Some people really are clueless

[Waynedance]

Had a chap call up today asking if we could take a look at his sons car which he got a few days ago. He said the car was smoking badly after pulling off from the lights etc.

caller "previous owner said he had a new turbo, do you think its faulty?"

me "No, it would smoke under load if turbo seals gone. Have you lost any coolant or oil etc"

caller "No all levels ok and not lost anything, only smokes after stopping at lights and then pulling off, get lots of smoke".

me "would have to book in to get checked over, you said you checked the oil level and all ok, not lost any"

caller "no all good, in fact its got plenty of oil in it its over the max mark"

me "how much over the max mark"

caller "loads over the max mark"

me "well there's you problem, do not drive the car until you take some oil out, can do just as much damage by having too much oil as not having enough"

caller "how do i do that, undo the sump plug?"

me "yes, if you get stuck get the car to a garage"

caller "thanks for your help"

[Father Ted]

True story.
A friend on another forum had an identical car to a neighbour.
The neighbour asked to borrow the dipstick as their dipstick wasn't long enough to reach the oil!

[jimboelliott]

Watching the World Cup,for the last few weeks. The wife’s auntie, who lives with us, said he’s already been on, when the name Hublot came on the extra time board. Mind you she is 91.

[ThomasG]

Tell me more...
The sheer number of times that I was called out for a "fault" (I'm a sparks) and it was that switch on the socket, or spur or even plug out of socket..
World is full of morons.

[4x4]

A friend of my father asked where to top up the oil in his Bedford CA van. Father showed him how to open the bonnet and where the oil went. Next day the friend was complaining that the van took 3 gallons of oil and it still wasn't full and what should he do!!! Yes he filled the engine with 3 gallons of oil and there was still no visible sight of oil when je looked into the filler neck on the rocker cover. Luckily he never started the engine but I had the job of removing and disposing of it...

[DaveNP]

Back when I started work as a truck driver there was another driver at the firm I worked for who didn't waste his time in the morning doing vehicle checks on boring things like oil, he was a conscientious fellow though and would religiously add a litre of oil every evening when he fueled up. Merc truck engines of the time didn't react too well to being overfilled and it wasn't long before it blew the oil seals and needed major work. I'd like to think truck drivers are professionals but sometimes ...

One thing I have noticed over the years is that some engines find their own oil level and topping them up will just result in that oil disappearing until it gets back to its natural level say about 2/3 of the way from min to max, once it's dropped to 2/3 it doesn't lose any more.

[ksmi]

Originally Posted by 4x4

A friend of my father asked where to top up the oil in his Bedford CA van. Father showed him how to open the bonnet and where the oil went. Next day the friend was complaining that the van took 3 gallons of oil and it still wasn't full and what should he do!!! Yes he filled the engine with 3 gallons of oil and there was still no visible sight of oil when je looked into the filler neck on the rocker cover. Luckily he never started the engine but I had the job of removing and disposing of it...

Morning Fourby, You are going back a bit,had to deliver a new CA to your neck of the woods,Bathgate,many moons ago. As I got out and slid the door shut behind me it fell off!!! Another thing I remember about them, it was quite common to have loose front bumpers on them,and the resulting rattle was quite distinctive,ah,that's a CA van coming up behind me.
ref.the oil, Brother being chauffeured by his Missus,in the A60 Farina. pulls in to local garage to get petrol,his Wife opens bonnet to check oil and water,takes off oil filer cap,pulls out dipstick puts it in rocker box, "What are you doing" asks Brother? "That's what the fellow here does,before topping up the oil for me", replied my Sister in law.

Regards,Keith.

[Pigeon]

Construction industry...

A Stihl TS350 two-stroke petrol engine will not run on red diesel, even if it is the same colour as two-stroke petrol/oil mixture. It is preferable to avoid testing this experimentally.

Then there was the chap who found an unexploded bomb in the trench he was digging. He didn't know what it was so he hit it with his shovel. Nothing happened, so he dug it up, took it into the site agent's office and put it on his desk. Site agent promptly had kittens.

The most annoying ones were the Dunning-Kruger ones: men who owned their own generators and wanted us to fix them when they went wrong. They would present us with half a generator, a box containing the other half (if you were lucky, all the other half...), and a half-arsed theory about what the fault was which made no sense and frequently contradicted the laws of physics. So the job began with putting it all back together to find out what the fault really was and how much was missing, before you could get started. Afterwards, they would argue the toss over the extra hours spent doing this, and they would also argue the toss over the hours to fix the fault and the parts cost because according to their theory it couldn't possibly be that part and it couldn't possibly have taken that long. Their own failure to fix it somehow never counted as evidence that their theory was wrong.

And it always was men, and all men, who did this. All women would simply give us the generator intact and say "this doesn't work, please fix it". I don't remember any exceptions on either side.

[4x4]

Many years ago a mate Billy said he knew where the remains of an old house were and asked if I had a metal detector. I didn't, but I knew someone who did. I borrowed it one day and off we went to the ruins. After searching for 3 hours and only finding bits of rone pipe, guttering and a couple of barrel rings we decided to pack up. "Just 5 minutes more" Billy said and with another sweep of the detector it started beeping again. I stuck the spade into the ground and removed a chunk of turf and Billy who was looking at where I was digging let out a yell of "Oh for **** sake" I looked into the hole and there, peering back at us, seeing daylight for the first time in about 45 years was a hand grenade...... Oh s*** I thought, what will we do. After a bit if debating I decided that Billy should hold the 2 dogs whilst I threw the grenade, theory being if it was live it would go off.......I threw it and nothing happened so after playing at Brits V Germans we headed back to the car. Billy took the seat cover from his drivers seat and wrapped the grenade before placing it carefully in the boot and driving back home. When we arrived at my house Billy said he was going to show his mate Jimmy and left.

Billy arrived at Jimmy’s house and with excitement shouted for him to come see what he had. Jimmy was a huge chap who stayed in a rough area and spent his days growing vegetables. Nobody dare go near Jimmy’s vegetable patch for fear of Jimmy catching them. Jimmy was feared by all and anyone who crossed his path better be able to either fight or run fast. Jimmy came to his front door and Billy unwrapping the grenade said “Look Jimmy, look what we found today“. Well, when Jimmy saw what it was he told Billy to GTF out of his house before it blew them both to smithereens. Take it to the TA Jimmy said as Billy left with his tail between his legs…

Billy arrived at the TA and as he was walking in, grenade still wrapped in the seat cover a Sergeant was leaving the building, he asked Billy if he could help and Billy started to open the seat cover. At that point the Sergeant started shouting for him to put it up at the back wall and before Billy knew what was going on there were bodies appearing from everywhere, carrying sandbags and covering the grenade. Billy turned round and left. Later in the afternoon I heard on the radio that there was a bomb scare in the town centre but thought no more of it. It turned out to be a live grenade., and the TA had to call the bomb squad to do a controlled explosion.
I decided at that point never to use a metal detector again.


Next day the story was all over the newspapers and local radio and the police wanted to speak to the person who handed in the grenade. Billy and I discussed the situation and we decided that as he handed it in he could face the music, so off he went to the local police station. The police were only interested in where he found the grenade and asked if he was available on Saturday lunch time to show them, to which he said yes. This of course caused another problem as we never had a license for the detector or permission to use it on the land we found the grenade so after further discussions we decided that Billy should head in the opposite direction to where we had been digging.


Saturday at mid-day a police van rolled into the street with 12 cops and Billy went with them to roughly the area in question. He spent the next three hours in torrential rain searching an area he had never set foot in before and when nothing was found the search was called off and Billy returned home.

Billy was an avid wild west fan, he frequented quick draw shoot-out venues and won awards for being the fastest draw in the area and

The papers by now were hot on Billy's heals wanting a story and he made the front page. A picture of Billy holding two pistols and wearing his Stetson with the headline 'Billy the Kid finds Hand Grenade'

I decided after this experience that I didn't ever want to use a metal detector ever again...

[green van man]

I know a lad with one of those metal detectors found a lot of interesting stuff, mainly musket balls and broken weapons but the occasional ring.
Being licenced all his finds are verified and anything valuable is treasure trove and goes through that system, musket balls and broken axe heads are generally just nodded through

Holding an old deformed musket ball and realising it probably got deformed passing through someone is a sobering experience. A bit of research soon shows if the area was a battlefield and there are surprisingly many sites of battle not generally recognised as such.

The arcioligists decry metal detectors to but as this chap says, if it's more than a foot deep it can stay there. It's the action of ploughing that brings the finds to the surface so they are out of context anyway.

Paul.