Mistakes I made fixing my cars

[rt green]

forgot to hook up the kick down rod on the trans. was too much in a hurry to drive it. hit 2nd gear at 6 grand and blew the tail shaft housing off the trans. broke the driveshaft front yoke and drove the driveshaft dampner through the floor pan. [68 gtx].  not sure what happened first or what caused what, but I knew it was my mistake somehow. maybe a bigger tach is in order-   bruce

[6spd68]

My son is a regional manager for a lube oil change company and told me about one of their stores that sent out a high end BMW with no oil in it.
Very costly

I know a guy who used to work at a Mr.Lube.  So his story goes, a guy brought in a 90's Pontiac Firefly in for an oil change.  When he get's his invoice it says "3-Cylinder", as many of us know, Swifts, Fireflies, and Metros had a 3-cylinder engine available for a bit.  Well, apparently this genious accused the people working of stealing a cylinder  .  He even went so far as to take them to court over it.    Obviously it was thrown out, but wowza...   

Not sure how much truth there is to the story, but it made me laugh.

[GOTWING]

When i was in my early 20's i had to put a water pump on in the freezing temperatures at night on my 72 Pontiac Catalina with a 400 and air cond. i got the whole job done went to shut the hood and the FREAKIN GASKET WAS LAYING ON THE DRIVERS FENDER !    SOOOOOO back apart it came, finnally got it done and made it into work without having to ad more coolant ! that's the funniest dumb thing i can remember.

[cudaken]

Now things I did not to do? 

Well, the first time I pulled a 727 out of the Road Runner I did not know to.

1 Drain the fluid or plug the tail shaft! While I was laying in 8 quarts of Dexron II that is when I deiced to use my GI Bill to learn to do bodywork! 

2 Did not know the Flex Plate bolted on only one-way?  Never made that mistake again!

Got Wing, while I was sort of part of this mistake, it was not my fault! I was helping a sort of car guy in my unit rebuild is Yuck 350 Chevy for his Nova at the base Auto Craft Center. He knew how to bolt on things but never installed a crank, rods or pistons.

One night I had the 350 on the engine stand at the Auto Craft Center and the cam, crank and 7 of the pistons and rods. But I ran out of time before the Center closed. I was on duty in the AM and Scott was off duty. I had set the heads and head gaskets on the short block but did not install the head bolts. Auto Craft Center rules was nothing sat on the floor after closing . So I sat the box that had the last piston / Rod on a shelf!

So when Scott showed up, he was tickled the short block was done!  He bolted down the heads, installed his new intake, 750 Holley, timing cover and balancer, then he had to go on duty.

Next day we both where there together. I pulled down the box to get the oil pan bolts and found the last Piston.  Boy I gave Scott some shit! 

Now, if I had sat the pan and gasket on with a few bolts finger tight if I did not have the self space.  He could have had a 306.25 CI 69 Nova SS. 

Cuda Ken