Fatal Mistakes....

[96Mustang460cid]

Ok, I have no professional training (engines/cars) and have learned a lot of things the expensive way $$$.

1) Thought I had a bad distributor causing a miss on a 351M. Drove to parts store and removed distributor in the parking lot. It was tight coming out. Went into the parts store and bought a new one. Out in the parking lot, I couldn't get the new distributor stabbed. Looked down the hole and noticed that oil pump drive shaft was cock-eyed. I took a screwdriver and poked it around in an effort to straighten the shaft and....clang, cling....crap! Flashlight ---> no oil pump shaft visible... Tow it home. That truck had a cross member that went directly under the oil pan so I had to pull the engine to pull the oil pan.

When I assembled that engine, I forgot to install the shaft with the oil pump. So, I removed the 'washer' so I could push it up into the distributor and drop it into the oil pump.

Cost: Tow truck home + 6 quarts of oil + oil pan gasket = $100


2) First solid roller camshaft: assembled the engine two weeks before leaving on my future wife's and my first Hot Rod Power Tour (2005). Drove around town and worked out a few bugs. Took to the drag strip and got some baseline #'s. Leave for the HRPT, 2005. Fifty miles South of Milwaukee, the car started running and sounding really weird. A quick check of the gauges showed < 5psi oil pressure. Kill the engine and coast to the side of the highway. Not enough tools to diagnose this type of problem and I don't know anybody within 300 miles ---> call a tow truck. Rent a car and leave my Mustang at the tow lot. After the HRPT, I hired a transport to haul the car home (Tulsa, OK).

Engine tear down revealed that I had installed a rocker with the rocker fulcrum upside downs. So, the polylock was tightened against a sharp edge instead of a flat surface. This caused the polylock to wear very quickly, open up the lash, and beat the snot out of the polylock until it broke.

Cost: Car rental for two weeks and 1,500+ miles, Car transport Mustang hundreds of miles home + gasket kit + new set of polylocks = Big $$$ for a college kid

3) Firing the engine up for the first time after re-assembly from HRPT mishap. The car cranked a few revolutions, hesitated, and rotated more quickly. The car wouldn't fire off. Distributor wasn't turning. Pull the mechanical fuel pump cover on timing cover and found the timing chain laying there...

The car had to sit until I finished college. A year later, I pulled the engine and found a piece of aluminum at the bottom of the oil pan. This chunk came off the back side of the timing cover when I used a bolt that was a little too long. It fell between the timing gear and chain.



Cost: Gasket set + timing chain + 5 valves + loss of use (fun) for over a year = $$$

Have a good day!
Michael

[machine shop tom]

Similar to a post above, a customer brought a 502 Chevy from his jet ski boat. Seems a carb breather nut had found it's way (while tuning) into a cylinder. Sleeve, head work, etc.

Two years later, same guy, same engine, same occurrence, different cylinder.

He's about due this spring.

tom

[5abivt]

Not sure if it was ever related. But I had the shoppe set the valve lash on my solid roller 388 LT4. I drove it hard about 30 mins on the way home to find ticking noise under a cover. i pulled it off and found Intake rocker on cylinder #1 missing an adjuster nut. Later found it right near the drainback. I did rpm the motor up a few times to 7500 rpms Hoping to 'feel' a difference knowing my valves were just set. The motor ran approx 2-3 thousand kilometres before I took it back to have it checked and lash readjusted (when the incident happend) . Including 2 dyno days of tuning and many many nights of wot 4th gear datalogs to 7500 rpms.

After the loose nut incident, the motor dropped a valve a few days later approx 50- 100 kilomotres . Just so happened to be the same valve !! Coincidence?

Maybe I'll put up some before/after pics in a new post !

[illfish]

A couple that I can remember.

1. Working on my buddie's VW Beetle and dropping a manifold nut down the port. Thought it would blow out the exhaust. . .didn't.

2. Helping my buddy do a cam change on his 351W in his LTD. We got everything buttoned up, radiator filled, etc. Walked into the garage and I said, "hey Dave, what's this". Oh shit I hear. The timng chain on the floor.

3. About 16 years old, thinking we can put cam bearings into my buddies 2.3L ford head with a 2 x 4 and a hammer.

[C Stevens]

"Holy broken cam towers....Batman"

[Tod74]

One of the auto shop guys was relieving the block on a flathead with a real powerful 3/8 drill with a burr cutting tool on it. We used to wear the baggy uniform coveralls at shop. As he was hunkering down the drill caught the slack in the crotch and proceeded to wind up the coveralls until we noticed him screaming in an ever higher toned pitch as it reached the nut sack area and started winding it up too. We were laughing so hard we could barely make to the outlet to unplug it

I work in a factory. I have since I was 18 years old(35 now) anyhow,One day I was talking to this girl I had my eye on while she was working.We made exhaust for Chrysler. Well part of her job was to use an air drill to run a thread chaser through the Oxygen sensor boss on a catalytic converter and then pack them in a crate. Well I was standing there " putting the moves " on her for lack of a better term.I had picked up the air drill which was very powerfull/quick and was fiddling with it as I talked to her.She bent over the edge of the crate to pack a part and I let the drill get too close to her and it grabbed her hair and wound it up tighter than a mouses ear before I could could get it stopped.

I never did get a date with her for some reason.

[Sandman]

This is the best thread I've ever read. Aside from getting a laugh, you don't feel so stupid for some of the dumb things you've done over the years.

I can relate to the rag in the intake. About 30 yrs ago, I had the carb off my 318. My missus called me for dinner, so I put some rag in the manifold to keep the insects etc out. My mate turned up to tell me they were going out racing. So raced out and jammed the carb on in no time flat. Made it to the corner of the street before the rockers started rattling etc. I remembered the rag then. We took the carb off, made a hook out of a bit of wire, hooked the rag and cranked the engine til we pulled it out. Then went racing.
Was always very careful about that, until last xmas!
Just put the motor in the boat, but the plate the carb sits on and the scoop goes on was hitting the valve covers, as they were taller than the old ones cos of the stud girdle. So put the rag in the intake. Searched around for carb spacers, then had to make some more longer studs. Bolted it together. Started first turn of the key and ran for about 30secs, before rattle in the rockers and backfire out the carb. Same deal, but as more lift on the cam than 30 yrs ago, it was able to swallow it quicker, so the hook and starter didn't work. I had to check the piston was down the bore, then wind the valve adjustment down to get both valves open and then pull it out. Lucky again, didn't hurt anything. Not sure about the CR of rag tho.

Speaking of stud girdles. When I put this one on I had bought the girdle S/H then had to get some tall adjusters, separately. I put everything together on the engine stand and was setting the valve clearance. After I had done a few, I was turning the engine over and heard a small ping kinda sound. Sorta like when a spring catches something. So I start looking around, trying to find something catching or whatever. Turned the engine back and forth. Every so often would get this noise.
Couldn't find anything, so I put it down to the valve springs settling in to place, as they had all just been fitted and I'd never had a roller cam and springs that heavy. Went back to adjusting rockers, but still this noise every so often. When I finished adjusting, I went back through them again, just double checking, and the settings were all over the place. I've been a mechanic and set all lot of tappets in 30 odd years and couldn't understand what was happening.
So I started pulling everything apart again, as I was sure something wasn't right.
Sure enough. The tall adjusters I had got for the stud girdle were about .010" bigger diameter than the original poziloks. Instead of going into the recess on the rocker fulcrum, they were sitting on top of it.
The noise I had been hearing was the thinnest part of the rocker fulcrums where the poziloks sits into them cracking out.

[AlteredFan]

I Left a 3/16 bolt without a lock nut in the manifold in our new Blown 511 KB. Took 10 passes down the drag strip before we realized and the bolt worked its way loose. Only problem was it ended up in the sump. After it took out the number 6 intake valve with it. Never again!

[kwik]

My buddy bought a Maverick drag car with a built 302 in it. So we were checking it out and noticed that someone had overtightened a front cover bolt and broke a portion of the block right next to the driver side head. Took the front cover off to fix this, and found a missing front oil gallery plug - it had been running fine and made lots of 1/4 mile passes. You never know.

[Ted]

Was asked to diagnose leaking water from some freshly installed heads on a 390 Ford years ago. Upon tearing it down, the customer had used 3M trim cement (aka 'yellow death') for head gasket sealer and needless to say, water was leaking profusely.

[larrycavan]

Not double checking everything that comes back from an outside machining is a gamble.

[Shopboss]

The story about the engine rolling down the hill and into the lake reminded me of this. I've heard several stories like this and figure most fall into the Urban legend category but I know this one to be true.
And athough this isn’t engine related it is still car related so here goes.

Well over 20 years ago an older couple which were close friends of our family owned a pristine Delta 88.
This car was the typical car belonging to the little old lady who never drove it. It stayed in the carport most of it‘s life. Since it was her car, and she had an eye problem, which left her with sight in only one eye and almost blind, shortly after the car was bought new it had very, very low mileage. I was asked by her husband to take it out and “blow the soot” out several times a year. I really loved that old car. But after sitting for several years with out any use the couple”s daughter got a divorce and needed a car. So they gave it to her. Se took it home and the next morning when se looked out the window the car was gone. Se got all excited thinking it was stolen.

Now the rest of the story … She lived on a fairly steep hill and had parked the car on the side of the street. The street was up hill from a shopping center. In order to fit the road behind the center the road was rerouted which made it necessary to cut a 90 degree turn at the foot of the hill. This made the end of the street at the turn about 30 ft. higher than the back lot of the shopping center. There was a short guard rail that lined the road. When they went down the hill they could see the parking lot and there set the car. It had blown through the grad rail and wound up squarely on top of a large dumpster. Needless to say it had attracted a crowd. Most were wondering why some one would through away such a nice car and also how they had managed to load it into the dumpster

[MadBill]

I have a luckier outcome 'back up' story from mid-winter many years back. I was deathly ill in bed and my wife had just started driving, but had to go somewhere most urgently. Our daily driver was a supercharged MGA-powered Morris Minor. I had put big brakes on it, but the master and wheel cylinder sizes were mismatched and it took a ton of pressure to stop, so I watched from the window with concern as she attempted to back down our steep driveway. Sure enough, it got away from her, headed straight at a 3' -deep ditch and... miraculously just carried right on until she got it stopped safely and drove off.

Later that day I was feeling a little better and went out to see how the car had survived it's wild ride. I followed the tracks in the snow to the place where the rear bumper had knocked down a 2" T-section post and found the left side tires had rolled right across the ditch using it as a bridge!

[1outlaw]

Back in the late 60's when I was still a teen, my dad asked our neighbor to put new wet sleeves in our E3 Coop (4cyl) farm tractor because we were getting water in the oil. The neighbor happily complied, also putting in new rings, etc. To save effort he left the exhaust manifold attached to the head. Once it was done they asked me to crank it with the hand crank. I made about one revolution until it locked up. Neighbor pulls the head again and 1 cyl contained about 3/8 in of rust/carbon sitting on top of the piston. Apparently when the head was picked up the crud went to that end and ended up unnoticed in the cylinder.

That was the last time dad had him do any work for him and we sure as heck never went for a flight on his self maintained little airplane either.

[levisnteeshirt]

once we were pulling a SBC and turbo 400 out of a vega ,, friend under neath , he never liked jack stands ,,, under it with only a floor jack ,,, he didn't see me set 2 jack stands under it ,,,,, the jack starts bleeding down ,,, he starts screaming to the top of his lungs ,, the floor pan stops an inch from his chest ,,