Idiot move of the day

A cautionary tale for all of you: don't drill holes through the floor pan without being very, very careful what's underneath. You might, oh I don't know, punch a hole in your fuel line.

Gasoline dripping on the floor, followed by a very hasty search for a towel to soak it up, followed by a slightly less hasty search for a steel bowl to catch the dripping, followed by removal of the fuel line and capping of the carb and fuel pump ends. Luckily since the car's still being assembled, nothing electrical was hooked up at the time. An afternoon of airing the garage out seems to have gotten rid of most of the smell.

Time to get a new fuel line and meditate upon my sins.

Remind me to never let you around a welder. :)

At least something ran out and you knew something was wrong. I've never done a trick like that but know of guys who drilled through then ran a sheet metal screw into a wire bundle. Do that during a restoration where nothing is turned on for weeks and it's really tough finding the problem.

you were lucky that the drill didn't spark that off but we have all made that type of mistake

So, how'd you air out the garage? Electric fan??? :devil:

Replacing the whole fuel line is a major PITA since it is so convoluted. Easier to get a flaring tool or even compression fittings and replace the cut section.

Pete

Installed a 12V outlet under the dash of the Sprite a few months back and drilled a small hole through the bulkhead and into the battery.

You would be amazed how fast you can remove a battery when you really need to.

I did that back in the 70's with my '71 B and used a small piece of inner tube clamped to the fuel line with a hose clamp to seal it.

I didn't air out the garage with an electric fan. Opened both bay doors and both sets of windows, and the side door. And I don't think the drill would have set it off - no vapor at that point.

And Peter, I view replacing the entire line, PITA-factor and all, as penance :-) Takes me back to breaking something when I was 7 and being told that part of learning my lesson was to fix properly what I broke.

While I won't ever admit to the idiot moves that I have made, I guy I worked with went to install a mirror in a restroom and work, drilled a hole and surprise, there was a pipe there that squirted back at him.

I forget why I want to drill a hole in the bottom of the spare tire compartment on a '74 Mustang II, but needless to say, I went right into the gas tank. I feel your pain.

A driller in the local shipyard, quite a number of years ago, was sent to drill a 5/16" hole through the deck in one of the submarines being overhauled. Unfortunately, he got the wrong deck and drilled into one of the ballast tanks - job done, he left the boat. This all happened a few years after the sinking of the Gataro at the pier of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard and all ships had to have big red draft marks on the hull, for and aft. It was those draft marks that alerted people that the submarine with the 5/16" hole in the ballast tank was lower at the bow at the rate of about 1" per hour and the problem was corrected before it sank at our pier. Classic example of the need of making sure what is on the other side of whatever one is drilling through, be it on a submarine or a MG.
Cheers,

That's not so bad. The real idiot move of the day would be to drill into a brake line.

Or a real funny one: friend of mine is installing a roll bar in his Rabbit to go SCCA showroom stock sedan racing. He drills the holes in the floor and is able to miss all the fuel and brake lines. So far so good. Next is to drop the bolts thru the mount and the floor, fit the backing plate on the underside, and screw on the nuts. He did so w/ no problems. First session at Daytona and the car will barely go 80 mph down the loooong back straight. He clamped the backing plate, crushing the fuel line. He fixed it, went back to Daytona and with his new-found speed rolled the car in the chicane. Feeling pretty low that he'd not get to finish the weekend, he pulled out the camcorder to at least watch his spectacular roll on TV. He had forgot to switch it on. He's not racing anymore.

When I worked at the dealership a tech was putting a tag bracket on the front bumper. He leaned in on his drill to puch through faster and drilled a hole through the AC condenser of a brand new Buick. Same tech got mad because the auto reel on the drop light wouldn't adjust like he wanted it to. He snatched the light cord, the reel took up the slack, the hook on top of the light caught the corner of his eye and played him like a big fish until he could reach up and get some more slack!

When I was fitting the V8 I had to dress back the bulkhead about one quarter t one half of an inch. On the inside of the bulk head was the (expensive) electronic anti theft box. Wedged tightly against the bulk head that was to be given the treatment. I spent a good half hour careful bashing back the bulkhead with my ball peen hammer. Really worked it over with painstaking care and diligence. Every last millimetre.
The entire side of the plastic electronic anti theft device was reduced to a fine plastic mosaic. Amazingly it still worked, and still does, albeit held together with duct tape (If it is good enough for Apollo 13...)

There is always something on the other side!

How about this for a Bonehead move?

When I came back from Nam, in early '71, I worked in a new Arco service station, while going to school, the manager was a fellow in his 50s so he should have known better. He was working on a Vega fuel pump, located in the fuel tank, so he had the car on the hoist and the tank down but setting on a jack. He had removed the pump for testing, which he did by putting 2 or 3 gallons of gas in a 5 gal. plastic bucket, immersing the pump in it and using the battery charger leads to reach in and energize it! Can you guess what happened? All of this in front of the owners office picture window, where the battery charging stand was, and he was at his desk doing some paperwork. Things went from bad to worse when the plastic melted.
The station survived but was closed for a week while contractors repaired the extensive damage and repainted the inside back to its original white.

Sam was a pretty easy going fellow and the manager did not lose his job.

Perhaps Jan will chime in with the story of the fellow who drilled a hole through the wing skin on an Aerostar aircraft?

My Dad works for a company that builds large (huge) agricultural hay grinders, and I worked there during my college breaks. That's where I learned to weld! Anyway, one day a high school kid they hired to sweep the floors was given a simple job by one of the fabricators - drill a few holes in this radiator fairing and bolt it to the radiator. This being a 500 hp cat diesel engine, the radiator being about five feet tall. So he holds the shroud up to the radiator and zips the first hole in, ALL the way in. I have no idea what it cost, but I do know that it had to be replaced, not patched. I remember thinking that it really wasn't the kid's fault, really it was the fabricator that should have known better.