Your worst ever dumb ass mechanical mistake
 

Come on folks confess your worst ever mechanical mistake and embarrass yersel in public. You can even pretend it was your mate and not you.



When i was 18 i had a Suzuki GT380 which handled worse than me after 10 pints of stella.

As the front end was particularly bad i thought i'd replace the fork oil with something thicker to stop it bouncing around quite so much.

So i put the bike on the centrestand and unscewed the first fork cap. I then unscrewed the 2nd fork cap.......BOING.......

Fork cap shoots off like a bullet and richochets all over the garage.

As i didn't have the brains to put a support under the bike, the front end of the bike collapsed, the fork springs shot out as well, followed by 2 streams of dirty fork oil all over the place.

What a feckin' mess.

The story doesn't quite end there. When i i put everything back together i wanted thicker oil in the forks rather than the de rigeur ATF or fork oil (no special weight fork oils back then) i used 2 stroke oil which was about 30w instead of the fork oil or ATF which was about 10w i think. At least i wouldn't have to worry about de-coking the forks.

It still doesn't end there, as i still wasn't happy with the handling i tried EP90 gear box oil to stiffen things up even further. Well at least i was young and trying, very trying. No wonder Nelly makes me stand in the corner on my own when i go there
:lol::lol:

Moral of the story, either learn to do it properly, workshop manuals are good things, or get the experts to do it.

Two other horroer stories. Running a courier company i've seen a few dodgy things but 2 gems that spring to mind that honestly weren't me are.

One lad changed his back tyre on his bike and it was dreadfull on the road. Someone suggested getting the wheeel balanced to he took it to the tyre place to get it balanced.

The wheel went on and nearly wrecked the machine it was so far out of balance. The tyre fitter toook the tyre off to find a 10" adjustable spanner inside the tyre:lol::lol:


The second is one of the best dumb ass storys ever and it happened right in front of me. One of the guys had an old Astra diesel van which desperatley needed a service. Some had suggested flushing the engine out. Instead of using flushing oil, he drained the oil and put a hosepipe in the oil filler cap and ran water through the engine for 10 minutes (creating a massive slick underneath the van) then put the drain plug back in and filled it with oil:lol::lol::lol: The clods of white smoke were unbelievable and the van was never right again.:lol:

Trapped a pull tie between the head and the barrel on an rd 125. stuck it all together and proceded to fill the crank space with coolent when filling the rad.

I was young and teaching myself. For really stupid **** ups talk to kye from the scooter shop he does at least 2 a day and hes got book learning behind him.

Harsh :lol::lol: But true

har to admit this but, when replacing my 748r with new oil and filter, which i had done myself several times, took the old filter off but couldnt understand why the oil wasnt coming out. stood there for ages before phoning my mate (ducati mechanic) have you removed the sump plug? what a dick head. soon the oil was flowing out.

At the tender age of sweet sixteen :saint: i owned a Suzuki TS 50 :D
One day it went "pop" :( not too mechanically mind but very determined (and skint) i decided to strip the engine down to see what the problem was..........in my mums kitchen:D......"What!!!!!!"..................it was cold out side ;) besides.......my mates said she probably wouldnt mind:o oh well, thats another story:lol:
Engine stripped......found the piston in tact but no rings.....either off them, now what:puzzled: asked the girl freinds dad to take a look (well, he owned a socket set so i figured he new all about engines:P) he tells me "the barrel and bottom end seem ok so just put a new piston and rings in". So the next day i come home from work and fit the new items in Billy Wizz time, wheel her outside and spend the next hour trying to get it started :mad: i was about ready to torch it when my neighbour offered to take a look (only cause he was trying it on with my mum and getting no where :lol:) he takes the head off the barrel and chuckles, (smug get) he then tells me the arrow on the top of the piston should be pointing at the exhaust port and not the carb.......................:lol: i rebuilt the engine on that bike a further four times before selling it on...........but i never made that mistake again:lol::lol:

Hmmmm, so many to chose from :D
One that immediately springs to mind is overtightening the sump plug on a VFR400 to find a garage covered in (unused) oil and a completed shafted sump!

Genius.

A guy I used to work with was the Grandson of a wealthy construction company owner. When the company was bought out he became wealthy. But he wasnt the brightest light on the christmas tree. His life is one catastrophy after another. Some years ago he bought a sloop sailing boat to pull the ladies in, but he had no sailing knowledge. One day whilst at his moorings the outboard stopped working so he undid the nuts which hold it on to have a better look. Unfortunatly he undid all the bolts at once and it fell off and sunk, Luckily for him some divers were nearby and retreived it for him. Another day he arrived at some resort and tied his sloop up to a pier to go off looking for ladies. However he didnt know how to tie the correct slip knots and the tide had gone out meaning that the upper bow of his sloop had snapped off and the rest of it was 6 foot lower in the mud. It needed an expensive rescue and repair. And finally he bought a small rowing boat because of the earlier knott incident so that he could drop anchor and row ashore. The rowing boat was wooden and was a bargain acording to him. Him and a mate put on their best suites to go out on the town on the pull. They lowered the boat into the water, got in and started heading for shore. But becasue the boat had not been in the water for so long it had dried and was no longer watertight and so it got lower and lower and their feet got wetter and wetter until it sank. He sold the lot within one week of that. It may not be mechanical but it is funny. :burn:

Changed the cam belt on my Escort RS2000 rally car. Shut the fiberglass bonnet.
Started it up........only to see a 19mm ring spanner smashed through the said bonnet at great speed hit the ceiling of my garage and come down with such force it smashed the windscreen :sniff:

moral of this tale....dont leave a spanner on the front crank pully bolt :puzzled:

In 1987 i briefly owned a Formula Ford 1600.At a MAllory test day the car developed a missfire.Diagnosing the problem as the points i replaced them.Unfortunately my Pit Bitch had took all the plug leads out of the cap and not noticed the firing order or where more importantly the posistion of no1 plug was.
A bollocking later out comes no1 plug and in goes a round file to see where TDC was.Engine turns over up comes file to the top of the stroke.Bingo, order sorted.Remove file Press starter button engine fires and the sound of the end of the file which had snapped of in the cylinder could be heard echoing all around Mallory
The piston resides in my fathers garage as a constant reminder.:lol:

Pure class!!

Any confessions from Nelly or Shazaam?

Where are You Shazaam, been very quiet of late?

decided the chain & sprockets on my old fzr400 track day bike could do with a clean up.
got bored quickly & decided while it was on the paddock stand why not start her up, put it in 1st and let the engine do the work?

3 seconds later i'm running round my neighbours kitchen with a mangled index finger.

never mind, chicks dig scars:cool:

I once re-connected the HT leads on my Suzuki GT750 in the wrong order and started it.
I never knew a motorcycle could make that much noise. I didn't know anything could make that much noise.

My local dealer told me what I'd done wrong (the first of many similar embarrassments, it should be said).

Come ere... theres more :lol: When i was 18 i had a Renault 18 GTX (you can stop laughing now, it was all i could afford at the time) was supposed to be a sporty model :lol: yo know twin Webbers and go faster stripes , any way it had been running a bit crappy for a while, felt starved of fuel.....i couldnt be arsed with pulling the webbers apart to take a look at the jets so i purchased some Wurz carb cleaner!!!!!! with my wife in the driver seat and me under the bonnet i proceeded to spray the carb cleaner into the carb as she revved the engine, go on i yelled, give it some......and she did just as i sprayed for my life into the carb trumpets.............aaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuggghhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!! the whole lot i sprayed blew back into my face, or more procisely my "f" ing eyes.........you may well sit there and laugh but i was in agony!!!!! i couldnt open my eyes, and as i stumbled across the road screaming and tripping over the curb, all i could here was that cow i married laughing her double D's off!!!!!!! whats that all about ?????? after a trip to the local quacks and then A and E i came home.......................but not as the same man i was earlier........ after having several eye baths with various solutions i was left with bright orange rings about 1/2" thick around both eyes.......... the skin was stained for about 2 weeks, so for 2 weeks i went about my normal life looking like an "f" ing panda only the rings around my eyes were orange :lol::lol::lol:

this is one sparkin may well remember as i new him in those days:P

Early 1980's serviced my old H*nda 400/4F2. Fitted a new chain and sprockets.
Just about finished fitting it and got called in fer mi tay.
Next morning out to the bike and sets off for work.
Gets to the A2 bow-water roundabout, slings it in left and then right. Next thing i know I'm on my ar*e watching the 400 slide up the road bounce off the kerb and cause all kinds of damage. I follow suit and end up in Gillingham hospital with the biggest bruise on my ar*e ever seen.

Yup you've guessed it; I fitted the front sprocket but failed to do it up tight having got called in for tea, then forgot all about it. It came off and it, plus the chain wrapped round the swing arm and locked the back end up.

Ains. :rolleye:

Tantrum, that was a tonic reading that, excellent.

Adam......surely yours involves a big hammer?:D

Or better still. You know the chemistry O Level experiment at school where you get a lighted wooden splint and poke it into a test tube of hydrogen and you get a 'pop'.

Well, having charged the battery up over night I said to t'other arf and the bros-outlaw who was down for a visit; hey watch this.
Match across the top and a neat little machine effect of popping across the open filler vents.
Oh yes very good. Linda is not impressed and the bros-outlaw is mildly amused.

So, gets the other battery that had been on charge and did the same thing. KA-BOOOM .Sulphuric acid all over the place. The end cell had exploded and was all over the kitchen, that's right not in the garage.
I'm splashed with it, so are the ali cooking pots and the new kitchen knives. Ooh ow that smarts.
We still have the bread knife 23 years later and it's still got the acid stains on it!

Ains.

A guy I knew lost the end of his finger when he stuck it between the chain and front sprocket (no shroud) whilst on the move. He was trying to push the gear lever back on the splined shaft. I think it was a KH250.

Worst I have done is to strip the thread on the cam cap putting my honda 250 back together. Had an insert fitted and promptly stripped the thread on one of the other caps. Bought a torque wrench after that.

Tantrum :lol::lol::lol: That is so funny now,wasn`t at the time tho(nah it was),you gave me a right load of ear ache for telling you to use that carb cleaner on that french peice of crap,if you weren`t cleaning the carb, you were changing drive shafts:lol::lol:

I was no better tho,I was welding them bloody old minis up:lol:
Those were the days:D

Back in 1986 i had an AR80, nice bike when 17 years old but needed a bit more go so it was treated to the following. Autisa 93cc barrel and allspeed pipe and K&N filter.

Sadly it was a tad unreliable (but damn quick) and used to detonate badly and overheat big time. The airfilter stopped you riding it in the wet.

Now as for bodges, firstly the kickstart stripped its splines so i inserted needles into the gaps, tightened the pinch bolt and snapped off the excess pins after.
Secondly, i stripped the barrel stud from the crankcase, so to put the barrel and head back on inserted a coach bolt from the top, removed the flywheel and gene, and put a nut on the underside and ground off the excess.
And sadly the worst one was as follows. on the AR the primary drive on the end of the crank was secured by a rubber / metal star type bush. These shattered under the massive HP hike of the said 93cc kit. Anyway i welded the primary gear to end of the crank directly. did the job but sadly you needed to grind away the end of the crank for each rebuild - which was every 1500 miles with the amount of seizures.
I have a good school friend to thank for the above tips, sadly he is no longer with us and some of you may have heard or remember him. His name was ian dugdale from dugdale motors in helsby. He came to my rescue many a time in the van and we took the poorly AR back to the workshop for its welding / bodging.

No mishaps wih bikes but I did once ( never again) change the cam belt on my Renult traffic. like others I was called in just as I was putting the pully back on. Whan I returned I tighend the pulley nut up, put all the other bits on and then tried to start it. It wouldn't fire up so I called the wife to start it while I took a look under the bonnet. It soon became clear that the pulley was not turning:o STOP I shouted, but it was all invain I#d already done the damage myself. 8 Bent valves:( The bloody woodruff key had slipped out and i hadn't noticed.

[Edited on 3-3-2006 by Jon]

Like i'd own up to that one ;)

Blimey, Ian Dugdale is a blast from the past. I didn't know him personally but i knew the shop very well.

I used to go out with a girl from Frodsham and she knew the Dugdales. What happened?
Do you know the guys who used to own Ellesmere Port Motorcycle centre?

[Edited on 4-3-2006 by rockhopper]

Not a bodge of mine but a funny story just the same. I used to have a VW beatle which was well tuned up, 1600cc engine, 4 barrel holley carb, the works. Anyway I was doing something to it and had both front wheels off, mate of mine came round and said he'd give me a hand to refit them. Usual story, my mum called us in for tea, my mate then went home and I went out. I got about 2 miles before the nearside front wheel (the one he didn't tighten) came off-first I saw was the wheel flying over the roof just as the car crashed down on the brake drum-bloody sparks everywhere. Anyway once it had ground to a halt I retrieved the wheel, robbed a stud from each of the other 3 and refitted it and carried on-tough cars beatles.............

John

One of my customers tried to fit his own sat nav & hands free kit....he gave up, and called me in to put it right....this is what greeted me !

:o:o:o:o what the hell, looks like the making of a thin blue flame running round the length of the car

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

BDG,

This has to be one of the best threads in ages.........

Rgds, Rob

P.S. Just off out now, but I'll jot down a near miss later.

OK hands up. I once reassembled the crancases on a pre unit Bonneville but forgot to put the crankshaft back in.

Car wise I recently undid the top nut on front suspension strut on my lads car to replace the coil spring. Wondered why the nut seemed a bit tight until it came of the thread sending the top spring retaining plate at some velocity straight into my face. Got to admit that my blood ran a bit on the chilly side as this has been known to kill before now !. Waited for the blood to come pouring out of my nose and eyes but it didn't happen. Quick change of underwear and mental note not to forget the spring clamps next time !!!

Tin hat on :):)

[Edited on 4-3-2006 by Paul James]

Wow .... so many and so little time :lol:


Helping a neighbor get his old car started that had stood for years. Prior to starting it, and at my suggestion, we took the plugs out and filled the cylinders with engine oil to let it soak down past the piston etc. Thought it would help lubricate the piston and bores. Left it an hour or so and then turned it over .... as the pistons came up to TDC they shot jets of oil out of the plug holes .... it shot oil up the side of the house and hit the gutters. The wall is still stained now :D



As a kid of 19, I fitted a re-con short block to my MKIV Cortina. Would it start after wards, would it F**K. Ended up towing it behind my mates car for about 2 mile trying to bump start it ... no joy. Back at the garage some smart ass suggested we connect the fuel line to the fuel pump :( started first touch.



20 years ago my mate had a Yam RD250 (aircooled) and kept it out side. He got fed up with the front discs going rusty in winter so he smeared them with a thin layer of grease :o then asked me a week later why I thought his front brakes were **** :puzzled: I was gob smacked he lasted a week of commuting on the bike with no front brakes.

[Edited on 4-3-2006 by Carbon749]

as a sprok. working in a scrap yard. boss wanted the springs off the front struts. off a escort. got the cutting gear. starts to cut the bolts off the top, bang spring flew off. next minute am about 5ft awy on my arse.owwww..even got a better one. i rode speedway for 12 years.well we put springs on the inside off the peaks on your helmet so you could put prepexe tear offs on. if the track was wet you would get muck on one tare. one off leaving a clean one behind. i took a mate to spanner for me first time. he came with me. and the last. showed him what to do. and to replace the tare offs, if i was busy, tapes up into first bend. am filled in cant see a thing. goes to pull the tare off. f******g idiot had taped it on i had to rip the peak off to see ware i was. missed the fence just.nearly brown leathers:lol:

Not sure i should own up to this one but this is why i'm not allowed to work on customers bikes!!:(

Rebuilding my race bike for the first race of the season I had the cases apart putting in the new crank after having it all balanced. Steve had shimmed the crank, gearbox etc and left the parts led out in the engine room, for me to safetyclean, airline, dry etc (a dull and time consuming job but one i'm qualified for!).

All parts spotless and led on the bench with shims in order, so i decided to put the bottom end together, which i did perfectly! sealed the cases and went home for the night.

Next morning Steve pointed out, between laffs, that he would split the cases for me so i could clean off the 3bond, then he could put the crank back in - THE RIGHT WAY ROUND!

I'll never live it down.

A long time ago I bought a pile of bits that was mostly a 1959 Triumph 5TA. This engine has a distributor like a car behind the barrels. Somehow I managed to time the points on the wrong side of the cam, so instead of about 2 dgrees of advance it had maybe 50 degrees.

The loud backfires on the first couple of kicks should have warned me, but no.. on the third kick it kicked back with me at full swing on the kick start. I nearly went into orbit! Thank god for the old Alpinestars Roger De Coster "Mad MAx" motocross boots I was wearing, they probably saved me from a broken ankle. Aye, them were the days.....



My mate, the Triumph expert, laughed so hard he fell over.

[Edited on 5-3-2006 by mikesps]

I replaced a shattred piston in a RM 125 kinda forgot to get new gasket kit, thinking the old ones would be ok. It started but ****ed allsorts out of the base and head gasket. Ever since then i dont even bother picking up a spanner

Not me this time but a mate of mine from way back who shall remain nameless; OK Stan the man, decided he was going to make himself a mechanical cruise control. Very easy to do.
He drilled and tapped a small hole in the top of the throttle/twistgrip body and threaded a winged nut in it. Then when on the move he just opened the throttle to the required speed and nipped up the cable/twist grip inside the handlebar body with the winged nut.

So, on ride outs where we had to do a bit of M-way work he'd use this device. We'd all be two hands on and he'd be croooooozing along throttle hand on hip nodding his head like Mussolini.
Anyway, one particular time we'd decided to get back earlier so wound it on a bit and settled in at around 105.
Stan's there hand on hip, lording it up when we came across backed up traffic. We all shut the throttle and slowed down; Stan on the other hand hurtled on panicking like mad as he couldn't get he cruise control nut off.
When he did manage to stop having barrelled down the middle of these lines of cars, we caught up as he was throwing the winged cruise control nut into the far distance.

What had happened was, at 105 the recess where the throttle cable ball-end goes, neatly lined up with his cruise nut, so when he tightened the nut it bit into that recess and so could be undone with 1/2 a turn. It took more like 3 turns which with two hands on one side of the handlebars at 105mph is a pretty neat trick. Well we thought so.
It was bloody hilarious watching him though.

Ains.

[Edited on 5-3-2006 by Ains.]

This morning I struggled for 10 minutes trying to get the offside exhaust off after removing the spring, it just wouldn't budge.

Only when i decided to take the near side exhaust off instead did i realise I had taken the wrong spring off.