Silliest or dumbest thing you've done in car

A couple hours after buying my 355 I was nervously filling her up with gas for the first time. It attracted a whole lot of attention and I didn't know how to handle it yet. I ended up forgetting to put the gas cap back on (as I was talking to people while gasing up) and ended up driving away without the cap.

Ferrari list price for that nice cap..... $700.

Finding an alternated Fiat gas cap that works just the same $20.

I will probably buy the correct Ferrari cap someday but at the time I was to worried about leaving $700 at the gas station at every fillup to buy another.

 

Dumbest for me was refitting the old cambelt on my Lotus Esprit (access is not easy). I had taken the old one off the previous day and laid it on the box with the new one inside. Woke up at 6am on the Sunday raring to go. As I tightened the last nuts and bolts on the shields etc I remember looking to my right and seeing the lovely clean, unopened box and it dawned............

 

At the age of 19 I was changing battery cables on my old 1988 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. Dropped a screwdriver and it somehow freakishly made a connection from one of the battery terminals to the starter, and I of course had left the car in first gear. My foot was right in front of the left front tire... I managed to drive over my own foot up to the ankle, but it really didn't hurt at all. One of the many reasons I have others work on my cars!

Had to laugh at the NYC 458 Italia parking ticket incident where the cop was limping after being "assaulted" by a slow moving tire on a car with the engine in back.

Great thread idea! I want to hear all of them!!

 

Repacked the front wheel bearings on a 1970 Chevy Impala with regular grease and not high temp Moly grease (I was in High School). The car started bucking and ended up welding the wheel bearings to the spindle.

 

I did an oil change on my old X1/9 years ago and realized while.replenishing the oil, the floor was getting slippery....I forgot to put the oil drain plug back in.
Then there was the time I put a new battery in my girlffiend's car and reversed the leads....oops! Time for a new alternator!

 

Ran from the French police, allot of times. I used to live in Germany near the border with France (pre EU) and would often go to France on the weekends. As I was coming back one time a cop radar'd me near the border, I slowed down to stop but he was driving a comically small car and I just started chuckling. I was driving my Xt6 with the EG33 swap and turbo at that so I just floored it and took off. The border crossing I used wasn't manned so I just rolled back into Germany leaving him behind. It was so much fun I did it again and again, it became sort of a joke to send the new guy with me as sort of a hazing initiation thing.

 

Dumbest thing I ever did in a car?? Got my girl friend pregnant.

 

I unintentionally parked a 911 in a horse pasture.

 

Drove down the highway in a 98 Honda Civic coupe while my girlfriend was riding me. How we managed that I will never know.

 

Mine involves a long bridge and my old C6 corvette and that's all I'm sayin.

 

We have a winner!!!!!

 

Dumbest thing I ever did is when I visited friends in Amsterdam. I had a hire car and as I turned the corner my friend screamed at me that I was driving down a cycle lane and I didn't know it!

For those that don't know there is a huge cycling community there and the cycle lane was easily wide enough for a car

 

Spontaneous demolition derby with friends on public roads, dumb move. Fun but dumb

 

My first car was a rolling living room, a 1977 Buick Park Avenue. Had a great motor and transmission but one of those loose rears that just spins one wheel. So the car was great for parties and necking and such, not so good at laying rubber but I figured out how to do it. Get up to about 25 in reverse, drop into neutral and let some slack build up and then drop into drive and floor it while still rolling backwards. Got both wheels smoking, several times, before spinning a main bearing.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2

 

Man I had a very long list flash through my brain when I read ths question.

Must be hereditary. My big brother told me he knew he was in trouble when the judge said; "and on page two of your driving record...."

 

After completing a valve adjustment on my 73 MGBGT (I was 17 years old). I reached in the window to start it, and see how it sounded. The car was in gear and took off, crushing a flimsy project-table into the wall of the garage. The car came out of it with amazingly little damage.

 

I just realized that wasn't the dumbest thing I've ever done....not even close. Lucky to be here. Amazing what you can block.

 

I was working a county highway when I saw two cars drag racing side by side. I turned on the lights and siren, pulled up beside the first car (a Caddy with a woman driving) and told her to follow me as I pulled over the second driver. Unfortunately, the other guy had other plans and I was now in pursuit. As I sped through sparsely populated neighborhoods, I looked in my rearview mirror and, you guessed it, the lady in the Caddy was sliding around every turn and keeping up with us throughout the chase. I ended up catching the moron (car was an un-reported stolen) and after securing him in my unit, went over to the woman who was now parked behing my patrol car, beaming with pride. Trying very hard to keep a straight face, I explained that her actions probably weren't in the best interests of the general motoring public, but in the end I couldn't help but smile and shake her hand. No ticket for her that day...

 

Good for you, I like your judgement here.

 

Love it. She was, afterall following instructions from a law enforcement officer.

btw - username some sort of badge number?

 

That's my kind of woman.

 

Whilst I was at University, a friend of mine had a rental car for a week and on the second day he let me take it for a drive by myself.

I took the car to a local park and came across a load of horse **** in the road. The car was front wheel drive and I wheel spun over the manure so that it spread across the underside and in the wheel larches.

I did that a few times.

After a few days he kept saying how he could smell **** when he drove the car, not knowing what I did.

 

Worked 5 years with broken engine bonnet lifters. 100 times the bonnet knock me on the head. Then finally i bought two new bonnet lifters installed them next day i installed a rear wing and guess what, ofcorse the bonnet lifters are too weak to hold the added weight of the rear wing up.


Disassembled the stock flywheel to build a solid flywheel for a 7,5" 3 disc clutch. Spend weeks of cnc cutting materials and drawing CAD pictures only to find out that only 2 clutch discs fit on the clutch shaft spline plus the solid flywheel kills the input shaft. So i bought a new flywheel for a bigger amount of money and where back at the same point like i was weeks and hours of work befor ... only a bid poorer on my bank account.


Accidently hitting the key knob inside my pocket lowering the windows of my e92 ..... it was snowing this day i recognized it half day later.....