James Sweet wrote:
all she needs is doing one preventive maintence job that turns a
working whatever into a non functional disaster that costs a fortune
to fix.

i rather imagine most of us have been thru one of those.



Oh it happens to the best of us, it's why contractors are bonded. I once
went to replace the distributor on a car, somehow managed to drop a socket
down into the timing belt cover while trying to locate TDC, and then broke
the timing belt in the process of getting that out. Thankfully it turned out
to be a non-interference engine so no major damage was done. On top of all
that, the car happened to belong to my boss, and I was working on it in the
back parking lot at work. A 20 minute job turned into 3 days of early
mornings and late evenings since so much had to come apart to fix the stupid
thing. In the end though no real harm was done and it was a learning
experience to say the least. Some would give up after that, but being a true
DIYer I climbed back in the saddle and haven't made that same mistake again.
For every time I break something and make a job 10x what it should have
been, I save a fortune on a dozen other projects by doing them myself and I
can provide advice to others to prevent them from doing what I did.

When I was a kid I watched my dad hit a water pipe with a Sawzall while
putting in a light fixture, oops! Always take great care to cut a small hole
first so you can see whats in there.


This could turn into a whole new thread of major f*ckups that we learned
from....

(One of) mine was when replacing the clutch on the family car--along
with my older brother--when we were 14 and 17 respectively. I put the
first bolt in the pressure plate, 'bumped' the starter in order to pull
the engine around to access the rest...

....and forgot to pull the coil wire. BAM! Engine fired up (briefly)
and trashed the new pressure plate. Luckily no other damage or injury
resulted.

jak