Over the weekend, I replaced my front wheel bearings, added an Addco 7/8"(22mm) frnt sway bar , machined about .625 off of the strut/tie rods, and replaced the brake hoses. Easy upgrades and basic maintenance. I reassemble everything, put on the wheels, snugged the lug nuts, kicked my tools out of the way, lowered the car, cleaned up and went to bed. The next morning i went for a 'quick' test drive, so i didnt take any tools with me.
The car seems to handle alot better. Its a little stiffer on the steering because of the increase in castor. Everything is great.
About 15 miles/24km away, I hear and feel a loud KLUNK,KLUNK,KLUNK.....OH Jesus Christmas!! What did I forget???
I got out and saw that my lug nuts on LF wheel had come loose. My tools + tire iron are at home. All I have is the factory jack and an old vernier caliper and all I can do is snug the bolts again. This works for about 100 ft.
So, blah,blah,blah, I do this about 11-12 times to try and reach a near by gas station. KLUNK,KLUNK,jack,calipers,100ft,etc. At one point the lug nuts get loose but I cant stop, there is not enough room on the shoulder, so I keep going about 50ft more. Once i get to the shoulder...KLUNK,KLUNK,BOOM. The LF drops to the ground. The wheel fell off.
I walk back down the street, pick up all 4 lug nuts off the street, jack up the car, walk the remaining 1/2 mile(1km) to the gas station and bought a new tire iron.
I'm lucky nothing broke, only slightly chewed up the wheel studs.

Anyone else care to share a short story?

haha, been there done that
only it was the rear passenger (drivers side to yanks) wheel, and I had to chase it for 100 metres.. haha .. the studs want replacing now and thats alot harder than the fronts.
In those situations when you've "just gotta take it for a drive" you tend to forget things like that.. you'll learn
by force of habit I now triple check things even like trailers.
that reminds me, my steering has a bit of play in it. can you get recon steering boxes for our cars? I know for a fact that the 1000 has the same steering box to the 1200, just the 1200 has a different column.

I dont have a short story for you but I do have this to say..

Ooops! bet you dont do that again
It could have been worse, you could have damaged the suspension badly, you should check it to make sure...

good luck

-SLAM

don't worry mate, I'm an idiot too - see my photo album stuff up and you'll understand.

geez ive done so many stupid things ..... like after installing an aviatoin style fuel filler i found out when i when to the petrol station that the little hose addaptors that i got were to restrictive and fuel just kept on comming back at me.... i took the car home to fix the problem (which worked) so i took the car for a drive ....going up a hill just around the corner where i live there was the strongest stink of fuel, so i pulled over where i could to look in my boot only to find my boot had flooded with fuel because i didnt put the pipe back on ... i took her home drained and cleaned the boot out .. it took ages for the smell to go..... most of my stuff ups happen when i work on something , get carried away , find my self rushing things because id be late or in antisapation to drive it because its a nice day , although things some times just go wrong, six years ago when i first got my car it had a three speed auto. I loved long drives (still do) and ended up in woop woop somewhere in the middle of the state (tassie) when i decided to turn around i took the first step to a three point turn pointing my car toward a huge rock in the middle of a ditch... i put it in reverse but the car ran forward .i tried every thing i could mechanically but it was too close to the ditch... so smart old me tried pushing it backwards but the slope was too big and i wasnt fast enough with the hand break ...bang..my car was on top of this huuuge bulder in the middle of nowhere.... luckly some huge guys turned up in a monaro (who woud have picked it) and just lifted it down i limped it home crushed crossmember stuffed box.. took it to my (at the time) mechanic ..gave me a quote for $1700and said i should just get a bluebird.. i thought stuff it,i love my car, a friend and i put in a 4 speed manual and a cross member, cost me $270 in parts (not bad) and ive been tinkering ever since.. i have heaps of stories but i think this is long enough. the last story i look back on and blows me away. sorry if i ramble on

I just changed over the diff in my XB Falcon ute. I went for a wheel alignment and the guys couldnt fix it as the front end is shot (ball joints, tie rods etc) so that needs fixing. Anyway one of the rear drums was leaking brake fluid really badly, so they said they could fix it for $250. Bugger that I thought, so I swapped the whole diff and springs from my spare ute. This was a bonus because the leaves are much stiffer and theres about 4 extra leaves put in.

Anyway, buggerised around with jacks and put the wheels back on the diff and called it a night. Went back to it in the morning and put in the shocks and brake line etc. Went for a test drive around some windy stuff and gave it some herbs. The arse end went hell sideways, more so than normal, whats going on? Stoped and check all suspension points, ok. Looked at the wheel nuts and they were all loose. I had only nipped them up before. Luckily I had the tool kit on board but no jack. Lost one wheel nut but that was better than loosing two wheels.

Bought a new toy on Friday too. One of those brake bleeder helper gizmos. I can now bleed brakes by myself, yay! Cost $17 from repco. They had a big flash gun type one for $100, bugger that!