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Stupid Things You've Done?

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long list...

Test running a model aero engine on the bench. Went to shut it down by putting my finger over the choke while forgetting there was a propellor spinning at several thousand revs was one.

Booking my car into a garage (before I had any interest in things automotive) because of the awful noise it made when going up hill under load (must be the gearbox!) only to be told the bonnet (hood) stay had come loose - should have lifted the bonnet.

Needing some bell wire I decided to remove some from the large coil connected to my bedside lamp (wires twisted and taped). As I landed on the other side of the room I realised its a good idea to unplug it first.

Trying to manouvre a deep freeze down stairs on my own when I realised it weighed about twice as much as me and I was losing the battle...
 
I'm blaming this one on youth....buy a new lawn mower, bring it home, put gas in it, start it, runs 2-3 minutes and dies. Restart, same thing. Do this a few times. Neighbor comes over, asks how it's going. Tell him. "Did you put oil in it?" DOH.......

Also it is a good idea to put the drain plug back in the oil pan BEFORE adding new oil when doing an oil change on a car. :D
 
coldplugs said:
Never did that - but have launched my fishing boat (twice) without the drain plug in. Similar results.
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Member of that club too..... :smile:
 
I feel like a comedian tonight, I got a hundred of 'em. Let's just take one category, jacking up the car. Despite doing some really stupid thing jacking up and holding up cars in my youth I somehow lived through it all with little damage to me or my car. The last few years, despite being theoretically older and wiser not so much.

1. TR250: Was jacking it up for reasons I don't remember now, but I jacked it up and decided I needed to move the location of the jack because it was in the way of where I wanted to put the jack stand. I lowered the car with my Harbor Freight jack with a really quick release. Unfortunately, the jack stand was now under my recently installed rocker panels on my recently painted car. Gouged a significant hole in the panel and revealed some deficiencies in my welding the rocker on.

Second got a flat on my daily driver from some nasty heat warped asphalt coming up on the interstate. I pulled way over to be safe, jacked up the car, everything going fine. It was a hat day, but had rained a lot that week. Jack sunk in the grass after I pulled the flat off and was digging out the spare under our luggage. Tried different spots, same result, couldn't move the car to pavement, no wheel. Wife saved the day when she suggested I put a large road Atlas book we had under the jack to enlarge the footprint in the soft dirt. I poo pooed the idea, right thought, but didn'the think the Atlas would doUchiha more than fold up. Ithe sort of did, but added enough footprint to make it work.
 
The test running a model aero engine reminded me of another. Had a balsa wood and tissue model airplane I built, thought it would be cool to play like it was in a dogfight and light the wing on fire. It went up like it had been soaked in gasoline, nearly burnt the house down
 
I once drove to work, got out of the car, went into the office, and then realized I still had my bedroom slippers on! Fortunately they were my moccasin slippers and not my big fuzzy Sylvester the cat slippers.
 
Working at Allied Foreign Cars in Boston back in 1957, Bobby, the young apprentice mechanic, was changing the oil on a rare and gorgeous Delahaye. He took it out for a test drive and came back white as a sheet. No oil pressure. Yep - he forgot to put the new oil in. A comment here about the loose airplane seat track. There is a mandatory AD for Cessna seat tracks as there were fatal accidents when the seats rolled back on takeoff, causing the plane to nose up, stall and crash.
 
pdplot said:
A comment here about the loose airplane seat track. There is a mandatory AD for Cessna seat tracks as there were fatal accidents when the seats rolled back on takeoff, causing the plane to nose up, stall and crash.
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Wowa.... That's what I was flying- a Cessna 150. Yep, nose came up quick! Luckily I had enough altitude to recover. It was scary. How a stupid thing as a seat track can be the cause of an accident.
 
Gliderman8 said:
Wowa.... That's what I was flying- a Cessna 150. Yep, nose came up quick! Luckily I had enough altitude to recover. It was scary. How a stupid thing as a seat track can be the cause of an accident.
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What brand of new britches did you buy when it was all over?
 
Basil said:
What brand of new britches did you buy when it was all over?
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Not me, but the thirteen year old kid I had as a passenger almost cra??ed his pants.
 
The stall buzzer in those 150's was a particularly onerous one, too.
 
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