Dumbest thing you ever did to your Opel

[The Scifi Guy]

Time for some light-hearted banter.

What's the dumbest thing you've ever done to, for, or because of your Opel?

I'll start off:

I once spent weeks with a milling machine carving out a block of aluminum for a cold air intake adapter for my GT's Weber. I flowed it and filed it and polished it to a high luster.

Then I tried putting it on the car.

I made the inlet for the cold air ducting too small to attach the ducting to it. So small, in fact, that it flowed less air than the barrels in the carb. I also made it too tall and couldn't close the hood without it hitting. It was such an unsalvagable cock-up that it went straight in the recyclables bin.

[sawdust]

nope, I can't top that.

[wrench459 (R.I.P.)]

Time for some light-hearted banter.

What's the dumbest thing you've ever done to, for, or because of your Opel.

You've got to be kiddin me.
I've made sooooo many, it's hard to pick the dumbest.

[G.v.Mainberg]

nope, I can't top that.

I can.

I once sold one. Bummer :banghead:

Dieter

[The Scifi Guy]

I once sold one. Bummer

Ditto. I feel your pain. The cobra car?

[wrench459 (R.I.P.)]

One

Two

[DennisGardiner]

Yikes!!! To many too count. Going back to my teen days:
1. Cheaping out on the underhood paint-not getting the sealer. What a mess after the first car wash!
2. Listening to my muscle car friends on what parts to buy for the Opel. Big mistake.
3. Listening to my parents how to rebuild an engine. Huge mistake! Oh,...it ran but with 2 quarts of 75w90 in the oil pan and I still had no oil pressure at idle. "Thanks Dad for the "Shimming the crank bearing idea",...NOT!
4. Pretending that the Manta was a Dukes of Hazard car-jumping it high in the air repeatedly. "Yeah-I know some of you guys did the exact same thing!!"
5. Doing a smokey burn out at the gas station, between the pumps, at the station I worked at, getting fired and rehired all in the same 24hrs.
6. Out running the local cops at 2AM in the morming at 120 mph.
7. Getting pulled over on the way to church-actually pulled over sk he could catch up. It happened in broad day light. After
Getting the ticket (signed and in hand) for 85 in a 45, the cop asks, "By the way, I was doing 100 and you were still pulling away. How fast were you going?" Ummm,....
8. Spinning out in my Manta (rain slicked night) getting the girl friend home before curfew! Should just have been 5 minutes late!! {Must remember to cut my kid slack when he gets old enouh too drive.}
9. Following my 4X4 buddies into a mud bogged field with the Manta. Luckily I did not get stuck!
AND,...the number One Reason for being Stupid and a Teen with an Opel!
10. Driving to get Pizza while buzzed!

Thank God teenagers grow out of their stupidity. Now what was that about, "What comes around goes around?"

[ken2]

Well, this would have been stupid regardless of the make of the car, but I will blame it on being a teenager, also. My GT was down about 3/4 quart of oil, so I stopped at the local gas station and bought a quart. My battery was a little weak, also, so I didn't want to shut the engine off. Go ahead and try to put oil in the GT with the engine running and see where the oil ends up(idle at about 1500 so it wouldn't stall)...all over the windshield and on the roof. And, if that wasn't stupid enough, when I got home and started wiping up the oil with a rag, I noticed something. Boy, the oil sure makes the old faded black paint on this thing really shine. Oh, yeah...I wiped down the WHOLE car with that rag. It didn't stay real shiny for long.

NEXT:

[Ooooner]

Drove through a corn field with my first GT! And it wasn't an accident!

[yellaopelgt]

One of my very first GT's had been sitting in my parents yard for a year or so while I "gradually" worked on it. Eventually, pops said he was getting tired of mowing around it so I decided to have my wife at the time tow me home(25 miles) with our Plymouth Reliant. We had gotten about 3 miles down the road when I saw a tire go flying off into a corn field and I heard the WORST grinding sound I had ever heard in my life. I then realized that at some point I had the rear tire off for some reason and had forgotten to tighten the lug nuts. Well....she kept driving along pulling me and I was waving my arms and shouting at her to stop(horn didnt work and not much for brakes) I could see her in the car singing to some tune on the radio and having a good ol time while I was frantically trying to get her attention. We went on like this for over a mile until she decided to finally look in the rear view mirror and see how I was doing.I had a very nice flat spot on the rear drum but was lucky enough to be able to retrieve the tire and put it back on. Made it home eventually....we didnt talk for days.

[lowkey]

I was working as a mechanic in a Mobil Station...

And this nice guy and his wife brought in an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser in.

A 1976 Vista Cruiser.

It ran rough, and it didn't always shut off when you shut it off.

I took off the carb, put it in the tank, and ordered an Ignition Switch.

*Picture an Oldsmobile engine intake, no throttle body, and a fuel line, rude fuel injection.*

So I put in the ignition switch, checked it, and just bumped the start position to check it.

Barrrrrrrrrumph.

It started.

Turned off the ignition, and as it turned out, the ignition switch was not why, the engine would not shut off when you turned off the ignition switch.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS!

Four Barrel manifold, fuel line dumping straight into it. Oldsmobile engine doing nine thousand RPM.

I was gonna reach in and pull the power to the coil, when I remembered that the plug wires were lousy.

That's when it burst into flame.

Now we gotta Oldsmobile engine doing nine thousand RPM, and on fire.

In a garage full of Flammable stuff.

One of the other mechanics shut the engine down with fire extinguisher down the intake.

Thank whoever for Insurance, but I didn't get fired for that one.

[Vanjoe]

Bought the FIRST one........ :banghead:

[rocknroll]

My dad drove his 72 GT from New Jersey down to Florida at top speed the entire time

[I-Hoard_Cars]

Bought the FIRST one........ :banghead:

Agreed... now i need more!!

[jlthunder]

Last year I was getting a case of beer for our "Wake up your Opel from their winters nap" gathering. As I entered the beer distributer(remember, we are in PA now), and elderly man with Florida Plates decides to back up his Kia SUV right into my front fender.

Back in the '80s I was heading back to NC from PA. While in VA I merged for someone coming onto I-95 and then realized that was my exit. I took the exit from the passing lane. The car slid and the rear end hit the guard rail where it attaches to the ground and it lifted the GT up onto the guard rail. I was a real life slot car. It popped off the guard rail, and I limped it to the shoulder. Damage: Flat tire and a bent rod from the bar from the axle to the body(not panhard rod, the other one). The donut and mounts on the torque tube were toast and a little damage to the body, just behind the wheel.

Good thing the spare tire was thinner than the tires on the car as the entire axle shifted due to the bent rod. Drove it the rest of the way to NC with no problems. The GT was injured, but not down!!

[kwschumm]

In 1977 Phoenix I was coming home my job at 2AM one morning. It was lightly raining. It rains so rarely in Phoenix that when it does the water and oil build up combine to make the roads very slick. Anyway, the GT was running great and the lack of traffic inspired me to drive like a racer. Coming off the freeway, green light at the first intersection, left turn, slick roads and massive oversteer and the next thing I knew the front of the car was wrapped around a median light pole. Whoops. Paid for that little lapse in judgement with a few months wages and higher insurance for a few years. Other than that it was a fun drive home.

[The Scifi Guy]

MAN, you guys play rough! I never crashed an Opel.

On several occasions in the past my town would get isolated like an island when a storm-of-the-decade would hit and all the roads out of town would be under 2-3 feet of water. My town is a solid grid of streets and there's dozens of "roads out of town" because EVERY road is a road out of town. The town sits on a hill and it's surrounded by water.

So I'm stuck in traffic, trying to get out of town. Why? Because that's what you do when there's a natural disaster: Hop in your car and drive around. So I'm stuck in traffic and I see down a side street that it only has water about one foot deep. Down the street I go in Ole Yeller, the GT at the bottom of this post. Ever so slowly, over several blocks, the water gets deeper.....and deeper........and DEEPER. Eventually the water was level with the top of the doors. Flat fans of water are blasting into the car through the edges of the doors. A 3" thick smooth flow of water is riding up the hood, over the windshield, and down the back of the car. I could look through the windshield like it was a fish tank and I could see my headlights completely under water sending their beams of light through the murky depths like the GT was Alvin the famous deep sea submersible exploring the Marianas Trench.

Somehow the engine stayed running for 4-5 blocks of that and I eventually emerged from the sea. Two days later I had a dead battery. It happened several times again after that and each time I had a dead battery two days later.

[david the opel king]

change the oil and forgot to put new oil back in dead motor

[wrench459 (R.I.P.)]

Number three
Shimming the relief valve too high and blowing the oil filter apart.

Number four
Improper torquing of the flywheel bolts.

Number five
Playing around on a dirt road and finding a large orange tree limb to crash into...

Number six
Involves a stop sign.....

Number seven
Installing the rear main seal sdrawkcaB

[m610]

We sent our first driver (had never been in the car) out on track for practice at our first race, with all four wheels loose. I had worked until 6:30 AM the day before finishing the electrical for our first race, got almost two hours sleep, then packed up and hauled to the track, got six hours sleep, and was up before sunrise the next day. I had completely forgotten that we tightened the lug nuts only enough to get the car on the trailer.

Our driver came in a few laps asking if the clunk-clunk sound was normal. I just told him to stay in the car and went around and torqued everything, then sent him back out with no discussion of the matter. He confirmed that the car handled better with the lug nuts tight.

Tell me you never forgot to tighten your lug nuts.