Whats your biggest mistake you ever made while DIY?

[TRIZ]

I took one of the break bolts all the way of the rear, and had the whole deal hanging by one bolt- when it was almost undone it had stripped the hole and I was fucked- I had to find a place where I could buy/rent the proper tap/die to get my car out of my driveway that was parked diagonally. It sat there for a day or two just looking ridiculous.

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[sicma99ot]

i was re connecting my cigarette lighter to hook up a new radar detector i just bought. plugged it in, started the car and fried the radar. turn out i crossed the wires.

[gearbox]

i tightened bolt too much and it snapped the head off. when installing my new vtec solenoid i forgot to put the gasket screen back and had to take it all apart again.

[IMSHANE]

mushroomed my tie rod bolt that connects to my strut. then put stripped nut over the bolt and held it in with the cotter pin. road like that for a month! nothing happened and i fixed it all!

[bomerman19]

did not re-adjust the valves after installing the stage 3 cam spun the motor unseated all the valves. Had to pull the whole thing apart and re-seat all the valves. what fun!

[KTciv_03]

wow here we go...

1st - when installing new headers stipped a nut on a bottom stud. blow torch and big ass hammer on her for about 5 minutes nothing happend. ending up forcing one size smaller socket onto it to get that bitch off but some of the stud broke off so had to pay dealer $80 to drill it out and put a new stud in.

2nd - when installing springs i cut the bump stops in the rear but forgot the front so rode around for a week hitting the bump stop every two seconds... gah

3rd - i nearly died on this one... i was unscrewing a distribution block on my audio setup. forgot to un do the battery first and shocked the fuck shit out of myself. luckily it was just a 750 watt amp. if it was a kicker warhorse.. i woulda died. thats what the trainer guy said at our shop.. i will be installing one soon too in a eg. woot!

4th - installing leds on my center console drilled a shit load of stupid holes and ended up taking leds out a week later and now im stuck with all the damn holes.

5th - wasnt me but was on my car lol. my cousin was taking off my oem catback when installing my new one and didnt wait for it too cool off. he first unbolted it from the downpipe and it fell down and hit him in the ear cinging his ear and cheek. haha. it was great.

[Maple50175]

well lets say I had new suspention and well, i forgot to put the top bolt on, I drove around and the fucking piston shock or whatever blew a nice hole in the metal in the back.

hard to explian, ruined shock

[speedfoos]

Let's see. When drilling a hole in the firewall of my wife's (then girlfriend) '97 Civic to install an amp, I went too far and drilled through the AC condensor.....

....then there was the time I installed the MAF sensor of my old Blazer backwards when I put the filter-on-a-stick on and ruined the MAF......

....the first head re-assembly on my '85 CRX (after a T-belt broke) and I put the crank pulley "to TDC" by using the white mark on the face of the pulley, not the timing marks on the edge. Eight more bent valves later and I got it right.....

....I'm sure I'll do more boneheaded things.

[Fox04coupe]

Mine's better than all of you. (I'm a one upper... ok not really) on my old nova, during an engine swap in which i did a headswap and full exhaust swap I did everything myself. However the last step of the project required me to hook up my brand new 750cfm carb. While hooking it up i didn't quite read the instructions carefully enough and put the gas line where a vacuum line was supposed to go. I tried cranking it for 10 minutes before I gave up and took a closer look at everything. I discovered that my motor was basically full of gas everywhere it wasn't supposed to be. If for some reason it would have turned over and fired I would have probably blown myself and my car straight to hell. Luckily, I thought to check my exhaust to see if gas was in there too... there was about a half-gallon of gas between the headers and the mufflers... dammit that added about 10 hours onto an already long job.

[CivicHatch9one]

i think i win lol
i think its safe to say

[mdawg]

I'm just gonna go throw up now...

[ArjoonKumar]

Originally Posted by CivicHatch9one

i think i win lol
i think its safe to say

what'd you there man??!

[jgcentury]

Originally Posted by CivicHatch9one

i think i win lol
i think its safe to say

You have definately won the most hideously grotesque finger contest. Your prize is 25 bandaids.

Looks like your mistake was getting so angry with your DIY that you repeatedly raped your finger with your seat and seat rails until desired pain was achieved.

[02fpcivic]

I gotta hear the story behind that picture. That'll probably take a whole box of sesame street bandaids, 3 zipties, a dirty rag, and some duct tape to get patched up. Damn......

[CivicHatch9one]

ah well.. that would be the reason why my hatch project stopped....

on one beautiful april afternoon waiting for the gf to get ready to go out to the store i decided to fire up the hatch and see whats up with it... so i hear a vac leak coming from the i/m

so i think lemme lean over and take a listen... so i do what i always do and have always done and leaned on the vc to hold myself up. well the only diffrence was this time the timing cover was off. :/ not paying attention im listening at hissing noises followed by a quick grind noise...

car sputters and dies.... hmmm that was weird, i thought.

i look over real fast to see my finger is cut... oh well ill clean it up later... so looking for any obvious reasons for the motor dying i feel a burning sensation in the cut area... look over again and think....


w....t.........f....... lol


so im alone i was going to pick my gf up... so i shut the hood put the car cover back on lock the house lock up the garage grab a rag and get in my car(5sp, right pinkey finger) and jet.. lol got to the gfs hop in her car and thats where you see that pic taken from...

it def was a learning experience lol...

i got complacent. and dumb ive been working on cars since i could remember. for this to happen.... i just hope people could learn from my mistake...

well as for the healing...









now it looks about normal the nail grew back kinda lol its pretty good...