Most liked posts in thread: Perhaps the dumbest thing you ever did.

This is certainly not the dumbest thing I ever did, but it was the first thing that popped in my head (I'm sure my brain is protecting me by temporarily hiding bigger, and dumber things I've done).

Situation: I'm 17 years old, I own my first car, a well-used and rusty 1962 Austin Mini. I have not developed any mechanical ability at this point in my life, but that is not going to stop me. I understand that it is necessary to periodically manually adjust the Minis rear drum brakes to account for brake shoe wear (that part is accurate), so that's what I'm going to mess with. I was sure I was ready for the challenge.

So, I grab a Crescent wrench from my Dad's toolbox, figure out how to adjust its jaws, sit on the ground and I reach into the mystery area underneath the car, and feel with my hands behind my Mini's rear wheels for the brake adjuster nut. I find it, and, not knowing much beyond that, I proceed to give it few turns the only way it will let me turn it. I repeat the operation for the other side of the car. Easy peasy, I'm genius and I just fixed my Mini's brakes. Then I go for a drive to see how much better my adjusted brakes work. As I approach a stop sign near my house I decide to brake real hard to test the brakes.

But, instead of stopping the car, the brake pedal goes right to the floor!!! :eek6: I pump the brakes and that does nothing - the brake pedal goes to the floor each time and the Mini is not stopping!!! How can this be happening?! I pull up the handbrake and the car slows slightly, but I fly right past the stop sign through the intersection. Fortunately no other cars were there.

I limp the car several blocks back home as my simple teenage mind tries to figure out what has happened. I am totally stumped - perhaps I turned the adjuster the wrong way? Could that cause that problem? I park the car and go inside, this time to crack open the Haynes manual to try to figure out what I did. Its not until a day or so later that I finally figure out that I had not been turning the brake adjuster nut as I thought (surprise!), but instead had loosened both rear wheel cylinder bleed screws!! So when I hit the brake pedal, I quickly expelled mass quantities of brake fluid onto the road in big squirts - immediately emptying the Mini's simple single-circuit brake system's little master cylinder. What an idiot I was. Not only that, but within a day the brake fluid leaking from the bleed screws had soaked into the rear brake shoes, so I got to do a complete rear brake job due to my stupidity.

It was after that point that I began to read and study the Haynes manual before starting on any work on my Mini. Within a year, when I was 18, my skills and adherence to what the book taught me allowed me to pull the engine from that car, dissemble it and then successfully rebuild it. I guess we all have to start somewhere...

 

True dat....

I also owned one of these - a 1962 Abarth Nardi 750 built by Vignale......one of a very few, I didn't realize what I had till much after I'd sold it....

 

...sold my '63 BRG Jaguar XK-E roadster for a pittance back in '72. I still experience pangs over that #######, ########### decision.

 

My list.......waaaaayyyyyy to long.

 

It was a long time ago......they weren't half million dollar cars then.....

 

I regret
selling a few different cars
buying a few different cars
staying at a new job when a much better offer came along
not have the guts to ask a few different girls out

In the end you are where you are and good thing that have happened since wouldn't have happened.

 

My grandsons who are 16 and 18 right now figure muscle cars will have dropped into their price range about the time they have enough money to buy one, as us old geezers die off and the demand drops too.

I've given up on old Porsches, they're just nuts now. I'm glad I owned and drove the cars I did back when they were (just barely) affordable.......

I'd have kept some of the cool old cars I owned back in the day, I'd be a hundred-aire by now!

 

^^^ pure sex...
I don't think there is a bad angle on that body....

 

ONE of the dumbest things I ever did was to sell my 2.5 acre home in the country. If we were still there, I'd have a nice shop and a garage full of all the cars I don't have room to keep.

 

Sold my Dino Ferrari to fund a move to Colorado......oh well...............you can't live in the past. Every step you took brought you to where you are today.

 

Got Married-to the WRONG person

 

I think you won this contest Dave....

So when you moved out of Colorado to Kansas, you should have gotten a huge credit.... Where's pictures of you Bugatti Type 35?

 

First I went to Sandy Eggo for about 20 years, then I sold everything to move back to KC to fund my wedding.....and my daughter's wedding.......and my son's wedding....all in the same year!

Of course, I still have my E-Type!

 

The dumbest thing I ever did was when I was an admin on Welcome to type2.com! There was a dispute that I wrote a post in reply to the other admin's. OOOPS, pressed the wrong button and sent it out to the list. I was embarrassed for a loooong time. That was over 10 years ago and I still feel it today.

 

I can't think of a darned thing!

Sorry.

 

Ah, go ahead. Nathan's got lots of bandwidth. If not, he'll regret it later.

 

You still have that XK-E, though.

 

You need to go back in there and edit out all the words 'stupid'. Stupid wouldn't have gotten the book and corrected the immediate problem then gone on to learn a whole lot more. Good write up other than that.