Spectator

iTrader: (1)

For entertainment purposes only. No tech in here!

So, I made this thread so we could all share the stupid things we did with or to our FCs while building/repairing/customizing or driving it. This should be funny. Don’t be shy, we all made mistakes. And sharing these mistakes will prevent other members fo doing the same ones…probably.

Let me start. I have a couple of good ones…

Well, I made a J-Spec swap this winter. And I’m the kind of guy that double checks everything twice at least…except this one time, and it bite me in the ***…think I’m still bleeding from that ****…Anyhow, I’m putting in my new J-spec engine in and since I removed everything from the engine bay to paint it, I figured I’d plug the starter just to see if it would crank…When I come to plug it in, instead of checking exactly on which pole goes the large wire to the starter, I figure I would assume it goes there by judging from the natural shape of the wire…

Well….you guess it. WRONG POLE. And she was sure to show me I made a mistake…by melting the freaking gauge cluster…Turns out she grounds her self with the speedo cable when you choose the wrong pole. And the gauges don’t like that. It also killed my battery…

DOH!

Freakin princess....

AllMotorRotor

haha. I know I have done a few stupid things but I can't remember them all. The most recent was doing some testing on the BACV with some jumper wires hanging from the BACV harness plug, can you guess what the positive wire wass closest too? The aux actuator, while the engine is running, shorts out, engine sputters and dies. Engine doesn't start, im freaking out looking for a spare ECU since im a pesimist and always think the worst, can't find the ECU so I then look in the cabin fuse box where I should have check FIRST, blew the engine fuse. I didn't have any fuses on me so I swapped the sunroof fuse in its place.

There are a lot more stupid things, some im sure were pretty dangerous....Actually, I remember one about my friend and I hooking up a home-made wood stove (we didn't make it) to heat our work shop at 2am to swap engines in my car.... All I can say is, we're lucky. How could anyone make a would stove so unsafe. After lighting the stove we quickly found out why we should hve never used it.

toplessFC3Sman

iTrader: (1)

doing a bunch of work on mine recently, and when removing the turbo, one of the bolts holding the coolant feed line onto the LIM snapped, so i had to take the LIM off, drill it out, and re-tap it (now both of them are the 12mm head bolts, not the smaller 10mm ones, so hopefully they'll be more resistant to breaking). So that goes fine, I get the LIM back on and the rest of the manifolds etc assembled, and am bolting up the turbo. While laying under the car and doing this, I drop a lock-washer, and it rolls over right next to a rubber o-ring that I dont remember removing... crap, its the 0-ring that goes between the LIM and the rotor housing, and look, theres the other one too. Fun stuff.. gotta take the turbo back off, unbolt the LIM, pull the whole manifold assembly away from the block, and with a bit of silicon sealant to keep the rings from falling out, a good deal of swearing, and a bit of retrieving the rings as I dropped them, I finally got them back in place and the whole thing bolted together. I was up to about 2am that night working on the damn car to get it usable, just to then break the coolant level sensor as im screwing it into the Koyo i just installed, thus making the car un-drivable again. And thats only the most recent story from this past weekend

arghx

iTrader: (3)

I get the feeling that many of these will be electrical in nature.

I was trying to reground my pressure sensor on my T2. There are two black looking wires, and like a dumbass I didn't meter them and grounded the wrong one (even though I had read the diagrams). First mistake. So my **** wouldn't start at this point and I thought it was a fuse. I checked all of them and they seemed fine. So I start checking all these circuits, thinking the ECU or something else was completely toast (spent at least 8 hours doing this ****). Finally I double check the underhood fuses with a multimeter and one of them actually had blown.

AllMotorRotor

Glad Im not the only one thinking the worst haha

Sounds like when I lost my wallet. A FLY buzzing around my room made me look in a specific spot in the attic to find my wallet. I always wondered why this fly was buzing around my room for weeks and I was never able to kill it, I think it actually either died or flew out of my room after finding my wallet. I bet your wondering how this fly helped me ?

Well I do remember another one. I got covered while doing this.

I believe it was some time early in the morning, about 1-3am. Sometime after working hard at work. I try to find out why I have low oil pressure, I removed the front cover, replace the o-ring and used some black rtv to hold it there. Remove the oil pump and front cover oil pressure regulator. Everything is going fine.

After squinting for the whole time trying to keep my eyes open sO i can finish this before morning, I put the gear back on the OMP and put the chain and e-shaft gear on as well. Thinking the e-shaft gear has been secured by the key, I take my impact gun, set it to low and I attempt to tighten the nut on the front of the oil pump. To my surprise, the oil pump just spun at about 2000rpm and, blew oil out the hole leading to the front cover, saturated everything, bumper, wires, floor, my legs.

After doing that, I stepped back and hit my self over the head asking my self, "Why didn't I put the key in the key slot before I tried that".

Spectator

iTrader: (1)

Hahahaha. This thread is hilarious. Never work when tired...Ask me how I know...

Well, when I finished the swap this winter I tried to start the car...Cranked, but did not start. I checked and rechecked everything for like 2 days...until I found out I needed a resistor pack for the new harness...2 freakin days...I was this close to selling the ****.

Oh yea, another funny one...My first engine swap was in my cousins vert. I was renting an appartment at the time. And we decided to change the engine in the drive way. We pulled the engine with the tranny. I then learned that oil comes out of the connection where the driveshaft meets the tranny....Wasted many towels and sand from a sand box, got bitched at by my girlfriend (understandable), the asphalt melted...and then I got sued for the damages.

toplessFC3Sman

iTrader: (1)

oh man, that sucks. I've had a few electrical-related ones as well. The first was just plain dumb, I put the primary and secondary injector wires on the wrong injectors, when running 570/1000cc injectors, and wondered why it ran like **** and all tuning efforts didnt effect it. That took about 2 weeks of playing with settings (still learning megasquirt tuning at the time) until i figured it out, and i was DDing it and marveling at the even more horrendous fuel economy. I also noticed a bit of extra current draw from the battery when the car was off when I was checking the harnesses since I rebuilt a few of them. I spent days tracing interior wires from the fuse box, pulling apart the interior bit by bit to test individual components etc... until i realized I kept testing the current draw when the door was open, and thus the interior lights were on (which used to never happen, but I had recently removed the door switches and cleaned them), causing my mysterious "short".

I was also re-installing the speedo cable into the transmission, forgot to screw it in/put in the bolt next to it, and jacked up the front of the car... promptly pouring out a good deal of tranny fluid onto the ground. oops. That area still smells of gear oil.

I think those are the worst ones, at least of the ones I remember.

toplessFC3Sman

iTrader: (1)

oh, and oil shouldnt come out of that connection unless you have a bad rear seal on the tranny.

Spectator

iTrader: (1)

Well, all trannies I have had all leaked oil from there...ALL of them...which is 5 to 7. Are you sure about the seal thing?

Flem-Ball

spilled brake fluid on a hot dump pipe = engine bay fire!!!

Luckily it was only small and blew out.

toplessFC3Sman

iTrader: (1)

on my NA tranny, there was a tiny little bit that seeped out, but not enough to melt asphault.

AllMotorRotor

^ O man, that reminds me of when I had my old chevy straight 6, about 6 years ago. My buddy and I took the head of so we could replace the head gasket. Well I decided I wanted him to crank the engine just so I could see the pistons move up and down. He started cranking, not once did I remember about the mechanical fuel pump and the ignition wires near it still connected to the distributer, well, out of the corner of my eye I saw this spray of fuel, I look over and in REALLY slow motion, I saw each individual drop of fuel start to fall when all of a sudden, each individual drop of fuel ignited into a huge ball of fire under the hood. Luckly it only melted one wire which lead to an aftermarket tach.

Before I noticed that though the engine and everything else was on fire, my friend and I ran to get a hose while our other friend thought the truck was going to blow up and ran to his car haha. I grab the hose and start running with it as fast as I can while my friend work on turning the water on, I get 10 feet away from the truck and the hose tangles up near the water facet, which causes the hose to tighten up and stretch as I pull on it which then the hose doesn't stretch any further and pulls me back in mid air and throws me right on my back.

My friend untangled the hose and I was able to put the fire out.

That part where I fell on my back seemed like it came straight out of a staged movie.

Wanked_FC

iTrader: (1)

Try to change an alternator at 3 in the morning when you have to leave at 8am for a 6 hour drive.... Lets just say I took a different car.

yusoslo

How about I fully built a T2 motor, installed it and heard this terrible rattling. I took off the TMIC and started searching. BTW I had driven the car about 10 miles at this point. Well needless to say I found a 14mm nut in the UIM!!!!!! and I am super carefull aboutmy car. The nut was just sitting in the large chamber right before the penlums.

Spectator

iTrader: (1)

You're one lucky sob that the engine didn't swallow it.

cluosborne

Most recently, I wired the backup battery for the alarm wrong. The module sends a ground to the alarm, not remove it. I only found that out after ordering a new one.

While I was reworking the wiring in the dash board, I mistakenly cut out the wiring for part of the cruise control that disengages it when the clutch is pressed.

I also spent a few weeks trying to get the engine to start, only to find that I had two pins on the CAS connector wrong. During that time, I thought I had badly fouled plugs, faulty kill switch wiring (I actually did, and fixed it), too much fuel pressure, not enough fuel pressure, and bad plug wires.

AllMotorRotor

Im loving this thread

RETed

Not an FC, but...

Working on an H22 powered CRX drag car and the owner was checking the VTEC solenoid, since we were getting erratic VTEC engagement from the Haltech install.
He forgot to put it back before cranking the engine up.
Boy, I never saw so much oil shoot out of the engine in 2 seconds in my life.
The oil geyser hit the ceiling, which was 30 feet high and dumped at least 3 - 4 quarts of oil in just 2 seconds of cranking!


-Ted

7dust

iTrader: (14)

Working on the AC to find a leak and I found it - it was the low side fitting shrader valve.

I decided to leave the fill hose attached to the fitting and a can of refrigerant under the hood. The can was tapped but the valve was off. I didn't take the can out because I didn't want to waste the almost full can. The attached hose stopped the leak from the system and it was fine for a week or so...

One hot day after a drive I parked the car and about 15 minutes later the can of refrigerant exploded. The shrapnel from the can left a big gouge in the passenger shock tower and a large dent in the top of the hood. The debris traveled all the way to the drivers side of the car and knocked the POST off the battery! The insulation under the hood was shredded of course and it looked like a chicken was murdered by the fan or something.

There was a crowd of people around and it scared the **** out of everyone... only to find after opening the hood that I was just playing the dumbass.

Spectator

iTrader: (1)

sORRY BUT 9.8/10

CyberPitz

I'm sure alot of people can relate to me...[/sarcasm]

I was changing the tranny fluid in my 88 n/a. Was under the car, and the hose feeding from the engine bay down, and I was directing it. Friend was up top holding the bottle up. He looks away, hose cap falls off, tranny fluid just pours down the side of the bay onto my face/chest. I actually thought I was going to drown in tranny fluid!

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

not something I did directly, but one of the few times I let my dad touch my car. bad idea. now, strangely, he has a pretty good record when working on his own cars, but about a 30% error rate with my cars. the last thing I remember he overtightened a water pump pulley bolt on my 323 and snapped it off. this was just after I had set it down to my liking, and he thought it needed to be tighter.

so anyway, we're at my parents' place, I just replaced the battery and it's the car's first introduction to the family, so naturally he's curious and wants to look. he starts poking around the alternator with a screwdriver and just as I'm thinking "That really isn't a good idea" he arcs the positive alt terminal to the engine and blows the main fuse. so my car was stuck in another town for a night because he had to wait until morning to buy me a new fuse.

pfsantos

iTrader: (1)

Well, no matter how good the seal, it'll leak if the driveshaft isn't there...

chiefnobum

Ok, I've got one

I actually managed to get the car started after the TII swap easily and I was using the N/A ECU. So after I shut her down for the night, I swapped the TII ECU in and put everything back together...well a couple of days later I came back to start her and for 20 minutes I couldn't get the damn thing to even sputter. I start shorting the spark plug wires to make sure there's spark. Next, I pull off the fuel lines to make sure fuel is getting there. Everything seems good, but I pull the spark plugs to see if they are wet and they re dry as a bone. Finaly I remember that I swapped ECU's so I pull out all of the carpet and whaddayaknow...I didn't even plug it in!

The ECU ended up being bad anyway, so I didn't feel as bad.

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

Went hunting for a wheel noise. Replaced everything: inner and outer bearings, seals, etc. Followed the Haynes manual step by step, pausing and checking at each step to make sure I didn't miss anything. Forgot to tighten my lug nuts. Turned around halfway through the test drive after I heard the wobbling noise, immediately realizing what I missed. A couple weren't even hand tight anymore.