Do You Have Any Embarrassing Repair Mistakes?

[Deerherd]

Ex brother in law called and wanted to borrow a saw to cut a hole for a cat door that leads to the cellar. When I got there the door was on a couple of saw horses in the driveway. He had the opening all laid out and without too much fanfare had the right sized hole cut and 12 screws later the cat door was installed.

When we went to hang the door back up he realized the cat door was installed on the top of the door! It hung there for about a month before he bought a new door and installed it correctly.

 

[Soundguy]

was working on a steering box with a 4 bolt square top flange that fit on the box. put it on 180' out and didn't find out till i was assembling the tractgor and the brackets didn't line up.. and I had to pull her back down to flip.. UGH..

 

[Taylortractornut]

At the rubbish land fill one of our skidder to compactor conversions got both axles wrapped with box springs from a mattress ware house. They wrapped so bad that we had to pull the wheels off one at a time and use a hook on the LS or to D5 to break the fabric and springs. after a while we got in a tigh mass and I soaked it all down with water and started torchin the metal wires. I was in a wad of pallet bandings when I got a good cut on something. I was about to go to town with the 02 lever when I found figured I was on the brake disk flange. The machine doesnt have a brake axle on that axle.


I saw our last mechanic work 20 minutes pulling off the carb on the water pump we fill out water wagon with. After it refused to start. It was out of gas.

Our little AC Gas grader at the land fill has sat up and we tried to start it. One of the older guys there is more swift on gas burners so he sanded to points with a sheet of emery cloth. THen it quit fireing at all. we found a tiny sliver if backing from the emery cloth right on the contacts of the point.

On our compactors the trans pump is on the torque converter and then it drives a Vickers vane pump. The vane pump has little vain cartridges that you replace. I had it off and the transmission pump off to rebuildthem. I was showing my dad them old cartridge and doing some thing els and put the old catriege back in and replaced the pump. Took 45 minutes of testing to figure out the new one was back in the box.

One of the JD scrapers quit steering one day in a cut. I checked the pressure on the steering valves and it was good. It would steer one way but not the other. I un pinned the the side that wasnt pushing and swung it out over open ground. I was standing on the side of the machine in the steps and I bumped the wheel over. It launched the ram out of the barrel and knocked me off the machine. The shoulder the piston sits on had broken off.

 

[michael.white]

I took off my FEL late last year along with one of the mid-mount posts. I didn't notice the mid-mount post bolts are symmetric but there's a couple inch offset in the post, i.e. they'll bolt on upside down and it'll look fine (except for wear marks I completely ignored and the fact it didn't look quite the same as the one I didn't removed). This weekend I tried to put the FEL back on. I spent a good hour and a half fighting with it trying to figure out why one side wouldn't sit on the mid-mount post....

 

[jwstewar]

This one was on Mom's Toyota Matrix. I was doing an oil change. I rolled under the car and put the drain pan. Had the socket ready to go. Someone said something to me, I roll out from under the car, finish the conversation and roll back under. I proceeded to drain the oil but make the comment it stinks and looks weird and changed the filter. Add the oil to the engine. Check the oil, it is extremely high. I drain some out, recheck the oil, it is still way, way high. Roll under the car and take another look and it hits me. I wasn't draining the engine oil, I was draining the transmission fluid.:confused2: Since it takes a special tranmission fluid, I didn't have any. So I started draining the oil from the engine using the correct plug and went to town to buy Toyota transmission fluid and another new oil filter. Came back home to oil everywhere in the shop. I didn't think about the 3 or 4 quarts or whatever transmission fluid I put in the drain pan, the oil that was in the engine, plus the oil I added to the engine and it overflowed the drain pan. Of course, now I can't move the car without getting in the oil. Simple 15 minute oil change turned into a 3 hour ordeal and a royal mess. Wonder why Mom hasn't had me change the oil in her car any more?

 

[Tig]

I manged to embarrass my then girlfriend with a repair once. The turn signal on her 78 Volare stooped working so I replaced the faulty switch mechanism! which was accessed behind the horn button on the steering column. Seems that I was a little sloppy putting it all back together and the horn wire soon chafed. Every time she turned left at the gas station in the village her horn honked and everyone would look up and wave. Such a friendly place.

 

[GreenWannabe]

Years ago, with my 63 Chevvy 3/4 ton pickup, I had just done an oil change and drove about five miles down the road. Looked in my mirror to see white smoke billowing out behind me. I stopped and opened the hood, there was fire all over my exhaust manifold. Yep, left the filler cap off! I was sure glad I had bought a class B & C fire extingusher and installed it in the cab.

 

[bullopa]

I had a ford 2110 with a backhoe. Didn't want to shovel a load of dirt out of my old pickup so I tried to use the backhoe to scrape it out. Tooth in the bucket caught the bedliner and dragged the truck back four feet in a heart beat.I tried to curl the bucket to free it up and squatted the truck flat and ripped the tailgate off in the blink of an eye.

 

[Bison]

my worst mistake was when i was removing dry liners from a P4 perkins i was rebuilding.
I decided in order to make them shrink for easy removal to weld a couple beads lengthwise in the liner so after cooling down i could tap the liner right out.Well that worked perfect for the first 2. but on the third attempt i found out i had welded the beads in the bore i just removed the liner from.

 

[KUBOTA OWNER]

I would not have beleived that you could do it but I did. --My dad called and asked me to look at his car not starting. --sure no probelm, I was a trained diesel mechanic at the time. Went over to his house and his 1978 oldsmobile had a dead battery. ---told him i would take it home with me and charge it up and bring it back in the morning. ---must of been a little tired because I hooked up the charger backwards and because the battery was so dead it din't spark or short out. -- Well I charged up the battery and I put it back in the car and it would turn over fine but not start! Had the hei ign system and I checked for a spark and had none. ---Well now I get out a volt meter and start to check things and find that my analog volt meter wants to bottom the meter backwards. --This was 30 years ago,--I remove the battery terminals and check the voltage with the meter hooked up backwards and it dawns on me that the battery is charged up backwards ---- Took the battery back home and hooked up a headlight on it overnight to drain it. Then recharged CORRECTLY! --- Then I loose some sleep thinking of all the things that will be burned out or not work. ----Put the battery back in and it started and ran fine. -- No other problems. --Still seems strange that it turned over but i guess the starter din't care about polarity. --DUMB!