No garage yet...at least not until spring. I did however break the door of the garage I'm currently renting, haven't been able to get in for over a week now, as the owner is out of town until early January... :shock:

ROFL :lol:

If its any consolation, tonight I cross threaded the sump plate while trying to screw in the oil drain plug after replacing an oil line and doing an oil change. :roll:

Is it warm there? I'll pack up my engine and bring it to your house. Brrr. :lol:

It might not be so bad if the tools weren't cold too!

After school job at a plastics manufacturing plant (talk about fumes...). I was using a table router to round some edges and the piece caught and pulled my left index finger into the router blade. It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt for hours. I picked the chunk of finger off the side of a nearby table and put it in my pocket for some reason. A few hours later it started to hurt. A lot. Most of it grew back but I still have a white scar on my finger that throbs when it rains.

That job was great for seeing people get hurt doing dumb things, usually it was one of the cons on work release. One con tried to cut a four foot long, 3/4 inch (read: freakin' thick) sheet of PVC by himself. One of the first things you learn about a high powered table saw is to work with a partner on big pieces and DON'T PINCH THE BLADE. I was probably 30 or 40 feet away when half of the sheet landed on the table I was working at. I didn't hear anything because I was running a router and wearing hearign protection. The con split his hand in half when he pinched the blade and the piece kicked back on him.

Another con was running a robotized router that cut vent slots in computer housings. It was on a long robot arm that was programmed to move around a piece on all sides including the top. I remember being trained on it and the guy told me how fast it spun, it was like a trillion RPM or something almost as ridiculous, that thing sounded like an f-14 at full throttle. So the con is running this thing and he is trying to get a guys attention, so he taps the guy and turns to point at the router and when he puts his arm up the robot arm puts the router right through it and doesn't even pause. There wasn't much blood, I guess it cauterized while it cut. Stunk like hell though.

Makes me feel better about jumping an Optima red top in the dark, red clamp to red clamp, black to black or something like that. I'm in the car trying to start it wonderign why ti won't turn over when I get this nice electrical burning smell mixed with a plastic/rubber burning smell as the insulation melts off the jumper cables. In a hurry, in the dark, red top red post, not the same.

OK. Time to jump into this discussion. This is not the stupidest thing (I'll post that a little later, you won't believe it) but it certainly was embarrasing.

I learned my 'skills' as a DIY on a '71 VW bus. Did several engine pulls/rebuilds on mine and friends. So when I got the 911 I figured this shouldn't be too hard. And it wasn't except for some 'little' differences.

Like when I had to replace the clutch after the donut blew on the back straight of Charlotte Motor Speedway at a Potomac DE. I was lucky to get a trailer ride home from one of the Potomac regulars (who let me drive his P-car back). So I have the car in the garage and drop the engine and trans as a unit, not too different from the Bus. I separate the trans and take off the flywheel to look at what was left of the pressure plate and clutch disk. Both were shot and so was the flywheel from bits that had put some gouges into it. So, simple right, just replace them and put it all back in the car. I bought a new flywheel, clutch, pressure plate, throw out bearing and installed everything back into the 911.

Turned the key and WHIRRRR, WHIRRRR, WHIRRRR (sound of starter not engaging the flywheel). To make this long story short(er) I couldn't figure out why the starter was not engaging. Everything checked out OK. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw the old flywheel on the garage floor. And I noticed that the teeth that the starter engage are on a ring bolted to the flywheel. Funny, I don't remember the new flywheel coming with that ring (of course it doesn't). :oops: Mystery solved, I forgot to transfer the ring to the new flywheel.

The car ran fine if I bump started it and since I had a DE that weekend and was out of time to do another engine drop I drove it at the DE that way. It is quite embarrasing to ask for help pushing your car at Summit Point so it will start 'cause you goofed the clutch job.

Of course the second drop was very quick. :lol:

I did almost the EXACT same thing on the first car I ever really worked on - my 83 Honda Civic. Dropped the tranny to replace the clutch in a blistering fast 14 hours (no lie). I was 17 and working alone, so cut me a little slack. Anyway, I did the push start thing home and back to the Navy base (where I was doing the work) the next day where I dropped the transmission, replaced the flywheel and put the tranny back in in less than 2 hours. I sure learned a lot, that's for sure.