Me and tony, the other 1st year apprentice had been told to get the freshly recond engine of a corona up and running.
Plenty of cranking, not much firing......"pour some fuel down the carby mate, that'll get her going"..... still no luck..... better check for spark. Unfortunatley tony had been a sloppy priming the carby, so as soon as he pulled the plug lead off and I cranked it, whoooof, up she went.

Took a long time to clean all of the pink powder out of the carby after we put the fire out!!!!

I don't remember what I was doing to the front end, but I too drove off with out tightening the front lug nuts.
Drove about 10 miles on a windy section of road before I heard a lot of noise and found my lug nuts loose. I had no tools, no cell. This was supposed to be a quick trip around the block. I did manage to find an old vernier caliper in the trunk that I tried to use to tighten the nuts. They would hold for about 1/4 mile.
This went on for about an hour so I could get close enough to a hardware store in a nearby town.
Didn't make it. Front wheel fell off. Lug nuts were sitting in the road behind me, evenly spaced.

Had problems a while back with the engine not idling. I checked everything 10 times. I finally got so pissed off I ripped the head off the engine to see what the f^ck was going on.
Found nothing
Finally found a blown fuse. The little bastard that's hidden in the engine harness that feeds the electric choke...
and the anti-dieseling solenoid

did valve stem seals on the a-12 and blocked the oil feed to the rockers, seized them and bent valves

rebuilt my a-14 but starter was bad so towed it, had no oil pressure and bang new motor seized

sorted out that starter and bearings, car had a big miss checked cam timing, changed plugs, leads, point, dizzy cap to find i had the wrong firing order

changed oil and left out sump plug 5l later i had oil

never tightened wheel studs enough and wheel came off

I remeber another one...in a rush I was taking my race coupe ( the deceased white one ) to John Taylors for the suspension to be built. I was blocking my street with my car and trailer while I had to push the car onto the trailer. Maenwhile there were 2 or 3 cars each side which I have now blocked. So after getting the car onto the the trailer I decided to just whack the handbrake on and move the trailer...Well the car rolled back off the trailer when I went to move it and got stuck on the exhaust.
I then got a few people to help me lift the car back on the trailer. After much effort and tying it down, I took off for Penrith. On the great Western Hwy, this guy in a BMW X5 rolls his window down and said that my windscreen launched off the car at 90kph (in peak hour traffic) did a couple loops in the air and scattered all the traffic behind me. He said it was all OK no-one got killed and I progressed on as is nothing happened.
The next day I went back with Teretonga to see if I could salvage the windscreen but she was a gonner.

Teretonga you have a classic story to tell, I think it happened that very night when with took the A series N10 Truple SSS Pulsar off to Ansell Park for a Khanacross.

Well this a good one although not done by me, I swear it is true as I saw the remains.
We had a 23 year old apprentice at the last dealership that I worked at,now this bloke started his "career"in the industry as a car detailer.We all watched him one day check wheel nuts on a car 11 times during the course of his day.
He actually did not do the modification to the car but his old man did and he thought it was well done.
So this young guy bought himself a 1 litre Suzuki ute (Indian built Maruti) now these things were a real povo pack they came with nothing so the old man decided to fit a cigarette lighter, this brainiac ran wires direct from the coil to his 2 dollar supercheap lighter kit and the day after he lit his first smoke with it, it was towed to work with the car as a burnt out wreck apparently the high side of the coil puts out approx 80,000 volts.
The rear taillights did survive.
Cheers Ade

I left one of those big dolphin torches in my engine bay one night, drove of the next day and my engine started making this horrendous noise - and I've snapped two crankshafts in my time and this noise was far worse.

Anyway the torch got wedged between the fan belt and the alternator, so the fan belt melted the plastic and spat it all over the place with a bit of battery acid mixed in, while the little alternator fan blades chopped the other half up - man I've never seen such a mess. The worst bit was that where I pulled up was out the front of a service station - and the mechanics all came out. Why do things like that always happen in front of people who know what they are doing??

Still find bit's and pieces from that 'incident' around the engine bay and it happened over 5 years ago.

I had an exhaust issue only yesterday. Had a half completed exhaust system under the car including a $200 oval shaped stainless muffler before the diff. Only needed the pipe over the diff and out the back finished. Put the car on the trailer to take it to the exhaust shop for finishing and on the 16km trip into town the $200 muffler decided it was time to part company. I remember that I never tightened the clamp bolt. Bugger..!!
$345 later I have a new stainless muffler under the car...and the exhaust is finished.

im probably the worst out of all you guys here, im so god damn accident prone!

recently when i was putting the rocker cover back on the l20b, i had left a small screwdriver in there, went to go start the motor and was wondering wtf is that sound, got really worried and looked over the whole motor looking for what it might be, then i clicked on leaving the screwdriver in there lol.

angle grinders, i have almost successfuly cut my fingers off!

i thought it would be cool if i sprayed the interior with silicon to make it look shiny, some of the silicon went on some wires in the dash. took it for a drive, turned on the headunit, worked fine for a few secs untill smoke poured out of the dash! immediatly pulled over and disconnected the battery.


with my old b310 sedan when i was doing the a15 conversion, me and my mate brendon had just finished it *so we thought* hopd in and went to go take it for a drive....started it....released clutch....didnt move, that was so disapointing and worrying..turned out to be the vannette flywheel is a different diameter to a std a12 one.

haha anyone ever slipped and smacked themselves in the face before from trying to undo a nut/bolt by pulling the tool towards you? done that a couple of times as well.


ahhh fun times.

most notable thing I ever did was back when I was 17 or 18, swapping the blown 2TG twin cam engine in my 76 Celica with a boring ohv 2T from the importers. I decided to leave the imported clutch on the new engine because it was like new. fitting the new engine into the car, I was surprised at how easy it went together - normally have a little bit of a hassle getting the clutch over the input shaft, but thought nothing more of of it... Anyway, when I had it all completed, bolted in, oil and coolant, the whole box and dice. got it fired it up and set the timing and everything. hopped in to take it for a test drive around the block, popped it in reverse and let the clutch out to back out of the garage - nothing happened... "hmm, that's strange..." then it dawned on me why it had gone together so easily... the imported clutch plate had a larger diametre spline... there was a few choice words at the prospect of having to do all that work all over again... but I've always checked clutch plates on the input shaft before fitting new clutches ever since!

I have also been known to leave my breaker bar on the crank pulley after tinkering with the engine - more than once, too... Don't worry Freak, nothing disastorous happens - it just undoes the bolt.

Dropping an oil filter that was full of hot oil (heavy AND hot) right on my nose, getting oil in my eyes, nostrils, and everywhere.

Breaking a bolt off in a distributor.

Slipping with a flathead screwdriver and slicing my hand open.

Getting *right* underneath the brakes on my (now deceased) 1991 Maxima SE5 to break a bolt loose and getting hit in the eye with flying rust.

Been zapped a few times too.