Whoops!!

[bombsquad83]

So I got home from some shopping tonight with some washer fluid since my car needed some.  Asked the wife to put it on the shelf and went to put a sprinkler in the yard.  Came back and grabbed what I thought was the purple washer fluid off the garage floor and started to fill my reservoir.  "This smells a bit odd for washer fluid", I thought.  Looked at the bottle...it was heavy degreaser which was the same shade of purple.  DOH!  After filling the reservoir the rest of the way with water and siphoning it out as much as possible about 5 or 6 times, I filled it with water and pumped it dry with the washers.  Rinsed off the car and wiped it down to get off the degreaser and refilled with the actual washer fluid.  What a pain!  Hopefully this won't do any damage to my windshield washer system or anything else. 

Anyone have any other examples of a little "Whoops!!" like this one in the garage?

[Precisi0n]

LOL!!!

I frequently listen to Car Talk on NPR.  A few months ago there was a guy who called in because he mistook his brake fluid reservoir for the washer fluid reservoir and proceeded to top it off with washer fluid and then went for a drive...

Could have been worse!  Good thing you caught your mistake before you were in a position where you needed to clean you windshield! 

[jestercinti]

I have heard of people putting gas in diesel cars. That's an expensive mistake.

[manofthefield]

I have heard of people putting gas in diesel cars. That's an expensive mistake.

My sister did the opposite; she only made it a few miles down the road.  IIRC, a few days or weeks later the catalytic converter failed

[Big Rich]

This happened a couple months ago:

I was using a cut off wheel in an angle grinder this morning and thought I had all the correct PPE: eye protection, ear plugs, no gloves, etc. What I learned however, was that the flannel I was wearing is not resistant to sparks at all. Smelled something burning then realized my chest was getting very warm, very fast.

[Big Rich]

Got another one. I've been working on a Trail 90 for a coworker and have had constant problems with the thing. He bought a brand new 6v battery for it but no charger. I mentioned a charger actually was needed and he said "do what you can - I'll get a charger later". After draining that battery to nothing and him replacing it (one of those "I told you so" moments), I got the bike to run for a little bit.

After shutting it off for a while as I looked in the service manual, I turned the ignition switch and nothing - no lights, spark, nada. Figured "to heck with it" and went in the house for about a half hour. After going back out to the garage I noticed immediately the smell of something burning........ turns out the reg/rect was in the process of cooking the wires around it.

What did I learn? An electrical fire under the gas tank in a full garage should be avoided at all costs. And my coworker needs to learn how to work on his own bike.........

[mcgimp]

I put bike on center stand on slight upward slope. Not steep enough to roll back off the stand but I must have been quite a sight getting it back down on two wheels.

[jestercinti]

Back in the 80s, my dad and I were working on a 1981 Chevy Citation X-Body.  I remember the transmission fluid was jet black.  We drained the fluid, and realized that it took much more fluid than we had on hand in the garage.

The smart thing would have been to call up someone to take us to the parts store to buy more.  Instead, we took the car to buy more.  3 months later, the transmission died with catastrophic failure.

$500 idiot fee later, we had a 1987 transmission in the car that lasted another 8 years.