oakback

1. Replaced my ball joints. I didn't have a torque wrench available at the time, so I figured my new impact gun would be more than enough to tighten it. A couple weeks later I'm wondering what this clunking sound is that keeps getting louder. Turns out the ball joint bolts were *just* about to fall off. Lesson learned, I torque everything! And the impact gun is only used for loosening, not tightening.

2. To change out the PD, I installed a new S5 fuel rail (my car is S4). Where the primary rail bolts to the block, for some reason the S4 rail has a thicker and a thinner part, but the S5 rail has uniform thickness; but I reused the original bolts.

I was in traffic, it immediately started running bad, I smelled gas, and pulled over. There was fuel GUSHING from the engine bay. Luckily it didn't catch fire, and I had it towed home. The bolts weren't tight enough (slightly too long), and the rail popped off the injectors.

3. I was in a minor fender bender, but it had busted up my headlight, front bumper, fender, and hood (I hit it right on the corner). So I removed the pieces and drove around anyway. I was co-hosting an RX-7 BBQ, so I threw my grill in my hatch (had to tie the hatch down), remove my passenger seat to fit in the large cooler, and I was on my way (my wife was supposed to bring the big items in a different vehicle, didn't work out for whatever reason).

So the car looked like complete **** at a meet, and that was bad enough, but on the way home I drove through a typical mid-afternoon thunderstorm. Coming out the other side, the car was dumping black smoke, sounded horrible, and wouldn't go over 30 mph downhill. I eventually made it to my friend's house nearby (he was following me), and let the car dry out. I guess the AFM got wet, and it was dumping fuel. But it ran fine eventually!

Don't drive in the rain with no hood!

Longshoe

iTrader: (2)

I had replaced my clutch and was wondering why I had so many electrical problems to the point where the car would barely turn over, and sometimes when I pressed in the clutch everything would shut off. I decided to fix it when I was driving one night, I revved it 3k rpms and suddenly I heard an electrical sound I couldnt describe come out of my hood. All the gauges, lights, and warning stuff FREAKED OUT and the car shuddered and shut off completely. I look under the hood and one of the spark plug wires had seemed to work its way loose. Problems solved? Not even close.

I still had electrical problems as if my battery was disconnected. I tried grounding the engine to the negative terminal with a small wire and it melted instantly. Turns out I jack up the car and the negative battery cable isnt even bolted to the starter! I bolted the cable to the starter and all problems went away.

My next incident happend when I took off my intake manifolds to replace some vacuum lines, when I got everything put back together I couldnt get my car to start for the life of me. I tried starter fluid and the car fired up but it began immediately dumping fuel, and the car would just not stay running. If there was any load on the engine is would buck horribly. The problem? I forgot to bolt down the ECU ground. I checked my mileage for that tank of fuel and I got a stellar 3 mpg.

13BGTU

I took out the connectors on the AFM by ACCIDENT? and i mean the connectors... it included the soutered wires connected to the computer inside the afm... just to replace my filter LOL..


Filter = $10.00
AFM = $75.00
Driving an RX-7 in a working condition = Priceless..

eff_three_see_es

iTrader: (11)

i tossed a 19mm wrench on my battery and welded the damn thing to the posts almost and had to beat it off with a mallet.

Skashua

I bought a non running 88 GTU and was going to tow it home with a tow strap. Well the tow strap was new so it wouldnt fit thru the tow hooks. So i ran it thru the grill and around what i believed was frame brace. Well it turns out it was just the mounting bar for the oil cooler/powersteering cooling coil . It towed fine for about a block but then we went around a corner and the strap got some slack in it and blam! it pulled the bar thru the grill. Luckily it got stuck before it ripped the oil cooler lines out. but it still was a pain in the *** to re mount the oil cooler etc.

RockLobster

iTrader: (7)

When my engine was out of my car this winter i (like a moron) moving the car out into the driveway (rolling it back) with the front end off the ground on a floor jack. I had a 2x4 between the jack and the front subframe.

I dont know why i thought this would work without risk. It of course fell off the jack and smashed the hell out of my oil cooler. 500$ mistake.

Revn_rx7

I've committed a few dumb dumbs, but as a rule of thumb, I've found I can thoroughly screw something up three times before it rivals the cost of a garage.

I had my 1985 GSL for a couple months when I decided to figure out why my stock stereo wouldn't work. I took the center console from around my stick-shift to track the wires to the speaker directional toggle, when I noticed two wires that appeared to need to be mated. I stuck them together, got a spark and got that tell tail singed smell that always accompanies a sinking feeling in my stomach. I found that absolutley all of my dash bulbs had blown and I had fried the dash dimmer switch ($80). As it turned out, the two wire leads were for the shifter light on an automatic. I did mention mine was stick-shift. I did figure out that the pre-amps under the rear glove boxes were fried and that's why the stereo wouldn't work.

One day I'm cruising down the street in my spiffy looking little sports car, and it's idling strange and sputtering when I step in the gas. I decided to kill the ignition to see if it might clear a clog. The car is in gear, which continues to turn the engine dumping raw gas into the exhaust manifold. It coasts like this for about 15 feet when I turn the ignition back to run, igniting the raw gas in my exhaust with a thunderous KABOOM!! It sounded like a 12 gauge shotgun. People are jumping and ducking. As a result I ended up with a silver dollar sized hole in my muffler, which needed replaced anyways. The original problem turned out to be worn out coil packs.

nyc_scorpio

iTrader: (1)

Doohhhhh. I removed the whole dash to get it painted black since it was a all reddish interior. So I remove all the little misc parts, nuts, bolts and all the stuff. So I take out all the a/c tubes and all, put them in a box, after 2 days of painting the dash and all, I put everything in.....except the a/c hoses. So one day its hot as hell, I turn on the a/c and I am like, **** the a/c is broken, but I feel it blow cold. but I cant control it. I take the car to a a/c guy and he is like, well I think its the logicon thats messed up and cant control the face/foot/vent positions. I am like ****... So I rummage thru my box of rx crap I see all the a/c black parts and I am like.. dohhhhhh what a ******* idiot lol

groundfirekid04

now that is a good one lol

groundfirekid04

anyone take off the intake manifolds to put on ss lines and forget to clamp the one on the primary fuel line? yea, that was me once

cb07

Yea....

Last night I went on a crest run (initial D ftw lol) with a leaky pulsation damper.

Smart, eh? And to think I'm considering going tonight too. Self control, self control, self control....

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

lol, I agree, that is win

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

you could destroy your car doing that. please don't.

oh yeah and you could kill someone doing that.

cb07

Yea, that's why I opted to not do that tonight. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a pulsation damper anywhere...

Mazda oem prices ftl.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

y'know somebody was selling a fuel rail with a new PD just the other day...

cb07

I wasn't sure if the turbo 2 fuel rail is a direct fit for the N/A, if so, I know where to get one.

ducktape

Adam: "Duck, the manual states only 15lbs of torque on the thermostat housing bolts... They were very emphatic about that."
Me: "I know what I'm doing."

<CRACK> drip, drip, drip

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

my bad, I didn't consider that.

Dinnercoat

Was this on purpose or on accident?

Spectator

iTrader: (1)

Who does that on purpose?!

rotor_convert

funny. . .i know it's going to bite me in the butt later on when I say that it usually isn't me hurting/doing something stupid/something stupid happens when i work on my car.

i.e.: doing a rear diff swap during mosquito season. i had those mosquito candles (that don't work) around on my driveway. somehow or another my cousin's pants caught the flame. and our other friend just starred saying "dude, your pants are on fire" and did nothing about it. that was 3 years ago. since then he's refused to help. he's not particularly and fc owner. he has an fd.

DaBrkddy

I fried the stock stereo trying to wire it up with out a diagram. That was fun... Smelled bad though. Some how I managed to run power from it that turned on my gauge cluster lights... that was scary.

staticguitar313

iTrader: (2)

hmm gotta think:
1: ALMOST hooked up the battery wrong once
2: i've ingnored oils changes longer than i should once or twice
3. forgot to torque lug nuts once, could have been really bad . . .
4. broke tons of plastic interior parts from being rough
nothing too stupid yet, i search and learn from the rest of you ^_^

p4nc7

iTrader: (1)

Well, this was in auto class with one of my friend's cars. We were just doing a tune-up, and charging his battery. We took some stuff out (batt, air filter, etc). Put it all back in, and decided to do an oil change since it's already there. Did that, fill her up with oil, slam the lid down. Go to start the car so we can find out if it's got enough oil. Nothing happens, he told us that it didn't seem like there was ANY problem. So we do the SMART thing and pop open the panel with the fuses behind it, nothing wrong. All of them seemed fine.
Just then the teacher comes over, and says, "Hey, didn't know if you guys were done with the charger, but this battery was just sitting there, looks like it's for this car too."

Needless to say, we laughed at ourselves for the better part of the semester.

ALSO a CLASSIC!
This girl comes in with her sentra, and tells my teacher she has a problem with the car, it's driving weird, and the tire is flat. But, it's only flat on one side. The passenger front tire is only flat on one side, the top. But the bottom is fine, it's the top of the tire that's flat. My teacher did everything he could to stop from bursting out laughing. We bring the car in, and find out the spring is broken (it actually snapped, first I've ever seen it, we ended up having a Ford explorer with a similar problem but in the rear) and it cut the tire open. At the same time, when the spring broke, it took the spring perch with it, so the shock was shot too. Her dad came in and asked if he could use the good part of the tire since only one side is broken, and told us to "use the old spring" and he'd go out and buy a new shock.

I never laughed so hard in my life.

Howru

iTrader: (25)

Another battery story. :P

I just installed my motor and it doesn't want to start. Crank, crank, crank, and eventually the yellow top optima goes dead.

Two days later, I put the freshly charged yellow top in the engine bay and connect it. Great, no sparks! I bring another charged battery to the car to give it some extra juice. I hook up the cables to the yellow top, then hook the other end of the cables to the jumper battery...backwards.

Sparks fly and a small smoke cloud rises from the pos terminal of the jumper battery. A quick check of the fuses inside and in the engine bay gave some relief that I didn't fry something. I figure the yellow top took the brunt of the damage.

Another two days were spent recharging the batteries for another round of 'start the rebuild'.

-----

While doing the banjo bolt mod: "The vacuum and coolant lines can stretch a little. My left hand can fit between the UIM and LIM and hold the crush washer in place while..." *plunk!* "Noooo...!" *remove TB and UIM* *remove LIM* Luckily, it got stuck in one of the aux ports. *bolt on LIM* *cover LIM with towels* *finish mod*