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We've all done daft things when working on cars or machinery in the workshop, be it practical jokes, your own cock ups etc.
Share the best tales you have, with the incident which inspired this post to start us off.
At present I work for an Agricultural Contractor as an engineer of several disciplines.
Along with all the farm gear, the wagons and plant, we also get to look after the company vans, and it is one of these -a 51 registered Citroën Berlingo no less- which serves as the centre point for this tale.
It was deposited with us with the explanation that the back end broke loose when going round left hand corners, at speeds as low as 15-20mph, and the suggestion that maybe the anti roll bar had snapped.
The immediate checks that the tyres had air in them and the wheel nuts tight didn't shed a great deal of light on the matter, whilst the initial look at the rear beam with it sat on the lift confirmed my suspiscion that the anti roll bars were in fact perfectly fine.
The presence of a diesely substance down the right hand side of the van did however raise suspiscion, and came with the confirmation 'It's been a bit heavy on juice recently'.
A few days of wet weather and a diesel leak that had spread as far as the rear wheel confirmed the cause of the problem -a split in the pipe as it ran up the bulkhead- which we deemed to be best solved by replacing it with a length of rubber fuel hose.
Simple enough you might think, until one cuts the pipe and discovers the 5/16" i/d hose that has been carefully run in for the purpose is in fact too small to go over the 10mm pipe on the van, which if not for my thumb over the end would be in the process of siphoning the contents of the tank onto the floor.
No problem thinks I, and a shout accross the workshop to one of my workmates soon sees me equipped with an airline and a blow gun to banish the fuel back to the tank.
A couple of quick blasts followed by a reassuring few seconds of calm with no fuel running out is broken by a return of the stream of fuel.
Further quick thinking sees more air blasted up the pipe as I had obviously not given it enough to clear the pipe back into the tank unit, whilst the veritable jet of fuel now spraying back out of the pipe before I covered the end again leading to the dawning realisation that I had rather helpfully just inflated a relatively full diesel tank.
A quick assessment of the situation again called for me to shout for my workmate with the fairly urgent request that he remove the filler cap.
Dutifully obliging he shimmies up a set of steps, obtains the keys and proceeds to open the cap, to be met with -at least from what I saw under the van- a cloud of diesel emerging from the filler neck, followed by some spluttering and the age old war cry of 'ya dirty curse word', somewhat covered by the hysterical laughter of the others -including me- in the workshop who witnessed the incident, and eve the lad himself had a good laugh about it once he'd gotten cleaned up a bit.
Hopefully that translated onto the page fairly well rather than just becoming a 'you had to be there' moment.
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njw
Part of things
Posts: 226
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That reminded me of a while back when I disconnected a washing machine, the valve behind the machine was faulty so I turned off the main stopcock, disconnected the machine then asked my young workmate to check for leaks, whilst he was checking for leaks with his face inches from the pipework I proceeded to give the stopcock a quick turn on and off with the inevitable result of turning him into something resembling a wet spaniel. I couldn't drive when we got back in the van because I was laughing so much.
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Things we used to do...
Steal customers cannabis from their ashtrays. It wasn't like they were going to call the police.
Spin up bearings on the airline and fire them across the workshop at people. Sometimes they'd climb the wall and sit at the ceiling until they wound down.
In one car we found a load of rather dirty lesbian love letters. We photocopied them for ourselves as porn.
Arrisshole customers could receive a variety of wheezes;
An exhaust full of grease. Once the engine was hot it would smoke like it was ablaze, but by the time they'd driven it back it would all have burned off.
Fish inside the door cards.
Drain 3/4 of the oil out and leave it idling over lunch. 70,000 miles of wear in an hour.
Never entrust your pride and joy to someone you've just been rude to!
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Milk cartons filled with oxy-acetalyne , they make a rather loud bang .
welding a chain around a apprentice and the other end to his workplace to stop him wandering off every 7 minutes .
Fabricating a set of cowboys spurs and welding them around the workshop slapdash ' cowboys' workboots.
Making a template of a chimps foot and printing feet mark around everywhere he works .
Getting a grease tyre marker pen and colouring someones tyres in to a whitewall finish - its looks particulary awful on a cavalier .
Shooting rats with paintball guns.
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Taking the air filters out of the sales boys cars at their request, to make them a touch faster. Men were men back then.
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Workshop tomfoolery.Mercdan68
@forddan68
Club Retro Rides Member 68
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First job as a sixteen year old back in 1985
I was sent to the bakers for the lunch order
Along with some Strawberry muffdive cakes...and yes I asked for them without a clue!!!
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Fraud owners club member
1999 Jaguar s type
1993 ford escort
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I worked at a large NCB road transport depot at the start of the 80's, when any fitter hit 21 they were duly body slammed by our huge bodyshop guy & then sprayed Coal Board yellow (a whole gun full)
When anyone got married they where tied to a chair on the back of a pick-up & takes through the automatic lorry wash.
We had one massive fitter, his specialty was stretching the rubber seal from a Lucas 522 fuel filter (about 4 inch diameter for those who don't know & NOT very stretchy) over your head as far as he could, let me tell you it fookin hurts.
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BT
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,772
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We had a new lad start at our place who thought he was a bit of a know it all. We sent him to the stores for one of those weight kits, the one with the long weight in it.
Sure enough when he asked the store man for a weight kit with a long weight. The store man left the stores through the back exit and he stood there like a total plum for near on an hour. Only once it was explained to him in the most simplest of forms did he understand what had happened.
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There was a phone box in the street outside our showroom. When it was quiet wed phone it as people were walking past. Old folk were best, and would invariably answer. We'd pretend to be from BT investigating a fault and ask them to help us with out tests. We'd have old biddies standing on one leg with a phone book balanced on their head thinking they were helping the nice man from the GPO.
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njw
Part of things
Posts: 226
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This one isn't mine but was told to me by my father;
My Father was going to the shop during his break and asked his workmate if he wanted anything, his workmate said he wanted a pack of Benson and Hedges, as my father was leaving he asked 'what if they haven't got any Benson and Hedges?' His workmate said 'surprise me'. Anyway, as it transpired they didn't have any Benson and Hedges at the shop so my father bought him a pork pie.
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Workshop tomfoolery.Mercdan68
@forddan68
Club Retro Rides Member 68
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Working at Subaru/Isuzu dealers back in the late 80s
We had the sales director from another branch send us his son a student for work experience over the summer
Well this lad thought he was above us all
And daddy was the top man according to him
And he knew it all....but didn't have an ounce of common sense , we played a good few pranks on him
The one that sticks in my mind was sending him off to the local tip in the most rotten trade in we could find
A totally rotten beige mk2 escort estate
Me and my colleague Paul tied a very high stack of cardboard to the roof with string. It was about 5ft and not very secure with flimsy string
But off he went with us all watching out of the showroom
Ok it was a tad childish but we were p&ssing ourselves
He got about two miles away and drove past our boss Simon on his way in, who gave us a stern talking to, whilst p&ssing himself too!
Said 18 year old student returned about 15 minutes later minus most of the cardboard which had come off somehow!!
He never really spoke to us much after that and daddy wasn't best pleased when he heard.......my mate got the sack not long after and I left before daddy got a reason to fire me!
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Last Edit: Jul 6, 2017 5:30:46 GMT by Mercdan68
Fraud owners club member
1999 Jaguar s type
1993 ford escort
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One nice thing - obvious sh**boxes of no value that came in as trade ins would get sent to auction. We were allowed to pinch or swap bits off these, so my beloved mkII Astra estate over time sprouted GTE alloys, front bumper, bonnet, front seats etc. One of my mates turned his ford Escago 1.3 into a full on XR3i clone for free.
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Some good ones so far. Another short one from me... A lad I used to work with had a bad habit of dropping his guts next to you and wandering off, it was never what you'd call 'fresh' and often happened when you were under something and in the middle of a job in such a way as you couldn't walk away and wait for it to clear. It finally came back to bite him in the ass so to speak when I was giving him a hand getting the timing belt back onto a car with very little space between inner wing and timing cover, the make and model I forget. He was crouched in the wheel arch dealing with the crank pulley and tensioner whilst I was lucky enough to be up top -in fresh air- feeding it over the cams. Ten minutes of fighting meant that after his  erupted there was very little choice but for him to plug on in a cloud of his own stench contained within the arch until the belt was on and secure. He looked a bit pale when he came back out. |
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It wasn't unknown for a customer to drop off a sporty car in the morning and catch the bus home or onwards to work. They'd be minding their own business when their car full of grinning mechanics would come flying last them at warp 9. The workshop manager used to get so angry he'd lose the power of coherent speech and the words would tumble out in the wrong order. Wed then titter, and he'd turn beetroot with anger. My how we laughed when he finally had a heart attack and was carted off in the ambo.
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Where to start? after nearly 30 years in the trade ive seen a few.
I was 'got' early on, a tech hid round the corner from the back counter and heated a spark plug with the oxy acetylene, then dropped in on the counter and rung the bell for serving, "one of those " he says "part number is on it" and i picked it up. 5 melting fingers , lovely.
we've tied apprentices up in the back of pick ups and put them through car washes, tied them up in stillages and doused the stillage in brake cleaner and lit it while a mech did a "spiritual dance" around it. poor kid thought he was going to be sacrificed! Tied one to a pallet, jacked him up on a forklift and left him there for an hour or two.
We wrapped ones scooter in clingfilm and parcel tape and tried to send it by TNT , to heavy apparently lol
last one for now, on my 21st i was cable-tied to some railings and 5 litres of swarfega was poured down my pants and it my hair. then i was jet washed, but only my trousers, so by the time i got home my hair had set rock hard and my legs were red raw due to the grit in the swarfega not being washed away....
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Oh yes, holding the apprentice down, spraying their groin with wd40 and lighting it was a great gag. We used to wet ourselves laughing as they ran around the workshop desperately trying to extinguish their grollies.
I was an apprentice too once. However, at 6'5" and 270lbs the Fossils were strangely reluctant to include me in such jolly japes, and the much smaller and weedier apprentice used to cop double as a result!
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Workshop tomfoolery.Mercdan68
@forddan68
Club Retro Rides Member 68
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Aah the good old days
Would we have to do a "risk " assessment
Before carrying out any of the above nowadays😁
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Fraud owners club member
1999 Jaguar s type
1993 ford escort
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This all makes me glad I don't work in a workshop...
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I never got any of that, I was an apprentice under one mechanic at a building firm, he was a really grumpy curse word and when it dawned on him I was being trained as his replacement he went out of his way to make me quit, which I did before I lamped him. Still I learnt a lot, just no papers to back it up.
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Its all flooding back...
We used to use this giant rubber band to flick a spark plug at each other. Some bright spark had the idea of playing golf, and the workshop, showroom and valeting bay became a 9 "hole" course.
Anyone remember the "Mr Angry" premium phone line? The parts manager was a penis so we'd ring the line and then transfer the call to parts, and listen to him arguing with a recording for 15 minutes.
The aforementioned service manager was a cock. He had one of these Psion organiser things and his whole life was in it, until one of the lads reset it...
He was going away for the weekend one Friday and left a bag of his clothes in the office. Some wag poured a cup of petrol into the bag, carefully zipped it up and ran. He was in a spectacularly bad mood the following Monday. I think that was the week he had a coronary.
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