Well, i've had my share of bad luck and dumbass moves. The first time I took the car for a drive around the block, I forgot to tighten the lug bolts. I heard a knocking in the rear end and thought mabey the U joints were going. I check the lug bolts and they are so loose that the wheel was moving around on them. Just today I did the same thing. I had the wheel off to change the e-brake cable and forgot to tighten the lug bolts on the drivers side wheel. Hear a knocking sound in the rear and I check the lug bolts and sure enough, they were loose. I was lucky I didn't lose the wheel. Also, I found out my throttle linkage is jambing up on something. Lets put it this way, the tach was pegged for a good 5 sec, rpms rising the whole time. I bet it hit 10 grand. I was shiting my pants the whole time. I thought I was going to blow the motor. Neeless to say, I shut it down after cursing like you wouldn't believe, and it gave the biggest backfire I have ever heard. Thought I blew out part of the exhaust.

 

that poor poor car...

 

Hmm. The first time I tried to change my oil I ended up draining the transmission instead. I did catch it though.

The worst thing I've ever done though I think was giving the keys to my 14-year-old sister. She put my car in a ditch while trying to adjust the radio then drove it home on two blown out tires. She managed to crack both my bumpers and break a tail light as well as ruin those two wheels. Fortunately this was a beater and not a 7.

 

The worst thing I have done is probly driving with 1 of the omp lines off the intake and didnt stop to check it. lol. Hope I never wreck my motor by dropping a screw, dam that sux.

 

I can beat you all no problem. Imagine spending *alot* of money on a 13B peripheral port (It had a SDS efi system and a bit of nitrous too. ) motor. Then not tightening the cold air intake nuts onto the air cleaner assembly enough. Then a breif run upto 9k rpms. You get the picture.

Rob@Pineapple said you could clearly see a lockwasher dent in the rotor. And it managed to take out 3 apex seals. I cried & cursed alot that day. CJ

 

Ahhhhhhh reading these stories make me feel so much better about the stupid things I do.

 

I'm sure you'll hear plenty of these from me as soon as I get mine running
Right now I only have one for my old Ford Escort.
Just dropped a new GT motor into the 87 (originally a four banger) with the help of my old man (I was like, forteen at the time). Neither of us thought it would need a new tranny.
Needless to say, anyone want a Ford Escort? It doesn't run, but it has a total of, er, 10,000 or so miles on it. Sure it's ceased by now

 

I think we all have one of these neat stories. on a rainy day I pulled the little bolt outa the side of the engine to let out the coolant. Next day I took off the intake installed freeze plugs and installed a weber intake. next day go out start her up and take her for a very very short drive cause the temp gauge was on it way to skyrocketing. Im thinking what the hell?????? Long story short, forgot to put coolant back in her. I didnt let it get hot enought to do damage about 1/2 way but always good to keep eyes on them gauges Filled her up and she was happy at 3/8 on the gauge again

 

Well, my story goes as follows.

In 1 year,i had to take out my 7`s engine 3 times.

1st : Orginal reason : To replace the water seals,whcih were old.

2nd :The engine wouldnt start with the starter,as the exhaust port timing ,along with the intake timing was too wild.It would only be started when pushed/pulled

3rd :Sourced other rotorhousings. Closed the engine.
It ran good for 5 min,then it got a bad misfire on the rear rotor.Then it pumped water out of the exhaust of the whole floor.

So then i sent it off to my engine builder to be assembled,seeing that i was very close to setting the car on fire.
I had to wait a week for apex seal springs to arrive from overseas,seeing that Mazda in South Africa is useless.

Dont worry: it could have been like mine.

Karis

 

n/a fc's are slow, but I own one now. I think i'm going to sell everything (drivetrain wise) off my '80 and throw in a 5.0/AOD







Just kidding, Jspec s4 motor/tranny, ford 8.8 rear, microtech ecu is the new plan. I am going to keep well documented records with pictures/cost/writeups. I'll get started in about a month once the funds build back up.

marques

 

Just the other day i told my girlfriend it would really suck to drop this nut in the carb.

 

I told mine the same thing and be damned if she didnt get pregnant

 

ok so when i first got my seven. i get her home after joy riding for alittle while with out registration or insurance, im the happiest guy ever cause i have wanted this seven for a while now. i get to my apt. to get online and tell my buddy zach.(FBII) that i got her and that i will be right over. and someone knocks on my door..... " do you know who's white mazda that is out in our parking lot"... im like yea dude thats my new car, he was like "well it rolled down the hill, jumped the curb, took out two ac units and hit the apt. building, i didnt know whos it was so i called the cops"( that was the guy who fixes everything in our apt complex) i flipped, an dpracticly jumped down a flight a stairs to see if she was alright, and there she was up against the building.... i just paid $1,800 for her not but 20 mins. ago and i thought she was already gone. luckily no damge was done to her. nor the ac units. turned out the ac units kinda acted as a pillow for roxette, and they just got moved but not broken.

 

lucky bastard, AC units acting as a pillow, so lucky.

FBII (zach) and I talk on AIM occasionally, cool guy.

Marques

 

Not really a destructive stupid, but stupid none-the-less.

I was doing the second gen coil direct fire, and had eveything all hooked up, so I took it for a test drive. IT wouldnt idle, had a lot less power, and just ran like crap in general. So I get home, get kinda mad cause it doesnt work and I just spent all that time (30 min, really) and it runs like ****. So I pop the hood to take it all apart, and after cutting the splice that I had made and reversing everything, I noticed that my front leading plug wire was off the plug. Dammit. So I remade all the splices and ****, plugged the wire back in, and took it for a drive. Same thing. Turned out my coil was bad. Dammit.

 

The first Rx-7 I got was actually my first car. It never saw the road (legally), but I did ressurect it from certain death.
I didn't know a thing about them, and thought they were some kind of special racing engine, because it sounded so cool when I reved it.
The tach was broken, and I was reving it as if it had a limiter on it everytime I drove it down the street.
I had that thing screaming!
I never did kill it, but the undercarriage was too rotten to save.

I was working on an 82 a few years ago, and I was jumping it with my daily driver. It was nice and hot out, but breezy.
My dad stopped by, and told me a story about a carb blowing up (backfiring) in his face on an Oldsmobile he was working on many years ago, so to appease him, I got the fire extiguisher out.
Thing is, the hose was right there.

Anyway, he left and I continued trying to get the 82 started. The engine caught fire and began burning furiously.
Of course, with my daily driver running to keep the battery charged, windows open, I let loose with the fire extinguisher. The wind blew sand all throughout my DD, and I bolted to go turn it off before it sucked any more sand (or whatever it is!) into my engine.

It would've been better to toss water at it!

 

Just last weekend I had removed my air filter box to work on it, and had placed the air filter resting over the carb and the Bonez lid that goes over it, and the nut on top, screwed a few turns but loose nonetheless. I kept saying to myself thru the weekend don't forget to put it back if you have to drive somewhere, don't forget to put it back if you have to drive somewhere. Comes Sunday morning, and me and some friends are gonna go to the shooting range. I was almost out of gas, so I hop in the car, warm it up, and drive it a block to the nearest gas station, fill it up, come back, and then realized what I had just done. Open the hood, nothing had fallen into the barrels, but I had briefly driven the car with no air filter box! at least I didn't go to the shooting range like that...

 

I think this goes to show that not everyone is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, even if they have been working at something for 80 years (not litterally, but you get the point). **** happens.

 

well ... i've done many dumb things since my Rx-7 life started ... everything from cooking a motor that could have been saved to trying to make a performance intake manifold out of a butter cookie tin (don't ask )

however, i've elected to tell the one of when i built my first motor. i put together an '87 13B for my first 13B swap, and i had not finished getting all the parts yet (particularly the header). well, i built the motor one day, put it in the next and immediately went to work trying to fire it up. oh, yeah ... and fire it up, i did . remember the open exhaust-thing? well, it seems that i had tightened a bolt on the intake manifold a bit too much and it cracked.
leaking gasoline + exhaust flames = the one and only time i've ever used a fire extinguisher!

nothing got to burn though, and even better, nothing exploded. however, after the nausea of what could have happened wore off, i felt like retard.

 

Me and Carl were working on my car and hd to remove the header. Well after putting the header back on noticed that I forgot to tighten the bolts and exhaust fumes were leaking.

 

I was taking the engine out of my old car and I droped a shop light on top of the carb. the stud that holds on the air cleaner box went right between the cage on the light and shattered the bulb. Lots of glass went down the intake, it was ugly. The engine needs to be taken apart anyway, but I still felt like an idiot.

 

The first engine replacement I did run around a little with nothing attached to the exhaust manifold. I had tucked some rags away behind the windsheild washer bottle [or was it sub-zero?), forgot about them, and naturally they caught on fire. No damage was done, but very funny.

 

damn marques; i would probably have stood there in shock for hours. atleast it's leading to an even better setup, well maybe.... are you still going to turbo???

 

i was ending a day of working on the car with my father, and we were pushing it back to its spot and i stopped pushing and he got made at me cause i wasnt pushing so he pushed really hard and ran it into the 82(parts car) infront of me and broke my left turn signal light, only proble was the 82 light didnt fit my 79 so now i have to buy a new turning light

 

make your dad replace thatshit man