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Ever done anything not so smart?

A

Anonymous-0

Well-known Member
A few weeks ago The head gasket blew out between cylinders on my MF with the perkins diesel. This happened right in the middle of my mowing season. I was rushing around making good progress replacing the gasket. I put a rag over the intake to keep dirt out. Got time to start it, and it started good, and sounded ok. After it warmed up I gave it more throttle, and it started to miss real bad. Then is when I realized I failed to remove the rag over the intake. It sucked that rag right into no 1 cylinder, and held the intake valve open causing the miss. I didn't feel good about that all. I just about started to remove the head, but thought if any damage was done it had already happened. I ran the engine at a fast speed and saw the rag come out in small pieces. It ran good after that. Nothing seams to be wrong with the engine since then, I probably have 40 hours on it by now. I wouln't be doing that again soon. Stan
 
:lol: If something like that happend to me, you could shoot me now, cause the rest of my life would be nothing but living h e doulble hockey sticks. No way would anything ever be easy again....
 
The day you DON'T learn to do, or not to do, something Is the day you die. Learning is an ongoing process from birth to death. Just wait till your gone and look down on some guy that is doing the same things you did. How ya gorna warn him? Smile life is good in spite of those stupid moments that we all have. I call them "brain farts"
 
Went down on a ranch ineastern utah to start a whitte diesel on generator. used belt set-uo with john deere. after it started 2 red rags blown out. Rancher had sheepise look , Said oh thats where those rags went I couldn't find
 
Like my neighbor says"I've messed up just about everything I've ever done". I don't believe him but I'm trying to beat him it seems like! LOL
 
Didn't make it all the way through but had stuffed a rag in the intake pipe from the air filter to blow out dust and such. Put it all back together and started it up only to have it run poorly and the throttel acting goofy. Took about 5 minutes to remember that I stuck that rag in there.
 
I almost tripped a reactor and would have lost the company $600,000 a day for three days of lost production.
The plan was to make a "bump less" transfer of power from the equalize to float circuit of the Class One rectifier supply.After the annual cleaning of the rheostat windings.
There was an awful "BOOM Thud" as the 600V 400Amp breaker tripped. Then even after I dialed the voltage to minimum, the breaker didn't want to reset.
I spent some time on the phone to the 1st Operator who wanted to trip the unit immediately. Finally obtained five minutes grace to allow the breaker to cool. And try another closure. Lucky for me the breaker stayed closed on the next attempt.
All this during PA system announcements calling field operators to the control room to prepare for a reactor trip.
Then my supervisor showed up asking questions.He was so glad the unit didn't trip he didn't even give me a "blast of wrath".
 
Had a friend who worked on diesel subs in the Navy.

They had been working late one night, when one of the senior guys told the crew they did good and could take off while he finished buttoning things up and gave it a test.

The crew gets up on the dock and walking away, when one of them goes, "Wait, did we ever take the rags out..."

Just then the hear the engine begin to turning...a bit hard...

After counting the appropriate number of flaming rags come out the stack, the engine sounded better and they continued on their way.
 
Dad used to play tug of war with his dog using red shop rags . Well the dog won once ,and ran off with the rag . Few days latter saw some of a red rag out his behind, to tired of seein ghim chew at it for couple days , caught him and gave it a pull, mostly intact shop rag came out and one very happy dog .
 
I had a Chrysler gear reduction starter with a flat spot. If I hooked it up to a battery it would work if I spun the gear a bit with my thumb. I did it one too many times and got my thumb into the gear reduction. I had gear teeth marks in my thumbnail but amazingly never lost the nail. Dave
 
In my younger days, I had a '69 Camaro with a 396 in it. Had an aftermarket intake and Holley carb on it, someone else had already cut a hole in the hood when I bought it. Used a piece of plastic to cover it up once when the wind blew the plastic wash pan I usually used somewhere into the next county. Got in a hurry, fired it up, got out to let it warm up, and just about the time it started to miss I remembered the sheet of plastic. It died before I could get to the ignition switch. The air cleaner top, bottom and filter were less than 1/2" thick. Luckily, a new air cleaner and filter was all that brain fart cost me...
 
Now that you mention it, no I haven't.

LOL!

Oh yeah, there's that thing I did on a warm September Saturday quite a few years ago. Ended with me saying "I DO".

I sure did....
 
When I first started repairing cars over 30 years ago I couldn't fix a sandwich. I almost quit. I stuck with it until I finally started to fix things. I've learned a lot about patience.
 
I heard of someone who put a new engine in a Caterpillar crawler but forgot to put water in the radiator...... oops.You can probably guess the rest!
Come to think of it, I think it was at a colliery somewhere here in England .
 
Shortly after I married, F-I-L ran a Shell station and I worked for him. I was changing oil in a car and he was riding me hard to keep customers moving at the pumps and get the oil change done yesterday, at the same time. I dumped the old oil when another car stopped at the pumps so here he is yelling again. After that car is gone, he is yelling about taking too long on the oil change, get it done NOW. So, I poured in 5 quarts asap and back to the pumps. He started the car up and no oil pressure! During all the pushing, I did not put the drain plug in. When he started screaming again, I walked out, leaving him to do all the work himself. He was mad because he could not hang out at the coffee shop around the corner with the waitress or something. That was 39 years ago.
 
I did one the other day while replacing the wires on the turn signal indicator on my old Jeep. Put a new socket and bulb into the internal indicator and tried it out on a battery to see what would happen. What I failed to do was to insulate the + and - when I put it together. That sucker blew up like a firecracker in my hand. Blew the wire to shreds.
 
I worked on a transfer switch one time. Spent two hours trying to find out why it would not transfer. Then looked over at the transfer motor switch. It was off.
Turned it on everything worked. Told the customer it was a loose wire and left. Never did bill him for it.
 
I did almost the same thing last week with my Allis 175 with the 248 Perkins...the front pump drive shaft wore out, so I had to take the air cleaner off to get to the chain coupler. There was a lot of chaff and dirt in the area, so I stuck a plastic bag in the air tube while I blew all the crap out...then when I went to take the shaft coupler off the front of the motor I had to bump it to get to one bolt. After bumping it a couple of times I remembered the bag...of course it was gone. I took a piece of wire and made an auger out of it and was able to snag the bag way up in the tube. Talk about relief!
 
I had one of the big Ollies up in front of the shop door working on it one night. Had the hood off,so had the precleaner off too. I put a plastic pitcher over it that night to keep water out if it rained. Finished up whatever it was that I was doing next morning and started it up the way it sat. Couldn't get any RPMs out of it for anything. Fooled around with it for probably 20 minutes or more before I figured out that that pitcher was still over the intake so it wasn't getting any air.
 
Years ago my dad sent a Volvo semi tractor in to the shop for a new diff. Truck only made about 3 miles.....they had forgot to put the oil in, and that was at a main Volvo truck dealer.
Chris
 
Worked at a 31 story bldg which used diesel engine fire pumps. salesman decided to start up the fire pumps instead of paying for a tech to do so. I walked in the room after the engine had been running for 20-30 mins there was an oil haze in the room. I showed him where to turn on the cooling water for the engine. He shut the engine down instead. I told my boss and some other people about it and got told the next day by my boss it didn't happen and I would be fired if I said anymore about it. 3 years later after the engine was out of warrenty, it all the sudden would not pass annual test and had a complete rebuild at owners expense. less than 50 hours on it.
did I mention that the company that sold it, whose salesman screwed it up, tested it until it was out of warrenty and always passed it and then failed it once it was out of warrenty

Ron
 
Went fishing with my wife and 2 grandsons (5&12) these last 3 days.Put the boat in the water and tried to start it to get it off the trailer. NOTHING!! Pulled it back out looked it over, changed the batteries around. NOTHING!! I was about to blow a gasket when I noticed it was in gear. Later I went to start it to pull it away from the shore (where we parked it to have lunch) and put it back on the trailer cuz the wind was coming up. Cranked and cranked, NOTHING!!! My wife walked over and said that it would probably start if I took the string clipped to my vest and put the little plastic thingy( her words)back on the kill switch.
 
My biggest mistake was getting married. Well maybe who I made that dreadful mistake with. I do have two beautiful girls by IT but ANY other woman would have been a better mother.
 
Funny all the stories about launching rags.I fumbled a bolt after rebuilding and installing a small block watched it bounce into the intake manifold and find an open valve.Would never want to launch a shop rag but tearing down the topend of a fresh motor sucks also.
A more recent problem involved rebuilding a Dodge Neon motor for my daughter going off to college.Read on a forum about the benefit of copper spray on the head gasket.Didn't bother to read the instructions with the head headgasket.Fired the car up and it started first crank and idled perfectly.Went inside and got her to check out my handy work and she asked if the giant cloud of white smoke would go away.
The mls head gasket I bought specifically stated in the instructions not to use any sealants and I had to pull the head on another 0 mile rebuild.
If you never screw up you aren't doing anything.
 
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