Dumbest mistake you have made?

[cleverusername]

Driving home last night I had lots of people flashing their headlights at me. How rude, I was being considerate and using dipped beams. Except I wasn't, because in changing the box which contains the headlight relys I had acidentally wired the main beams on the outer headlights to the dipped beam rely, and the dipped beams to the main beam rely. So I had two headlight settings which both dazzled on coming cars. Pretty stupid.

So I wondered what is the daftest mistake you made fixing a dolly?

[Toledo Man]

Where do I start? I've made some regretful decisions lately with mine. Trying to repaint it when I should've just MoTd it and I even managed to cock that up by using a garage that wasn't classic friendly and made the car worse than before despite getting that important piece of paper. Buying a second hand electronic ignition was another costly mistake because it failed shortly after I bought it.

[BSV205F]

Similarly with the headlights, I had a 1500SE back in the 80's and my mate and me were welding in new headlight supports on a winters Sunday and was getting late/tired but we fitted back the square headlights and were chuffed. However next night coming home from work and living in the country, I was getting a great view in to the trees on dip beam....because the idiots that we both were had fitted the headlights upside down!!

[Edin Dundee]

Piping a pair of carbs wrongly - inlet to overflow and overflow to inlet. Took me a while......

[trackerjack]

Driving down to the New Forest my sprint started to weave a bit......................I had forgotten to tighten the wheels nuts properly.

[Edin Dundee]

Ahhh, actually perhaps that's also my dumbest mistake - fitted new studs to a rear wheel......

[xvivalve]

Spending four weekends soon after buying my first Sprint changing the clutch from beneath on the roadside outside my digs before realising the transmission tunnel came out!

[Toledo Man]

Another one from me.

Killing the engine on my Toledo the day I picked it up from Aylesbury (October 2003). It let go on the M1 in Leicestershire.

The first oil and filter change I did on the 1850 resulted in the loss of some engine oil because the filter housing wasn't tightened up properly. The next change wasn't much better. I haven't had any problems on subsequent changes.

[tinweevil]

Using an open gas fire of the type below to keep warm in the (otherwise) exceedingly dry garage in which Mr Bond and I did extensive bodywork repairs to my sprint years ago.

2 C4H10 + 13 O2 → 8 CO2 + 10 H2O

[xvivalve]

buying the quicksprint?

[zsnemeth]

So, the short version of the background story:
My girlfriend has an MG Midget 1500, in the original manual box the second gear syncro was at its end of of life
and the clutch master and slave sylinder started leaking about the same time,
and she prefers the automatic box over the manual.
So, from a very nice guy, I've got an 1500HL auto box and the bits and bobs for the conversion and another 1500 engine.
Now they are in the Midget.
It was kinda tight fit, had to shorten the bottom part of the dipstick tube, I've cut off about a mm at a time,
gues what happened after the 4th cut... I've cut it too short, no room left for welding it back together...

It was the typical case of "don't matter how many times I cut it, won't be any longer". Oh well...

[MIG Wielder]

" O.K. All Done. Tea time. We'll take it for a run tomorrow "

"Daddy, Daddy .... what's this funny coppery coloured thing with 4 big holes in it on the front seat " ?
T.M.

[grifterkid]

One word... Carwash...!!!

I will never learn...

[captain_70s]

I bought one of the bloody things for considerably more than it was worth... Then I bought ANOTHER ONE!

Leaving the 1850HL parked outside Stonehaven's only club on New Years night wasn't a wise move, I hid the wiper blades and wing mirror in the boot but my radio aerial will never be the right shape again...

Also, not me but my Dad connected the 1300's battery backwards.

[Toledo Man]

You've reminded me of a couple of battery-related things I did.

I once connected a battery the wrong way round on an Acclaim. Fortunately, it just blew the master fuse and did no other damage. I shorted the battery terminals on another Acclaim with a spanner causing an explosion. Forunately, I was wearing gloves (not latex ones) so I wasn't injured.