What's your biggest ever "screw up" while working on your SC?

Roboplex

Registered User
So today I had to fork out $650 to my mechanic to replace my entire intake manifold after I snapped off an EZ Out inside a broken off thermostat housing bolt. After I finished beating myself over the head for being so stupid as to mess up that bad, I got to wondering, could it get any worse? So I'm just curious, what's the biggest mistake you've made while working on your SC?
 
Right after I got my SC, I discovered the driver side motor mount had seen better days, and was no longer doing it's job. Pass side was still good.

I got underneath and put a jack on that side of the engine to see if I could lift/tilt it far enough to get the old mount out/new one in. Didn't take long to figure out that if I'd simply removed the thru-bolt on the pass. side mount, it wouldn't have popped like a grape in the jacking process. Oh well...back to the parts store.
 
I almost ruined my timing chain cover thinking the "gasket" was going to come out. Turns out the 89-93 and 94-95 DON'T use the same gasket on the cover behind the balancer
 
Forgetting to lock my hood pins, I didn't have a hood latch due to front mount intercooler and the fiberglass hood flew up destroying it and the windshield.....................................TWICE....:eek::eek::eek::eek:
 
Forgetting to lock my hood pins, I didn't have a hood latch due to front mount intercooler and the fiberglass hood flew up destroying it and the windshield.....................................TWICE....:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Did the same thing just once though. Also dropped a small socket head bolt in the intake. Had to pull the heads to find it.

Ken
 
I broke off the "well" for the knock sensor in a freshened up long block right as I was getting ready to drop it in the car. I ended up spending around 12hrs with my dremel tool carefully cutting out what was left enough to get the rest out without damaging the threads in the block. All that, and I ended up deleting the knock sensor later anyway! lol
 
Doing a cam swap and not changing the oil coolant trashes the bearings. After rebuilding...
Forgetting to put the cam bearing spacer on and having the cam walk and trash the new rebuilt motor.

Do I get a trophy?
 
Doing a cam swap and not changing the oil coolant trashes the bearings. After rebuilding...
Forgetting to put the cam bearing spacer on and having the cam walk and trash the new rebuilt motor.

Do I get a trophy?
Good lord...yeah I think you win :eek:
 
my mess

buying an engine and being told that for $ XXXX it would be up and running only to find out that the number is less than HALF of what I got into it now... oh well I can say I do got a one of a kind SC in my garage....Rich
 
I once had a new torque converter shipped via air freight from Lentech in Canada because my transmission shop identified it as the source of a whining noise (sounded like it was low on PS fluid). Over $1100 later the noise was still there, and ended up being the vacuum hose fell off the supercharger bypass valve. This is why I zip tie the ~~~~ out of every vacuum hose on the car now.

David
 
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Not a SC but with my 302 in my tbird, I rebuilt the engine, mated it to the m5r2 trans, reinstalled the exhaust, and had it all ready to start up and set timing:

As my teammate (lemons car) was priming the pump when the 10mm socket jbwelded to a long extension (worked for the last 3 rebuilds) we had used to engage the oil pump drive shaft, he dropped the @#$@#$#$ socket into the oil pan. I was cursing him all the way to the airport as I dropped him off. I drained the oil pan and did all sorts of fishing for it (even with a camera). I even pulled off the upper & lower intakes on the off chance it had made it into the valley. Eventually, I just disconnected everything and lifted the engine back out enough to pull the pan and get the stupid socket.

A few years later, on my last rebuild, I had forgotten to put the little retaining ring around the same oil pump driveshaft. This prevents the oil pump driveshaft from going anywhere between the block and the pump. Under normal operation, this wouldn't have been an issue because the distributor will hold it in place. Well, as I was priming it again this time and had to restab the distributor, I accidentally lifted up unretained pump driveshaft and dropped it into the pan. At least this time I didn't both wasting any time trying to fish it out. I just went straight back to pulling the engine.

Let that be a lesson to you: use the damn retaining ring and the proper drive shaft priming tool (it's one piece of metal and costs like $10) or potentially suffer the consequences.
 
Because my first car was a Supercoupe, most of my mistakes were the kind of stupid things that new drivers do. For example, the first time I "changed" its oil, I replaced the oil filter (but forgot to drain the engine oil). I added 5 quarts of oil (on top of the 5 that was already there). Thankfully, I checked my dipstick before starting the car and saw it was WAY too full.

I've snapped a lot of plastic trim pieces and mangled the crap out of my headliner (which needs to be replaced). I accidentally bent the cardboard backing as I removed it from my car (it's a moonroof, so it has narrow sides that bent easily).

Probably the BIGGEST mistake I made was buying my Supercoupe from a redneck that drove it like he stole it (and had crashed it into a pole while hydroplaning on bald tires). Then I spent thousands of dollars replacing the fenders, bumper cover, doors, trunklid, wheels & used tires, motor mount, transmission, rear differential, axle half-shafts, coil springs (the car was lowered too close to the ground), accumulator ball, and repainted the whole car except the hood. It still needs a new windshield (it's cracked), new interior (it's ripped up and smells like cigarettes), new headlights (the corner ones are busted), new power steering pump (LOUD NOISES), the radiator fan doesn't always come on (it's almost overheated 3 times), and the A/C doesn't work (not sure if I'll fix it), and I still need to paint the hood (It's a Cervini hood that needs some fiberglass patches). It hasn't driven since spring 2015. It's almost roadworthy, so I'm kinda excited.

It turns out for $3,000 I could have just bought a Supercoupe that looked ok and drove normally. Oh well :rolleyes:
I definitely SAVED this car, because nobody else would have been stupid enough to save an MN12 that needed this much work, even if it was a 5-speed :D
 
When my XR7 was new I was on a mission to make it faster, but since this was 1992, there wasn't much info out there and no internet to help out, so I tried more "old fashioned" hop up methods. I started with changing the thermostat to a 160 deg unit ($3.50). Of course this made the car run hotter. I bought a thermocouple ($140) so that I could figure out what was going on. Determined that the fan wasn't coming on until 210 deg, so I got a manual temp sensor ($20) to control the fan. It still ran hot because after more testing I also determined that the stock fan was dual speed. Bought another controller to run the 2nd speed ($20) but then proceeded to burn up the car stereo fuse holders I was using to power them so bought bigger ones ($40). Now it worked but the fan was running slower, not faster. Before I figured out why, the fan burnt up. So I bought the biggest aftermarket fan I could find ($160) and installed that. It seemed to work about as good as the low speed stock fan, but at least it worked. A new Ford fan was $350 or so and I already knew that wasn't working. Went on vacation in summer with the car and was 1500miles from home in 95deg heat, started the car up for the first time of the day and let the AC run to cool off the ultra hot black leather interior before getting into the car and suddenly the AC compressor starts "smoking" and the belts start squealing and all hell breaks loose under the hood. I determine the AC compressor has locked up. So we spend the rest of our vacation driving without AC until we can get to a shop to have the AC looked at. $360 later it apparently worked fine but they replaced the orifice line just to be safe. We take the car and later on it does the same thing. Don't remember how I figured out that the AC system was overpressurizing due to no air moving through the radiator (fan not on because engine wasn't hot enough). To this day my wife is leary of AC systems due to the number of times it did that to her with no explanation. Eventually figured it out and rigged my own relay pack to get the fans to come on under all the right circumstances ($40). By this time it was probably 2000 or so and the EEC Tuner was on the market so I got one of those ($400) and bought a new Ford fan ($350) and set about to make it work right and get rid of all the crappy wiring I'd added. Turns out the stupid EEC Tuner only accesses the high speed function on the fan so ended up burning out the fan AGAIN after a couple years. But this time it took out the relays in the IRCM too. I was disgusted with the whole thing and parked the car in front of the garage and left it. It was fall anyway. Come March I decided to start the car up and let it warm up (idk why I did this) and went in the house. Got distracted and probably a half hour later my wife asks why the car is smoking. (?!?!) Turns out I forgot the fan was disconnected and it overheated and blew the headgaskets ($1500).

All for a $3.50 160 deg thermostat.
 
I was installing a firewall behind the rear seat because I was adding a fuel cell in the trunk. I was in the trunk and my father (bull in china shop) was in the car and he was hammering the sheet metal into shape so we could get some clekos in it. His back swing was a little to aggressive and he took out the rear glass. This was about 10 years ago and I still from time to time find a little cube of glass in the car, he probably still finds some in his hair too.
 
In 2017 Chris Wise and Kelly Simons helped me replace my new 255lph fuel pump. Turns out it was the relay in the trunk.
 
When my XR7 was new I was on a mission to make it faster, but since this was 1992, there wasn't much info out there and no internet to help out, so I tried more "old fashioned" hop up methods. I started with changing the thermostat to a 160 deg unit ($3.50). Of course this made the car run hotter. I bought a thermocouple ($140) so that I could figure out what was going on. Determined that the fan wasn't coming on until 210 deg, so I got a manual temp sensor ($20) to control the fan. It still ran hot because after more testing I also determined that the stock fan was dual speed. Bought another controller to run the 2nd speed ($20) but then proceeded to burn up the car stereo fuse holders I was using to power them so bought bigger ones ($40). Now it worked but the fan was running slower, not faster. Before I figured out why, the fan burnt up. So I bought the biggest aftermarket fan I could find ($160) and installed that. It seemed to work about as good as the low speed stock fan, but at least it worked. A new Ford fan was $350 or so and I already knew that wasn't working. Went on vacation in summer with the car and was 1500miles from home in 95deg heat, started the car up for the first time of the day and let the AC run to cool off the ultra hot black leather interior before getting into the car and suddenly the AC compressor starts "smoking" and the belts start squealing and all hell breaks loose under the hood. I determine the AC compressor has locked up. So we spend the rest of our vacation driving without AC until we can get to a shop to have the AC looked at. $360 later it apparently worked fine but they replaced the orifice line just to be safe. We take the car and later on it does the same thing. Don't remember how I figured out that the AC system was overpressurizing due to no air moving through the radiator (fan not on because engine wasn't hot enough). To this day my wife is leary of AC systems due to the number of times it did that to her with no explanation. Eventually figured it out and rigged my own relay pack to get the fans to come on under all the right circumstances ($40). By this time it was probably 2000 or so and the EEC Tuner was on the market so I got one of those ($400) and bought a new Ford fan ($350) and set about to make it work right and get rid of all the crappy wiring I'd added. Turns out the stupid EEC Tuner only accesses the high speed function on the fan so ended up burning out the fan AGAIN after a couple years. But this time it took out the relays in the IRCM too. I was disgusted with the whole thing and parked the car in front of the garage and left it. It was fall anyway. Come March I decided to start the car up and let it warm up (idk why I did this) and went in the house. Got distracted and probably a half hour later my wife asks why the car is smoking. (?!?!) Turns out I forgot the fan was disconnected and it overheated and blew the headgaskets ($1500).

All for a $3.50 160 deg thermostat.

lol....that is all! :eek:
 
Not a SC but with my 302 in my tbird, I rebuilt the engine, mated it to the m5r2 trans, reinstalled the exhaust, and had it all ready to start up and set timing:

As my teammate (lemons car) was priming the pump when the 10mm socket jbwelded to a long extension (worked for the last 3 rebuilds) we had used to engage the oil pump drive shaft, he dropped the @#$@#$#$ socket into the oil pan. I was cursing him all the way to the airport as I dropped him off. I drained the oil pan and did all sorts of fishing for it (even with a camera). I even pulled off the upper & lower intakes on the off chance it had made it into the valley. Eventually, I just disconnected everything and lifted the engine back out enough to pull the pan and get the stupid socket.

A few years later, on my last rebuild, I had forgotten to put the little retaining ring around the same oil pump driveshaft. This prevents the oil pump driveshaft from going anywhere between the block and the pump. Under normal operation, this wouldn't have been an issue because the distributor will hold it in place. Well, as I was priming it again this time and had to restab the distributor, I accidentally lifted up unretained pump driveshaft and dropped it into the pan. At least this time I didn't both wasting any time trying to fish it out. I just went straight back to pulling the engine.

Let that be a lesson to you: use the damn retaining ring and the proper drive shaft priming tool (it's one piece of metal and costs like $10) or potentially suffer the consequences.
I did the same thing with the oil pump drive shaft on my 289 in the 66 mustang! What a PIA!
 
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