What's the biggest performance mistake you've ever made?

[Ghoste]

For myself I'd have to say that one of the worst was getting the regular Edelbrock Performer intake.  I thought the cheaper intake without the installation hassles of it's Performer RPM big brother.  Wrong.  It killed performance and was too light to be much good as a doorstop either. 
I'm sure I've made worse performance mistakes but I can't think of them right now.

[Cooter]

Sprayin' twin plate kits @300 HP each on a mild 440......

[1Bad70Charger]

PISSING AWAY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on modifying modern state of the art muscle cars, namely corvettes, years 1998 through 2003 (they are all sold) then f u cking selling them for thousands and thousands dollars less than I had invested in them (YES I AM DONE WITH THAT PAST)   when I should have been investing in Mopar Classic Muscle Cars!  

Oh yeah, should of stayed freaking single also!  

[68X426]

What's the biggest performance mistake you've ever made?

Let's just say that the performance mistake lasted more than four hours.

[Neal_J]

Buying & wrapping a garbage disposal for my bridge on our 1st Christmas together.

Oh wait. You meant.... Err, nevermind. 

[greenpigs]

I guess not replacing my pistons with the 6 pack ones years ago during the rebuild. An actual mistake was getting an eldelbrock carb. The biggest was not checking the ground on my ECU and spending WAY to much time and money fixing things that the bad ground was responsible for.

[Tom Q]

I tried to put a tremec 5 speed from a southern state in an E body.  It did not fit properly due to inadequate engineering and a love of money.  I tried telling the vendor and the vendor attempted to stick me with the defective product.  A huge nightmare.

I went on moparts to tell my tale of woe and Mr Mopar Tech from the M-A group got on there called my orig sheet-metal car junk  and my talents worthless junk and all the lemmings believed him. Dogpile!!!  Mr Mopar & i were good friends until that day, now he won't speak to me.  Apparently free transmissions do strange things to people.

At carlisle that year Ron Adair [RIP Ron] was telling only people who actually bought something from him that those snakes [the swap spot right next to him] were screwing people.  The snakes slithered over and wanted to fight with Ron. Security came and chased the snakes away. The snakes had their mouthpiece send threatening letters to Ron and myself. Now the mouthpieces are defending the snakes in bankruptcy court.

I called my credit card bank and they cut off the head of the snake by giving me a full refund and telling the vendor no recourse ever.

It took two years for the snake to make good on his promises that we agreed upon to  resolve our situation. Only after a legal letter of demand was sent.

BEWARE OF SNAKES!

[Ghoste]

I had a run in with the same snake but it has nothing to do with transmissions and occured long before he got into that business.  But it basically laid his whole personality out for me.

[Mike DC]

 
Over-carb'ing a street motor. 



   

[Runner]

to much cam for a stock converter in a 383,  car was an absolute pig. 

[A383Wing]

 
Over-carb'ing a street motor. 



   

Same here...got dual quads on a 383....1250 cfm on factory cast iron 383 intake, then I decided to port the head myself...

[Mefirst]

My car performance headaches began the second I went to the Drag Race track for the first time.. I must have been out of my damn mind.. thinking about it, I still am...

My

[Runner]

My car performance headaches began the second I went to the Drag Race track for the first time.. I must have been out of my damn mind.. thinking about it, I still am...

My

      that first trip to the dragstrip sure was an eye opener for me. 

[Ghoste]

I think it is for just about everybody. 

[b5blue]

For me......buying a Chevy! 

[mauve66]

for listening to all those people that told me to "get rid of that troublesome 6pak, they never run right" when all along it was really my fuel pump

[ChgrSteve67]

Installing TBI fuel injection system from AFI

[TylerCharger69]

Putting a Ford rear end underneath a Mopar....Dammit!!....What a POS!!!

[elacruze]

Selling my CH4B before road testing the single-plane M1.

Then there was that 'failure to time cams' issue on my 2.4l twin-cam. I guess it needed porting and exhaust valves anyway...