Boner Move Club

[Steve_Mack_CT]

On occasion we all do stupid things.  Last weekend we put 75 miles on the A roadster, two cemetery stops to place flags for my wife's family.  All good, except for the stunt I pulled in getting something out of the rumbleseat area.  Lazy, climbed up wrong side of the car, not fender with the step plate, an unintentionally shifted my weight onto the fender,  denting it nicely.   Now, fender needs some minor work anyway but still frustrating.   

 

Anyone else make such a mistake on occasion?  

[Paul Dobbin]

It's a car in use, Stuff Happens.  If you fix the fender and quit driving it, that would be a real Boner Move.

"fender needs some minor work anyway but still frustrating"  Use this as a good reason to take care of both.

Yes, I can show you goofball nicks in all my cars, but that's life in the real world of cars.

 

[46 woodie]

Steve, you are driving your car, having a good time. At least the car is not sitting in a garage waiting for the next car show. Dents and dings are a fact of life for those of us who actually drive our cars. Life is too short to worry about such things. Have fun with your car, I'm sure you earned it.

[victorialynn2]

31 minutes ago, Steve_Mack_CT said:

Anyone else make such a mistake on occasion?  

I won't embarrase myself and say how many times. 

No one was hurt, that's all the matters. I thought you were going to say you slipped and hurt yourself. 

[Steve_Mack_CT]

Ha, I should have jumped back I guess!

[Brass is Best]

Don't be too hard on yourself. As my Grandfather would say "If man made it we can fix it. If God made it we will pray for it". Fix your Model A and keep enjoying it. I had a wonderful 1932 Ford Roadster Hot Rod a few years ago. I drove it everywhere just about 30,000 miles in 7 years. At gas stations somebody would always have to talk about the car. More than once I found myself driving back in search of my gas cap. Everybody pulls a boner move once in awhile.

[victorialynn2]

By the way Steve, I hauled an A from Tx to Or. I had the car loaded the wrong way. The headliner started lifting after going through the desert. 

 

It wasn't real bad and I could argue that I didn't know any better and had to haul it quickly and without much assistance, (with zero towing experience), but I definately felt like you describe. I quickly got over it and I hope you do too. 

[Steve_Mack_CT]

 Yep, over it but wanted to share anyway.   Small mistake compared to swapping my 56 chevy (restored, not a bad job) for a real POS corvette years ago, but that's a whole other story... 

[oily rag]

Don't feel to bad, I had driven my 1969 Dodge through some tall grass and hit a a short tree stump.

And of coarse, I remembered cutting the tree down when the car suddenly stopped.

Yup, 3 MPH is enough to do a number on a bumper. 

[caddyshack]

We have all had our good and bad moments. My lapse of good judgement was putting 10 gallons of ethanol gas in my '62 vette a few years ago. Beer does alter your thought process. The rubber in the fuel pump turned to mush and what was left in the gas tank found its way across the attached garage floor and into my basement. Lucky the water heater pilot didn't blow the place up. Every rubber item from the carb to the gas tank had to be replaced and the basement took six months to get rid of the smell of gas. Lesson learned.

[motoringicons]

If you haven't made a "boner" move, you probably haven't worked on old cars.....

 

 

[Mark Simmons]

Victorialynn2 reminded me of bringing the '34 Buick that my younger son and I had just bought to his house. We paid for the car and loaded it on to our trailer. My son was in the chase car just in case anything bad happened. About a mile down the highway he called me and said it was snowing on him. I quick looked in the mirrors on my truck to see the top insert on the Buick had come loose and the liner was blowing apart in the wind. I pulled over and he and I finished removing the top insert as people drove past shaking their heads. Fortunately none of them were Highway Patrol Officers. Age doesn't always make us smarter and sometimes experience doesn't either.  

[Pilgrim65]

Was keeping my  slip up quiet , but as I saw this post , thought I'd come clean.

Cyprus where I live for much of the year , we have tankered water , I have a 10 tonne in ground tank adjacent house.

when I bought my 53 Buick convertible I had a carport built to keep it dry and out of sun . The water tank had a cast iron cover , but as I had a back operation 18 months ago and cannot lift anything to heavy., I change cover to aluminium.

the tank was central in the finished carport and I had used most weeks with no problem as wheelbase on Buick straddled lid easily.

I had always let passengers out before entering carport 

however last Saturday night on returning from a meal out with wife , I forgot about tank lid and drove into carport off centre so my wife  would have space to exit .Plonker!

youve already guessed it, front wheel demolished my lightweight cover and dropped  into tank , chassis stopped car , but was unable to reverse out . car was badly tilting, but managed to get jack onto front bumper , raised car and put timber under wheel , but couldn't lower jack , so needed neighbours professional jack under chassis to take weight off bumper jack , which thankfully worked .

lowered car and reversed out ! 

Feel a wally and think it warrants membership of the club!

I have had to reinstate cast iron cover ?

But thankfully no damage apart from scuffs on underside.

cheers

pilgrim

Edited June 2, 2017 by Pilgrim65 (see edit history)

[Pete O]

I don't understand how the fender on the non-step plate side would have dented from just your weight.   That fender is the same gauge steel as the one on the other side with the step plate, and that one supports human body weight without denting.   Maybe that fender was knocked and repaired some time in the past, and you just opened an old wound.

[F&J]

A paintless dent guy can fix it with zero damage to the paint in "most cases".

 

.

[Vila]

We all do things we should not have done. 

How many of us have restored a car and dropped the part we were installing, which then scratched the new paint job before we ever got the car out of the garage the first time.

Me for one.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2017 by Vila (see edit history)

[46 woodie]

It would be nice F&J, if a painless guy could fix it, but the modern car junk they work with is about 24 gauge. As Pete said the Model A fender is 19 gauge and a LOT tougher.

[Restorer32]

Jumped in the truck (Dodge Ram with a topper, limited visibility to the rear) preparing to take off on some urgent mission. Backed across our parking area right into a customer's car that we had literrally finished restoring the day before. Cost us a replacement fender and grill plus the labor to re-restore those parts of the car. In my defense an employee had parked the car where it should not have been.

[Steve_Mack_CT]

Oh, I feel for anyone whose had something to really complain about, Caddyshack would be excused if maybe a four letter word or two let loose... yeah, I was surprised also but I think I got it just right.  Frank I have used PDR on newer cars with amazing results. They even fixed a couple of inside out dents on trunk lid of our SL, a very flat surface, with pretty good results.  I have probably done worse but need to think about it a bit more...

[1937hd45]

Add a step plate  to the drivers side, problem solved. Bob

[Rusty_OToole]

The man that never made a mistake never made nothing.

[John348]

If you do nothing you can never do nothing wrong!

[Bill Stoneberg]

I jumped in my truck at my bosses house, put it in reverse and promptly backed over his new Corvette he had parked behind me.  didn't even see it.  Luckily it was the end of summer and I had to go back to school.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Bill Stoneberg (see edit history)

[Restorer32]

On 6/2/2017 at 6:45 PM, Steve_Mack_CT said:

Oh, I feel for anyone whose had something to really complain about, Caddyshack would be excused if maybe a four letter word or two let loose... yeah, I was surprised also but I think I got it just right.  Frank I have used PDR on newer cars with amazing results. They even fixed a couple of inside out dents on trunk lid of our SL, a very flat surface, with pretty good results.  I have probably done worse but need to think about it a bit more...

 

We had three grocery cart dents removed from the rear quarter of a '59 Cadillac Conv. using our ;local PDR guy. I was skeptical to the point of betting our painter who suggested we try it $20 that the PDR guy could not make the dents invisible. I lost.