What is the worst thing you have ever done to your car, that you inflicted yourself?

Absolutely gutted

Installing my new HKS 264 cams, taking it slowly and according to the Toyota manual, tightening down the 3rd and 7th bearing cap i heard a small dull crack and assumed it had just dropped into place. Came to check the cam would still turn by hand (not too tight) and to my horror i saw that the rear part wasnt turning

It cracked about 2mm behind the bearing cap i had been gently tightening

I now feel sick. Its yet another setback, and its at times like these that i wish id never started a single build. Iv been too down on the whole car to even update my thread for ages now

Somebody please cheer me up by telling me you did something worse!

Ouch

Ah well mate , no-one said it was gonna be easy , just think how good it will be once its all in place and running well

I would have done much worse by now no doubt if i had the balls to do half the work you and other guys on here do to your own cars.

This when trying to remove those pesky boot rubbers.

I will cheer you up Rob. I ran my car dry on oil. Its was making a very metallic noise and thought that sounds like a lack of oil. So I decided to finish my motorway journey in the knowledge that my oil light wasn't on. (The solder contacts had gone) which is was to find out later.

So I get to my destination and the engine was bone dry of oil. That bit of stupidity cost me a bill for a new engine

It was a good few years ago now and I have been paranoid about oil ever since

Jeez Rob. Could it be a material flaw? Don't think cams should just shear like that. I've installed a fair few too.

Hope you sort it soon mate.

while popping down the shop, as I parked my car, I drove into the kerb and wrote off my bumper. New one on the way

Ouch, that doesn't sound right mate, surely a flaw in the cast.

Not the supra but I spent hours struggling to fit the new engine in my bug only to find out it would seize everytime I tried tightening down the bolts. Removed engine again and found out i should have removed this adapter ring from the clutch fingers which was causing it to bind on the release bearing guide.

Total nightmare and all on the night before going offshore for two weeks.

In my experience mate, things have to begin bad before it starts to feel good again, got my mk4 n/a supra in may last year, the car is great an all ways but from the day i got that car i was in a financial low, self esteem low, basicly as low as you could get, but over one year later, my finances are how they should be, money in the bank, money in the pocket, my supra is now getting a full TT Conversion with BPU, a full bodykit waiting to go on, and things are finally coming together for me.

Like i said things always start bad but its down to how you deal with it and how much you fight which will always pay off in the end.

Yeah loads worse, I wrote my first supe Off! Fooked she was!

Does this count? my damage cost 8k [OOPS][/OOPS]

Feel a little better now

The HKS are hollow cast so it is fairly easy to snap them, im not looking forward to fitting the new one though

Does this count? my damage cost 8k [OOPS][/OOPS]

Christ mine wasnt that bad :

Yeah loads worse, I wrote my first supe Off! Fooked she was!

Ooh I did that too

Feel a little better now

 

The HKS are hollow cast so it is fairly easy to snap them, im not looking forward to fitting the new one though

Oh fook. Didn't know that. In that case Rob don't follow the Toyota guide word for word. Don't torque up one cap at a time in the stated sequence.

Pull all caps down incrementally in sequence. Pull 'em down in steps maybe 4 or 5 times. Maybe 10lb at a time.

Sorry if that's teaching gran and sucking eggs Rob.

Oh fook. Didn't know that. In that case Rob don't follow the Toyota guide word for word. Don't torque up one cap at a time in the stated sequence.

Pull all caps down incrementally in sequence. Pull 'em down in steps maybe 4 or 5 times. Maybe 10lb at a time.

Sorry if that's teaching gran and sucking eggs Rob.

Struggling to follow that Andy

Toyota says put 2 caps on, tighten slowly and evenly in lots of goes.

Which i think is what you mean, each cap down incrementally.

Basically i did each bolt up half a turn, which may even have been too slow, im not sure, but it felt fine on the exhaust cam.

After fitting chrome headlight surrounds on the clk, I took it out for a drive, 2 miles down the motorway one came flying off........so off to Eurocar parts and ordered some more.

This time when it came to fitting I was taking no chances so Super-glue was brought into the equation. After fitting the new ring it started pi$$ing down............glue all over the front bumper and it even ended up on the wing.

What made matters worse was when it dried in I tried to scrape it off with a screwdriver. Enough said really

Struggling to follow that Andy

 

Toyota says put 2 caps on, tighten slowly and evenly in lots of goes.

 

Which i think is what you mean, each cap down incrementally.

 

Basically i did each bolt up half a turn, which may even have been too slow, im not sure, but it felt fine on the exhaust cam.

Sorry Rob. You've done exactly what I put anyway ie you haven't pulled one cap down half way then gone to another one etc. The material had to be flawed if you've taken that much care doing this.

Going too slow won't break them normally either. Better safe than sorry.

Only thing I'd change is to put more than two caps on. I used to put them all on and pull down as you did. That will even the loading along the whole of the cam. Do them in the sequence for the final torque down. Can't suss why MrT says to put two only on to be honest.

Can't suss why MrT says to put two only on to be honest.

I think it is because one will stabilise the cam and the other will push the valves down on one cylinder.

Whichever way you put the cam it will push a set of valves down, so the manual states to align 2 'knock pins' in a certain way

I think it is because one will stabilise the cam and the other will push the valves down on one cylinder.

 

Whichever way you put the cam it will push a set of valves down, so the manual states to align 2 'knock pins' in a certain way

Hmm. Can't get away from easing the stress then. In which case there's no way the cam should snap.

Kent cams had a problem with material when they moved to India. Big recall.

Being doing some searching and couldn't find specifics on snapping cams.

I did, however, find this. http://www.enginelogics.com/camdegree.html

Which, hopefully, will be useful later.

Cheers Andy, yeah it will!

http://xs130.xs.to/xs130/08341/snv81814164.jpg

One of the worst nights of my life, wouldn't wish it upon anyone

Been saving rock solid for a few weeks now and shouldn't be too much longer till i can afford another one

Quick pic

Obviously i would never normally place a cam on the ground, but its a bit beyond any dirt ingress now

Crikey Carl, what did you hit?

http://xs130.xs.to/xs130/08341/snv81814164.jpg

 

One of the worst nights of my life, wouldn't wish it upon anyone

 

Been saving rock solid for a few weeks now and shouldn't be too much longer till i can afford another one

Bleedin' nora.

We put a new diff in the RB/200sx, had loads of other things to do and overlooked putting fluid in the diff. The car went five miles then the diff locked solid. Fortunately we still had another diff, just not as good as the one we wrecked.