I've garaged my cars overnight for the past 35-odd years but once needed to leave my Triumph 2000 Mk1 outside because I was working on a friend's Cortina 1200 in my garage, having volunteered to replace the main bearings for him as a favour.
The Triumph had been left on the road for a few hours with the sidelights on (it used to be a legal requirement to show a light when parked on the road during hours of darkness) so I moved it onto the driveway and put the battery on charge overnight. This entailed lodging the battery charger under the bonnet, which I closed for security, and trailing a lead to a power point in the garage.
Rushing out late for work in the morning, I started the Triumph and was greeted with an almighty commotion as the trailing lead caught up on the crankshaft-mounted cooling fan, yanking the charger into the fan so hard that it bent one of the aluminium fan blades over at right angles and sliced a neat core out of the radiator.
Result: Even later for work - and radiator, antifreeze, cooling fan and battery charger up the spout.
This is just one of the very many silly things I've done in my time. Tell me I am not alone!
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You are definetly not alone,I once changed the clutch on a alfa sud -front wheels on ramps me under disconected the hand brake car rolled back onto me 2 hour I was trapped a passer by built like a brick @!#$ house hearing my cries for help lifted the car and released me . The scenario I took him to the pub and bought him a few beers
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My dad put some hessian sacks over the engine of a FIAT 500 to protect it from frost, and then drove off in the morning forgetting to remove them. Result one burnt out FIAT 500.
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Doing some work on a rear axle and found that after stripping down the rear hubs e.t.c the half-shafts would'nt come right out because i parked the car too close to the garage wall.
cue cursing, foul language.....
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1962...impoverished student....1934 Austin 10. Wandering round the pits at Goodwood race track on a quiet weekday. Find gallon Shell can. Open it up ---ah, pleasant petrol smell, someone must have left it behind after the weekend's racing. Lucky me. Pour contents into Austin tank. Two miles later, splutter splutter, stop. Learning point One: all things smelling of petrol are not necessarily petrol. Learning Point Two: THe internal combustion engine as we know it does not run on water. Learning Point Three: removing all traces of water from a fuel system is extremel;y messy and tedious.
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Rush hour (s) in Manila start around 5.15 p.m and end sometime after 8 p.m. Driving at these times is agonisingly tedious, 2 or 3 km can take an hour, more if it's raining. During this period, as in many countries, it's time for trash TV, and the local soaps are aired. Many drivers have taken to mounting small Japanese TV sets on the dash so as not to miss a moment of their favorites. Result: I was so busy watching TV officer I never saw the other vehicle........
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Once told a traffic warden he was a very nice man.
Does this count?........
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Reassembled B31 engine very carefully, determined not to have any oil leaks that time. Then found carefully laid aside gudgeon pin circlips; dissemble, instal, throw thing together in bad mood, leaks bad!
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Trying to find something in the garage, need space, put car in neutral, handbrake off, push backwards.
Forget car door is open. Crunch against garage door pillar...
Panelbeater fixes door.
Two weeks later, ignore wind-tunnel aspect of cape town city planning...
park car outside office, open door. Door ripped from my hand by gale, ends up "opening" through 120 degrees...
Panelbeater fixes door AND front fender...
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40 years ago my Morris Minor parked nose first in a narrow garage with a very steep drive starting right outside the entrance. Battery flat and decided to push it backwards to get it out of the garage.
Door open, left foot on the brake, heave backwards.
The back wheels hit the steep slope and at the same time the door hits against one of the timber supports.
Left foot down hard on the brake but the door has wedged me against the body.
Not enough room to get back in the car to reach the handbrake.
No-one seemingly within 100 miles. Left leg can only hold the brake down for so long.
alvin
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Bought a SAAB 96 v4 with burnt out clutch. Fitted new driven plate, pressure plate & release bearing myself (engine out job on these), finished job, tidied up, found release bearing lying on floor! Doh!
Jack
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What is it with SAAB V4s? I got my hands on an unused short engine with lightened flywheel, got my tired unit out, put in new engine, swopped cylinder heads, radiator back in, everything back together, turned starter and slight shudder. Solid. Cylinder heads back off to discover I'd bought an early engine in which the pistons protrude slightly above the bores and later cylinder heads don't match. Still at least I didn't waste any anti-freeze by putting it in and I'm now pretty quick at swopping V4 engines. The car has long gone but I still kick that short engine occasionally when I trip over it in the garage, still minus proper cylinder heads.
David
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David,
I know what you mean, I loved mine yet when I think back to the pain it caused me I can't understand why I have such fond memories of it! Quite advanced for it's time (E plate 1967 - early model with the inboard headlights), dual circuit, front disc brakes; alternator. Wonderfull things like freewheel & column change. Loads of headroom (you could turn over the seat runners to lower the seat by a couple of inches I remember). Even had removable litter bins in the footwell.
But the rust - unbelievable! An MOT tester asked if it had been stored in a river!, still passed it though! I finally got rid of it when the floor pan literally split in half across the boot floor.
It jammed in reverse once, the detent ball in the selector fork had jammed, the car was on a steep slope, so the fork slid back when the gear lever was moved, inevitably it would'nt do the same backwards, so engine out yet again!
The (Zenith?) carb had a vertical tube pressed into the float chamber lid that fed the main jet, that fell out once as well.
I suppose we can't really blame SAAB for the engine, I think it was a Ford Taunus unit?
I particularly liked the way fellow owners would always wave when they passed, and would always stop when I was in a layby with the bonnet up!
Happy days !?!? Jack
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Whilst at college many years ago I was rebuilding a Yamaha XS750 engine (in the kitchen - landlady not too chuffed!) and decided to use a split link racing cam chain. Hadn't bothered to put the plugs back in and being all fingers and thumbs dropped the split link which made a beeline for the aforementioned hole. Cue fishing with magnet on string (didn't work) followed by vigorous shaking of the engine upside down until the offending link dropped out onto the kitchen floor. When I say vigorous I might be exaggerating slightly, it took me and my mate Stan a lot of effort and time! I eventually finished at 2am and couldn't wait to start it - (3 into 1 Motad!) resulting in very loud complaints from my fellow students.............Happy days.
Rob S
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Helping Dad and his partner move cars around in their garage (showroom is pretentious) prior to locking up at night. Common practice was to slip a trolley jack under the diff and push a car sideways.
We were stopped by the bloke in the garage next door who said " you do realise that's a Reliant Robin, don't you?"
Ian
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Removing front brake drums on Mk1 Escort to sort out seized wheel cylinders and asking girlfriend (now SWMBO) to GENTLY press brake pedal. Out shoot both wheel pistons out of the cylinders and brake fluid everywhere.
Clean cylinders and replace seals only to find that all the bleed nipples are rusted solid......a very careful drive to the local garage.
Ian L.
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Swopping my Bonneville for a Lambretta just to please a new girlfriend....
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More unbelievable than silly IMHO!
Rob S
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I think I'd have kept quiet about that, Growler. Mind you, 10/10 for owning up to it.
Ian
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I ran a Russian 125cc motorbike. It was a two-stroke based on the BSA Bantam, in turn based on maybe an early DKW or similar.
I was starting to notice a considerable drop in the already poor performance and noticed that the silencer was full of coke deposits. I'll clean it out, I thought.
After undoing the various screws and clamps, I tried to pull the baffle out. It would not move and there was no way to get any purchase on the part as it was recessed into the silencer.
I know, I'll push it out. We had a substantial piece of wood in the garage that would do the trick. In it went to push the baffle through. No movement, give it a good bash. Again nothing, really smack it this time.
There was nothing in the Russian-written manual to describe the interior geometry of the silencer. There was certainly nothing to say that there was an angled plate inside the silencer into which the wood would imoveably wedge itself. I now had a baffled baffle and a wedged wood (ho ho ho).
I had to then dig out a blow torch to heat up the silencer, which would in turn heat up the wood, which would hopefully burn enough to become charred and powdery, allowing me to extract the wood from the silencer.
After adding 3 hours to a 20 minute job the bike worked brilliantly and I rode the A-roads from Liverpool to Leicester (still on L-plates then).
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blown kh250 engine. Stripped and rebuilt in careful conditions. Clean environment, everything in trays, marked and clean, new gaskets.
Engine finished. Step back for cigarette and coffee, stand on piston ring.
Strip engine, no care, no clean environment, nothing marked, no intention of replacing gaskets/seals etc.
However, all piston rings are present and correct. Sit down for another cigarette and some serious thinking. Spot sister on floor in hysterical laughter holding the other old piston ring she'd got out of the shed.
It ended in tears.
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1973ish - listening to mate revving his Morris 1100 engine when oil filler he had loosened then replaced popped off. Hot oil mist splats into face, bang head on bonnet, glasses fall off, hear brief sound of glasses being munched by engine fan. Curses!
1976 - Fiat 128 Rallye service. HT set off for cleaning, plugs out, Redex squirt through plug holes. Spin engine on starter to blow excess Redex out into carefully arranged rag. Engine slows, the rag has only dropped into the the open distributor and wound itself round the advance retard springs etc. B*gg*r!
1981 - Citroen DS Familiale jacked up on a sloping drive and the rear drum off investigating a fluid leak. The semi-auto box was difficult to leave in gear and the parking brake started to give. Heard creaking as car eased down slope tilting jack as it went, rolling over the inadequate stone I had used as a chock. Leapt backwards into holly bush in time to watch brake back-plate settle onto drive where my leg had been. Ouch but phew!
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When I was in the two-wheel business lots of two strokes got clogged silencers, especially scooters. Jack my foreman use to saw the boxes in half, blast out all the crap into smoke with his welding torch, weld the silencers up again and put 'em back on. No one would have dreamed of stitching up the customer with a new part just for that. But that was then, and this, they keep telling me, is now.
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Far too many to list here.
Growler has my vote for the silliest. Always wanted a Bonny
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On a similar note to Growler's silencers..
I used to do some work for Montessa, in the days when they were competing and their tanks were made of Aluminium.
We used to make them, and they used to break them. We used to weld them if they started leaking.
Took the petrol out, started up the car, and leant the tank against the car with the filler opening over the exhaust.
That did for about 30 minutes, then the welding started. I never had one blow up on me, but I always wondered.................
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Bikes again.
Saved up for a flash loud silencer on my Royal Enfield 250. Into town Saturday morning and decided easiest way to get it home was to fit it on the pavement and leave the old one in the shop's skip.
Easy to fit with just the clamp to the front pipe and one mounting point for the silencer which actually coincided with an existing misc hole.
Blasted about town as you do puzzled at the weird handling, also by the rapid increase in exhaust noise. Stopped for a look....ah I'd fixed the silencer to the swinging arm!
Was a great deal better with that sorted.
David
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Greasing the chain of my Triumph 3TA with the Duckhams chain grease in a tin on the stove. 1/2 hour later my friend says "is that smoke comming out of the kitchen window". "No" says I, 5 mins later he says "it is you know", "arghhh the chain". Flames 3 feet high and smoke all over the place, grab and wet dish towel and place over burning grease, it sinks through the grease which catches fire on top of it. "Arrrhhhhh", grab bath towel from washing basket, wet and plonk on top, it slowly sinks through the grease but fortunatly doesnt catch fire again. The towel is brand new my mums washing it before use, the kitchen had only been painted 2 weeks previously. Dohhh!
Bill
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