“When we get older and have experience, we carefully consider the consequences and forge ahead anyway”
Amen.
Yup I guess we learn. Back in 1958 my Dad was changing oil and as he poured the new oil in, it all drained onto the driveway again after forgetting to put the plug back in. Over 50 years later I still double check my oil plug whenever I change oil and think about the look on Dad’s face.
My brother recently changed the oil in his Jeep, failed to realize the gasket from the old filter remained on the engine, and pumped most of the new oil into my driveway. The only casualty was the oil and a decent amount of Oil-Dri to soak it up.
As for me, the most foolish thing I can think of right now I’ve done is failing to watch when I was raising a conversion van on a lift. The safety stop on the lift was out of adjustment, so the roof got creased. The shop manager called the customer and said we ran into some unexpected trouble (without going into detail) and would need the van overnight. We stayed late to drop the headliner and straighten out the roof, then adjusted the cable on the safety stop so a similar event would not happen.
I think one of the dumbest and potentially most dangerous things I’ve seen in a shop involved a dealer where I was the shop foreman. They had an hourly guy there who was one of those prison work release people and part of my duties was to keep that guy busy. This was a near impossible task without handcuffing myself to him.
We had several balky lifts so I told him to take a drum of hydraulic oil, go around and service every lift as necessary. I then went on to other things. About half an hour later there’s a huge crash sound that shook the floor.
This guy had raised the rack up, removed the large plug from the floor, and then dumped a big load of hydraulic oil down the hole. He then walked over and hit the DOWN side of the lever, without the column safety lever being flipped.
Since there was no plug in the floor, the heavy rack dropped like a ton of bricks and all of the oil went to the ceiling. It was like one of those old movies where an oil well gusher comes in…
A big part of the wall, workbenches, ceiling, one of the mechanics and his tool box in an adjacent stall, and 4 cars including the interior of a brand new VW with the sunroof open were all covered in oil. The detail guys had to spend a ton of time cleaning that interior.
It took that guy the rest of the day to get things halfway cleaned up and oil was still dripping from ceiling beams a week later. For the nteenth time I went to the service manager and said now will you please fire this fool before he kills himself or someone else. Nope.
If there’s a plus side to the story it’s that no one was underneath that rack when it came down.
I would just add that this work release guy was pretty much a klutz no matter what was asked of him but he could turn out some beautiful homemade shanks…
TSM:
We’ve all been there.
Years ago I heard a story about an IBM exec who was given a $10 million budget to head up an organizational project. His attempt at it failed. He went into the CEO to hand in his resignation. The CEO responded with: “I can’t let you resign. I just invested $10 million in training you. You’re too valuable to me now.”
One of my goofs occured when I put spark plugs and ignition points in my 1947 Pontiac. After installing the plugs and gapping the points, the engine would’t fire. I pulled the coil wire from the distributor cap, removed the cap and flicked the points open and let them close. I got a good healthy spark. I pulled the accelerator rod and had a healthy stream of gas shoot into the carburetor. I snapped the cap back on and tried the starter again. The engine cranked, but didn’t fire. I checked the point gap–it was right on the money. I spent about an hour rechecking my work. My dad came along and picked up something on the front fender. “What is this?” he asked. It was the distributor rotor that I had forgotten to put back in. After I replaced the rotor, the car started instantly.
Ok, here’s my little disaster of my own making. Actually it’s a double disaster of my own making. Happened this past summer. I put my mt bike on the bike rack and drove 5 or 6 miles to the trailhead after work for a bike ride. After a couple hour bike ride I was really tired and ready to head home. I put the bike back on the car rack, got in, and started the car. Nothing. Wouldn’t crank. Sigh.
The first part of my disaster of my own making was that I had modified the car’s starting circuit. Someone here had mentioned about cars that start by pressing a button, and I thought that was a good idea for my early 90’s Corolla, so I installed a big red illuminated rocker switch for “ARMING” the starter circuit, and a big “GREEN LIGHT ILLUMINATED PUSH SWITCH” which I’d press to start the car. When I started the car, it was sort of like being in Las Vegas with all the lights flashing. Pretty cool, eh? Well, on this occassion, the pushbutton switch failed, so the car wouldn’t crank. I was stranded. And it was too dark to mess around under the dash with the wring. I was near the top of a hill though. If I could push the car uphill about 20 feet, then I could coast start it. No worries. You know what? Cars are really heavy! It’s hard to push a car uphill 20 feet. I huffed and puffed, sweat pouring out of my pores, even worse since I was tired from the bike ride, but I finally got it to the top. It took me 15 minutes or more to push that car uphill 20 feet. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. But finally at the top, I coast downhill, Pop the clutch, start, and while I’m worn out an frazzled, my back aches, from the uphill push, I’m on my way home.
Then comes the second part of this disaster of my own making. I suddenly realized on my way home that I had wired the starting circuit in parallel with the ignition switch. All I had to do was turn the key to “start” and it would have started right up! There was no need for all that pushing! … lol
That’s a funny story @Triday, thanks for posting! I got a good chuckle!
I’ll just add one a day as I think of them as long as this is active. I changed points in my 59 VW at home and couldn’t get it started again. Tried everything. Finally called a friend of the family that worked in a garage and he came up. Took about 5 minutes for him to discover that I had the insulated washer on the wire to the distribtor on wrong so it grounded out. Fired right up. Felt kinda foolish.