whats the dumbest thing you've done during installation

[dbhittin 5,000+ posts]

ive done the no fuse on amp thing, put a few holes in the surround with the drill

 

[NhustlaR 10+ year member]

hmm lazy and never unhooked batt, put some LED's in for indiglow hooked it up straight to the fusebox, then looped in my head unit to the fuse box also, but when routing the wire for my HU, it hit the ground to the LED's and burnt the shit out of most the wires in my dash. :embarassed:

 

[Kevokrook77 10+ year member]

I had just installed my 2 XXX 12"s in my box when I had to go pick up a door, so the box had to come out. Hadn't even listened to them yet. I put the box on the garage floor and went to pick up the door. When I got back, I couldn't see the sub box due to the angle of the driveway and the height of my car (Yukon) so I nailed one of them with my tires and scuffed the hell out of the surround. Good news is it still works, bad news is that it doesn't look too pretty anymore....

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

I have several, but nothing exciting. I personally knew an installer who drilled into the fuel cell of a Mercedes 2-seat convertible and filled the interior floor with ~2 inches of gas. oops

 

[dbhittin 5,000+ posts]

last week i was driving and all the sudden, no bass.. im like wtf.. first, i pull over quick, cause last time that happend, my crx like went up in flames... i look in the trunk no smoke, and i move the box, and my ground wire came off.. easy fix. ive had a few small fires before cause of lazy tape jobs instead of butt connectors

 

[Worlddre 5,000+ posts]

i was connecting power to the battery with my ratchet when i accidently touched this little metal bar holding the battery down that happened to be grounded...sparks fly and at first reaction i closed the trunk...so finally i open the trunk too see nothing had changed and realized i had to pull the ratchet off to i grabedbed the ratchet(which was glowing at this point) and pull it off with my bare hand and throw it on the ground...scared the shit outta me and burned off two of my fingerprints

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

i was connecting power to the battery with my ratchet when i accidently touched this little metal bar holding the battery down that happened to be grounded...sparks fly and at first reaction i closed the trunk...so finally i open the trunk too see nothing had changed and realized i had to pull the ratchet off to i grabedbed the ratchet(which was glowing at this point) and pull it off with my bare hand and throw it on the ground...scared the shit outta me and burned off two of my fingerprints

Whoa!

 

[Hades2004 10+ year member]

Theres a few for me lol. It was my 1st install. I was hooking up my headunits wires for the speakers to the wiring harness so I can get sound from the stock speakers. I hooked those up but I couldn't figure out what the black, yellow, red and that were for. So i'm like okay time to try this biotch out. I go to the car plug the wiring harness into the factory one, turned the car on and pressed power on the headunit, and nothing. I start swearing and everything and it's -40 Degrees Celesious out, so my hands are freezing. After 10 minutes tring to figuring it out, i'm like, I know what those wires are for now. So I go back into the house and wire them together. Go back to the car hook it up, turn the car on and it powered up. I was laughing about that. It was quite funny. Then comes the amps. I have everything hooked up to power my amps up. But the thing I never did was crimped the ground termails to the ground wire. I just used electrical tape and when I put in the ground and power cable into the amp I tightened the hex screw until I touched the bare wire, thinking it was good. So i'm looking for a ground in the car and had no luck. Then my uncle came home and helped me. While he was looking he grabed the ground cable at the terminal and said WTF is this and I started laughing. Then he's like you wanna crimp and I said it was took hard to. So he did it for me and he could barely do it either but got both crimped. Then he pulled on the ground cable by accident and he said okay, now what the hell happened and I laughed again. He's like you gotta make sure that everything is nice and tight, not loose so everything falls out. So I tightened the power and ground wire on the amp and I mean I tightened. I got a rachet and a allen head and tighted it. So we got that all done. And I connect the power to the POS on the battery. I turned it on and I was happy. I was sweet but it only lasted 1.5 minutes. So I recharge the battery over night. Then i'm like I wonder if I should put this on the power cable near the battery cause I was told at the place where I bought my sound system stuff as long as I have a fuse already *I had a fused distro block* you will be fine. So I put the fuse holder on the power wire and started up the car. It lasted longer then 1.5 mins this time. This was my experance. I was quite fun and had alot of laughs.

 

[bikejunkie223 10+ year member]

Here are a couple I have seen at work (but not done myself)

1: Somebody was making a hole in the firewall for a power wire (4 guage) and drilled into the back side of the brake vacuum booster, then drilled another hole for the wire and never mentioned it to the customer- they came in complaining about a hard brake pedal, and a whistling noise at idle- on an '02 Civic w/ 1200miles on it

2: Many punctured fuel tanks from amp screws gone bad. These result in check engine lights on newer cars, and the tanks aint cheap.

 

[Darth Audio 10+ year member]

When I first started installing I shot a screw through a fuel supply line on a brand new Jaguar. Definitely the highlight of my career.

 

[Randy Savage 5,000+ posts]

Few weeks ago I was pulling a car into the shop. Normally we pull a car in, roll down the front 2 windows, and throw the keys on one of the front seats, or somewhere on the center console. It was freezing out...I pull the car in, throw the keys in the cupholder on the center console, walk away from the car. Minute goes by, I hear the car chirp...think for a second...run over to the car, and everything is locked.

Called the guy on the phone...first thing he said was "it's done already?"

I said nope...you happen to have an extra set of keys for your car?

 

[ax600 10+ year member]

I once ran over a customer's new kenwood cd changer, with my jeep.

That one cost me a little

 

[JAZN 5,000+ posts]

I was drilling some pilot holes with a small bit and it snapped, and the broken half that was still in the drill went into my finger. It was pretty hilarious to me.

Another time when I was a super noob and barely knew anything, we were trying to upgrade my cousin's big 3. We were doing the battery (-) to chassis, except we thought it was supposed to go on the (+) batt post. We kept trying to force it on with all the sparks flying off, we figured we had to push it all the way down for it to stop sparking. Before we figured out we mixed up the terminals, half the (+) post had melted off lol.

Other than that, just a couple stabbed surrounds and one stabbed cone.

 

[Worlddre 5,000+ posts]

I was drilling some pilot holes with a small bit and it snapped, and the broken half that was still in the drill went into my finger. It was pretty hilarious to me.
Another time when I was a super noob and barely knew anything, we were trying to upgrade my cousin's big 3. We were doing the battery (-) to chassis, except we thought it was supposed to go on the (+) batt post. We kept trying to force it on with all the sparks flying off, we figured we had to push it all the way down for it to stop sparking. Before we figured out we mixed up the terminals, half the (+) post had melted off lol.

Other than that, just a couple stabbed surrounds and one stabbed cone.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/hilarious.gif.02a037aad04aa96f19982b298a3d70a8.gif holy shit im sorry but im still laughin out loud at that literally

 

[jrpro130 10+ year member]

i was wiring a friends system...we went through everything and the amp wasn't turning on. Thought the fuses were bad so we went out and bought new ones. Still nothing. Tried the amp in my truck to see if it was defective...but it worked. Used a DMM at the batt...12v

Used a DMM at the amp...4v hmmmmmmm

Used a DMM at the ground...3.98 volts...hmmmm

GROUND LOOP

after about 4 hrs of cursing and screaming me and my friend finally got it figured out. I was the genious who considered the ground being bad.

It was a sport track and the ground we used was not a common ground or something..it was a floating ground...that SUCKED ***

Let me say..it will never ever happen again.