Mistakes

[David Lahey]

I was about 15 years old and was fiddling with the throttle slide needle position on my TS185K and obviously wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing because I fitted the slide in backwards. It wouldn't have been too bad if I hadn't started in gear, and had no killswitch. The ignition keyswitch was under the tank on the left side and with all the noise from the screaming engine, I mistakenly thought I could (really quickly) take my left hand off the clutch and turn off the motor with the key. Well it went forwards very fast and smashed into the stern of my Dad's fibreglass boat. I managed to grab the left side of the bars again and with both hands now holding tight, it just kept pig-rooting and repeatedly hitting the boat with the front tyre.
I eventually managed to throw it on the ground and turn the key off. My mum came downstairs to see if I was still alive then quietly went back to cooking tea. Whe my Dad came home and heard the story he had a great laugh. He reckoned I probably wouldn't fit any throttle slides the wrong way around again.

[pancho]

 Sometimes the biggest mistake is telling about your mistake.
 An engineer at my 26yr gov. job told us about fitting mudflaps to his kombi.
While drilling into a panel for a self tapper screw this liquid came running down the drill.
 Turned out to be acid from the new battery that he just fitted into the battery box.
cheers pancho.

[Nathan S]

One of my mates from tech had a Beetle. After he bought a decent car, it went to his brother on long term loan. Eventually, his brother decided to get a real car, and the old dak dak was put up for sale - my mate took the opportunity to reclaim the good stereo he'd fitted years before.
Halfway through the process of removing the head unit, he smelled fuel.
Turns out that he'd put a self-tapper through the wall of the fuel tank when he'd fitted it, and removing it unplugged the hole and it was now pouring out of the tank and into the back of the dashboard...
  He said "that explained why I started smelling petrol after I installed the stereo".

[OverTheHill]

Blimey i've lost count of how many times i've seen that done over the years but the best [worst- but luckily no injuries] was in about "79 i think & by memory we were in Taumarunui [NZ] & involved an RM400N. Guy a couple of cars down from us must've had the slide out & fitted it back in half turn out [must be harder to fit the top & compress the spring], consequently it wouldn't kick start start & the plunger type choke won't work with the throttle open so "Yes" they pushed it. Pits were organized this day as two rows with a [not very wide] gap down the middle. Anyway she took of minus rider & climbed over backwards then did mad doughnuts till someone tamed it. Missed all the cars--kids--& people & gave us a bloody good fright for sure. Cheers Morley [NZ]