Most of us have been at this for a while and I’m sure we’ve all done some bone headed things.
With my first car I wired in several switches without fuses and they kept melting / smoking / nearly catching on fire. It took me a few times to understand exactly what I was doing wrong, lol.
Buying a Subaru, then doing it again thinking it was still a good idea.
Also, buying more car than I could afford when I was younger. That one stuck with me.
Doing some mods early on that I ended up redoing later when I had more knowledge/money…nothing crazy, but the usual…
Power washing engine bay at 16 years old -_-
Being 21 with Credit Cards and meeting some of you OGs forcing the mod bug to bite
It all worked out in the end…learned some great lessons about cars and financial responsibility and met some great people.
Owning Volkswagens.
Putting in a 1000W system on my F-body in high school without knowing how to crimp wires properly or solder. Every time I hit a bump my siqqq beats would turn off and I had a billion grounding issues. Luckily I never got juiced or started it on fire.
Sounds systems were the worst. I remember at some point considering what I had spent and realizing I could have simply had a nicer car… :ham:
I remember that time o-rings were lubed with WD40 and wrenches were thrown into garage doors. :ham:
nearly killed/maimed myself…when I was 17 I was borrowing my moms car and the radio started smoking while I was driving to work…pulled over as quick as possible, turned the car off and yanked the radio out…however when I went to restart the car I got nothing. I started thinking bad starter solenoid cause I had power but no clunk or anything. I thought I would be smart by crawling under the car (91 Lumina) and use a screwdriver to jump the solenoid terminals. The car started right up, and it was in drive. I still don’t know how but luckily I was able to yank myself out from underneath the car before it ran me over and stopped it before it hit anything.
By far the dumbest thing I’ve ever done…car related at least
I caught my beater on fire with a battery.
Back when I was DD’ing the s10 all summer I drove beaters for winter. Come spring I had a battery that would charge, but not hold a charge. Autozone wouldn’t warranty it so I decided I would kill it and bring it back an hour later for the new battery.
In the parking lot at work I hooked up the pos to neg terminals with a jumper cable, battery on passenger floorboard and jumper cables just laying there. Walk in to work no big deal. 5 minutes later my boss and the other guy there are running around screaming fire looking for a fire extinguisher. I look outside and the car is billowing smoke. Turns out the jumper cables got hot and melted, catching the seat and interior on fire. seat, shifter housing, dash, all burnt/melted to some amount. ended up having to drive a few days with windows open from the fire extinguisher chemicals that I couldn’t get out. a fire truck drove by real slow with its sirens on a couple minutes after we put the fire out. but hey my battery was warrantied so I could drive the s10 again.
I ended up selling that car for the same amount of $$ that I paid for it too. lol.
This.
I’m guilty of the oil filter gasket being stuck on my Honda Civic. One of the first few oil changes I did myself in my apartment complex. It was later in the evening, was having a bitch of a time getting the filter off. Finally got it off in a mangled/crushed mess and slapped the new one on. Started it up and oil went everywhere beneath the car. My parking spot was stained for the next year while I still lived there lol. It was dark out by then so I said fuck it and searched online. Sure enough I found out about the gasket getting stuck and next morning I pulled the old gasket off and changed the oil a second time…haven’t had to worry about that happening since.
Believed jnj was a legit guy.
I skunked(3 to 2 shift) my maxima on nitrous and blew the motor. I had a window switch sitting in the trunk but never bothered to hook it up. KAPLOW
haha I would usually try to stop these type of posts but considering what I have heard he says about me for some reason I will let it slide.
:tup:
In my case it was when I worked at autoplace got there when it was dark and drove into a foot+ of water and hydrolocked the motor 
Pulled plugs, bumped out water, flushed with oil a few times and it kept running for years
When I swapped from an auto to manual in my SHO I installed the flywheel with a broken alignment pin. I thought nothing of it, for it still had 2 of 3 good pins. Turns out that little pin was the cause of a subtle engine vibration that I spent nearly two years chasing after the swap.
I suppose I could have started this comment with ‘owned a SHO’…but we all have to start from somewhere.
Decided that the base tune was fine, lets turn up the boost, still lasted all summer
Holding onto a broken spark plug boot when checking for spark in my S10 when I was 16.
when I was 16 I thought it would be funny to drive on a baseball diamond to cut though a park with some friends in the car. we got stuck. the cops came. I had to be towed out. my parents came and yelled at me. I had my car taken away for a month.
also, Volkswagens.
:tup:
I’m guilty of this as well, did it once, never did it since haha.