Stupid wrenching stories

[Johnny_P]

We're all car guys here. And I'm sure 90% of us have worked on our own vehicles. Which means 90% of us have a story or two about some completely stupid shit we've done while wrenching. What's the dumbest thing you've done?


When I had my Ford Focus I was just getting into cars and wrenching on them. My dad always took his cars to shops so I never learned from him, mostly learned from reading forums and such. I could never really figure out how to bleed brakes for whatever reason (this was before youtube and whatnot). So I go try and figure it out on my own. Got the car up on jack stands, took a wheel off, hooked up my bleed bottle and clear hose with a little brake fluid in it and had my brother pump the brakes. I opened the bleed screw, and..... well I couldn't turn it. Son of a bitch. I put more weight into it and nothing, and then I finally really ripped on it and the bleed screw sheared off, half the screw embedded deep into the caliper. I was turning the wrench the wrong direction since the bleeder was on the back of the caliper.

So there my car was, leaking brake fluid all over my dad's brand newly sealed driveway, with a bleed screw stuck and I couldn't get it out. Turned out the other caliper had a frozen piston, so I actually replaced both with re manufactured units. Cost my college self way more than I was thinking it would.




There was another time I forgot to fully torque lug nuts, but I found out pretty quickly as the wheel was clicking with every rotation

[goIftdibrad]

I could write a book on this subject.

[Johnny_P]

I could write a book on this subject.

drop some fresh

[SAWCE]

We're all car guys here. And I'm sure 90% of us have worked on our own vehicles. Which means 90% of us have a story or two about some completely stupid shit we've done while wrenching. What's the dumbest thing you've done?


When I had my Ford Focus I was just getting into cars and wrenching on them. My dad always took his cars to shops so I never learned from him, mostly learned from reading forums and such. I could never really figure out how to bleed brakes for whatever reason (this was before youtube and whatnot). So I go try and figure it out on my own. Got the car up on jack stands, took a wheel off, hooked up my bleed bottle and clear hose with a little brake fluid in it and had my brother pump the brakes. I opened the bleed screw, and..... well I couldn't turn it. Son of a bitch. I put more weight into it and nothing, and then I finally really ripped on it and the bleed screw sheared off, half the screw embedded deep into the caliper. I was turning the wrench the wrong direction since the bleeder was on the back of the caliper.

So there my car was, leaking brake fluid all over my dad's brand newly sealed driveway, with a bleed screw stuck and I couldn't get it out. Turned out the other caliper had a frozen piston, so I actually replaced both with re manufactured units. Cost my college self way more than I was thinking it would.




There was another time I forgot to fully torque lug nuts, but I found out pretty quickly as the wheel was clicking with every rotation

I've done the lug nuts thing once after swapping from winter to summer wheels on my :gti: .

Similar story as your brake fluid change, one time on the GTI I was changing the oil and just went full and started turning the drain plug the wrong way. It was tough, but I just pushed through it and stripped out the threads in the drain pan. Got lucky and a friend of my dad was able to weld a new nut in there or whatever for me to put a new drain plug in instead of having to completely replace the bottom portion of my oil pan.

[goIftdibrad]

On my first car the EGR valve shit the bed, so my solution was to just remove it.

Good thing it had a rev limiter.

[goIftdibrad]

one time I put a clutch on backwards.

[Johnny_P]

On my first car the EGR valve shit the bed, so my solution was to just remove it.

Good thing it had a rev limiter.

Brap brap brap!

[Johnny_P]

I've done the lug nuts thing once after swapping from winter to summer wheels on my :gti: .

Similar story as your brake fluid change, one time on the GTI I was changing the oil and just went full and started turning the drain plug the wrong way. It was tough, but I just pushed through it and stripped out the threads in the drain pan. Got lucky and a friend of my dad was able to weld a new nut in there or whatever for me to put a new drain plug in instead of having to completely replace the bottom portion of my oil pan.

That is At least there was a cheaper solution though.

[goIftdibrad]

I left a car in teh home depot parking lot because i never cleaned up some wiring. It was a convertible, so fair weather car. Well on a road trip it rained, i turned on the wipers, messy wiring got tangled in the mechanism, no power a few moments later.

[goIftdibrad]

I've pulled more than one engine out of a car in the junkyard with seatbelts and the a-frame with chainfalls

[stripethree]

The first time I was doing suspension on my R32 back in '05 with a friend in my apartment complex. Going to undo the stock upper strut nuts and was turning the offset wrench the wrong way in just the right way that it snapped. It was a brand new Harbor Freight wrench.

During that same install, on the rear this time, said friend gave two warnings that I move my hand while we were putting in the spring. I was like "nah", and ended up with my hand compressed in a spring. "See, what did you learn. Move your hand."

No injuries other than the wrench, but Ted loves to remind me of those incidents from time to time.

Oh, and the first time I did an oil change on the R32 at my parents folks, I forget to pull the chocks from the rear wheels trying to back the car down off ramps. I figured this was a version of the "just need a bigger hammer probelem" and gave it a little more gas. The car came off the ramps... by spitting them forward into my mother's Maxima in the driveway. Again, luckily nothing was damaged.

[goIftdibrad]

one time i had a temp sensor for the fan fail at an autox and slightly overheated. I ZFG hotwired the fan to the battery and finished the day.

[wap]

I really haven't done any serious wrenching since I built my Beetle, I'm embarrassed to say, so my story is an old one. When I built said Beetle, I replaced pretty much every electrical component, battery, voltage regulator, generator, distributor, cap, rotor, points, wires, plugs, etc. Everything except the ignition coil because I figured coils virtually never fail, right? Took newly hot-rodded Beetle on it's first longer trip, driving a few hours south on I57 with some friends to visit the lovely U of I campus. Got down there fine, hung out for a few hours, went to Steak and Shake for lunch. Time to go home and Beetle would not start. Cranked fine but wouldn't light up. 7 of us had to pile into the other car (mom's Mk1 GTI driven by my bro) to get home. I rode back in the hatch. Next day I rented a van with a tow bar, drove down there and brought the Beetle home. Day after that I bought a new Bosch coil, threw it in, and the bitch started just fine.
That was the only time it ever left me stranded.

[MexicanYarisTK]

This one time on my mk6, I was installing a clutch bleeder block and short shifter, resulted in 2 fuck-ups. Which means I had to remove the intake. There was a hose in the way, which caused me to have a harder time to remove the intake. So my dumbass pulled the hose that was attached behind the headlight housing, turns out it was a coolant hose and started spewing coolant. So I made a mess on my engine bay. Luckily I had a bottle of coolant thanks to the waterpump failure I had. That was no biggie.

However, after I installed the short shifter and the clutch bleeder block, I depressed the clutch to test it, the clutch couldn't come back, made my car undriveable. $100 bucks and taking it to the shop where my dad usually takes his cars to fix, it resolved the problem. I didn't know what really caused it, maybe I did the installation wrong. But it worked the way I expected with a little more

[max225]

We're all car guys here. And I'm sure 90% of us have worked on our own vehicles. Which means 90% of us have a story or two about some completely stupid shit we've done while wrenching. What's the dumbest thing you've done?


When I had my Ford Focus I was just getting into cars and wrenching on them. My dad always took his cars to shops so I never learned from him, mostly learned from reading forums and such. I could never really figure out how to bleed brakes for whatever reason (this was before youtube and whatnot). So I go try and figure it out on my own. Got the car up on jack stands, took a wheel off, hooked up my bleed bottle and clear hose with a little brake fluid in it and had my brother pump the brakes. I opened the bleed screw, and..... well I couldn't turn it. Son of a bitch. I put more weight into it and nothing, and then I finally really ripped on it and the bleed screw sheared off, half the screw embedded deep into the caliper. I was turning the wrench the wrong direction since the bleeder was on the back of the caliper.

So there my car was, leaking brake fluid all over my dad's brand newly sealed driveway, with a bleed screw stuck and I couldn't get it out. Turned out the other caliper had a frozen piston, so I actually replaced both with re manufactured units. Cost my college self way more than I was thinking it would.




There was another time I forgot to fully torque lug nuts, but I found out pretty quickly as the wheel was clicking with every rotation

Hmm, lets see... I used an electric wrench on the crown vic shock bolts and stripped them I also stripped 3/16 tranny pan bolts using same wrench.

The annoying part is, this is when I was LOOSENING the bolts. It was a really annoying lesson and I haven't used it since

[Johnny_P]

Hmm, lets see... I used an electric wrench on the crown vic shock bolts and stripped them I also stripped 3/16 tranny pan bolts using same wrench.

The annoying part is, this is when I was LOOSENING the bolts. It was a really annoying lesson and I haven't used it since

16 point socket?

[Johnny_P]

This one time on my mk6, I was installing a clutch bleeder block and short shifter, resulted in 2 fuck-ups. Which means I had to remove the intake. There was a hose in the way, which caused me to have a harder time to remove the intake. So my dumbass pulled the hose that was attached behind the headlight housing, turns out it was a coolant hose and started spewing coolant. So I made a mess on my engine bay. Luckily I had a bottle of coolant thanks to the waterpump failure I had. That was no biggie.

However, after I installed the short shifter and the clutch bleeder block, I depressed the clutch to test it, the clutch couldn't come back, made my car undriveable. $100 bucks and taking it to the shop where my dad usually takes his cars to fix, it resolved the problem. I didn't know what really caused it, maybe I did the installation wrong. But it worked the way I expected with a little more

What was the clutch bleed block supposed to do that the OEM setup didn't?

[max225]

Hmm, lets see... I used an electric wrench on the crown vic shock bolts and stripped them I also stripped 3/16 tranny pan bolts using same wrench.

The annoying part is, this is when I was LOOSENING the bolts. It was a really annoying lesson and I haven't used it since

16 point socket?

No, it stripped the actual threads, the head was fine.

https://www.gamut.com/p/dewalt-heavy-du ... 2NEALw_wcB

Tool in question

[Johnny_P]

16 point socket?

No, it stripped the actual threads, the head was fine.

https://www.gamut.com/p/dewalt-heavy-du ... 2NEALw_wcB

Tool in question

Oh wow that's impressive af

[MexicanYarisTK]

This one time on my mk6, I was installing a clutch bleeder block and short shifter, resulted in 2 fuck-ups. Which means I had to remove the intake. There was a hose in the way, which caused me to have a harder time to remove the intake. So my dumbass pulled the hose that was attached behind the headlight housing, turns out it was a coolant hose and started spewing coolant. So I made a mess on my engine bay. Luckily I had a bottle of coolant thanks to the waterpump failure I had. That was no biggie.

However, after I installed the short shifter and the clutch bleeder block, I depressed the clutch to test it, the clutch couldn't come back, made my car undriveable. $100 bucks and taking it to the shop where my dad usually takes his cars to fix, it resolved the problem. I didn't know what really caused it, maybe I did the installation wrong. But it worked the way I expected with a little more

What was the clutch bleed block supposed to do that the OEM setup didn't?

I had some moments with my manual mk6, and I stumbled upon a thread where this dude hated his GLI's manual. Claimed that the s3 short shifter, clutch bleeder block that I got from ECS, and the one that I didn't get, I believe it was a clutch stop, solved his issue. So I jumped on the bandwagon and that they're also cheap mods, so I was like why not?

But it didn't made a huge difference by any means.

[Johnny_P]

What was the clutch bleed block supposed to do that the OEM setup didn't?

I had some moments with my manual mk6, and I stumbled upon a thread where this dude hated his GLI's manual. Claimed that the s3 short shifter, clutch bleeder block that I got from ECS, and the one that I didn't get, I believe it was a clutch stop, solved his issue. So I jumped on the bandwagon and that they're also cheap mods, so I was like why not?

I've fallen victim to forumbreh mod recommendations too

I put an AEM intake on my Focus. #neveragain

[max225]

No, it stripped the actual threads, the head was fine.

https://www.gamut.com/p/dewalt-heavy-du ... 2NEALw_wcB

Tool in question

Oh wow that's impressive af

It was super frustrating... I thought it was a one off thing, but it literally strips the threads if you use it to loosen bolts I guess it is due to the "impact" function. I got the tool to help me save time, but instead, I wasted a bunch of time+money on it.

[MexicanYarisTK]

I had some moments with my manual mk6, and I stumbled upon a thread where this dude hated his GLI's manual. Claimed that the s3 short shifter, clutch bleeder block that I got from ECS, and the one that I didn't get, I believe it was a clutch stop, solved his issue. So I jumped on the bandwagon and that they're also cheap mods, so I was like why not?

I've fallen victim to forumbreh mod recommendations too

I put an AEM intake on my Focus. #neveragain

mk6 was my first enthusiast car and first car that I did DIY work, so I was kind of a noob to the modding game.

[Johnny_P]

Oh wow that's impressive af

It was super frustrating... I thought it was a one off thing, but it literally strips the threads if you use it to loosen bolts I guess it is due to the "impact" function. I got the tool to help me save time, but instead, I wasted a bunch of time+money on it.

I have one of these. Haven't tried using it yet.

[ChrisoftheNorth]

No, it stripped the actual threads, the head was fine.

https://www.gamut.com/p/dewalt-heavy-du ... 2NEALw_wcB

Tool in question

Oh wow that's impressive af

Seriously. A half-inch impact is serious overkill. No wonder you stripped threads.