Here Are All Of The Worst Things Jalopnik Readers Have Done To Their Cars

We all do dumb things sometimes. It's okay to admit it. Earlier this week we asked our readers to tell us all about the worst thing they ever did to their car. Some of these responses are downright heartbreaking, so buckle up for a little bit of automotive sadness. If you have your own story that you'd like to tell to commiserate, you can drop your own worst thing in the comments below.

Definitely the worst thing I've done, definitely the most inconvenience caused over the longest time – I shaved my door handles. Buckle up.

This 1984 Audi 4000S Quattro was my second car, just as I was figuring out that I was a car person. I've always been naturally predisposed to taking things apart and making things my own, and I got my feet wet early on with car stereos and lighting, all the easy stuff. During my tenure with this poor Audi though, my ambitions and confidence grew and I struck out for bigger things. I had a vision, however juvenile, and a big bucket of bondo.

Largely, I think I did a great job. I stripped the doors down, mounted solenoids and created linkages, wired everything to a receiver for a fancy key fob, and put an emergency mechanical rear door release in the trunk. I may have done slightly less great a job on the bodywork, I simply pulled the door handles off and filled the handle recesses with lots and lots of filler. But I did a decent job shaping and sanding and I think it would have looked decent enough if I ever got around to painting it beyond a few masked off rectangles of primer.

Style aside (it looked SO rad), this is where the wins sort of tapered off. Everything worked well for a while, but soon enough the click-to-pop feature ceased to function. Decades later I honestly can't remember what failed, but my method of entry ended up being the manual trunk release more often than not. The convoluted route of the release cable made it challenging to pull and the knob on the end eventually broke leaving only a steel end with a few bends. That's when I started carrying the crowbar, which would hook onto the cable end and give me enough purchase to yank it hard enough to operate. In the spring and summer I'd just leave the window down enough to reach in and open the door, but in the cold, snow, and rain, it was the whole process. I'd have to use the physical key to unlock and pop the trunk, grab the crowbar and use it to pull the release cable, open the driver side rear door and reach up to the front door to pull the handle from the inside. I did this for YEARS. I also cannot for my life remember why I didn't just fix the door poppers.

I've done a lot of questionable or just plain terrible things to my cars over the years, both driving and with a wrench, but this was the one that probably caused me the most collective aggravation. And I have no regrets.

Suggested by icrashbikes

1. I have cleaned our old family owned mitsubishi with what turned out to be an aggressive oven cleaner.

2. Wanted to impress a friend and show how fast my "new" BMW is. It was freezing cold, I started it and made a 0-100 kmh pull within the first few seconds in a 30.

3. When I married, I sold the small relatively new economic car my wife owned for a rusty engine swapped E30 with no ABS, airbags whatsoever.

This is 15-20 years ago and my stupidity humbles me to this day. It also absolutely does not describe the person I am today.

Suggested by Eugene

I'm going to play fast and loose with the term "car" and read it as "conveyance".

I pulled the deck of a Kubota ZD1211 mower to do maintenance. When I put it back on the split shaft between the PTO and the deck gearbox didn't want to slide together very well. Assuming it was just slight alignment issue I gave it a couple smacks with a mallet and it slipped back on.

When I rode off on the thing the vibration was horrible. I assumed it was something wrong with the gearbox, which had been rebuilt by a local shop. This was just one more of a string of problems with the shop that I won't get into, so I ran with it.

Long story short, I learned that u-joint phasing was a thing. The "alignment issue" with the shaft was the fact that there was a tiny weld bead nestled between the ends of two adjacent splines being used as a spline key and I'd popped it off with the mallet smacks. I completely destroyed the PTO clutch pack in the trans/hydro unit. Twas a $4000 lesson, and embarrassingly recent. And looking back, I think I probably was responsible for the transmission of at least one other vehicle about 15 years ago for the same reason.

Suggested by Harmon20

In high school, my ride was a '60 Chevy El Camino that my Dad and I built. It had a Rochester Q-Jet carb on it that was giving me trouble, so I bought a Carter AFB to replace it.

I bolted it on, tightened the fuel lines, and headed out. Didn't check for leaks.

On the way home, with my girlfriend and best friend in tow, they started complaining about smelling gas. I insisted it was just some spilled fuel from the carb change.

It got so bad, my buddy rolled the window down in the dead of winter and hung his head out, just to be able to breathe.

I declared them both wimps and soldiered on. After I dropped them off, I pulled over into a parking lot and popped the hood.

Gasoline was RUNNING off the underside of the hood. The hood pad was SOAKED. A fuel line had split and absolutely hosed the entire engine bay. It was a miracle it didn't burn to the ground.

That car loved me...

Suggested by Anthony Thornton

Despite many, many, many warnings from my dad, I ran out of gas in my first car, an Oldsmobile Cutlass Brougham diesel engine. Never did get it to run right after that, eventually donated it to one of those Cars for Kidney charities.

Suggested by Artificial Stupidity

Over the course of a year, I lovingly turned this $500 truck from a broken down lawn ornament covered in hay and chicken shit, into an utterly reliable work and play machine capable of 1000 mile road trips, drive-in-movie dates, fire department wildland fire support, and of course, sweet jumps.

And then, in my utter stupidity, I sold it, under the promise that I could buy it back at a later date. It was immediately traded for a large amount of narcotics, and I never saw it again.

It deserved so much better.

Suggested by H4llelujah

LOL – I literally forgot to tighten my lug bolts *yesterday*. I am in the midst of a major service on my 128i, so had all the wheels off to change the brake fluid having just done an oil and coolant change. Put them back on, got the car down off the Quickjack, was about to go get the torque wrench when my neighbor came over and distracted me for 20 minutes. Completely forgetting about the lug bolts, I jumped in the car to go for a spin and check the oil level (modern BMWs...). Got to the end of my neighborhood and went DOH! Drove very gingerly back home and tightened them up, no harm, no foul. I blame advancing middle age. At this point I spend half my wrenching time trying to find the tool I JUST HAD IN MY HAND.

Suggested by Kevin Rhodes

When I started college, I bought a 1987 Pontiac Sunbird with a five speed (I was poor)... And did not yet know how to drive a five speed well. Went to pass someone by dropping from 5th to 3rd and... Hit 1st around 50 mph. Amazingly, it didn't grenade right there, but the next time I started it, I learned what rod knock sounds like.

Suggested by Midlife Miata Driver

I put poly engine mounts in my beat-up VW Rabbit when the old rubber ones needed replacement. My mechanic buddy warned me as I jacked up the car to do the job that I was going to regret it.

He was right, as the little shitbox buzzed like cheap motel Magic Fingers. And not in a good way. The resulting vibrating resonance first shook loose all the rust, then half the fasteners, out of the car.

Suggested by jrhmobile

Drove it in Michigan, in winter. Forgot to wash it for a couple of weeks. It pretty much dissolved. Bye-bye Neon.

Suggested by Skeffles

Installed a lowering kit on my Acura. The benefits weren't nearly worth the headaches that came with it.

Suggested by Stephen

I wanted some Halo's that change color on the Evo and bought a kit from a reputable brand. Lasted about a year or so, was fun. Well for some reason one day the unit that controlled the lights were staying on an d instead of me disconnecting it, I just drove the car like a Dumba$$, I get to the gas station and the car starts dying. I finally get it going and start to head home and the car's electronics start going haywire, I can still drive, but everything's flashing. The positive wire for the unit that was connected to fuse box was smoking...come to find out, I needed a whole new engine wiring harness that was going to be $5K. As luck would have it, my insurance decided to cover the damage (I think because the car should have blown the fuse to protect itself, but didn't). So I got new fuses, and new wiring, and lesson learned =).

Suggested by Darthspartan117

The year was 2005, I had a full head of hair and a 1996 Honda Prelude. I did an oil change the weekend before getting the car ready to drive up to the mountains to go hiking with a group of friends, one of which was a girl I was quite fond of. On my way to pick her up I was experiencing some car issues. I stopped by a friend's house where my car died and I rolled downhill and parked in his driveway.

I forgot to put the oil cap back on and the engine seized up.

Suggested by finalformminivan

I allowed 'the friend of a friend' to so a front end alignment on my '83 Escort (as if that car didn't have enough issues....)

Apparently this alignment was done 'by eye' and the resulting 'alignment' made the car ride even worse, and the car chewed through a set of new Goodyears in about 5000 miles.

When i finally got the car aligned by a professional he told me that the 'friend of a friend' must have been reading his Chilton's manual upside-down.

Suggested by Earthbound Misfit I

Not my car, but I helped my then-girlfriend (now wife, somehow) change the tire on her Prius when she got a flat. I didn't do it on a flat surface and also apparently over-tightened the lug nuts. She drove a mile back to her house afterwards and the wheel got off balance, and when I went to fix it in her driveway, it was too late. Had to have it towed first to her mechanic, who couldn't fix it, and then to the dealer. I don't remember what exactly they had to do to get that wheel off and fix it, but I remember It cost me almost $2k.

Suggested by SamMcCrawfish