Thread: Talk about your all-time bonehead moves

Anyone have any personal SR20DE/SR20VE stories?? Here's mine:

When I swapped cams in my DE, I put in new spark plugs since it's easier to access them with the valve cover off. But I just realized that: I DIDN'T TIGHTEN THEM! I probably loosely screwed them in by hand, meant to tighten them properly but then got distracted. :SMACKS FOREHEAD 100x:

Meaning, when the motor was idling and you pressed a finger down on the top of a spark plug wire, there was a serious vibration (I can only assume the spark plug vibrating in the cylinder) My car has been running like shit lately, felt low on power and has all the bolt-ons for your average DE. The spark plugs were probably ok hand tightened for awhile but slowly vibrated loose.

I just pulled the wires, got a new set of plugs and tightened them down very very snug. What a world of difference pulls so much stronger.

Moral of the story: don't overlook the small things when you're doing big jobs.

installed my n1 cams in mah vvl... in the process of running up the cam bolts by hand, my ex called and we had convo for about 30mins. got off the phone, threw on the valve cover start up was fine. drove her to that open stretch of road, floored it... bent 4exh valves, camdowel in the oil pan motor was fine.

back in the day just before tunercode, when 9krpm limits werent possible, dynoing my n14, at the end of the run threw the car into neutral and didnt take my foot off the gas... next dyno run, car was down 20whp... nex day, bearings gave. blew out 2mains and all rods.

relocating my battery to the back, installed the +ve lead perfect. spent a bunch of time on that aspect. connected a ground to the seatbelt location in the back. drove her around for 2weeks wondering why the hell the car wouldnt restart when the car was warm. bought more +ve wire. beefed it up and still the problem existed. lo and behold one night the car wouldnt start atall. +ve read great. no fucking continuity at ground. the seatbelt bolt wasnt tightened... fuck!

yeah girls can be distracting that's for sure.. when i took my N1 cams out and put the stockers back in i got distracted and didn't tighten the cam caps all the way so it was making some ticking noise, i was like FAWK!! but discovered the problem pretty quick an corrected it lol.

since then i've also accidentally shifted into 2nd from 3rd, caught that pretty quick too, did a comp test after that but still had 240 on all 4 cylinders, phew!

i'm sure there's plenty more where that came from.

Didn't bleed the hla`s durring my last rebuid.
Tossed 2 rockers and broke a bunch of shims on first start

Worst part is i told him to bleed the fuckers hahaha oh well shit happens, atleast it wasn't anything major and you had backups.

I was nervous as hell during my first start one time and put the plug wires in with no plugs...cranked her over and blew the plug wires out of the holes...pop, pop, pop...lmao.

Had a friend leave a ratchet on his crank one time and tore his water pump up when he fired it up.

Taught I was a badass going up a hill hauling in 3rd gear almost redlining shifted into 2nd my engine was not so good afterwards lol

When I had my 1st B13 I painted and installed my B14 wheels. Tightened all but one wheel couldn't tiger it out for days until when I turned the wheel felt like it was going to fall off. Luckily I fought it in time...


1st time I installed a fly/clutch(in a 240sx) I didn't torque it down, drove for about a day or so (shit started to get loose and loud) thought it was rod knock. Car sat for a few days then I pulled the.motor/tranny and when I seperated the two I found out I forgot or didn't know to torque the flywheel. Was super excited and put her back together.

was doing a timing belt on a ej22 recently and the tensioner was toast (figured that out later) any how had the belt on an off a bunch an ended up leaving the socket wrench on the crank pully lol, good thing when the engine turned over the ratchet was set to the opposite direction so it just match a super fast ratcheting sound then fell off lol, whoops!

Haha, its so often the females that can distract us....