Rookie mechanic mistakes thread?

lol
done that. I had a big knot on the back of my head for a while.

another one from the shop

>it was the eldest tech at the dealer doing a service
>he had been working here for like 40 years
>he puts oil in the car
>drives it down to the wash when he's done
>it starts smoking and knocking
It turns out he never actually drained the oil, just dumped in new. They drained 4 gallons of oil out of this car.

In two years at the shop I saw four instances of forgetting drain plugs. The best part is that it's never the Peruvian oil-changer, its the real mechanics
>one was me

>drain the oil
>change the filter
>reinstall splash guard
>fill bucket of oil
>drain bucket into engine
>see drain plug on the bench
>%*@$#^ gefucken gehaben
>my entire bay is now a pool of oil
At least we have a good janitor, he wouldn't even let me clean the floor. I lifted the car up all the way and took a 5 while he mopped.

Funny thing is, you think I'd learn from this.

>I drain the radiator out of an S60
>change the thermostat
>I mix then pour coolant into the tank
>"I've never seen a 5cyl take a full 2 gallons of coolant"
>watch the coolant tank empty
>wait what is that splashing sound
>all two gallons went straight into my drain pan
>I had to buy the customer new coolant

That's not as bad as the trusted shop mechanic my cousin sees for his M3. One time he poured windshield washer fluid into the transmission.

Oh fuck, I've got this:

>bought a 4x4 without realizing it had an engine swap
>didn't realize that I should flush disgusting coolant until years later (took 3 days to get it clean)
>didn't realize I should have checked the condition of the fuel lines and sprayed fuel everywhere all the time

Apart from that, I haven't screwed up too much since. I'm pretty cautious about how I do things, mostly because I'm terrified of my truck. Gaining a lot of confidence lately though.

My friend nate and i took apart my motorcycle a looong way before we realized the killswitch was in kill.

rip

A friend of the shop owner brought in their Mercedes that had a bad P/S leak. The guy working on it discovered this person had dumped P/S oil into the brake reservoir.

I've also seen water (not coolant) in the oil, coolant in the washer tank, and diesel in the gas tank.

I did head gaskets on my friend's ranger, and it turned into replacing the heads because he drove it so long with blown gaskets. I ran the garden hose through the block for 20 min and shit was still coming out. We have done 4 flushes and the coolant still comes out looking like mud

>1 quart of oil
Was it at least the correct weight?
My turn:
>Changing over turbo in my old SRT 4
>Took out some big ass turbo and everything related as lol no money for tune
>Have to change coolant lines
>I didn't drain the coolant out
>Thinking I can just unscrew the old line and quickly screw in the new one
>I was so, so wrong
>Loosen off the old one and coolant goes every where
>New one would not screw in
>Coolant everywhere
>God damn it
>No idea how much is left in the block, and get a towel to soak up all the spilled coolant
>Now the new line threads in
>Hang head in deep shame
Never made that mistake again.

>Be me in HS, still working on the bug
>I've replaced every single part in the brake system except for the petal and one T fitting in the rear
>all new lines, hoses, master cylinder, wheel cylinders, shoes, and springs
>I bench bleed the MC
>I start gravity bleeding at the front and go to the back
>petal goes to the floor
>I go buy another quart of fluid
>we bleed the entire quart of fluid through this thing using the push petal open bleeder close bleeder lift petal technique
>there is now a small amount of feel at the bottom, not enough to stop the car
>fluid is coming out with no bubbles, and I've used up 2 quarts of fluid
>still no petal
>I talk to a friend's dad who works on trucks
>he suggests I go adjust the shoes
>lo and behold, the brakes were working but the shoes were too loose to hit the drums
>after adjustment the petal came back up

It took me about 3 weeks to figure that one out

that reminded me

I installed a junkyard turbo on my Volvo 244 using junkyard parts and ebay hoses. I learned an important lesson.

>space constraints dictated the oil feed line had to go around the bottom of the turbo and up to the top from the outside
>there was 1.5" of clearance, and the braided hose made it without kinking
>drive to my friends house
>arrive with a trail of oil following me
>the soft engine mounts in the Volvo allowed the engine to rock over enough that the line was being kinked against the inner fender, and it ruptured

Always make sure to point fittings away from pinch hazards lol

talk about bad mechanics

>bay neighbor borrows my long handle pliers
>mofo closes the hood on them and lifts the car

i got a good one for you fuckers.

>get 2.5L I5 whiteblock back from having forged internals installed for muh s60r
>put in new pcv system, ported/flowed intake manifold, etc.
>get everything back together, go to start up car
>instantly see puffs of black smoke, engine is shitting itself and i hear major turbo flutter (put a bigger turbo in as well, oh baby)
>its sunday night and i have college in the morning so i leave it and drive one of my dad's cars for the week (honda accord, i was fucking miserable)
>friday morning go back to it, take out the airbox and look underneath
>see throttle body gasket hanging out and a clear gap between the throttle body and intake manifold

i screwed the fucking throttle body on the wrong way and it didn't seal/mate properly with the manifold. holy fuck i was mad.

There was a UTI grad that started working at the dealer shortly before I left, he admitted to doing this one weekend.

>he bought a new set of headers for his s10
>eager to put them on
>alcoholic beverages were consumed
>forgot to buy gaskets
>he has gasket material in his garage
>he traces out the shape of the ports and says he spends a lot of time to cut it out nicely
>he even cut out holes for the studs nicely
>bolts everything in place
>he goes to start the engine, it won't start
>it makes a funny noise
>he's too drunk to think at this point so he goes to bed
>next morning he pulls the headers off
>he never cut out the holes for the ports
>the exhaust valves floated and were all bent

oh boi

proud

what turbo did you put on? who tuned the ECM?

I made the mistake once of trying to remove a fuel filter before depressurizing the fuel line. The result was a nasty gush of gasoline straight into my left ear.

Two years later my hearing is still fucked. The pain was just indescribable, I felt pain I didn't even know was possible.

Only ever made one real mistake.
Changing air filter, forgot to reconnect AFM, car won't start, plug it back in, still wont start, check engine light etc.
Just took an ECU reset

>being this spoiled
FUCK OFF

have you tried igniting the vapors

>my friend's dad works for the county maintaining school buses and transfer trucks
>one of the guys in the shop replaced a set of wheel bearings on a trailer
>forgot to pack them with grease
>the truck got about 4 miles down the road and the bearing locked up
>it melted the balls to the inner and outer races and jacked up the spindle

pic not the one but related

Ive seen this before, and worse then that, had one do the same except it got so heated it sheered the spindle off the axle and that set of duals ended up in the ditch.

>finally get around to changing radiator
>fill it up and take it for a test drive
>tfw when no leaks and no overheat
>park car, minute later coolant all over floor

Didn't slide the lower house as far up as I should've. During operation it worked, but once it had hot pressure and no movement it caused it to burst off.

I would say rookie mistake would be not to double/triple check all your work. Don't get excited and think the job is done.

It's been a while since, but I believe it was the correct weight. I just didn't know how much to get.

> VW diesel
>coolant bubbling over, car overheating
>rent a truck and haul car two states home
>replace my first head gasket
>fuck it up, buy better tools and aftermarket head studs and repeat
>start it up... coolant bubbling, car overheating
>then I found the actual problem - blockage in the small coolant return line - in the little nub on the reservoir
> poke out blockage with piece of wire
> actual repair time ... about 100 seconds

>doing engine swap because motor blew up
>firebird V6 into a camaro
>automatic firebird manual camaro
>swap is done, start to drive it
>vibrations out the ass 50% of the time after shifting
>realize we forgot to put the pilot bearing in the new motor
>say fuck it and sell the car the next day

>find a A/C recharger in the garage
>"oh look I could use this"
>decide to recharge my A/C
>buy a can of refrigerant
>decide to puncture the can early with the recharger tube things valve
>find the A/C service ports
>connect hose to one of the ports nipple
>doesn't connect
>try the other nipple
>doesn't connect
>mfw realizing I shouldn't puncture the can in the first place thinking all is right with the world and that releasing this shit is bad for the atmosphere but there is nothing I can do about it
>loosen the valve and release what I believe is harmful to the enviroment
>figure out later the can didn't contain O-zone babby killing shit and my shitbox has R12 ports and the recharger has R134 connectors

Should really remember if two things have a related purpose they sometimes won't be compatible

>car is fucking up idle still
>had replaced most fuel air things in engine bay
>maybe it's the fuel filter
>go buy a new filter
>jack it up and put stands
>pull clamps off
>rip the hoses off
>at this point realized I fucked up
>pressurized fuel sprays towards my face
>lucky I was wearing glasses and barely any touched my eye
>blindly crawl out from under car
>walk blindly to hose and spray water at my face for a few minutes
>go back to car and catch the fuel into an empty water bottle
>eyes hurt like a mother fucker
>replace filter
>one of the 30 year old hoses rips
>go inside to rinse eye more
>'son you smell like gasoline'

>key in on position
>unbolting fuel rail

Pic related
I have a 72 Duster and I didn't even know it had that
I was driving around with Pitch Black Instruments for about a week before I accidentaly dialed it up again.

yiff in hell furfaggot

buy a rope and hang yourself sub-human

I came here to post this

Oh i got one,
>used to work at an engine rebuilding shop, all we did were large inline six diesel engines.
>just finished a complete rebuild on a deutz inline 6 n/a.
>Fired it up on the end of the forklift, sounding good and then suddenly all i hear is a loud TAP TAP TAP TAP and the engine loses a cylinder.
>Spend about two hours diagnosing it and then my buddy goes "hey dude did you forget to take the rag out of the intake"
>Fuck, look inside the intake with a mirror and sure enough the rag got sucked into the no.1 cylinder and bent the shit out of the valves. Ended up taking the head off and putting new valves in it, got mad shit talked for the rest of the month.

Oh but it gets better

>first rebuild on an actual car motor, my very own 1990 honda crx.
>Did everything, bored,honed skimmed the block and head, new pistons rings bearings you name it.
>Fire it up and it runs tits. While its warming up i find a hole in one off the coolant hoses going to the head, its in a bitch of a spot and i really want to drive the car.
>Grab some electrical tape, tape it up fill it up with water no leaks heh.
>Slam the hood down and drive off like a bat out of hell to "break it in like your going to drive it".
>Get about three miles away from home and the engine starts losing power, and suddenly have alot of smoke out the back.
>And then the engine goes "poof" and shuts off.
>have the car towed back to the house, take the head off to see the damage.
>Find the hose i had taped up, had immediately blown and overheated the engine so badly that the pistons melted aluminum to the cylinder walls.
>Proceed to take the engine i had just put in half a day earlier out of the car and start calling people for a new donor block.
Never been so pissed in my life.

I would have my trip on but it's banned fur a day.
Why are you so mad???

reported for ban evasion

yiff in hell

i suggested putting rags in the engine bay of an oil leaky machine at work to keep it from making a mess

Reported for reporting reports

Ive got another one too
>same 90 crx, only with the "new new" rebuilt motor i put in it that i didnt melt down.
>Im new to tuning so my engine is running a little rich at the time.
>muffler has a hole in it about the size of a football and is raspy as hell, find a dude on craigs that has one used for a decent price so i pick it up.
>Im all excited install the new muffler, fire it up for the first time and it sounds great, drive it around rev it and take videos all that stupid shit kids do.
>Shut off the engine and hear a hellacious BOOM.
>Step outside to see what the fuck the noise was and see rust scattered everywhere and a piece of sheet metal laying under the rear bumper on the ground.
>Look around cant find anything wrong with the car so i fire it up to move it forward.
>Realize engine sounds exactly the fucking same as the last muffler that i just took off.
>thats when i found out, my engine had backfired and blew the entire lower panel of my muffler off, just like the last one i had on it.

Thats when i decided to go with glasspacks.

I really only had one big fuckup.
>high school auto tech class
>TA because I wanna work on cars
>doing oil change on a trans am
>everything goes fine, get the filter on, drain plug on, fill with oil
>start it up and walk away to grab something out of my backpack
>come back and see oil all over the ground, literally a pool of oil bigger than the car
>panic, frozen in place
>teacher runs out of the office, jumps from a block onto the lift arm, opens the door and shuts it off
>check everything over
>oil filter double ringed
>clean for 3 hours

I went to the store and bought the oil to replace the wasted oil with my own money and the guy was all good, even cheered me up. He was a student a few years ago and he was really cool about the whole thing, luckily there was no damage and I learned a definite lesson.

and another before i go to bed.
>finally round up enough parts and cash to put together a home depot turbo kit on my crx.
>This thing is a rolling rube goldberg of parts and problems constantly. Pretty much every pull something broke, or was about to break. Home depot rubber water couplers as boost couplings, used to blow three of those a week. I had spares in my glovebox because they had a warranty and i was dead broke.
>See an ad for the local drag strip having an import night.
>Get all excited, decide to rally up my rag tag group of goons and head down to the track.
>Get there and get flagged by the tech inspector because i guess they dont like batteries being held down by a ratchet strap.
>Get through tech, and then get flagged off the track twice due to leaking fluids in the burnout box.
>Finally get that shit straightened out and actually get a decent burnout going without people yelling at me to get off the track.
>Finish burnout, pull up to lights and car dies. This has been a constant problem of after i get into boost the car would die or idle pig rich for awhile.
>So i start cranking the car over for what felt like ages, the spectators are laughing, the guy next to me in the other lane is asleep and it finally starts.
>Proceed to do the shittiest 16 second quarter mile of my life and get beat by a completely stock d16a6 civic with nothing but open headers and shitty slicks.
>Get hazards half way down the track by this punk.

I dont find out until three years later that i had accidentally put my evap emission line to the intake. So every time i got into boost it would pressurize the tank to whatever psi i went to making it idle rich as fuck unti the pressure bled off. Im lucky i didnt kill myself in a fireball as the tank exploded.

Only real bad one was me not knowing or remembering to check oil levels when I first got a car. I didn't know fuck all about them at the time.

>on roadtrip at night
>50km in
>temp gauge suddenly starts going up fast
>wtf
>slow down and start pulling off the road
>TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK
>engine dies, pull to stop
>smell oil and metal burning
>open oil cap, can see smoke just rising out of it
>check dipstick
>literally no oil
>OH YOU FUCKING IDIOT
>get friend to drop off 5L bottle of oil
>top it up and try to start
>Whur whur whur like it has a flat battery
>call up bro in law who actually knows about cars to help
>he rotates the fan by hand a full turn until there's a clunk and just says "It's fucked mate"

Swapped the engine and took this pic to remind myself to not be a lazy dumb cunt with cars ever again.

I put the throttle body onto my new intake manifold and used rtv silicone because I didn't have a gasket. I've been trying to figure out why the thing runs so rich for a while now. My instructor at school thinks it's because I probably blocked off the channel to the map sensor partially so I'm not reading the correct vacuum.

Fingers crossed.