What's your biggest fu*k up

[dik]

I've been in the trade for 32 years so there have been a few! my most memorable one was setting fire to a mk2 escort in the workshop (welding floor in drivers foot well melted the petrol pipe) pushed it outside just as customer arrived to watch it burn !, the most expensive f-up that I saw was when I was an apprentice hgv fitter, one of the lads was showing off and drove a scammell tipper flat out through the workshop - forgetting the body was raised!!! and the workshop entrance was 3ft lower than the height of the raised body! - Steel RSJ 2 ton of bricks and a fiberglass cab, you can guess the rest!
So who has done worse Meaty-brain perhaps?

[Meat-Head]

So who has done worse Meaty-brain perhaps?

*THANKS* Put these words into a sentence

Not saying details, so don't ask, but i 'got away' with it, and it was
a genuine mistake, and about a month later made the same 'mistake' 'on purpose', trying to aviod the last cock-up (but instantly sussed it)

basically the customer was having an aftermarket piece of hardware fitted
and the instructions said something like 'green/grey wire' but the wires were all factory 'melted' together (like speaker wire is), and when you split it the color goes with it, so what happened was the wrong wires were connected can line got shorted out by a wire that had a small amount of earth on it, but it everything worked for weeks afterwards and one day the car died!

It's not how you get in the shit it's how you get out of it that counts.

So if you have been in the trade for 32 years, you were setting fire to MK2 escorts, with their fixed jet carb-a-tooters, batterys with flat terminals, negative switched reverse lights and fuse boxes you don't touch while i was on the drawing board!

[autotrans]

been in the transmission bussiness for 35 years soon ,
i can remember fitting a tranmission to a daimler hearse
it seemed the ideal vehicle to dump an old roll of carpet
while on road test , only to bump into the customer at
the local tip

[dik]

A lad I had working for me changed some brake pads on a new customer pride & joy, he didn't pump up the pedal afterwards, reversed the shitbox met-rot out of the workshop and smashed it into the brick pillar between 2 lock up garages, that cost me a tailgate, bumper, back panel and some painting, also lost the customer

Another time my brother was helping me out, he jacked up a mk1 fiesta on the curved under engine x-member (big bradbury trolley jack) the car slid backwards and the pad on the jack tore a gash up the front panel behind the bumper, hammered it back welded it up and said nowt!

Come on lads own up 119 views and only 2 other cock ups?

[CHRISTOF]

seen a few fires in my time but my personal best was back when i was trainee mot tester we had car up on ramp i was inside checking belts ect guy underneath checking. i whent to clamber in back and hit gearstick it was an automatic and engine was running any one guess what happened next ?

[dik]

So if you have been in the trade for 32 years, you were setting fire to MK2 escorts, with their fixed jet carb-a-tooters, batterys with flat terminals, negative switched reverse lights and fuse boxes you don't touch while i was on the drawing board!

When I left the HGV game and started my own car repair business it was mini's, all-agro's, mk 1 & 2 escorts, v4 mk1 tranny's, marina's, mk3 & 4 grotina's (lovely motor the cortina!)

life was so easy back then, they needed a service twice a year or the points would close up and cause it to breakdown, they failed the mot every year on loads of expensive welding, (anyone remember the cortina void bushes every year)

Cars only had 5 or 6 fuses, ecu's, fuel injection, emission control etc not yet been invented, you could dump batterys oily rags & filters in the dust bin yes m8 Ive seen some changes

[Meat-Head]

while on road test , only to bump into the customer at
the local tip

At least you tested the car rather than let the customer test it.

had car up on ramp belts . i whent to clamber in back and hit gearstick it was an automatic and engine was running

Now you mention that at the time it was a spanking new Trump Dolimite
spotty apprentise, decided to flick the key, on ramp, in gear and parked
it on a Trump Stag

Somebody elsewhere car on ramp, running decided to touch the gear linkage, high ho silver away.

engine x-member (big trolley jack) the car slid backwards and the pad on the jack tore a gash up the front panel behind the bumper, hammered it back welded it up and said nowt!

Yeah now you mention it, back in 1997, Astra 3 TD, jacked slipped
no idea how it missed everything (think it tipped over), then axel stand
broke number plate in half, glued number plate and self tappered the bonnet prop plastic square back in place


Just remebered somebody eleses fu*k up, but to protect the guilty person, a few details have been changed, but is otherwise 100% genuine story, don't tell anybody, because don't know if alloud to tell anybody.

This story dates back to a cold winter 1901 ish, HUGH carpark the window cleaner guy basicaly comes in at night to lick the windows, when everybody is in bed and that is all he does nothing else, nothing less.

one morning the staff turn up and notice (detail changed) the door frame
is 'moving', on closer inspection the door frame has been converted from wood to lard (true fact) and is melting with the heat of the sun,
then somebody walks outside to see the brand new shining motor car, with one end smashed up, on checking the cctv footage, they see the
window licker man jump into one of the cars, got confused with the
pedals (auto) and rammed the door frame.

They tried faxing the guy, no answer, (rest of story is 100% true) so they went round to his house and found he had hung himself.

(Don't know if he got paid for that night or not)

[lotus791]

mmmmm let me see there has been a few ....no1 has to be drove back to a yard ,climbed out of recovery lorry which we had just built a new body for and fitted a cab to it only to hear a bang about a minute later .ran out only to see it in the distance stuck into the balls of the other recovery lorry which was only a year old .it must have travelled 100m down a slope so you can imagine ..but the story doesnt end there ...the owner decided he would tell the insurance someone broke in and did it as he wasnt fully comp .ins decided as the place was like a security prison they would request the video footage and the police report as emmm the video had been wiped and no cop report they told him to sling his 40k claim and would not be insuring him in future .....he later found out if he had told the truth it would have been covered as his 3rd party yard insurance also had comp cover for recovery trucks ..................

no 2 has to be carring a m5 bmw on a fork lift one of the jcb all terrain ones ..with only the glass broke in it and a year old ...only to forget to go down the same hill backwards as it was a good car so it wouldnt slip off ...you could have heard a pin drop as it went end over end all the way to the bottom ...there went another 20k ....


most recent (this ones not mine) 3rd yr apprentice forgets to put oil in the 2007 tdci mondeo he is servicing ....10 mins after it leaves the phone goes and so did the apprentice ........

[Liteace]

Ive had a few, when I was in the UK my workshop was in a petrol station and we had halogen ark lights that were on a timer to light up the used car sales in the eve, 1 of the lights was next to the vent pipes for the four underground petrol tanks, 1 day the petrol tanker pulls in connects the hoses and starts loading the god knows how many gallons of petrol, unbeknown to us someone had been playing with the timer and the lights switch on igniting the petrol vapor coming out the vent pipes, plod along Danny the car cleaner \ tea maker panics and call the fire brigade and tell them its a petrol station on fire with a petrol tanker in, the petrol station is opposite a pub on a busy roads in a fair size town, Len the tanker driver looks up didn?t panic one bit, Danny is jumping around like a nutter shi**ing himself, so Len just turns off the valve on the tanker to stop petrol flow and the fire goes out then opens the valve again to carry on loading the fuel meantime we must have had every fire engine arrive from the south of England and there is Len the tanker driver standing next to the tanker still loading fuel saying ?what the problem, its out now? then the fire inspector arrived checking all the lights and wiring, closed us down for a while till we got it sorted but if it had of gone up Leigh-on-sea in Essex would probably not be on Google maps now

Next on was a XJS V12, 5.3 that was in for service, I drove it up the forecourt to go into the workshop, thought I would show off a bit, stamped on the gas to flick the arse end round the pumps instead of doing a uturn, the throttle got stuck WIDE open, panicked both feet hard on the big brake peddle and it slowly with front wheels locked and on full left hand down ploughed into the wall, done the headlight, bonnet, bumper and grill

Next was a talking Austin maestro, it was a GT or sport or some sh*te, full service and front pads, owner come in just as I was doing the wheels up, lowered the ramp he paid, got in the car started it up , rev rev rev, reversed out fast hit the brakes and then hit the petrol pump, I forgot to tell him to pump the peddle

Next was a diesel Astra van in for service, I told the lad to put the air filter back on, he did, I checked it, where?s the washer is said, don?t know he said, it was there when you took it off I said, don?t know he said, you didn?t drop it down the inlet did you, I said, NO he said, so he found another and put that on. About 4 months later owner calls me car on motorway clang clang clang and stops, gets it back to workshop, I pull of the head and guess what, there is the missing washer holding one of the inlet valves open

And last year here in Tenerife I had a Ren megane 2.0D Sport on the ramp doing timing belt, the kid had been in from next door talking to me and standing near or on the ramp arm, put the ramp up done what I had to do, all done ready to return car to customer started to lower the ramp and then, have a look what happened

[ziggystardust]

i was working on a junkyard with it's very own workshop , i changed the driveshaft on a ford and everything worked well until i did a left-turn and i did hear a big bang , hmm then i did realise that the driveshaft came from a automatic transmission and this car where manual :-)

[dik]

One time after I had just returned from holiday, jetlagged I changed a c.v joint, the customer (a member of the HA motorcycle club) drove it out of the workshop and the wheel collapsed because I had neglected to re-connect the bottom ball joint oops!

[Meat-Head]

somebody elses cock up, pug 406, left the locking pin for lumpy stick in after cambelt change, and got away with ONE rocker thingy, nice idea is they are like fuses, they just break, but damm expensive!

he went to scrapyard, and see in a shed a 'new' motor, and whipped it out before spotted!

[Meat-Head]

Just remebered a couple more, remember these have happen when i was
younger, so much younger than today, so it's not that i'm not
forth coming, just can't remember

1) Think posh motor, expensive, non starter, side of road, excuse me mr fat person with the large arse, could you help push this car into this conveinent laybay, grunt push heave, park, thank mate, oh he's gone already, later one looks down to see ARSE SHAPED DINK, in back panel.

got local body shop to tawat it out

2) Must have been one of my first jobs using a trolly jack, the guy insisted
it came to 'Meat-Head Motor Co' for a starter, slip off jack, twang crome strip, bend gouge, the funny thing was, the bloke who panel beated the strip back, who at the time worked over the road, it was his nextdoor naybours car!

3) did hear a story about somebody was looking at something blowing fuses on something, BIG fuse, carpet went 'schoricho'

4) some saab don't mix up heated seats and fog light plug on back of
dash, otherwise you will end up with balls of fire, when you turn frog lights on.

5) another saab (could tell you reg, but best not), one year old
unplugged ignition switch, plugged back in, 'schoricho' across the dash

6) If i said "****DATA" do you think will get an input from the mods
on this thread!

7) Wounder if we can either get real photos or made up 'cartoon' images
e.g. arse print in back panel, flames from petrol station vents etc and have a D-K downloadable calender for next year, or even a real calender we can pay for?

[bob272]

i cant take the glorry for this but was told about it from another trader.

New Page 1

bob

[ziggystardust]

Installing some aftermarket product's in a polish bus by the name of Autosan and when i'll was open the electric central i did hear a small bang and the fire fighting system went off and drown the engine ecu so we did have to change it , i dont now exactly what went wrong couse when i inspected the wiring the cable was'nt attached in the house hmmm maybe bad luck i dont know