The first day I owned my Z28, I took half the day off to get to know her. Leaving my neighborhood, I stopped at a red light and waitied. It had been over ten years since I had a daily driver with a stick, and I had never owned a car with as much power as my Z28, so when the light changed, I laid into it to see what she could do. After doing a couple of donuts in into the intersection and missing the oncoming traffic only by the grace of God, I humbly drove away from the light with my tail between my legs.

I gained a lot of respect for a real sports car that day...

 

well i cant think of anything dumb ive done in my 97 but one thing really pops into my head was in my 68. well when i first learned to drive it since it was a manual i was at first only allowed to drive to a local weekly cruise in then back because i was new to a stick and also my grandfather and i were still getting the bugs out of the car. (at the time it was still using the crappy quadrajet carb) well one night it was to nice not to take it straigt home i wanted to crusie up the main highway in town. so i begged and pleaded and i got the go ahead only if my grandfather rode in the car so that if anything happed i had some help( so much for pickin up girls) so we took off and right off the bat i had a hard time all of the sudden taking off. well i left the e-brake on, oops. after that everything was going smoothly except traffic was a nightmare. well i had to stop at a light and wait. well wih that stupid quadrajet the car just idleing flooded itself and died. me still being a new driver started pumping the gas and continuing to flood the motor. while this is going on the light is green cars are honking im getitng yelled at on how to unflood the motor and finnaly it fires and guess what the light was red again so i had to sit there revving the motor and finnaly when the light turned again i jackrabbited the takeoff and got the car home as fast as i could. the next week i had a edelbrock carb on it.

 

for the Henry Ford quote...

 

I cant say I did anything stupid in my car but I can tell you about a stupid thing I did in my Dad's Truck.

We just finished building a nice little 355 for his 68 Short step. The engine really had some power. But the heads were not done right. The guide to stem clearance was too tight and that caused the valves to bind a little. Well it is about a week after getting the heads back after Dad sucked a valve and I am heading home from work. It is late and I am all alone on a dark 2 lane in the middle of nowhere. I decide in my infinate teenage wisdom that I am going to take this truck to its limit with the new engine. I downshift (TH400 that didnt have the electric kickdown hooked up so downshifting was manual) and instead of just hitting back into second I make it all the way to first. At the same time I sandwitch the go petal between the floor and my right foot. WOW that engine woke up for about 2 seconds! Tires brake loose, and then BAMM, CRASH, POP, CLINK! among other noises. The truck lost power I could barely keep the engine running. I thought for sure that I just sent a rod through the side of the block. I pulled over and opened the hood. No stray internal engine parts (pheww, *wipe the sweat from my brow*). I get the engine fired again and limp the truck home. It is not making any more strange noises other than popping through the exhaust. I sucked a valve and prolly ruined the head. These are Wedge Aluminum performance heads, big $$$ for a high school student. Well we get home and I have to wake Dad up and tell him that his truck is messed up. OH was he pissed. This was the second time in 2 weeks that the heads were comming off the engine.

Well My father is an aircraft machinist so he knows a thing or three about machine work. Him and I take the heads apart and start measuring the clearance of the valve and guide. We also notice that all the valves are scored and the guides do not look so pretty. We did some research and found what the proper clearance's are supposed to be and had a local machine shop redo the heads to those standards. Those heads are still on the engine today, with no problems.

OH what happened was the factory used iron head tollerances to assemble aluminum heads. The aluminum expands more than the iron so it closes tightens up on the guides more than an iron head will.

Massey

 

Last summer, I changed the transmission on my '96. While it was off, I changed out the rear main oil seal and gasket of the engine. My manual didn't tell me to drain the coolant, so when I got the thing off all the coolant in the system flooded down onto me (thankfully not in my eyes).

So then, I had to clean everything out with a spray-can of Seafoam - had to make sure all the coolant was out of the oil pan, etc. I had the little red straw on the end of the Seafoam can, and it popped off and into the engine while I was spraying things! My father-in-law ended up helping me fish it out, after it fell down into the oil pan.

I could come up with stupider things, probably, but this story's embarrassing enough lol.