Redlinear

The "truck" things you done that you'de rather not admit.

1) This is my latest and got me thinking about my prev bonehead moves.
I changed the heater core in my 2000 in 2hrs flat. Walking away I realized I had installed the heater core that I had just removed.

2)Doing some rust work on rockers once. Pinhole rust. I was cutting about 4x4" chunks of metal out of the rockers, Laying it on a hood, tracing it, cutting the good chunk out of the hood, welding it back in place.
The best fitting piece I welded back in had rust holes in it. (piece I had just cut out).

3) Customer needed an inside tire for his dually. It was flat and worn pretty bad, and for this old farm truck? Cheap and used was all he wanted and all it was worth. I had one that held air and that's about it. For the price, he wanted it.
While changing it, He stood there, watched me, and we talked about all sorts of stuff.
Finished the job, he paid me and left.
Later, while discarding the old tire...I noticed I was throwing away the tire he bought. I had dismounted his tire and mounted it right back on.
Didn't know the guy. Figured he would be back in a day or two. But, that wasn't the case.
He came back about six months later wanting to buy another one for the other side. I guess he was trying to soften me up for a better deal by bragging about how well that last tire was holding up.
I didn't have the heart to tell him what happenned. Needless to say, this next one was "on the house".
We are pretty good aquaintances now....and I've never said a word.

Lary Ellis (Top)

I once did a brake job on my truck and after bleeding the front caliper I jumped up all done and lowered the floor jack barely stopping myself before the front end hit the ground.....seems it is a good idea to put the wheel and tire back on first

SOhappy

1st oil change on my 2003: screwed the new filter down tight onto the old gasket which was stuck to the oil filter housing. Started the engine and painted the garage floor with 2 qts of new Rotella.

infidel

Poor guy I helped out a few years ago went to change the oil on his truck for the first time but drained the manual tranny instead and didn't refill it.
Surprisingly it went almost a thousand miles before the tranny seized up.

My mistakes are on a grander scale, like spraying Roundup on 660 acres of corn that wasn't Roundup Ready.

Tallguy67

Infidel, Roundup has given DW and I some fun stories. One year I sprayed the garden with Roundup from the hand sprayer to kill all weeds before planting. When done I walked across lawn to barn. It turns out my boots were wet with Roundup I had been walking on the garden. 2 weeks later dead footprint pattern appeared on the lawn between the garden and the barn. You would think I would have learned. Next year I got smarter and sprayed the Roundup on the garden using the 25 gallon sprayer that pulls behind the lawn tractor. 2 weeks later, there were dead tire tracks on the lawn between the garden and the barn.

Now, when done spraying Roundup on the garden, I let the lawn tractor and sprayer sit in the garden for 24 hours before driving it back to the barn. Roundup is an amazing product but it must be used with caution.

gorms

Back when I was swapping out the auto I took my time because I didn't really need the truck much...and did it as I could afford parts. But while enjoying a few beers with a buddy we both decided that the turbo wheel looked dirty, lets pull it out and clean it. Well once it was out we said best way to clean it is to totally take it out, so we did. Upon reassembly we (I) forgot the snap ring on the front behind compressor wheel. Now I have a rebuilt turbo, compressor kinda walked into the housing a bit.

Last summer I replaced all the a/c components, bought a vac. pump and gauges and all that junk to work on it. After pulling a real good vacuum on it (over 2 hours!) I went to hook up a can of 134A, didn't know you have to puncture the top of the can with the needle valve thing first (because I didn't have one of those) so I lost all my vacuum while I thought I was filling the system...

Thats the best way to learn though...right?

lovinCTD59

I lost my high beam lights on my truck one night.. in a hurry I assumed it would have been a short or bad connection in the multifunction switch.. installed a new one. Still nothin. Well I never did check voltage at the headlamps. Ended up both high beam bulbs burnt out at the exact same time...

gorms

Hey that reminds me of a good one! Went to the drive in movie theater about 3 summers ago, sat through both movies, I have a few tall boys and the wife drives home. So she goes to put the head lights on and nuthin! I start swearing at the headlight switch, wiggling it/hitting it/even pulled it out to check it. Ended up backfeeding the thing with a peice of wire and some trial and error (its well past midnight mind you) and got the low beams going, right off the battery. Sobered up the next day and found I must have hit the light switch under the dash that switches from normal to plow lights. Good to know I could get them going in a real emergency I guess.

rockcrawler304

One of my first small block chevy builds I installed the cam, dropped in the new lifters, installed the intake and let it sit over night. Next morning I spin the engine over on the stand and hear plink plink plink as the lifters all fell out....... I forgot to put the push rods and rockers on first

Redlinear

If I may deviate from Trucks?
Got a guy here is good with outboards/boats. Rather than our local bass club members taking their boats to a real shop where the bill is $1000 and the time is 30+ days? We often get to fix boats in a couple of days for a couple hundred$. (redneck boat repair at it's finest)
Had three in the shop last year that wouldn't start. (lanyards were attached to the life vests that were stored in the consoles). Instead of attached to the kill switches.
I've never done that.
I have inspected my motor from top to bottom while on the water though. Wondering why it wouldn't start. 30min later I figure out my life vest is on my body...with the lanyard dangling off of it.

Put the cowling back on motor, fired it up, told my wife it was a loose wire and luckily I was smart enough to find it.

patdaly

Ok, I might as well tell this one on myself.

My buddy the Dodge dealer liked to buy seized vehicles at auction, then send them thru his "certified" shop to check them out for sale. Subject vehicle was a 1998 4WD Grand Cherokee, nice enough vehicle, but I could see it had been clipped in the front and fixed at some point in it's life. ( Should have made me go Hmmmm ). Anyway, vehicle ran out good, shop gave it their blessing, and it went on the lot. A couple of people drove it, didn't sell, my buddy the owner drove it, no problems. Finally the day came that the serious buyer was test driving it, we get a call that it was "bucking" and she couldn't get it back to the dealership. Get there, I take her back to the dealership, buddy is driving this thing back, it was for sure bound up somewhere, he was mad and didn't care, so he just powered thru.

I figured something was up when I saw him pull in, so I crawled under it, sure enough, all the slack was gone in the drive shafts ( SECOND time the HMMM should have smacked me.

He got his "certified" mechanics out and of course they said the TC was screwed up ( at which point I ran them stupid idiots off...... ) Now I was mad and was gonna find out what in the HECK was going on. I grabbed my wrenches, pulled the front u-joint caps, and tried pulling the shaft, wouldn't budge. ( THIRD and FINAL strike ) Yours truly, the intrepid adventurer, grabbed his trusty prybar, rolled under it, and proceeded to pry it loose.

BAM!!!!!!! Followed by the most gawd awful pain in my chest I had ever felt. Next, the stupid GC is rolling backwards ( was in neutral.... ) and stopped on my leg. Thank goodness it wasn't much of an incline, because I would have really been in trouble if it had. Anyway, I am now trapped under this thing, with a chest that felt like 40 mules had savagely kicked me, and I notice tranny fluid ( nice clean, red ATF4 ) coming down on my shirt. At that point, I was just thankful it wasn't blood, because I still didn't have any idea what had just happened to me, except that 1.) I hurt like heck, 2.) I was lucky to be breathing, and 3.) I REALLY need to get somebody's attention to get out from under this mess. About that time, my buddy came back, and in due course, pushed it off of me. Luckily, I was further under it when I pried, or that driveshaft would have bounced off my head.

Long story short, at the time of the accident, evidently they had to replace the front axle due to damage, and if you didn't ever deal with GC's, there are about 25 different options available. They evidently didn't find the right one, and stuck a 3.73 front with a factory 3.55 rear.

Dummy ( that's me ) missed all the PLAINLY obvious DANGER Will Robinson signs, and bounced the driveshaft off my chest, and rebounded back to the trans, thankfully it only sheared off the neutral safety switch.

The worst part of it all ( past my wounded pride)?

His idiot service manager still didn't believe it had 2 different axle ratios........

Anyway, that's just one of the more memorable lessons in life that thankfully, so far haven't killed me.

SIXSLUG

I pulled the distributor in my 68 F-100 for a rebuild. The clunk I heard was, sure enough, the oil pump driveshaft falling into the pan. Many unprintable words were uttered rather loudly.

18 year old genius that I was, I unbolted the oil pan, pulled the drivers side motor mount bolts and jacked her up. As I fished around in the pan, which was a 10 quart off an old 352 dump truck motor, I noticed the block slowly easing downward and thanks to my watch, pinning my hand in between the pan and block.

After a quick panic I had the sanctity to use my leg to pump the floor jack enough to recover my hand, watch, and oil pump driveshaft out of the pan.

Lesson 1: make sure the floor jack handle is tight for raising the jack

Lesson 2: Use jack stands or a solid support when working on vehicles

Lesson 3: When rebuilding a Ford 390, make sure you get the retainer ring on the oil pump driveshaft going in the right direction...

Zeus1987

Cleaning the air filter on the truck I put a shop rag in the intake tube to keep whatever out and proceeded to clean then oil the filter. Once all was done a couple hours later I re-installed everything and started the truck. Right away it hit me and I shut the truck off instantly and my heart felt like it was in my throat. Luckily for me I left those white air directional things in the intake tube and they caught the rag before it could get sucked into the turbo. I think my truck has a guardian angel haha.

NE frmhnd

When I was really young a couple of my uncles put a new transmission in my grandfather's td-7. Instead of taping or tying rags over the open hose ends, they cut up rags and stuffed the pieces in the ends of the hoses.

I bet you can see where this is going.

When they put it together they left the rag pieces in the hydraulic lines and burnt up the new transmission AND torque convertor.

Put a new air bag under a hopper trailer a couple years ago. Welded the end of a fitting shut, screwed it onto the line to that airbag, aired up the suspension, and took the old one out. Drove a half hour to NAPA, came home and stuck the new one in. Barely got it squeezed in, and the trailer wouldn't lift once it was hooked up. Spent 20 minutes on the phone with NAPA, it was the right airbag. Someone comes out of the shop and says "shoulda started the truck". The air had bled off while I was gone to NAPA.

mtdoragary

Drove my Civic double gasketed until oil light came on. Traded it the next day.