Please tell me I'm not the only to make this mistake?

[Rev-It-Up]

 I am loving this thread!  Makes me feel normal!   

[Burdar]

No, I'm one of the few who have never made any stupid mistakes.    

Direct shot at the wall outlet.  It's probably all lubed up inside now. 

[Spikedog08]

One thing I will bet . . . you will never do that again!   

[cudabob496]

To be old and wise, one must first be young and stupid!

[cudabob496]

Pulled a plugged radiator once to send in for cleaning. while it was out thought it would be a good idea to flush the block, even better if I ran the motor to help circulate. Well it didn't take long to see the transmission fluid running down the driveway. Forgot it was an automatic!

been there!

[oldmoparbuff]

I was a young 18 year old excited to fire up his first rebuilt engine (66 chevelle w/283).
No hod on the car, hit the ignition and the motor fired right up.  No engine send unit installed.
Motor oil shot up 20ft in the air straight up.
Shut the motor off and the oil that shot up came back down,
All over the engine, windshield, and my Uncles driveway.

Doooooooooh.

[HP_Cuda]

Yeah Cody, look at it as a learning experience. You will never do it again but you may do something different!!!

Kinda reminds me of the time my buddies 440 was first starting up and his headers glowed bright red like they were going to melt and we had too much advance on the distrib. Prob is we didn't want to shut it down but we did anyway. It all worked out.

[Burdar]

Grandpa forgot to put the drain plug back in the oil pan before filling the engine with 5 quarts of oil.  Dad was in middle school at the time and remembers grandpa being pretty mad.

Dad grabbed the brake fluid by mistake when he went to add some trans fluid in his Taurus wagon.  On the way home from a family picnic, the trans cooler line swelled and blew, smoking the trans.  He limped it right to the junkyard before even going home.  That was 20 years ago and I still give him a hard time for that one.

I make a stupid mistake on everything I work on.  I've just gotten used to it.  I'm having a hard time remembering one at the moment.

[RzeroB]

Grandpa forgot to put the drain plug back in the oil pan before filling the engine with 5 quarts of oil.  Dad was in middle school at the time and remembers grandpa being pretty mad.

In my much younger days I had a supervisor named Ray who was a very fastidious and meticulous mechanic. He followed every repair instruction to thee letter without exception. We called him "By-The-Book-Ray." One day Ray was to do a simple oil change. Got underneath, drained the oil and changed the filter. Went top-side and started to refill the engine with oil. About halfway through pouring the second quart, an oil puddle appeared out from under the front of the car and enveloped Ray's shoes. Yep, sure enough "By-The-Book-Ray" inexplicably forgot to reinstall the drain plug back into the pan. No harm done of course, but I will never forget that totally mortified look on his face when he realized what he had done. 

[cuda dad]

About forty years ago after I blew the engine in my '69 road runner once again, I decided to clean the engine compartment while the engine was out of the car.  The car was parked in the street next to the sidewalk at my buddy's mom's house.  I didn't have any degreaser but gas cleans things pretty good (I remember cleaning the first engine that I ever "rebuilt" with gas) so I had a plastic gallon milk jug of it on the fender.  It was going pretty good when I got the idea to listen to some music while I cleaned.  I put the battery in and turn the key to play the 8-track.  Everything was going great until some wires contacted metal and POOF!  My hair was all singed and there was fire so without thinking, I grabbed the jug of gas and tossed into the middle of the street as far as I could.  Shortly after that the gas began flowing from the street back towards the gutter and the car.  After I pushed the car out of the way, I was shoveling and chucking dirt as fast as I could with my bare hands to put the fire out in the gutter and street.  I was lucky.  Thanks for the memories, Cody!

[1 Wild R/T]

Mike, the original Burning Man....

[RzeroB]

The second coming of "Burning Man" occurred in Sacramento around 1985. Thankfully it wasn't me, and nobody got hurt, but it makes for a good story.

I had a place with a garage, so a lot of my friends did their wrenching over at my place. At the time, my friend Russ was building an engine for his '69 Pontiac there. His other car was some early '80's Nissan that he got around with while the Pontiac was down. One day he was going to come over to work on the Pontiac, but the Nissan wouldn't start and he drained the battery trying. He finally got a jump, got the Nissan started and managed to limp on over to my place.

When he arrived at my place, the Nissan was running a little rough and Russ was reluctant to turn it off because he didn't know if it would restart ... and besides it was still charging the battery back up. So Russ blocked the accelerator pedal so the engine was turning about 1,500 rpm or so and said "lets run over to McD's in your car and grab something to go real quick while the battery recharges on the Nissan". McD's was only a block or two away, so Russ locked the doors and off we went.

We were gone maybe 20 minutes or so, but when we returned to my place there was a small gathering of my neighbors watching the fire department hosing down the flaming engine compartment of Russ' Nissan! WTF?? Russ ran to see what had happened to his car and I asked my neighbor what had happened. Patricia said she heard what sounded like a "screaming chain saw" and then a loud bang! When she looked over at my place she saw smoke and flames coming from under the Nissan's hood. She called 911 and the fire department rushed to the scene and started to put out the blazing Nissan just when we showed up.

After the fire department left, we examined the charred engine compartment in disbelief. What the heck happened to cause this? Don't know for sure, but apparently whatever little issue that the Nissan was experiencing that caused it to run a little rough and made it hard to start cleared itself. Once it cleared it's issue, it then ran like a "screaming chain saw" until it kicked a rod out the side of the block directly in line with the exhaust head-pipe. With the hole in the block right in line with the exhaust, oil spewed out directly onto the hot exhaust and whoosh! up in flames it went!  Since the fire department arrived really quick after receiving the call, they prevented the entire car from going up in flames limiting the damage to pretty much the engine and engine compartment. Russ was besides himself completely bewildered by what had happened and the fact that now both of his cars were now out of action. 

[fc7cuda]

Nothing real major, but in my early days of learning I put oil in the transmission tube.  Doing my first solo oil change, I drained the oil and filled the tube that I thought was the oil tube. 

I went inside and got my Dad when the oil started to spill out over the tube, how could this happen if i had already drained the pan???

No harm done, and I got to learn how to drain the transmission same day. 

[JH27N0B]

I've never forgot to add oil or put in the plug while doing an oil change, but a few years ago had a seal bad on a new oil filter I think. Put 5 quarts in, fired up the engine, and the oil light didn't go off.
Shut down and went to investigate.  Oil all over the driveway.  Posted on Moparts complaining about my defective Wix filter seal and got piled on about how I'd obviously installed the filter wrong as Wix would never put a bad seal on their product, so I was an idiot. 
I've done 100s of oil changes in the last 35 years and somehow installed the filter right every other time, guess I was just lucky all those other times since I don't know what I'm doing. 
Dumbest thing I did in recent times involved a fuel pump on my 71 Challenger.  Fired up to go to a cruise, found pump leaking.  Got mad, pulled back in garage and got another car to go out.
Week later with a new pump from Rock Auto, went to install.  While installing and having trouble with a bolt, heard a zapping sound and smelled skin burning.  My watchband touched the stud on the alternator!  I thought the battery was disconnected, I always disconnect the batteries in my old rides in the garage.
In my haste and anger the week before when I found the old pump leaking, I'd forgot.
Got a nasty burn on my wrist, still have a watchband link size scar there to remind me how stupid I was not to confirm battery was disconnected, and for wearing a watch while working under the hood. 

[Jim AAR]

3rd coming of burning man.

I had a 91 Toyota 4runner and the fuel pump wasn't working, they are inside the gas tank and they almost always rust.

So I removed it, cleaned it up and tested it dry with the car battery, just to make sure it spun up , it did, so stupid me tried it with some gas (Don't know why I didn't just use water, Homer moment I guess), put the inlet hose in a small container of gas and the outlet hose in an empty container and hooked up the wires to the car battery and instead of whirring the stupid thing arced and caught the gas on fire, so I knocked the gas container away spilling gas on my shirt and arms pulled off my shirt and jumped in the pool which was 20 feet away, burnt some hair and my neck a bit but the worst was the gas spilled on my hands and was burning, got super bad burns on my hands and lower arms. Jumped out of the pool and grabbed the garden hose that I sprayed on the engine compartment right away because the truck was right next to the house in the backyard. Water doesn't put out burning gas very well, but at least it wasn't much gas, less than 1/2 a quart.

I was the only one home at the time and the wife comes home about an hour later and here I am in the kitchen running cold water over my hands and lower arms and she looks at me and says what are you doing, I don't say anything cause I'm super embarrassed that I could have been so stupid and she looks at my hands and arms and by this time they were bubbled up a couple of inches and says get in the car now were going to emergency.

The worst part was sitting in Emergency for almost an hour before the doctor could look at me, had to go in the nurses station and soak my hands and lower arms in water because it hurt so bad. I have hurt myself playing hockey many times, slipped some discs in my back, broken ribs, broken foot, etc. , but never ever have I experienced pain like that from the burns, so they bandaged me up and gave me some T3's which basically did nothing for the pain, the pain was actually making me cry and I never cry, so the next day I went back and got some Oxycodone prescribed.

After that all my buddies called me Burning Man and for the rest of the summer if I got on a roll golfing the inevitable Man On Fire.

Sheeeesh how stupid was that.