Share your favorite mechanical blunder

That's a classic! Hopefully he was careful when closing it so he didn't scratch or dent the rear door and adding two correctly sized doors to the repair list.

Our (5-door) C900 needs a replacement left rear door and, having been on the look-out for one for quite a while, a Saab breaker was getting a car in in the right colour (Eucalyptus Green isn't that common). I was rather peeved to hear that the (dead) car, upon arrival and being picked up with a fork-lift, had slid along the forks and had the one door I was after dented. Typical!! All the other doors were perfect.

Anyway, I'm still looking. Anyone in SE UK have one?

One snowy day, I attempted to swap the wheels from a 1990 Jaguar XJ6 to a 1982 Jaguar XJ-S. Having only one jack and two jack stands, you can imagine that it took a while to accomplish, not to mention the snow.

After removing all four wheels from both cars, I fastened two of the XJ6 wheels to the rear of the XJ-S with no problem. But when I tried to install the wheels to the front of the XJ-S, they rubbed the front calipers. I ended up having to put all the wheels back where they had started ... in cold weather ... and was none to happy to have wasted so much time.

I also left a shop light in the fan area of a early 90's Honda. I was reminded when I started the car. To make matters worse, it was not my shop light!

This isn't a Saab blunder, but I hope it counts.

Years ago we were on a family road trip. We stayed at a distant relatives house in St. Louis for 1 night on the way home. That night somebody left the reading light on in our Chrysler minivan, so the battery was all but dead (It was actually quite comical -- you could activate the solenoid to pop the trunk, but there wasn't quite enough juice to actually make the latch pop.).

Anyway, we had jumper cables, so we just jumped the car and went on our way, right?

Well something got crossed somewhere and blew a computer up. For the remainder of the trip the dash read 0 MPH, we had no temperature or fuel gauge, and the best bart, the whole way home from St. Louis to Salt Lake City, Utah (Which -- if you're unfamiliar with US geography -- Salt lake is quite a bit WEST of St. Louis) the compass insisted that we were driving NE.

We were driving in caravan with about 4 other cars (We take our family road trips seriously), so we knew when to get fuel and such, and we made it home fine.

Now for the best part of the story #2 -- when the dealership replaced the computer, we had been tracking our gas milage, so even though we'd lost the odometer in St. Louis, we figured with the return trip home the van was at 80,000 miles ±200 miles. We told the dealership this. Got the van back from the dealer, and the Odometer read 80,000 miles exactly. One of those things that makes you go hmm.

The water pump on my MY01 9-5 Aero went bust and living in Namibia on a Thursday afternoon, things were rather bleak to get the replacement part soon as I was planning a trip to my mom at the coast, a distance of about 356km one way.

The dealer in Sandton, Johannesburg, the parts deparment to be precise, advised that an identical GM Europe part fitted to a Opel (can't recall the variant) would perfectly replace my 9-5 Aero water pump and it would be cheaper too. Off I went to the nearest GM Opel dealership in town and voila, got the exact water pump (I had the correct part number) and rushed off to my indy to fit it.

Well, I departed Windhoek (capital city) to the coast, and having switched the ACC on, I discovered as I was nearing the coast that the temperature was getting colder and even when I switched it to the heat setting, I was getting extremely cold. Needless to say, we were freezing in the car and at the end opted to switch the ACC off completely. So we endured a very cold weekend in Swakopmund and had trouble with demisting the windscreen and etc.

Upon my return, the indy told me that he had connected the unit incorrectly as the Opel unit connections are the other way when secured, meaning that he connected them wrongly, and so, instead of heating when the ACC was switched on to head, I rather got blasted with cold air.

I wasn't amused as I paid dearly for this seeing that I needed the car before the weekend and I got charged overtime in the long run. Needless to say, it was fixed at no charge. So next time, when you want to swop your MY01 9-5 Aero water pump with the identical Opel unit, be warned.

Hilarious, I don't have anything to compare to that, but these 2 are sort of funny:
1. Was doing some nice bodywork brazing on the outside of the car only to find out after finishing that the inside of the car was on fire, inside my garage. Pure panic at that point.
2. In the early 60's, I had a very nice Bulova watch which I didn't want to scratch or damage while working under the car. So, I set it on the trunk lid to be safe. It wasn't until I was on a test drive that I remembered it, just in time to see it sliding off the trunk in my rear view mirror. It looked like it might have been okay though, and I stopped and was running back as fast as I could run just in time to watch a following car going left of center to clear me smash it to bits.

That's absolute gold!

It's also why I rarely try anything difficult with my car. If I did 10 big things on my car, I'm sure 5 of them would turn out like that.

@Danni: I love it! Sounds more like your average Chrysler dealer than Opel or Saab.

@Ted: OK, BOTH of those compare favorably. Setting your car on fire?? I think that's pretty accepted practice that you want to avoid that. I have a similar story to the watch, but it involves a brief case and a quick stop to allow an over heating car to cool. That was NOT a fun day.

@Andy: I have done almost the same thing, except that I had just the one car and I realized that the wheels that were "new"had the wrong tires mounted on them and I had to swap them all back -- and the weather was boiling hot.

@Ryan: Classic story, traversing DAYS of driving nearly blind. Good times. Good times.

How about this? In preparation for an oil change, I drove my 9-5 up onto these little metal ramps I bought just for this procedure. I didn't quite realize I had come to the tops of the ramps, so I kept going. Of course, I had to jack the car up to get the ramps out afterward. Fortunately, no damage to the car, just my ego.

In my younger days I did not own any Saab, but one of my friends had a 95 V4.
Once he asked me to help changing the engine, can't remember why though. I do remember several night hours in the local fire station garage swapping the engine, and the test drive in -40 Celsius... I remember that the engine had to be swapped back again, but not sure whether we did it the same night... At least it was a lot of work for not so much.

I finished an oil change on a Honda and drove it out of the garage. When the check oil light came on, I wondered what it could be. Oops! I forgot to fill it with oil!

A mechanic I worked with forgot to bleed the brakes on a customer's car and went through the garage door. Oops!

Not a Saab, but still a blunder ;-)

Back in 1970something, a friend of mine and I owned mopeds that we tried to make go faster.
So we disassembled the piece between the carburetor and the cylinder (don't now the name of it) of my friend's moped.
We intended to widen it internally for better gas flow.
Unfortunately, a washer fell into the opening of the cylinder.
We dismounted the whole motor, turned it upside down and shook it like crazy until we were quite sure that the washer had fallen out.
After putting the whole stuff together, we took a test drive.
Not long after start, the engine stopped VERY suddenly.
We opened the cylinder head to find the washer jammed between piston and cylinder. It had found it's way through the duct that lets the gas flow from below the piston into the combustion chamber (2 stroke engine!).
Needless to say that my friend needed a new cylinder and a new piston.
And a new washer, too...

And for De Teng, I would recommend replacing the Sab's bnack door by one from a Mazda RX-8.
Attach it to the C pillar in a way that it opens in inverted direction and you will get the very first "Saabzda 900-RX-8".
;-)

Great stories! I have some whose not really DIY stories, and not quite first-hand experience, but Saab-related anyway. :)

1) My father-in-law worked at aircraft-Saab and there was quite a lot of Saab cars in that parking lot. When he was leaving work one day, one of his colleagues was desperately searching for his C900, thinking he forgot where he parked it. After helping him out for some minutes, another colleague arrives in the car, quite embarrassed. Apparently, he owned a car with the exact same colour and trim and didn't register the license plate (or the stuff inside the car) when he was leaving work. The key fit and the engine started without a hitch so he didn't notice his mistake until he reached home and his wife asked him what had happened to their car... It's good that the newer Saab models can't be opened with a lollipop-stick as some of the C900s. =)

2) Our neighbour was getting ready to leave for work when his son comes back from going to school and asks why he's parked some houses further down the street. Bewildered, he goes out and, right enough, finds his car snug (but rather sloppily parked) against the garage door some houses further down. It wouldn't start though so he had to have it towed, thinking that it had been burglared. However, according to the local Saab dealership, a tiny spring inside the ignition lock had snapped, causing the car to start in the middle of the night (with reverse gear in and no handbrake). The car obviously must have backed down and, when hitting the curb, turned alongside the street. At some point it must have swayed against the curb again and nicely swung into the parking lot in front of another house, the engine killing itself when the garage doors wouldn't yield. I'm still amazed that it didn't tear down some mailboxes or fences in the process...

I learned the hard way that when they say you need an E20, you really need an E20. The first time I changed my front brakes on my 2003 9-5, I had a set of torx sockets that I found after lifting the car and removing the front wheels that it only went up to E16. Of course not realizing the game was up from the start, I tried my 6 pt sockets to try and remove the caliper bolts. Finally an hour later I knew it was futile, put the wheels on and went on a 4 store quest looking for an E20. Amazing how one little tool can halt a simple job like brakes.

Hahaha These are all great stories! I'm sure we all have enough to talk each others ears off. Here are a couple typical Saab stories I'm sure some of you can relate to.

I was in the garage one night and my friend had his battery die on his 1992 900. Obviously not paying attention he hooked it up backwards and lit the alternator on fire. I now own this very car :)

My heater core blew out on my 1995 900SE and I had to drive it home about a two hour drive with no heat. It was -4 deg F (-20C). My brother had to continuously scrape the windshield from the passengers seat with a credit card. I finished putting a new heater core in and cranked the heat up to max, only to find that the blower motor died at the same time, so once again I had no heat for a week :)

I was once driving down the road in the same 1995 900SE and it went BOOM and the clutch pedal came up and whacked my left foot, and the shifter moved back like two inches. I had no idea what had happened so I carefully rolled it into the closest driveway. I opened the hood and saw my engine resting on the subframe of the car by the axles A large motor mount had failed and the engine tried to fall out.

Also in the very same car again I was driving down the road at 80mph and something under the hood went "poof" quietly which I would have dismissed as nothing but a crosswind except I lost power, I put the car in neutral and my revs dropped to zero. Long story short, the intake cam shaft gear key had sheared off the gear and the gear was spinning on the camshaft causing me to loose 4 intake valves. Dropped a new head on it and the car now has 217k miles on it and is going strong!

My story involves my first car, a 1976 99 GL. By 1980, the silver paint on the plastic frames around the headlights and the grill was looking worn, so I removed those pieces by opening the hood, bought matching spraypaint, masked off the pieces and repainted them matching silver-grey. I did this outside. Suddenly the sunny skies turned dark and it began started to rain. So, I lowered the front hood and proceeded to drive the 99 right over my newly painted plastic grill and headlight frames. Fortunately, the brand new set from Reinertsen Motors looked even better!

I replaced the head gasket on my 9000 Aero a few years ago. After taking off the exhaust manifold, I was missing one washer. ... musta fallen on the floor and been swept away....

Fast forward to job completion, a week or so later (this job was done in my garage on a couple of weekends), and the car runs fine, but there seems to be no turbo pressure. After spinning the turbo backwards, it works for a while, then nothing... This time it won't spin backwards.

Take the turbo apart, remove washer wedged between compressor and housing, car runs like it should.

(I still have the washer, and I have a picture of it stuck in the turbo too.)

~Peter
'93 9000 Aero, 115K, 5spd. Trouble free turbo operation for the last 60+K miles.

My first car was a Hyundai Pony. I was having starter motor problems. Until I had enough money to buy a replacement, I used to bump-start it. I got quite adept at pushing it on my own to get it rolling then jumping in, clutch down, into gear, drop clutch, engine starts. Until one day I did it in reverse whilst parked on a road by a tree. One very quick method of removing a door! I then had to drive home with my mate sat in the back seat behind me with his hand out of the window holding the door in place. Luckily I could see the funny side plus the car was a POS anyway.

Hi all,

indeed.. it was me. So any personal question, shoot ahead. It would be nice that I were notified about this, only to have more fun with you. Obvious, I'm not the only one. Thanks for sharing.

You can be very ambarassed about those kind of things, but you can choose to laugh about it.. my friend was about to take the door instantly off again, but I just saw a short moment to make the photo.

Cheers from Holland.
Still a Saab fan by the way. The other door is being repaired and surprise, it fits perfectly! ;)