Your biggest motoring cockup?

[lisbon_road]

Fitting a manual choke to my Ford Sierra.  Drilled a hole through the bulkhead to fit it and went straight through the master cylinder.

 

Oops.

 

Not difficult to fix really, but I was dazed at my stupidity.

[UmBongo]

Selling (in no particular order) these...

 

MG Metro.

 

Ford Escort 1.6 Ghia, white with a BVR.

 

Lancia Delta HF Turbo, although to be fair it was completely fucked.

 

Triumph Spitfire.

 

Peugeot 309 GTi.

 

:cry:

[jakebullet]

Fire used to be my favourite. Move welding shield to find I've set it on fire again. Best one was where I'd jammed my fat arse under a series land rover and set it on fire welding, and seriously struggled to get back out as the flames spread. It's quite the panic feeling.

[HMC]

Bought a Volvo amazon a few years back, didnt look closely enough at the bodywork (shiny paintjob over wob over rust) Spent a load on it but it never drove properly, a decent amazon is a lovely thing, but mine was a badly bought steaming ( and expensive) pile of shit.

[dome]

Took out a loan to buy a ur quattro when the overtime was good.

 

Laid it up with signs of OMGHGF after an uninsured driver whacked it when it was parked in Glasgow.

 

Eventually sold it for a pittance.

 

What are they worth now?

[purplebargeken]

Obtained replacement A pillar trim for R75. Easy fix, just pull off.

 

Knack required as the cunt cracked the corner of the windscreen when I tried to remove it. Bastard thing. 

[Guest Hooli]

Accepting a free 'goona2 thinking 'it can't be that bad'.

[MarvinsMom]

once bought a golf, unseen on the word of a friend of a friend, that it was a good one.

 

it wasn't, it wa rotten to the core (the wheel arch spats had been siliconed on) and it smelt like something had died in it, (i think something had) it was so flippin' horrible i had it 3 weeks before it went over the bridge,

 

i won't do anything quiet so foolish again. well not yet, again!

[captain_70s]

Buying a Dolomite.

Buying another Dolomite.

Not wanting to stop buying Dolomites.

[Kiltox]

Fitting a second hand BSI and ECU to a Citroen - I'm possibly the only motor trader ever to clock his stock forward

[strangeangel]

Buying a SIII Land Rover. Nothing comes close.

[For Fiats Sake]

Buying a new car.

 

I'm not a new car person.

 

It's taken me losing money I wish I still had to realise that. 

 

Twice.

 

Ah well tis only money.

[coalnotdole]

I once ordered a custom build £470 radiator which was too wide to fit my car...

[overrun]

Fitting a manual choke to my Ford Sierra.  Drilled a hole through the bulkhead to fit it and went straight through the master cylinder.

 

Oops.

 

Not difficult to fix really, but I was dazed at my stupidity.

 

My mate once drilled into the rear of his Nova roof skin, when fitting a mk1 SR style wraparound spoiler!

[cort16]

Jacking the car up on the chassis rail after I'd just cut the surrounding floor and cross brace off.

 

Rounding the nut on a 7 series calliper resulting in a 6 weeks discs and pads change .

[matty879]

Selling (in no particular order) these...

 

MG Metro.

 

Ford Escort 1.6 Ghia, white with a BVR.

 

Lancia Delta HF Turbo, although to be fair it was completely fucked.

 

Triumph Spitfire.

 

Peugeot 309 GTi.

 

:cry:

selling all my treasures,biggest cockup ever

3x hf turbo

4x metro turbo

mini marcos, mk1 minis,mk1/2 escorts.to name a few.

imagine how wealthy we could all be with the benefit of hindsight

im hoarding what i own now,and consider it my private pension fund

[Junkman]

Buying a haunted Rover P6.

[Mr A Lawrence]

Buying a brand new mgzr then being genuinely surprised at how shit it was.

[rainagain]

Deciding to treat the missus by buying her a 'decent'  car (as in one that costs more than our usual £1000 limit) and let her choose. She wanted a Megane convertible, I ruled the diesel out straight away because the dCi is shite. However whilst looking through Gumtree it was me that found a diesel and went to see it. I stupidly bought it.

 

After two weeks the engine died, whilst taking the engine apart I found it had a buggered crank and someone had just put new shells on it to get it sold. Spend £550 on a 'low millage' replacement engine which looked like it had never seen an oil change and had used orange gunge for coolant (bought online with a three month warranty).  Had to buy a new clutch as well as the Renault clip software and interface to program the new injectors. By the time I had it all back together my OH was six months pregnant and couldn't really get into the back to strap our son in, so couldn't drive it.

 

I ended up selling it for less than we paid for it in the first place despite having shelled out for the engine and all the other pieces. Luckily I took out AA parts and labour cover on it as whilst I was trying to sell as the starter motor failed followed by the battery. I fucking hated that car.

 

 

[daveb47]

Fitting an AA badge to Triumph Herald,easy cos of forward opening bonnet.

Unfortunately over long bolts attaching it went right through radiator when bonnet was shut.

[strangeangel]

My mate once drilled into the rear of his Nova roof skin, when fitting a mk1 SR style wraparound spoiler!

 

In a similar vein... years back I owned a 405GR which had suffered rear impact damage, necessitating a padlock to hold the boot shut. Naturally the rain pissed in, and in an effort to get rid of it I drilled a series of 10mm holes in the boot floor. Unfortunately one of these resulted in a curious hissing sound - I had drilled straight through the spare tyre

[dollywobbler]

For reasons of complete idiocy, I saved a horrific Bond Equipe from the Scrappage scheme. Cost me a grand. Went to collect it, at which point the MOT was proven to have been a blind "just for the scheme" one. It barely ran, and as we set off, it became apparent that the rear brakes were binding.

 

My clever* solution was to simply remove the rear shoes. I was Roadkill ahead of its time. That could have worked if I'd actually thought to find some way to prevent the wheel cylinders pushing the pistons out...

 

Obviously I didn't, so the brakes just refused to work. I managed to swerve into a housing estate, which was up a hill thankfully. Shoes refitted, took it back. Borrowed a car trailer and dragged it home that way, because obviously it was still going to pan out ok. Then a needle valve seized, so it poured petrol everywhere. Spent a small fortune at a specialist trying to coax some reliability into it, then swapped it for a Saab 900 worth £350. 

 

Worst car ever.

[2MB]

Nothing too specific, but I have had one or two issues in the past stemming from starting drinking part way through a job and forgetting to tighten things up

[AMC Rebel]

Buying my X350 Jag - then keeping it too long and spending upwards of 7K on repairs and servicing in 2 years (it already had full Jag History).  I know you can't really judge these things, but the previous owner got rid at just the right time.

 

One of my stupidest deeds was taking the clutch on my Maxi to bits one quiet afternoon when I was bored (things were very different then), including removing the flywheel (why?) and then putting it all back badly so I wrecked what up to that point had been a perfectly good engine/box.

 

Once I'd got it back on the road, changed a driveshaft and failed to tighten the wheelnuts fully - wheel came off and ripped the wing to bits.

[stephen01]

 

Buying this blind and then driving 550 round trip to collect the stupid thing, sent it to the bridge as it was utterly fucked. no way it was going back on the road, steve wonder must have been doing the MOT as it had no mention of rust but it was seriously fucked. sent it to the bridge as it was that bad.  

[rainagain]

My first car was a Mk1 Fiesta which had no radio, being a 'youth' I had to sort this. I took the driver's door card off to cut a hole in it for the speaker I was fitting, I used the handy hole from the window winder spindle as a point of reference and cut the hole directly underneath this. You can imagine my surprise when I put it all together and realised I now couldn't wind the window down as the now attached window winder caught on the speaker.

[Slartibartfast]

Buying this:

 

 

Looks nice, doesn't it? It mostly looked like this:

 

[Des]

When I was a spanner wizard I'd get plagued by 'friends' for weekend repairs, always insisted on beers, cold ones, maybe wasn't the best of ideas as not being a big drinker I'd get hammered quicker than a smaller socket. I fucked up a few cars in ways I can't recall, couple ended on the hook of a hiab, and there was a small fire, once swapped a Rover 800 box, bit of a bastard job addressed by adding vodka to the Guinness. Matey later engaged in argumentative exchanges with the supplier of the replacement because it was as noisy as the old one and leaked oil, poor gearchange, blah, blah. Week later when I swept up a worrying amount of bolts, brackets, old box into a soak pit I'd dug, it dawned on me that I may very well have put the cars original box back in.

[overrun]

Fitting an AA badge to Triumph Herald,easy cos of forward opening bonnet.

Unfortunately over long bolts attaching it went right through radiator when bonnet was shut.

 

I have a similar but much more idiotic version of this.

On my old Volvo 360, again. I fitted twin electric fans to the rad, in situ and used a bradall tool to poke through the fins (and as it turned out next morning, nick the core).

I repaired it by removing the rad, and testing it on the hose, cutting away a few fins around the holed core and patching it with chemical metal.

 

It felt like a win, after that.

[MOD500]

• Failed to tighten the rear hub nut on fiat 500. Lost a rear wheel on the way to the MOT station.
•  
• jacked up the front of a Clio via the sump wrecking the engine mount and denting the bonnet. (in my defence that was a reliable way to jack up the 500/126
•  
• fitted a used gearbox to the Clio. Some lovely person had removed an oil seal so when I started filling with oil it took me 5 minutes to figure out why it wasn't showing on the dipstick. That stuff stinks and it wrecked a pair of new trainers.
•  
• collecting a free shelf that was too long for the Volvo 340 pushing it right up against the window then slamming the boot shut. A new screen was worth more than the car (at the time). Never fitted the shelf in the end.
•  
• convinced the timing was good on a fiat 126, took the engine out and paid for a re-bore only to find that the timing was out in the first place.
• Replaced the dash bulbs of an old car with new super bright bulbs. A month later started getting charger issues. the LED's were preventing the trickle feed from going back to the battery. Seems very obvious now.

There are many more, but it's already starting to look like I should have my spanners confiscated.