Noob mistakes with your car

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DaveBonds said:
A week or so after I bought my car, the mean guy working at Subway with the bowtie tattoo insisted that my Charger was a '72 Corvette.

I eventually agreed.

I'm not sure if that was a mistake.
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Never argue with stupid people. They will wear you down and then beat you with experience.
 
Lol Dave

I mistakenly used "restore" engine treatment on the turbo ford probe gt I drove as a 16 yr old.

The turbo made some strange noises after a few treatments....

Wish I knew more about cars then, that could have been such a nice one.
 
I wasn't a noob, but it was a noob mistake.

I was in a hurry and bam bam bam slamed together an automatic trans and transfer case into a 4x4 then turned around and tripped right over the torque converter laying on the floor. :)

Needless to say the job took a little longer than expected.
 
OneOfMany said:
How about driving off after doing a nice wash job on a car, including polishing up the aftermarket sunroof, then at 30mph feeling a whoosh as it lifted off (forgot to clip it in), and then watch it explode in the rearview on the street behind me. Fortunately, no cars behind, although the orange setting sun made for one pretty and spectacular view :)

Grant
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I had something similar happen with my '68 Mustang- it had a lift-off hood (thanks to the hood hinges being shot lol). I accelerated rather briskly (thanks to the 351C under the hood) and then noticed the front of the hood lift up about 8 inches and hover there. And then flip right off the car.
I watched it land on the road upside-down behind me, slammed on the brakes, and ran out to get it off the road before the car behind me could run over it.
 
My mother filled my Charger's tank half full of diesel.

After discovering her mistake, she proceeded to top it off with regular and drive it home.

I ended up draining everything, replacing the fuel pump and rebuilding the thermoquad.
 
After spending a couple years building the Dart, back in August I finally got to the point were I could drive it again. I had checked over everything important (so I thought) and headed down the road for my maiden voyage. I was cruising down the freeway about 3 miles from home and heard a knocking noise from the front that would change frequency with the speed of the car. It got louder and louder to the point I knew something bad was happening, even though I wanted to ignore it. While pulling over, I poked my head out the window to look up front and the front wheel was wobbling like crazy. I then went into panick mode and got it shut down. Upon looking at the problem, 4 of the 5 lug nuts were gone! It then dawned on me. 2 weeks prior when I put the wheels on, I only snugged the lugs while the wheels were in the air. Then that day when I dropped it to the ground, I did not do a final torque to any of the wheels. The last lug that was still hanging on the front wheel had a spun lug in the rotor and thus prevented the nut from backing off and losing the wheel at highway speed. The damage could have been bad but ended up with only having to buy a new rotor. Pretty embarrassing when you can't remember to check the most basic thing of a car!
 
Just found out about this one over the weekend. Took my bare heads to the machine shop. They bathed them and checked for straightness and cracks, everything was good to go. I brought them home, lapped the valves real good, put them all back together and prettied them up with a coat of paint. I grabbed gaskets from the FelPro kit to get started putting the engine back together and noticed 2 bags of valve seals still in the box. So the valves all came back out again...
 
Exact same story as the OP but when I looked in the mirror I saw a cop driving through the smoke. This happened twice. Once with my dad when he was in his mustang and I was in the dart. We both smoked the tires twice in front of this cop and we got warnings. The second time was turning onto a four lane. I had the car sideways with tons of smoke. Cop turns on his lights and I pull over. I looked at his name tag and realized it was the nephew of the guy I just bought my rear end off. We had a laugh and talked about mopars and he sent me on my way.

On a serious note. Never retune your carb before addressing other problems. My car had a bed hesitation and wouldn't stay running after it warmed up. I screwed around with my carburetor until it ran ok and then realized my distributor had just moved. I reset the timing where it should have been and no my carburetor is way out of wack.
 
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