The 'own up to ruining your car' thread

[MB-BTurbo]

I have saved £100s by DIYing on cars in the past but I have also done a few stupid things over the years as well such as;

1) polish a tiny scratch like a crazy thing only to burn straight through to the base layer of paint, requiring a full door respray,
2) feeling proud of myself when locating a knocking noise under the car discovering it was a loose bolt, only to tighten it up too much that it sheared off costing me £300 in new parts
3) last night, my recent one when...

driving down a driveway with a dip at the end I noticed the suspension was making a graunching noise going over it. So I went back and there it was a again, determined to work out what it was I went back and forth 8 or 9 times until it suddenly dawned on me that it was the bottom of my lovely new splitter I had fitted a couple of weeks ago catching and slowly being chipped, scratched and eroded away to nothing.

Anyone else care to share sinking feeling moments that have been good leaning experiences...or rather when you have just been a plank?

 

[moonloops]

I went to the DIY store and picked up a tub of emulsion - placed it carefully in the boot, you know the rest (promptly forgot about the paint and gave it some welly)

 

[neilz]

Touching up stone chips on my '94 W202 C200 Elegance 3 years ago.

Left the cheap eBay mini bottle of paint (only a few cm tall) leaning against the windscreen with the lid off while I touched in everything. It got knocked over and the paint (of a slightly different shade of blue) went all over the bonnet

And it was bloody obvious it was there when it dried

The ECU went shortly after, anyway - common fault so they were scarce and replacements cost a fortune. Sold it for just a few hundred, someone seems to have fixed everything as it's on the road again.

 

[mika]

got a merc with park distance control ( for the first time )

and backed into a bollard

 

[Geordie Amanda]

Actually this is more a 'how on earth didn't I manage to ruin my car' post.

Firstly I should add that I am a proper petrol head and unlike many women, I actually know how a car engine works (thanks to my Grandad and the cute boy that used to live next door). Anyhoo, my story begins many years ago when I owned a Fiat Uno. I had done a deal to sell it and was on a return trip from the North East to Manchester when the clouds opened, really, really heavily. After 50 miles or so the car started to splutter and cylinders went on strike. Eventually I sounded like I was driving a small dumper truck, so pulled over and lifted the bonnet. Ah ha! I thought, it's water in the distributor. SO I rummaged in my box of stuff in the boot and found some WD40. A liberal spraying of this and I was once more on my way again. Many miles later the car started to do it's death impression again and so I pulled over, wiped out he WD40 gave a really big spray to the distributor and the HT leads and once again I was Manchester bound. As I neared my destination and the rain grew steadily heavier (proper Manchester rain) my poor little Fiat eventually struggled to run on even one cylinder. So I rolled up under a motorway bridge, propped the bonnet up and got the WD out again (it was a long time ago and the motorway wasn't very busy). I took the Distributor cap off and liberally sprayed almost the whole of the tin into the offending component. Imagine my surprise when all this white frothy stuff started to pour out of my distributor! It was only after staring in disbelief for a minute or so I checked the WD40 can in my hand. It said 'Mr Sheen' on it!!! I had just filled my distributor with furniture polish.

Still, apart from it smelling nice, i figured what the heck and scooped out as much of the stuff as I could. It turns out that Mr Sheen has a lot of silicon in it and doesn't combust to easily. Cap reassembled, I started the car and continued my drive to Manchester. The car never missed a beat again!??

 

[developer]

I went to the DIY store and picked up a tub of emulsion - placed it carefully in the boot, you know the rest (promptly forgot about the paint and gave it some welly)

I watched one of my previous neighbours cleaning out the back of his Nissan after the same antics - not funny.

 

[Deleted member 11979]

Stubborn tree stump that needed to come out of our garden, so I sawed through all of the roots I could find and still it wouldn't budge, connected it to the back of my 3 week old Volvo XC70 company car with a rathchet strap, gave a gentle tug......a little movement.....bit harder.....a little movement but not enough, took a small run up, out flew the stump into the back bumper......that'll be whats called a tap root then!

 

[Doodle]

The car never missed a beat again!??

One could call it a polished performance

 

[Geordie Amanda]

One could call it a polished performance

Wa hey Boom Tish

 

[Ted]

I decided to change all of the oils in my g- wagen- engine, gearbox diffs
Easy job as it turns out all of the drain and filler plugs are the same, and with a coarse thread I couldn't possibly cross thread anything.
God only knows how, but I managed to cross thread the gearbox (or transfer box, cant remember) filler plug.
Realised immediately and managed to clean off the thread with a triangular needle file
All ok in the end, but a bit scary at the time

Still don't know how I managed to do it.

 

[Ian_Mac]

Back in the early 90's I had a Mk2 Gti which was my pride and joy. Due to dubious VW design it did suffer from rust patches on the bottom of the doors.

In a bid to tidy it up I started rubbing down the bottom of the door. You can imagine my horror when sanding a scab the size of a 10p all the surrounding metal gave way leaving a hole about the size of my hand.

Needless to say an awful lot of mesh and bodge was required to sort out the mess.

 

[Colin_b]

Trying to get in my car, wondering why the remote didn't work, with increasing volume and profanity.

Wrong key, wrong car. Mistaking an SLK for an Astra Estate is sooo easy, particularly when a pre-pubescent policeman is watching you, and smirking.

 

[Deleted member 6183]

Changed the oil in my Mrs old 205.

Got a bit confused by imperial/metric measurements and seriously overfilled it.

Took it for a run to Sainsburys, in the rain, to make sure all was OK - All was not OK.

Blew off the oil filter and dumped around a gallon of oil all over the really wet car park. I managed to have driven over most of the tarmac looking for a parking spot and really spread the oil over the wet floor.

It was like an ice rink, I got a mate to tow me away asap.

 

[Comcastle]

Feeling very proud after changing the rocker cover gaskets on my old V6 Mazda MX-6 I realised I was missing one washer for the cover bolts.

"Must have fallen into the engine bay" I thought.

The reality was that the above statement should not have had the word "bay" at the end.

The engine did not last much longer after I'd driven it home from the workshop.

That was the worst, although many times doing DIY interior jobs I've snapped clips, broken trim and lost small parts to oblivion, all to save a few quid and keep my hands busy.

 

[moonloops]

Wa hey Boom Tish

It would have been great if you were driving a Dacia Duster

 

[wezza36]

I had some winter tyres (on alloys) on my Fiesta van through the winter and thought it would be a good idea to get myself some new (summer) tyres as the old ones were close to the limit. As the spare was a brand new conti on a steel I had a look on ebay and found 3 more conti's on steel rims at bargain prices.
I found out from the local Ford dealer that the wheel bolts are different to those used for alloy wheels so purchased 16 new bolts.
So one Saturday morning I changed the wheels over paying special attention that the all the bolts went on the same way and marking with a paint pen to make sure I had tightened them up sufficiently and they wern't working lose.
To my amazement after only 10 miles of driving they were coming lose so I popped down to the garage where I get the van serviced and explained the situation and asked them to tighten them up with the torque wrench.
The mechanic took one look at the wheels and started laughing..........I'd only gone and put all the bolts on the wrong way round

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

On the subject of WD40, I sprayed it on the windscreen of MR2 and cursed that it wouldn't shift the ice. I did that several days on the trot before I realised it wasn't de-icer.

 

[Geordie Amanda]

It would have been great if you were driving a Dacia Duster

I wish I had thought of that

Actually I fancy one for the winter if Winter Tyres don't give me enought grip

 

[artyman]

Doing a top end overhaul on a friends Datsun 100, replaced the head gasket the wrong way round, topped up the water thinking this is taking a lot of water, only to have it pouring straight out on the garage floor. As it was midnight I didn't fancy starting head removal, so did it the following afternoon when I got home from work, all done in 45 mins which I thought was pretty quick.

 

[markjay]

Did the head gasket on my Alfa in the eighties. Got the cylinder head off (getting the head off took two weeks - worst head bolts design ever, plus use of cheap alloy that corrodes on the metal bolts - local Alfa garage told me later I was nuts to even try, they usually just break off the cylinder head with a large hammer then fit a replacement one), took it to be machined and tested.

Got the head back from the workshop, fitted it to the car. At the time DOHC on road going cars was not very common, mostly seen on performance variants, but standard on Alfas since the 50'.

So I neatly fitted both camshafts in identical positions, torqued everything up, filled with coolant (Fiat Paraflu - the best coolant at the time), and started the engine. A small bang and the thing won't run...

Removed the rocker cover, and discovered to my horror that both camshafts were in identical positions... now the intake camshaft should be 'mirror image' to the exhaust camshaft, not in identical positions... you can't have the intake and exhaust valves on the engine open and close at the same time, not only will the engine not run, but the valves hit the piston and hit each other...

I removed the cams and refitted them properly, then drove the car on two cylinders to the local garage, where the head was removed and several new valves were fitted to replace the bent ones... I then put it all back - the proper way this time, only to have the head gasket blow again a couple of months later (great engine design, rubbish materials) and had to do the job all over again - but this time fitted the cams the right way first time round.