Printer Friendly Forum Posts - Worst thing you did or encountered?

I am curious to see what kind of nightmares everyone have encountered or created while installing a r/s or alarm system. Also what did it cost you to fix

I will start off by saying I burnt out a 2000 Explore pats module!!! Can't prove it was anything I did or caused, after the module was replaced I reinstalled everything as was before and it worked great. This was the first and only major thing I have had happen in over 6 years of installing. Cost me $450.00 and a lot of shame eplaining to the customer what happened also a lot of headaches getting the vehicle to the garage.

well once i was installing an alarm system on a 07 volvo semi truck, cant remember exact model, well after installing it the computer threw up fault codes for engine, trans, brakes,gauges,LCM,and airbags then it shut off, well i freaked out because this truck cost around $160,000, well i went at it looking and looking couldnt figure it out, then right before the customer was due to come pick it up i figured out that the main computer had fried, i thought i was a dead man, but after talking with my boss he told me that the model truck i was working with already had a service request out for the replacment of the main computers because of this, so after he check everything it came out that i was ok, my install was perfect and the computer just had died, so well spent the next 5 min replacing it as i already had the dash out and all, put the new one it and it worked, now dont ask me why this person wanted an alarm system on such a big truck that he will probably spend most of his time in but he did, and it works great, especally since the alarm used the trucks horns, nice and loud lol, oh and only thing that had to be paid for was about 9 hours of my time, which was paid to me posted_image

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The only thing that I've ever damaged was a BCM on a 1999 Dodge Stratus that cost me $ 700 Cdn. THe only thing that was damaged on there was the HVAC controls did not work while in the 2,3 or 4 positions but did work in the 1 and HIGH positions. Dodge mechanics got a hold of this and told the customer that it needed a new BCM, I called BS on this but the customer wanted this fixed. You learn from experience and have never done this again.... I accidentally touched a wire that I was stripping to ground and this caused the problem.

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Jeff
Velocity Custom Home Theater
Mobile Audio/Video Specialist
Morden, Manitoba CANADA

I installed a UHF 2way in a new county plow truck. The driver took the truck and 10 min down the road the tranny dumped on it. They towed it to the dealer, and repaced the tranny ??? why I dont know. on the way from the dealer the guy keyed up the radio and the tranny dumped again! The dealership got the truck back and tried to blame us for hooking the 2way up to the wrong ckt. [imposible direct to a battery lug with a relay sending a signal off the accy ckt.] They put another trany and computer in it. I got the truck back and started doing some rf troubleshooting. I found the radio had zero sheilding letting the RF bleed out through the radio rather than the antenna. The truck had a RF operated shifter in it when the radio keyed, it would send the shifter frequency out of whack. I disconnected the battery for a bit and the truck went back to normal shifting. The solution is quite stupid. The county was to cheap to buy another radio so I encased it in aluminum foil - problem solved. Moral of the story, dealerships dont know squat when it comes to anything that is NOT an OEM peice, and they will not investigate into anything. This cost me nothing but time and headaches, but the dealership did 2 trannys and a computer.. wonder what that cost?

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Tire Proz Stillwater Mn
High End Restyling and Comlete Repair

I punched a hole in the back-side of a vaccuum brake booster. I know it happened INSTANTLY. I was drilling through the firewall, and the drill punched through, then stopped, very abruptly, within about an inch of punching through. Then I heard it... SSSSSSSSSSSSSS I knew right away what I'd done.

All I could say was "doodie." (:::EDIT::: Only I didn't say "doodie"; but the12volt servers decided to clean up my act for me... (someone needs to, I guess) My real expletive is MUCH funnier -haemphyst) It was not a terribly expensive fix, the truck WAS a 1979 POS, I think it cost me $50 (I was getting paid $47.50 for the job, so I installed the alarm for free, and paid the guy $2.50...)for the booster, and I installed it myself, right there in the bay. I laugh about it today.

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

Hmmm...Well let's see, in a hurry installing an MDT (mobile data terminal), we were a little behind schedule, I never checked where I was drilling and went through the fuel line while I was drilling for the floor mount...yeah, SBC was not happy. Learned a valuable lesson..always triple and quadruple check, and don't rush. Seen a guy, almost deploy an airbag..seems he didn't realize that there is a reason why chevy puts those little wires in that yellow harness. his excuse, but the wires matched up to the wiring codes I got on Wire Magic. *shakes head* I replied "yeah and some TS's look like real women but aren't. Lesson, don't let newbies, who are way too c**ky for their own good, alone in the shop. Thankfully, our policy was simple, unhook the battery before doing anyhting! only god knows what would have happened.
Oh, and I locked keys in a car..it was for a dealership to, yeah that was $60 outta my pocket to get a duplicate from the dealer.
Than there's that BCM I fried in my car...Don't Drink and Install!!

Not bad for installing on and off for 12 years. and those all happened within the first two years, see I learned....

I can be taught..WOOHOO!!

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Đễẳ†ђş 12\/ Ĵęśŧē®™

Well I haven't caused any damage it may happen someday. I do have a installer helping during the busy season. We are installing compustar pro remote starts. He was installing on a pontiac vibe and hooked up the large gauge (12v output) wire to the negative trigger lights, well as soon as the autolights tried to turn on it fried the drl module. The stealership has managed to put it to me at $80 an hour labor my total bill for his error is a little shy of $300.

I almost forgot about 6 years ago I was installing an amp is a pos s-10 blazer, while putting the sill trim back on I nipped the power wire. it didn't pop the fuse right away but after a day or so it did. The customer claimed it caused a vehicle fire, funny when I installed it I put a 15 amp fuse in the holder, when it came in so we could see the burnt carpet and trim piece it had a 50a fuse??? We gave hime his money back ran new powercable and bought a new trim piece inwhich easily covered the small singe mark on the carpet. Well about 2 weeks later we got served that we were being sued for over $13,000 dollars. Holy crap batman what the he11. Kind of lucky we took a ton of pics of the small singe mark because it mysterously grew into a full fire and wiped out the carpet and part of the seat, the jackass had taken a torch and burned his junky ass car trying to get rich quick. The judge was hilariuos when he through the case out......

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We had a guy pull the same thing at the last place I worked at, tried doing an insurance scam.. He broke his own window , cut his seats and ripped the dash up bad. The idiot salesman [his buddy] had written up recipts from the shopfor products that he never purchased and we didn't even sell.. To make a long story shortall the "new stuff had been installed [leather seats a/v stuff plus some] and when It came time to pay up, he thought the salesman would deal it through the insurance directly [why I don't know] well the sales guy didn't and then the production manager got wind as of what was going down, He made the guy call his insurance agent and had him come out to the shop.. BUSTED... the insurance guy found several flaws in the story and wouldn't give the guy a dime.. I pulled everything out and sent the idiot on his way with no seat covers, a hole in his headliner, no headrests, no deck and missing tones of trim peices that had been dipped in green snakeskin.. Ha the guy was as mad as I had ever seen anyone in my life.. oh yeah, the sales guy, got fired and charged by the cops for aiding insurance fraud... another person from the shallow end of the gene pool...

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Tire Proz Stillwater Mn
High End Restyling and Comlete Repair

While installing the cd player and amplifier wires in my 1986 buick century, I was drilling through the firewall and accidently hit my steel fuel line with the drill bit, tearing it open. luckily for em it was the return line so it didn't siphon the gas out of the tank. Got a splice kit for it and fixed it.

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Disturbin' Tha Peace

Used paperclips as connectors.

Glad I grew out of that!

I broke the windshield on an Audi A8 one time. I was removing the a-pillar to run the antenna wire and the windhield cracked somehow. It was 700$ to fix. When I picked the car up from the glas guy he said he broke the first one he tried to replace it with and he suspected that the body of the car was tweeked since the new window didn't fit quite right.

Another time I had a soldering iron burst into flames in a new caddy, burning the carpet and my hand, costing 300 to fix. (the car, that is)

I don't know that those two things were my fault ( i know the soldering iron thing wasn't) , but aside from that, it has just been little things like clips. All told, aside from those two things, I think I may have spent 500$ total on damages in 8 years of installing. Not to bad I think.

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Northstart.....or start it your damn self.

ugghh it pains me to think about it. last shop i worked for (basically a front for a drug running jew) dealt with alot of "ballers" or at least they think there ballers.

anyways 96 cadilac seville custom gold with rediculous flake adding a 15 and 2 12 inch flip downs to the back seat.

i mad a cool fg pod to hold it all and secured it to the metal bracing all across the roof. well on my last screw i tighted it a 16th too much and pop. little dimple that has a peak coming out of his roof :( he wasnt that wized about it and i told him that thats what insurance is for but man was i ashamed.

i quit that job and have been at my new one for about 2 and a half years and lo and behold he walks in to my store. i sold his brother a plasma and fgd a double din into his dash on his newly painted 96 caddy sevile, same one. i guess it took my old boss a couple of years to go through insurance! so i guess the guy was as cool as can be i mean if i put a screw through your roof would you ever let me work on your car again? didnt think so

I once also drilled through a brake booster on a hundai...santa fe?? Just barely nicked it but that was the biggest thing I have done. Other than that, I have broke a hazard switch on a older blazer. Actually the other day, I got the keys to an isuzu rodeo, walked out to unlock the car and the key just twisted like butter. Turns out, the key was cut "wrong" ...they said it was cut too thin. I love the life as an installer.

I popped a door lock switch on a Grand Cherokee years ago , using 5 wire in both doors. Still not sure how, but the dealer ordered the part, put it in, and never billed me for it. $300.00 part. My only major repair.

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i once watched a blazer roll out of the bay with the passenger door open, hilarity did not ensue. ended up having to replace the door and hinge, it was like $800 or something, thank god for insurance.

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I have been one lucky guy for 14 years now but not to long ago I fastened some wire down to the back wall of a Chevy step side pickup with some P clips and ¼” screws. Well with step sides part of the back wall is visible from the outside. To make maters worst I had just started at this job! I wanted to die. Turns out that it was no big deal. I had it repaired and my boss thought it was funny.

The other guys at the shop didn’t think it was a big deal either and they told me about a practical joke that they had pulled a few times. They would cut the ends off of some screws and hot glue them to the outside of a door panel. Then they would inform the installer working on that car that they had screwed through the outside. Only to pull off the artificial screws and have a laugh.

It was my day off a couple months ago and got a call from the shop.

"new guy wrecked a truck"

It turns out that the installer that was hired without my input could not drive stick and paniced when the passenger mirror touched the door frame of the shop. he took his foot off the clutch and turned the wheel slightly which caused the truck to lurch forward and hit the passenger door against the wall and tore the trim (and most of the paint) off the truck all the way back to the rear bumper. This winner says that he was going to talk to management and instead he grabed the few tools he had, got in his car and left. I think he is still wanted for hit and run... On the outside chance that he is reading this (i am not convinced that he can read) we still have your charger and jacket dummy.

A few months back I accidently locked myself in a customer's trunk. Glad I had a cell on me..

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Be loud,be obnoxious,man up, and bounce with a legend.

in a little over 6 years of installing, i have had two mess-ups and actually fixed them both before anyone ever found out. the first was when i was making some custom seat brakets for a set of racing seats in a honda. i went to drill the hole in the floor for a support bolt and knicked the fuel line...luckily i had some JB weld and told the guy he needed to leave the car overnight for me to finish up in the morning. thank God he went for it and by next day the stuff had dried and viola!, no more leak. the second was on and expedition with rear climate control. i was mounting an amp under the passenger seat and hit a coolant line with a screw. i didn't notice i had hit anything until i saw a large puddle of antifreeze forming beside the truck. i asked myself "where the he11 did all that come from?" i first disregarded it thinking the truck may have had a small leak, but when the puddle began to grow more and more my heart began to sink. i looked under the truck to see antifreeze trickling out from right under the passenger seat...much to my dismay. luckily i had a good idea and some scrap line laying around the shop (as we also have some drag racing cars we do as well) and i patched it up. oh yea..i busted the windshield in a 10 year old lexus...insurance paid that one though...so i guess it was 3 things.

i also had a coworker some time ago install an amp in a older lexus and almost had to change his pants when sand came pouring out of the firewall when he went to drill a hole for the power wire. i almost died laughing. ( for those of you who are lost at this point...lexus used to {maybe still does} put sand in between double firewalls to cut down on road noise in the car to make it quieter to drive in)

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"If a man made it, another can modify it...it just takes some thinking."
"If you ask questions, you're a fool for 5 minutes; if you don't, you're a fool for a lifetime."

Had an installer at my previous job pull a chevy truck into the bay and put the truck in gear to get the dash off to pull the radio. He pulled the radio, got out of the truck and walked to the work bench to start wiring the harness. When he turned around, the truck had already rolled out the bay and went straight back into the pond in front of the bay. Sucked for him but was pretty funny for us to watch the re-runs on the security camera tapes.

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Perfection is the only standard.

The worst thing that happened was during a remote starter install on a 1998 Chevy Blazer. While taking apart the dash, I somehow managed to snag the hazard switch that is on top of the steering column with the dash piece. It broke and I ended up paying about $350.00 and while the dealership replaced this they ended up screwing up her alarm that I put in so I had to go back through and test all the connections and reset the brain for it to work again. That is that worst thing that I had to pay for since 1993 to 2002. Then I went out of business because of my ex and a couple years later I am out here in PA and work for a small audio/accessory installer shop.

INSTALLER_MSS wrote:

i went to drill the hole in the floor for a support bolt and knicked the fuel line...luckily i had some JB weld and told the guy he needed to leave the car overnight for me to finish up in the morning. thank God he went for it and by next day the stuff had dried and viola!, no more leak.

Not cool. Way not cool. That should have been replaced with a new line. JB weld isn't all the great and WILL come loose with vibration.

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Certified Security Specialist
Always check info with a digital multimeter.
I promise to be good.
Tell Darwin I sent you.

I've been sick lately, sorry I won't be on much.

auex][ wrote:

UOTE=INSTALLER_MSS] i went to drill the hole in the floor for a support bolt and knicked the fuel line...luckily i had some JB weld and told the guy he needed to leave the car overnight for me to finish up in the morning. thank God he went for it and by next day the stuff had dried and viola!, no more leak.

Not cool. Way not cool. That should have been replaced with a new line. JB weld isn't all the great and WILL come loose with vibration.[/QUOTE]

Ditto on that, this will fail. This is the kind of things that give us all bad names.

I have 2 .... Doing a simple keyless in (of course) a friends S-10. Attempting to find a nice neat place to hide the relay pack. (added actuators) dropped the relays......catches on some metal brace under the dash, snap, crack, the smoke starts flying as the wire melts all the way to the 12v t-tapped connection, then the main ign. harness starts smokin...... Holy crap. I couldn't rip those relays out fast enough. This is when I learned to wrap the relays in tape. Not to use t-taps, and solder posted_image

Puttin a deck in an old Ford manual trans (OLD) lifted 4x4. The truck has no neutral safety, and a bad ign switch. Understand, the shifter is like 2.5 feet long, and has about 3 feet of "throw" (both directions.) So I put the shifter out of the way, commence to hookin up wires...... never worked on an old rig like this before (years ago) time to turn the key and test for switched power.......cranks rite over, the rigs in reverse. Plows right into a new at the time Honda van. I had had a tough day......this was the straw that broke my back. The shop is L shaped, the truck was on the bottom of the L it flys back and tore the entire front of this van off. then plows thru the sop wall into the next doors shop.

I didn't need to get up the next day for work......... posted_image

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Ive done a couple things. I was borrowing a friends Recoil Red 1000.1D
and I didn't use a big enough ground from my ground block to the seat bolt and it burnt up the amp, and when a local shop opened it up the copper coils were black. =/ My own stuff though, when finishing my final setup for a while, I hit my high end amp settings vaccuming and switched the 3rd and 4th channel to low pass, causing two of my 4x10's to catch fire. Pretty bad, had to knock out the smoke and small sparks and take then out with like a 3 inch screw driver. =[

is it just me or does nothing above me make sense

Kartuneman is the WINNER. Ford truck thru a car AND a wall. Dude you made my day. LMAO!

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It was already broken, but I made sure it could never be fixed again.

houndz805 wrote:

Kartuneman is the WINNER. Ford truck thru a car AND a wall. Dude you made my day. LMAO!

Lol, so true, that was hilarious

Those blazer switches are notorious for that. They have a 30 dollar replacement piece for that now... It's also irritating on those blazers you have to take the dash off and all of plastic shrouds to do a r/s. I do remember the tach being easy as hell getting to! I'm sorry to hear all that other stuff, hopefully you make it!

Workin on a Freshly Painted 69 Camero SS stolen recovery in a paint shop surrounded with other cars that the squeezed together in this tiny shop when closing up 4 the night, I was replacin the ignition switch, forgot about these old cars being able to start in gear.. on the passenger side layin on the floor across the trany hump and turn the ign to start to test it.. Camero jumps ahead, 454 by the way, luckly i open the hood about a foot, went crashing into a paintbooth heater/vaccum system (probably an expencive thing), only thing i messed up was the hood it caught all the force and bent a bit, but not a scratch on the bumpers or grill nothing. Paint booth was still workin fine...Shop owner told me the customer wanted a cowl hood anyways so i didnt have to pay anything. Close call on a

2nd Same shop doing another ignition switch 64 stang, ignition was workin perfect, shop owner says i cant start the car..... I get there, check my wires looks good, check for 12 @ starter none.hmmmm check my wires again, 12v out 4 start, but wasint getting to the starter back and fourth, back and fourth. Deside to crank it over manually with a jumper wire, car starts and drives in reverse right into my freshly painted rear doors of my Astro, I was parked maybe 10 feet from it. Guess this car did have a saftey switch.. atleast it was my van i ran it into. But u should have seen me try to hold onto that mustang like i was going to stop it, i held on all the way hahah. Mustang was fine rubbed some of MY paint off with steelwool. Still havent fixed my van, Shop owner Still calls me to do work :)

this thread is hella old, but oh well. 05 WRX sti, full audio system from to back, 4 amps, 2 12 eclipse titaniums, components all that jazz. well the new guy decided to sit inside the car with the windows rolled up and cranked it about 3/4 of the way. bass hitting hard then we heard some next shatter. we go to the back of the car and the back windshield is in bits. its like some1 hit it with a bat. i guess too much pressure inside the car. till this day we dont know wth happened. and thing is the guy came in 20 min after we broke it. and didnt see the car, but said i will be back in 2 hours or so. we ordered a windshield, and offered to tint it for free, so if it did break again, no pieces would fly.

bypassing factory amp in a toyota tundra. ....... factory airbag wires (oem yellow on black) had been replaced with right rear speaker wire colors. i was poppin wires at the kick panel to check speaker polarity and the seat belt safety bolt fires off. scared the cr@p out of me and the counter people thought i was mad and throwing tools in the back. $175 to replace seat belt assy.

put a new deck in my wifes car. mixed up the illum wire with the dimmer wire. every time she turned the headlights on it would blow the tail light fuse. instead of talking to me she tells a friend about it and he says to just put a bigger fuse in. after she works her way up to a 35a fuse over the course of a week, the 18AWG wire finally gives out ..... about a 8' run of it .....

that's the worst i've done. but hey .... give it a couple of months ... with my luck, somethin else will pop up.

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brad