This made me laugh so I have copied it from another forum I am a member of!
ust been on the X type forum about my Satnav unit in the boot not being well....
And one of the posts reminded me of a time when I wasn't quite as smart as I thought I was.
So. I thought I'd start a new thread with some confessions...
Age 17.... I had a Hillman Minx Mk V1. It had the3 cast iron 1725 engine and a Zenith carb.
I decided to "tune it" and bought a very sad, very holy Sunbeam Alpine sports car with a 1600 engine, alloy head, twin choke Solex (flat spot between tickover and full throttle) and proceeded to (with a new head gasket natch) to swop the head and carbs over, exhaust manifolds etc for the iron head.
All I got was backfire through the carb, huge explosions through the exhaust, even towing it for miles achieved nothing. Over the next 4 weekends I followed the same procedure, checked the distributor, plug leads, plugs, air filter, you name it I changed it. Every weekend I fitted the alloy head, every Sunday night I put the iron one back on so I could use it for work.
But I'm stubborn, damned if a piece of metal is going to outwit me...
The 5th weekend... A mate came around to see where we were going that night, which night club. Knew nothing about cars except you put petrol in one end and they moved until it ran out. He watched me take the head off, I had it down to about 2 hours by now, put the head on the floor, start to pick up the alloy head and asked innocently "Why are the circles a different size?" Me, being all manly and knowledgable says "They are the inlet and exhaust valves and they are different sizes because the exhaust gas is at higher pressure"... So he says "Why are they in a different order then?"
The penny dropped....
About a year later: I have a Cortina Mk 3. Fords used to rust faster than the pound lost value...
Under the bonnet there were two holes punched into the chassis rails. I decided that I should pour my old sump oil down the holes, and a bit of spirited driving will spread this oil all over the inside of the chassis rails, thus making the chassis last for ever.
So... I did this. I poured roughly half a gallon down each rail, went back in the house to wash my hands, came out to discover that actually there were drain holes in the bottom of the chassis rails and most of the oil was now sat on the A631 outside my mums house....
Later, same car... Same road too.....
It failed it's MOT, rear shocker leaking. I looked under there, seemed a simple case of unbolting the shocker from the axle then taking the top eye bolt out. So I sprayed the bolts with duck oil and used the car's side jack to lift it up. Put an axle stand under the chassis rail and unbolted the nut that held the shocker onto the axle. When I came to release the shocker from the bolt, it was very tight so I proceeded to try and knock the bolt through the axle mounting. Being young and a fool I didn't for a minute consider why the bolt was so tight... There was an almighty "BOING" as the bolt came out and the axle fell to the floor releasing the rear spring which shot down the A631 seeming to bounce higher and higher until it came to rest about three hundred yards away at which point a "Dennif" lorry drove over it resulting in the spring taking off again... Getting up shakily (the axle missed dropping on my leg by a whisker) I jumped over the wall of the local old folks home to retrieve my spring.... To discover that actually the roadside of the wall and the garden side of the wall had a height difference of about 4 foot.....
I left the car as it was for the rest of the day.
Same car, later on still....
I decided to fit a cassette player to augment the "PYE" two wave radio. All went swimmingly until I connected the speakers. Apparently the cassette speaker cables had to be connected to their own earth cables, the old PYE was earthed through the bodywork. One "pfft" and a cloud of smoke later, I had a very warm, almost ablaze cassette recorder sat on the draylon passenger seat of my posh Cortina trying to imprint it's shape and size into the covering. It stayed like that until I sold the car....
Later still, a mate of mine bought himself an MG Midget. He decided to put a car radio/casstte in it, the one he bought (a "Turnolock" Philips unit) was quite a bit deeper than the Motorola thing it had in place, so we took the old one out, took the rear support bracket for the new one, marked the holes for the mounting plate and very carefully drilled the first hole for the PK screws. As the drill was withdrawn, a steady stream of fluid followed the bit.... I let some drip on my finger and tasted it, thinking it must be antifreeze and that we had drilled through the heater. It was battery acid.... One visit to the sink, a bottle of milk and a self tapper later...
ust been on the X type forum about my Satnav unit in the boot not being well....
And one of the posts reminded me of a time when I wasn't quite as smart as I thought I was.
So. I thought I'd start a new thread with some confessions...
Age 17.... I had a Hillman Minx Mk V1. It had the3 cast iron 1725 engine and a Zenith carb.
I decided to "tune it" and bought a very sad, very holy Sunbeam Alpine sports car with a 1600 engine, alloy head, twin choke Solex (flat spot between tickover and full throttle) and proceeded to (with a new head gasket natch) to swop the head and carbs over, exhaust manifolds etc for the iron head.
All I got was backfire through the carb, huge explosions through the exhaust, even towing it for miles achieved nothing. Over the next 4 weekends I followed the same procedure, checked the distributor, plug leads, plugs, air filter, you name it I changed it. Every weekend I fitted the alloy head, every Sunday night I put the iron one back on so I could use it for work.
But I'm stubborn, damned if a piece of metal is going to outwit me...
The 5th weekend... A mate came around to see where we were going that night, which night club. Knew nothing about cars except you put petrol in one end and they moved until it ran out. He watched me take the head off, I had it down to about 2 hours by now, put the head on the floor, start to pick up the alloy head and asked innocently "Why are the circles a different size?" Me, being all manly and knowledgable says "They are the inlet and exhaust valves and they are different sizes because the exhaust gas is at higher pressure"... So he says "Why are they in a different order then?"
The penny dropped....
About a year later: I have a Cortina Mk 3. Fords used to rust faster than the pound lost value...
Under the bonnet there were two holes punched into the chassis rails. I decided that I should pour my old sump oil down the holes, and a bit of spirited driving will spread this oil all over the inside of the chassis rails, thus making the chassis last for ever.
So... I did this. I poured roughly half a gallon down each rail, went back in the house to wash my hands, came out to discover that actually there were drain holes in the bottom of the chassis rails and most of the oil was now sat on the A631 outside my mums house....
Later, same car... Same road too.....
It failed it's MOT, rear shocker leaking. I looked under there, seemed a simple case of unbolting the shocker from the axle then taking the top eye bolt out. So I sprayed the bolts with duck oil and used the car's side jack to lift it up. Put an axle stand under the chassis rail and unbolted the nut that held the shocker onto the axle. When I came to release the shocker from the bolt, it was very tight so I proceeded to try and knock the bolt through the axle mounting. Being young and a fool I didn't for a minute consider why the bolt was so tight... There was an almighty "BOING" as the bolt came out and the axle fell to the floor releasing the rear spring which shot down the A631 seeming to bounce higher and higher until it came to rest about three hundred yards away at which point a "Dennif" lorry drove over it resulting in the spring taking off again... Getting up shakily (the axle missed dropping on my leg by a whisker) I jumped over the wall of the local old folks home to retrieve my spring.... To discover that actually the roadside of the wall and the garden side of the wall had a height difference of about 4 foot.....
I left the car as it was for the rest of the day.
Same car, later on still....
I decided to fit a cassette player to augment the "PYE" two wave radio. All went swimmingly until I connected the speakers. Apparently the cassette speaker cables had to be connected to their own earth cables, the old PYE was earthed through the bodywork. One "pfft" and a cloud of smoke later, I had a very warm, almost ablaze cassette recorder sat on the draylon passenger seat of my posh Cortina trying to imprint it's shape and size into the covering. It stayed like that until I sold the car....
Later still, a mate of mine bought himself an MG Midget. He decided to put a car radio/casstte in it, the one he bought (a "Turnolock" Philips unit) was quite a bit deeper than the Motorola thing it had in place, so we took the old one out, took the rear support bracket for the new one, marked the holes for the mounting plate and very carefully drilled the first hole for the PK screws. As the drill was withdrawn, a steady stream of fluid followed the bit.... I let some drip on my finger and tasted it, thinking it must be antifreeze and that we had drilled through the heater. It was battery acid.... One visit to the sink, a bottle of milk and a self tapper later...
