too much to drink, he realises that he is way past his car return curfew time and stupidly decides to race back to town. Youthfully naive, he decides to have a cigarette anyway and opens the window wide to keep the smell of the smoke to a minimum.
The cherry end blows off the fag and lands on the back seat just as he is hitting max velocity on a long downhill stretch of dual carriageway. Fearful of the impending wrath of his girlfriend and her mum he ( yes he really did ) tries to steer with his foot while getting the rest of his body into the back seat to find the burning fag end.
Inevitably it ended in tears. The car ended up in a flower bed in the middle of a roundabout. There may have been some undamaged panels but probably not many.
He decides that discretion is the better part of valour and walks / hobbles the rest of the way home. The following day he has of course to confess all of this sorry tale to the girlfriend, her mum and of course the local constabulary.
Indeed, he really wished he hadn't done that...........
|
>>Fancy performance tuning a bubble car,
I was young, and foolish.
|
someone else's tale of woe has reminded me
i always buy decent sunglasses, to prevent headaches when it's bright
had the bonnet up on my old Triumph 2000 mk1, which when you close it, needs to be held up about a foot in the air and allowed to land with a good thud
on the third try wondering why it wouldn't close properly, realised i'd left my £100 Raybans in the gutter of the bonnet... they were smashed to bits
absolutely fuming doesn't even begin to cover it, luckily there were no tree branches readily available, otherwise there would have been a John Cleese moment
|
Once reversed over my new electric tyre pump.
My next door neighbour reversed over his son's new bike.
I once reversed into a foot high concrete bollard which mysteriously appeared behind my car. Still can't figure out how it got there so quickly and clandestinely or indeed how such a small thing hit at such low speed could cause so much damage.........
:-(
|
Tidied up the office last week, got rid of all the old phone chargers and computer cables that were sitting in a drawer and getting on my nerves - if I didn't recognize it or it didn't fit my phone, it went in the bin.
How much is a TomTom USB connection these days, I can't find mine anywhere?
Ditto Westpig's glasses thing, they slip off my nose when I'm loading shopping into the boot and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to leave them on the rubber boot seal which is now embedded with thousands of bits of glass and plastic.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 24/09/2008 at 13:38
|
"sitting in a draw"
should be drawer of course, I won't sleep for 3 nights unless a mod corrects it.
{no sleepness nights for you BBD}
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 24/09/2008 at 13:39
|
Some moral principles emerge from the painful experience described in my post above, which I haven't mentioned before because it is so embarrassing.
1: However smart you may be or think you are, you can suddenly be really stupid about anything at any time. There may be reasons for this, but there are no excuses.
2: Only very familiar routine mechanical jobs can be tackled in a hurry, and it's a bad idea even then. Anything resembling a problem should be approached cautiously from all angles before taking considered, cautious action. It is easier to take this leisurely approach at home than when travelling. So when travelling it is particularly important to take your time, whatever you may feel about the urgency of your travel arrangements.
3: When you are interfering with a car on the basis of unsound reasoning, not even gruelling effort will guarantee success unless you are lucky.
|
|
|
|
|
|
