What's the worst thing thats ever happen during your project build?

Tell everyone about the worst thing that's ever happened during your project build.  
Just another day "Taking The World By Storm"

for me the worst thing about any project build is the dead time. when you walk away from it for more than a week and somehow forget about it for 6 months. then you have to creep back in to the build for weeks on end and get to know it again before anything really gets done.

i also dislike the times I've spent a week fabricating some part or bracket that I end up not using. I have a nice collection of worthless brackets and parts in my garage that i save just in case they find a job to fill.

lastly, just about the worst thing about a project is the 11 steps backward to move 1 step forward. in mocking up and installing a hydro-boost brake system on my flatfender years back i must have bolted up and removed that hydro boost at least 20 times before i finally got it right. it was tedious and mind numbing but it's all part of getting the best finished product.  

I was getting ready to put the frt suspension back on my 74 c10 and had to reposition the jack stands.
( I found ou the hard way,never do this by yourself).As I had the jack under the frame to lift it, I wasnt totally under the center of truck and the jack slipped out and the truck layed on the frame! I thought I damaged the oil pan but it was about an 1" from the ground!
So Im standing there bewildered...wondering how Im gonna get it off the ground.My floor jacks too big to fit under the nose so I had to go just ahead of the cab on the frame and jack there a little bit and put a block so I can move to the frt and jack it up slowly to get the stands under the nose.no damage to anything just embarrassing cause the neighbors were in the back yard having a BBQ and saw everything but didnt offer any help!  
'79 cherokee,35x12.50x15 Yoko Geolander M/T, Whered it go Camo paint,stock lift w/fender flares cut completely off.

Damm I thought I was the only one thats had somthing like that happen.  It sucks that no one helped.  
Just another day "Taking The World By Storm"

Yep, it did suck...and even one of their kids got up from the picnic table and was staring at me too. And I know the other family members over there heard me cussin like a sailor! but still no help...basturds!  
'79 cherokee,35x12.50x15 Yoko Geolander M/T, Whered it go Camo paint,stock lift w/fender flares cut completely off.

Don't you just hate it when people can obviously see you need help, but just stand around picking their @$$? LOL.    

Yes, its the schits when that happens...but it didnt take long to fix my accident, just a little embarassing.  
'79 cherokee,35x12.50x15 Yoko Geolander M/T, Whered it go Camo paint,stock lift w/fender flares cut completely off.

The worst thing is when your new-at-the-time wife starts complaining loudy that you're spending more time on your only project then you're spending with her.  So you stop working on your project when it is not quite driveable, and you are literally just a few hundred dollars from being finished.  Then you make a few job related moves, to homes with no place to work on a vehicle, while your project languishes in various rental storage garages.  You can only watch as your carefully planned state-of-the-art (at the time) suspension and frame design modifications are rendered antiquated.  And then to add insult to injury, you have to make another 'move now, or look for another job' type move, and you abandon $10,000+ in new parts, countless manhours, and all remaining hope of completing to however the storage locker owner wants to get rid of it.  That's what happened to my project, one that I started back in 1999.  May it rest in peace.

Tom H.  
Resistance is Futile (if < 1 ohm)

I hope I didn't sound too bitter....

Tom H.  
Resistance is Futile (if < 1 ohm)

Three B's come to mind:

Burnout

Biting off more than I could chew

Bad Motor

Details later...  

Burnout...I've found, and others have, too, that down time is a HUGE project killer. Too much down time, and it's too easy to start a new project, give up and part out your current project, etc.

I may have started my 3 B's list from the wrong end. As I think of it, Biting off more than I could chew and a Bad Motor led to the burnout.  

Biting off more than I could chew...this is easy to understand, but it's also easy to get caught in this trap.

We feature plenty of hardcore builds in our magazines, enough so that it seems like custom suspension and an engine swap should be possible in a few afternoons. Nope.

The trap is even more deceptive when you work for a magazine yourself. After all, you get to see cool hardcore stuff all the time, so what's the big deal with building a project that's on an equal level? The answer: time.

Big builds take big chunks of time.

Now that I'm a little wiser (only a little, mind you) I understand what I can and can't get done in a given amount of time.


Dream big, but don't take an "all or nothing" approach to a project build. After all, you have a 50 percent chance of ending up with...NOTHING.  

The third "B" I mentioned was a Bad motor.

In my case, it was a Toyota 22R. I know many out there are fans of this engine, but in my experience it was way too slow to move the rig. It's an engine you have to make excuses for.

The other factor that killed the 22R for me was that it had a computer-controlled carburetor. This brought all sorts of reliability problems with it. For example, it had a fuel-cut solenoid that cut off the fuel flow on deceleration. A bad wiring connection caused this solenoid stuck in the "closed" position. Guess what? No more fuel flow--at all.

Backing up this pile under the hood was an L-45 transmission--another piece of junk. I killed it three times before I swapped a Marlin-built W-56 HD in its place. The W-56 was much better. Too bad it was connected to a carbureted 22R.

I have a feeling if I'd had a 22R-E I would be singing a different tune about reliability. Nonetheless, it would still have been too slow.

I've wondered if it wouldn't be easier to build a vehicle with a good engine and a so-so chassis than to have a good chassis with a bad engine and do an engine swap. Keep in mind that I'm talking about smog-legal engine swaps in California.  

Yeah, most of my experiences have been with the 22R-E in 2WD regular-cab street trucks, and they feel plenty peppy in those, but they're only moving around about 2,900 lbs. and 195/75R-14 tires. I can imagine in a built rig with 31s or larger, it would be quickly overwhelmed. There's a reason the smallblock Chevy/Gen-III/IV is the most popular engine swap in the world!