Stupid things you have done fixing or driving your subaru?

[MilesFox]

he would manage to get the brat with no front suspension stuck!

 

check this out.

 

althogh the train took out the first couch, this one is still laying off to the side of the tracks. lets go for a daytime shot with your camera when you get back..

[myossfeece]

Like the pic and yes he could get the brat stuck. Roneece could get a car with no wheels and setting on jackstands stuck between two trees in a way that it could not be pulled out

[MilesFox]

well right now its stuck in the carbola taking up space!

yeah, he left the brat there just like he left me in idaho

in both cases, parts were set aside never to be heard from again..

[frag]

It's often stupid, when something happens right after something else has happened, to think that the first event is the cause of the second.

I shut down the engine of my Loyale when in an automatic car wash. Unable to restart. Have to push the car out.

I presume the wash is responsible for the no start condition (wetness somewhere in the ignition system).

I replace the distibutor cap. the rotor, the ignition wires, the plugs, the coil.

Finaly find out it's the coolant temp sensor: the car was refusing to start not because of the damp conditions of the car wash but because the engine was hot while the ECU was being «told» it was cold = flooded engine.

Nice lesson I learned there.

[bushbasher]

How about welding the rear diff, and burning out of my driveway while the diff was still hot, and the last bolt hadn't been tightened because I was late for work When I got to work, I took a big wide turn into a parking space, and ended up in the rock garden next to it. Left it there to move it on my break, but I couldn't drive it home cause I broke the rear lift The diff made funny sounds after that too.

 

The next stupid thing occured up harborview trail, where I drove into a puddle that was actually a water filled crevace between to big slabs of bedrock. The front intake side was about 6" over the hood, and I had the stock intake on Got it to run again, and then we started hearing this occasional knocking sound underneath the car. I looked underneath and saw the exhaust rubbing on the driveshaft. Do I figured we bent the exhaust. WRONG, the driveshaft had somehow been pulled out of the tranny splines, and bent. The driveshaft proceeded to flip over and smash the floorpan up. So we took out the driveshaft (the splines were f'ed) and continued in 2wd. By the time we got back it was running on 2 cylinders with barely enough tranny fluid to still move.

 

This is all the old t-wagon mind you, not the one I got now.

[bleakhorizon]

how bout tryn (and accomplishing) to outjump a toyota with my brat at sandlake oregon and blowing both your front struts out at the same time......Hey they were stock..... or driving at night and maken a wrong turn in the sand and ending up being able to almost walk under your car cause your over a quad trail.....

 

Or with my 83 wagon hitting a 4 foot snow drift and not having all 4 on the ground (In a safeway parking lot BTW) cops didnt think it was very funny but i did.............i got lots more but i wana find the pics of some of em....like hitting a 2 1/2 foot deep pond at 70 and skimmin it in my brat....that was awesome

[bajavwnsoobnut]

welp a few years back I was cruising the gut in Salem and did a wheel spin in my loyale that I had at the time and there was a cop 2 cars behind me on the way around the guy was next to me and asked me if I was the one that did that and I said nope hehe

[RedLance]

It had snowed really heavy, and in downtown, they pile all the snow in the parking spots, until they load it up and haul it off. Parking in downtown is scarce as it is. I came tooling into work in the evening, and found the big drift in the parking spots. Figuring I had 4WD in my 86 Turbo XT, I thought I'd plow through it, as there was room between the pile and the sidewalk. What I found out was the drift had frozen solid. I ended up high centered. A few guys from work, helped me push it off, and I drove between the parking meters, and down the sidewalk.

 

Went down to Oklahoma City to hook up with a lady friend from the internet. Picked her up at school, and apparently was too nervous, cuz I drove right over the parking stopper. This was also in the 86 XT.

 

Trying to make an 81 EA81 automatic wagon do wheelies by piling a bunch of people in the hatch area.

 

Got my BRAT stuck right next to a Wagoneer on 35's, after driving around it twice.

 

Shifting the BRAT from 4th to 2nd at 60mph, and dumping the clutch...sort of a reverse burn out...

 

That's all I can think of now...

 

RedLance

[Hondasucks]

OK here it goes...

 

At the mall with my then-GF in my 83 GL-10. Some %*%*head in a not-all-that-lowered Honda was C R E E P I N G over the speedbumps to avoid scraping his non-existant bodykit or something, well I laid on my air horns at him cuz he was pissing me off (No reason to go THAT slow over speedbumps) so the next speedbump I go to pass him, and I give it too much gas through the corner and slide right into a curb, caught the ball joint on the curb, bent the lower control arm and the stabilizer rod, felt really dumb after that one :-P

 

When I was 17 (Might as well have been 16 since I had just gotten my license) my friend Randy and I were out drivin around in mom and dads old 93 Sable wagon (3.8 Liters of Honda-killing V6 power..), anyway me with little driving experience AND a car that handled liek crap, tried to take a 10MPH corner at liek 40.. Hit gravel, slid, jumped a ditch, and set the air bags off. Told mom and dad that I had swerved to miss a deer, which they bought since it was right by a game preserve. $3000 worth of damage to the car, yeah, it sucked.

 

That's about it for stupid car stuff... although the other night out cruising my friend Juan did an e-brake slide into the parking lot where we were all hanging out, right in front of the cop taht was at Wendy's next door gettin a burger. Told the cop hsi brakes locked up...

 

I did a right in front of mall security once in the Sable.. Told him my foot slipped off the clutch (It was an automatic) and he bought it.

 

 

 

:burnout: :burnout: :burnout:

[NumberOneStunner]

Spent $200 bucks on a new cluch kit for my 86 XT, yarded my motor (not easy), slapped the new clutch in, spent 3 hours putting the motor back in, sat in the drivers seat, patted myself on the back for doing such a good job in record time, looked for my keys and then found them in the passengers seat...right next to the throwout bearing...damn.

[crazyeric]

the only absolutely moronic thing i've done in my sube is once when i was delivering pizzas i was in a huge rush and forgot to put the 85 GL in park and when i got to the door to knock, i turn around just in time to see my beast rolling into the gentleman's garage...oh, that was fun.

[StormTrooper]

all hopped on adrenaline after hitting some crazy trails at hollister hills, I decided to jump right off of a huge ridge. there was nothing fancy or cool about the leap, I just accelerated tp about 30 mph, and went right off the edge. I then proceeded to stuff the front end into the ground so hard, that i smashed the skidplate into the oil pan, bending the pickup inside the pan, crumpling my unibody frame, so my fan got shredded to bits by the now instrusive kink, and set my steering rack askew..ahh still runs:headbang:

[divinicus]

One of the first things I did with my 83 Brat after driving it home to NYC from Tallahassee was go to Lowes and pick up some lumber. I loaded some long 4x4's through the rear window and one of them was touching the windshield. I hit a small pothole and shattered the glass. 

After a replacement tinted windshield and new gasket was beautifully installed by a glass shop, I thought I was out of the woods. But I parked in our carport which has had a heavy wooden sculpture hanging from the ceiling for over ten years. 

A big storm blew through and I woke up to find it had fallen onto the new windshield and shattered it. 

Gary Brant 

Edited April 22, 2019 by divinicus
Misspelling

[Scoby4wd]

In high school I had an 89 DL Coupe 2wd auto that had been rear ended badly and repaired poorly by me.  Since I only paid $50 for the car I used to beat it mercilessly.  

Once, I was pushing a train of shopping cars through a parking lot at high speed and rammed them hard into a dumpster.  Another time I was pushing a cart which somehow rolled and wedged under my right front fender ripping it out.  Another time I was rallying down a dirt construction road and hit a big ditch.  The floor board in the back dented up and we hit the cieling in the car we hit so hard.  When I hit the gas it wasnt moving, but then I looked down and it had popped into neutral.  I put it in D and off we went.  Eventlly the hub splines stripped out and I junked it, but the damn car ran great with only 78k miles.

[Checkerboard Comet]

Dumbest thing I did was take my roof racks off at a manual car wash station..........and forgot to put them back on before leaving. I didnt realize it until a couple days later.........uh oh.

But, I thought I should go back and hope for a miracle they were still there.

Luckily, they were still where I sat them down......days later.

What a lucky SOB I was, whew!

[Steptoe]

The local carwash DIY has weaker than hand soap engine degreaser and signs up saying no outside degreaser or buckets n sponges allowed. So I get the terrific "export" degreaser out across the road in a new commercial estate...start the degreaser pressure pack from top of bonnet underside, then top of firewall down, then engine.

Engine was running so I could quickly fly over to the carwash ( four lane road to cross first)

Next thing, the engine bay took to flame. Panic All of a sudden bloody bonet stick instead of struts or springs so it stayed up as I hopped into the Brumby and drove , leaning forward and down to see between dashpad and under the still up bonnet.

I just drive until I got to the carwash, coins at the ready on floor mat to turn on the water, but by the time I got there the flames had either blown out or burnt out. Lucky I didn't turn the carwash down!

The damage was the engine sensor wiring scorched and dizzy cap melted in like it had been microwaved but due to the EA81 running, the rotor kept its running form in shape.

Learner a lesson there...just take my own bucket and sponge along with degreaser after attendant hours

[1 Lucky Texan]

Felt really stupid just before a road trip once. I was checking the car over before hand; inflating tires, squeezing the window gussets,  checking fluid levels - GAH! how did this happen! the transmission is overfilled! I start getting tools out - then, maybe 30 seconds after I panicked I realized the auto trans must be checked while idling.

 

Not Subaru related but once I poured about a qt and a half of fresh oil thru my dad's truck - yep, forgot to put the drain plug back in. So, a few moments later I go to the house, get my parents attention at the back door; "Dad, we're gonna need some more oil. Mom, can you get oil outta this shirt?"

[scoobydube]

Bad things:  Installed Autozone front CV axles on my 4wd 86 GL10 with 465,000 miles.  Autozone sells you cheap Made in China CV joints without telling you.  O'Reilly sells a much higher grade and they are still purring.  The other thing was I bought hydraulic lifters from Rock Auto and half of them were already shot.  They hand picked the damaged NOS lifters and sent me them.  Which I thought was real considerate of them, and wasted a lot of my time.  

Good things:  On my GL10 exhaust manifold, I removed the heat shield between the passenger side exhaust port and the turbo flange.  This enabled me to get rid of the standard exhaust death rattle, and it allowed me to have the standard crack at the turbo flange, welded all around on both the outside and inside.  So it won't crack again.  Killed two birds with one stone.  Subaru does not make gl10 exhaust manifolds anymore so save your old cracked rattlely ones and repair them.

[idosubaru]

4 hours ago, scoobydube said:

Autozone sells you cheap Made in China CV joints without telling you.  O'Reilly sells a much higher grade and they are still purring. 

nah - they're all garbage. you just happened to get one bad one out of the box at AZ and one...*for now*...good one at OR, but your assumption about all of them universally from one experience is off.  this has been ongoing for decades, aftermarket axles are plain annoying.  buy a few over 5 years and put some miles on them and you'll have plenty of issues with both.  here are people with bad OR axle experiences, I'm sure there's plenty more:

 

Edited May 11, 2019 by idosubaru