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.