[EA S]

Following on from my brilliant piece of work with the EA mystery beep that didn't exist, why don't we put up some motoring and mechanical funnies or disasters or oddities for a bit of a laugh. Here's a few to start off.

Years ago, on what must have been the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" principle, I decided that an old motor mower would benefit from a bit of petrol straight into the cylinder and few tugs on the rope to clean it out. Gave it a big pull. Fuel and vapor shot out of the plug hole over the spark plug, which was arcing onto the deck or something, and was nicely ignited by the time it hit the paint on the garage door and set fire to it. Only scorched it, really.

This comes from a mate of mine who says he got it from someone involved at the time. Back when manual chokes were common, an old dear bought a new car and had endless problems with poor running and lousy fuel economy. It went into the dealership time after time and was checked, many times, for every possible problem, but it always ran perfectly. Ultimately the service manager suggested that she take him for a drive, to see if it related to her driving. He got into the passenger seat. She got into the driver's seat, then pulled out the manual choke and hung her handbag on it. Turned out she had no idea what a choke was and thought this was a handy little gadget put in by a thoughtful manufacturer for people to hang things on. (For those who haven't encountered a manual choke - or maybe even a carburettor - a manual choke was a knob on the dash connected by cable to the carburettor to give a richer mixture to assist cold starting and early running. The choke was operating when the knob was out and of no effect when it was in.)

My local Bursons has a ventilated brake rotor on the counter, which has lost about 75% of one of the faces and exposed the vanes underneath, which have been scored by the pads, or whatever was left of them. The rotor came off a car that was in regular use until it was written off in a prang.

 

[HO HO HO!]

It sounds like you're the kind of person god had in mind when he invented proffesional mechanics/panelbeaters

 

[Grunter]

I've a story about my old man's car.

About 10-12 years ago, we were living in Melbourne and Dad had just picked up his brand new Falcon the week before we were heading to Brissie. Anyways he loaded us all up and off we went. About 3 hours into the trip the oil warning light came on, so he pulled into a servo (mumbling to himself) to fill it up. He pops the bonnet, grabs the dipstick and pulls it only to discover that it's right up to the full line.

Being the fussy old fellow that he is, he was a bit annoyed but decided to keep on going. A couple of k's up the road on comes the oil warning light again plus the cars now starting to overheat. This time he's starting to get really annoyed and the next major town he looks up the local Ford dealer. We pull into the dealer and he is out like a shot and getting up some poor bastard in the service dept. Long story short a mechanic comes out and Dad tells him whats going on (light coming on, checking dipstick, oil is full).

So they both go around to the front and check the oil level again. Same story with the oil level being fine. So the ford mechanic goes back inside and brings out a couple of the other mechanics to suss it out and they all start having a discussion on what could be going on for the next 5-10 minutes.

While these lads are having a good old chat an appentice mechanic goes around the front and has a look himself. He pulls out the dipstick and it's bone dry.

Yep you guessed it, the car was a automatic and my old man, AND the 3 Ford dealer mechanics had all been checking the auto dipstick not the engine one.

 

[ebxr8240]

Ho Ho Pro mech can stuff up too!Charge you for there mistakes..

 

[XR_Strider_GuY]

Yeah my story happened quite recently wheni was helping my mate install a stereo in his EL, what happened was we must of arched the acc power when cutting the wires of the stereo. Anyway the first thing we done was to find contiueous power for the stereo then we can determine the speaker wires etc.

Spent ages, couldn't find it we decided to take it to another mate "elecrician by trade" who might be able to find the conitueous power, low and behold when we tryed to start the car up it woudn't start, checked the fuse box and "silly me didn't check all of the fuses" found no fuses broken, so we called nrma convinced we have blown either a relay or somethin else nrma spent ages doin the tests etc and then he checked all the fuses and sure enough found a blown fuse. Must admit i was abit about it.

Ahh but after we fixed the fuse and found contiuous power the stereo installation was a breeze.

 

[saleen1]

Wheel Well Wedge

Was on the ole Famous Parramatta Rd. on my way to Wagga Wagga at a set of lights minding my own business when BAM!!!! Hit from behind. Bumper flexed back out so damage wasn't as bad as first supsected. Anyway, was about 25 k's out of Wagga at around 8pm, belting down rain, car decides to get a flat. Wearing my going out clothes, had to change the tyre only to find the locking bolt wouldn't budge. Not a cracker. Then decided to belt it withthe trolley jack handle. After missing it about 8 out of ten times, i finallygot it off. Tried to pull tyre out.. IT wouldn't budge. Turns out when that clown hit me back on Parra rd, the impact actually put a wedge in the spare wheel well, jamming the tyre in nice and secure leavering on it every which way I could, letting air out every couple of attempts until the tyre was damn near flat...........hence deeming itself useless by the time i got it out.(Its still pelting down rain mind you and dark in the middle of nowhere). Had to call NRMA to come out and pump the tyre. Also Late for party.

 

[Falchoon]

Some guys at work here had a flat tyre in their Econovan. No worries they thought, pull over and change it. Do you think they could budge the wheels nuts? No! Not a hope. Jumped up and down on the wheel brace, swore at it in several different languages, even found a longer pole to put over the end of the wheel brace to give more leverage. Still nothing! Turns out it was a left hand thread and they were actually trying to tighten the wheels instead of loosening!

 

[Falchoon]

Another one I just remembered relates to lawnmowers. I was watching my mate mow his lawn one day when he knocked the spark plug on the side of the garage causing the mower to start misfiring. So he reached down to try and hold the spark plug together and the result was, well...shocking! The resulting kick from the spark threw him about 10ft. I nearly pissed myself laughing! We were only about 16yo at the time so I guess that is sort of an excuse.

 

[Aussie Pete]

I have a mate to blame for this one. He supercharged his lawmmower and described the basics, so I had to give it a go.

Starting with a 160cc two-stroke Victa I rigged up an impeller from a largish hairdryer and after some modification of the engine cover managed to set up a nicely geared up impeller speed (using a small fanbelt). A bit of pvc piping to the cylinder head, a re-routing of the carby to the intake side of the impellor and presto - one pseudo supercharged Victa lawnmower.

It sounded so stupid, but fark it cut grass like you wouldn't believe. It died not long after when the impeller exploded (obviously cyclic fatigue) and the engine ingested the pieces.

Oh, and the exhaust used to point down into the cutting disc but the port overlap combined with the intake pressure caused some high EGT which didn't help the grass much if you stayed in one spot too long! :nuts: :nuts:

 

[Zomwit]

Disasters

This happened when I was a little kid. I was fascinated by the ciggie lighter in my old man's car but in those days they didnt have the little safety features that prevent your car from erupting into a flameball. I pushed the ciggie lighter in, got bored, and decided to leave the car. About 10 minutes later my dad walked past the car and couldn't help notice that there was smoke billowing out of the car. Needless to say I got the spaking of a lifetime.

Several weeks later my grandfather successfuly managed to completely burn out the interior of the same car as a result of a "welding incident".

Several years ago while I was in high school in our metalwork class we were all rebuilding our own lawnmowers. One part of the rebuilding process was to test the capacitor from the ignition system with a spark tester. This thing would shoot a constant spark between two points about 10mm apart. The spark was standard lawnmower strength (around 10,000 volts). I had a brainstorm one day when I was using the spark tester. I noticed that all the benches had steel edges and vices. From that moment on our biggest laugh was to get a couple of spanners or steel rulers and connect the spark to the metal bench edges and watch everybody who was working on something or other clamped in a vice take a big jump backwards. There were even a couple who didnt quite catch on and kept trying to touch and grab their work only to keep getting zapped, leaving them with dumbfounded looks on their faces.

 

[EA S]

Many moons ago I spent an afternoon trying to rectify some fault affecting rear lights in my mighty FE Holden, without benefit of a wiring diagram and unhindered by any electrical knowledge. Eventually got everything just right. Went out that night and on applying brakes on leaving drive found that dome light now came on with brake lights. Quite a useful modification if you want to find it harder to see where you're going when you're braking at night or want to bring yourself to the attention of other road users.

 

[WINGED]

My sister was driving an had some car trouble so she pulled into a servo and some guys helped her out and determend that she was low on oil so she brought oil and they put it in.When she got home she told my father and i and we went and checked it after she told us how mutch oil she brought not kidding they filled it up to the top of the rocker cover no idea how it made it home.

 

[botch]

A few years ago I got a bit of hot metal in my eye from grinding metal (not wearing goggles!). Anyway DOCTOR had to dig it out and I had a patch on for a few days. Went to pub that night and saw a mate who asked "what happened to your eye". Quick thinking me half charged, replied "I was rally driving up the pine forest,and you wouldnt believe it, the bonnet flew off, smashed the windscreen, then the lead jumped off the spark plug and landed in my eye" . My mate then thought for a second, looked at me soo seriosly and said "Yeah, that happened to my brother once!"

Go figure.

 

[Mr Sparkle]

The Pine Forest as in The Wattagans??????????? My old home!! My backyard!!! *sniff*

 

[botch]

wattawhats????

I think those pine needles have gone to your head!

 

[TeeHee]

This little disaster happened a number of years ago. My oldest son was about 2 ½, I had just put him in his baby seat in my faithful old XY Station wagon, which was parked in my driveway. The driveway sloped down towards the street. I ran back into the house to grab a few things but forgot to strap the little blighter in his seat. The loud bang and crashing sound soon had me back outside. To my horror the car was now parked on the neighbours lawn across the street, with my son was standing on the front seat with look of sheer terror on his face. As with most little boys he was keen to know how to drive a car, so he jumped into the front, took the car out of park and then released the handbrake, sending it rolling backwards into the street. To my relief he was ok, the car was not so good. I had left the rear door open and as it rolled backwards, it took out my letterbox, which was designed not to be knocked down. Those familiar with the XY know how solid their are, but this time the letterbox won. The rear door bent right back twisting the frame of the car, which meant the door could not be closed. Cars can be fixed, kids can’t so I wasn’t too upset.

 

[Mr Sparkle]

wattawhats????

I think those pine needles have gone to your head!

Possibly!! The Pine Forest was a place not far from where I grew up, did a fair bit of Colin McRae mimicking up that way.. just thought you may have been a local as well!! But you're not, so I take it all back

 

[botch]

RALLYIN

thats cool.

We used to have a "lappy track" up the pines and do time trials in my mates mums camry. Front wheel drive 4 cyl, excellent handbrakies:nuts: :nuts: :nuts: :nuts:

He is now a Vic speedway champ! Not me...bummer

 

[EA S]

I was standing on a city tram stop yonks ago and a car braked into the intersection with a bit of a lock-up on the red light and then reversed behind the stop line. Driver looked a bit embarassed and must have lost concentration. I was interested because his reversing lights stayed on. They were still on when he took off under a bit of power, into the car which had stopped right up his clacker. Not a big bang, but bloody funny to see. Saw similar thing happen one other time but, alas, no crash.

This is not recommended, but when I was kid I saw a carload of young bucks coast up quietly beside a cyclist and all at once blast airhorn and yell out at top of voices. Cyclist shat himself and bloody near fell off. Lucky he didn't go under their car. I seem to recall similar effects on pedestrians with young bucks turning off ignition and fuelling exhaust then restarting with mammoth backfire - this was in era of wastegates to bypass mufflers so maybe that's how they did it without damaging exhaust.

A parked car rolled across sloped street in our local small shopping centre a while back and ended up across footpath with rear against shop wall. Was still there when I came back fifteen minutes later and still no sign of owner, so I went home and got some gumboots and old pants and newspapers to stuff them with so I could put under car with legs and boots sticking out to give owner a bit of thrill when they eventually returned. By the time I got back the owner had returned, so nothing happened, except that my wife said I can be surprisingly foolish and immature for a grown man.

 

[FTEfan]

An auto sparky I know was wireing his terratrip up in his Datto 1200 rally car. He had to find a constant power lead on the passenger side of the car. He found the lead, wired everything up and it all worked fine. That weekend on the way to a rally his navigator(another sparky) noticed that the terra trip was dead and proceeded to pull the thing apart as they drove along. After finding nothing wrong he opned the car door when they arrived and found the now in pieces terratrip worked fine! He had wired it to the courtesy light feed from the door switch so the terratrip would only work with the door open! To say he copped a bagging is an understatement! The fact he is a member of the other Canberra rally club only fuels the fire more. And yes he has done work on one of my cars.