Fatal Mistakes....

[wikd69]

This is funny. Taking confessions is what it is

I'm not about to confess on here

<bok bok bok>

[bobqzzi]

When I was about 18 (muscles > brain)my dad asked me to help him do some brake work on his CJ5.

All the left side lugs were so frozen that I had to break them off with the 4 way.


At least that's what I did. When I went tthe parts store to get some replacements and showed him the old ones they guy said he didn't have any left hand thread ones in stock.

When he was about 16 my brother had a friend rebuild a Vega engine for him. Guy didn;t know the torque spec on the rod bolts, so he figured since it was 4 cylinders, 1/2 the V8 value would do just fine. It didn't.

[wikd69]

When I was about 18 (muscles > brain)my dad asked me to help him do some brake work on his CJ5.

All the left side lugs were so frozen that I had to break them off with the 4 way.


At least that's what I did. When I went tthe parts store to get some replacements and showed him the old ones they guy said he didn't have any left hand thread ones in stock.

When he was about 16 my brother had a friend rebuild a Vega engine for him. Guy didn;t know the torque spec on the rod bolts, so he figured since it was 4 cylinders, 1/2 the V8 value would do just fine. It didn't.

And I'm still laughing !!! I could see the left hand thread thing coming... <g> Thats great

[Mr. P.]

This is funny. Taking confessions is what it is

I'm not about to confess on here
...

LOL oh c'mon now you don't want to die with "sins" on your soul

[mike ramirez racing]

when I was 16 I put a V8 in my 64 nova and used a moroso pan. I forgot to check the oil pan drain plug and took the car on a drive. when I got home I noticed a trail of oil following me straight up my driveway!!!

Then I put a motor together for my 70 nova, just a bunch of junk laying around. I had installed too short pushrods and the car ran like shit!

I know I have made more mistakes since then but I can't think of them right now...except for putting the wrong pushrods in the wrong place on a 3.1L V6 and hitting the pistons and bending the valve and pushrod.

[Sirshredalot]

Well....I got so excited the first time I installed my first tunnel ram that I left all 16 pushrods laying in the lifter valley. The distributor went in fine.

So I got to start setting rocker lash...."what the heck...where are all the pushrods?"
So about an hour later I had successfully fished all the pushrods out of the valley with an extendable pen magnet...

-----------------------------------

The first engine I ever rebuilt laster about 3000 miles because I didnt know what thrust clearance was....needless to say my crank was trying to escape from the front of the block and ruined everything....that was a $2500 mistake.

God bless
-Shred

[ZEROMAN91]

My mea culpa was installing a turbo 400 in an olds and forgetting to put in the torque converter whata mess !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rommel Racing]

I talked my friend into buying this used motor for his 69 Chevelle.

This is a copy of the add.



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SBC 383 with 9000km of street driving. Never been to the track or abused.just a weekend cruiser. Always had a rev limiter set at 6200rpm. Always had royal purple synthtic oil since break in. Engine was built and balanced by ???????. . Reciepts available to prove. Located in Victoria . Call Mike at ??? ???? after 5 if intrested

-Eagle 3.75" stroker crank
-Eagle 6" I beam rods with ARP rod bolts
-SRP forged lightweight piston with floating pins (16cc dish for 10.2 to 1 comp)
-Moly file fit rings
-Comp Cams 284XE camshaft 507/510" lift with 240/246 @50 duration
-Comp lifters and Heavy duty pushrods and timing set
-Edelbrock E-tec 200cc intake runners with 2.02/1.60 valves and 64cc chambers (very good flowing head)
-Arp headstuds
-Elgin 1.5 ratio full roller rockers
-Moroso 7qt rear sump oil pan with trap door
-Edelbrock Performer RPM air gap intake
-New Pro Form double pumper 650cfm double pumper...add a larger main body for more $$$
-MSD billet distributor
-Edelbrock aluminum water pump
-Billet crank and waterpump pulley
-New balancer and flex plate

$3900 delivered to mainland or trade for MX bike or Race ATV or 4x4 truck

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So He buys it for $3500 bucks, and brings it to me to tear it down and check it out.

Here is a few things I found

The block was not clearanced for the stroker crank...this rod had maybe .010" clearance......no signs of contact though



I thought the oil pump pick-up looked like it was pretty tall so I quickly measured it....then after a closer look in the bottom of the pan you could clearly see a nice impression of the pick-up! thankfully the pick-up was not square to the pan!







I also found that half of the rod bearings(h series) where installed backwards, upper shells in the caps, lowers in the rods.

Needless to say the bearings didn't look to good.

It is really amazing what you can get away with, when you find stuff like this.

Oh ya, the motor also had tapered seat spark plugs in it as well

I think it was still a good deal, but sure glad we took it apart!

[BEDNAR1320]

I WAS INSTALLING A 8-71 BLOWER ON A BBC FOR A STREET CAR ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO-I WAS VERY CAREFUL WHEN I PULLED OFF THE CARB INTAKE AND KNEW IT WOULD BE A FEW DAYS UNTIL I INSTALLED THE BLOWER INTAKE SO I STUFFED A SHOP RAG DOWN I EACH INTAKE PORT IN THE HEADS TO KEEP OUT ANY UNWANTED OBJECTS. WELL-A FEW DAYS LATER I INSTALLED THE BLOWER INTAKE AND PUT THE REST OF THE TOP END TOGETHER,WHEN I WENT TO START THIS THING UP I HAD A VERY HARD TIME GETTING IT TO RUN,THEN IT WOULD NOT IDLE FOR A LONG TIME BUT I GOT BETTER AND BETTER AND FINALLY IT WAS OK. THEN I NOTICED THIS STRANGE FUZZ COMING OUT OF THE MUFFLERS--YES IT WAS THE REMAINS OF ALL EIGHT SHOP RAGS THAT HAD BEEN SHREDDED AND SOMEWHAT BURNED. IT WAS VERY FUNNY AND I WAS AMAZED THAT I WAS ABLE TO MAKE IT RUN AT ALL AND THAT IT DID'NT CAUSE ANY DAMAGE!

[kirkwoodken]

Something that tickled my funny bone: I saw some SBC rods that a guy numbered and he put a line under the "6" so he wouldn't confuse it with a "9".

A previous post mentioned an ungreased crank pilot bearing. I saw an extreme case of that shake a 5 ton truck violently when the clutch was pushed in. No one could believe that was causing it.

[407SBC]

Ive been dying to tell this one, but could never bring the shame upon myself, here goes:

My buddy got a race boat with a BBC for dirt cheap. He wanted to either fix it up and race it or fix it up and sell it. So out came the 454 for a rebuild. Initial plans called for .030 over but 4 bores didnt clean up, but just barely. My buddy decides to take the block back to machine shop. Machine shop fixes problem, kinda. Bores the 4 problem cylinders to .040 over and sells my buddy 4 .040 pistons & rings. My buddy asks me to handle the dirty work after his brother tells him F U. On cylinder #7, one of the .040s, as I was installing the piston somehow one of the oil supports hangs up and gets bent. I blame it on the POS ring compressor as Ive never had anything like that happen before. Anyway, I tell my buddy its F'd and we must order new support rail. My buddy is pissed & tells me I better make it F'ing work or else. OK, you sure?
I tried in vane to straighten the thing out but no. So I had no choice....
I gave the ring a "short cut," I.E. cut about 55* section out of the ring with pliers and then installed it as if nothing unusual. To say its bad diesnt even come close. Obviously the ends of the rings are digging into the cylinder wall cause the motor will barely turn over.

My buddy wants to sell the boat now but he hasnt bought a new drive system so its just sitting collecting dust. Maybe better that way. He absolutely refuses to take it apart and fix the issue and he damn sure wont spend the $ for another .040 ring. Cheap a$$ ba$stard. Anyway, it is my only truely painful memory of engine building I wish to forget. Now I have come clean and feel awesome. Thankyou everyone for reading my dirty confession. My advice is just buy the F'ing thing, even it it takes a few weeks to get from an a$$hole who has already ripped you off. Good Karma pays.

[user-9613590]

Well,few years ago my friend has a Corolla with blown engine.So he bought rebuilt and hopped -up engine(sidedrafts,ported head,header..) for it.Installed it and even sound good.Gos for test drive to his friend some km away.Engine runs well and has power.Well,he spend some time on his friend before going back to home.On the way to home the engine seized!
He towed it to garage and start to inspect what happened..
After lenghty hassle he happen to remove the distributor and find that there was NOT an oil pump under it!
Engine builder had forgotten to install some little part..
Amazing thing is that the engine run about 5 km only with assembly oil and whatever oil splashed around the crankcase!
(and yes,the oil pressure light in dash didn't work..)
Later when I take the engine apart there was a LOT of loose bolts.I quess the builder was pretty drunk when bolting it together..

[mtkawboy]

In 1962 I was 16 and in auto shop. We had to put a timing chain in a Y-block Ford. Instructions, we dont need no stinking instructions ! We lined the dots up on the timing & crank sprocket as opposed to doing it the right way which was counting 16 or 17 pins, I forget, between the dots. After towing it about 100 miles with the hood off while turning the distributer alternating shooting fire out the carb then the exhaust we finally read the instructions. Problem solved and we actually learned something ! Carb looked like a BBQ pit but it ran !

[nitro2]

Back in highschool every auto class for a few years had been trying to get an old 318 on a test stand to run. Now this was a pretty lame class where nothing was ever accomplished, but over the course of a few years some parts had been replaced, distributor, carb, plugs, wires etc. In any event the engine would always start right up, run well for a second or two then quit. Always. As it turns out a friend of mine had been keeping a big secret for a long time, he had been responsible for welding up the exhaust header which merged the two collectors and had purposely welded shut the exhaust for one bank where the two collectors came together as one. Everytime the engine ran, exhaust came out as expected, but only half as much, which wasn't obvious at idle. The exhaust from the blocked side just backed up into the carb and killed the engine. Talk about reversion. Not a fatal mistake, but an interesting way to cause a lot of head scratching.

[RednGold86Z]

hehehe, that reminds me of shop class where the teacher left for a few minutes, and we had our English teacher's car (pos CRX I think) in for an oil change. I mentioned to one of the more mischievous kids that we should swap some spark plug wires around, not thinking he'd actually do it. The thing sounded like a Harley for the next 4 days until they finally figured it out, still brings tears to my eyes when thinking about it.