(Credit to “research assistant” Nutting on this one as well) – The following message board threads rank the highest on a scale of wackiness that we wanted to put them all in once place for you to be amused with. Some of them you have probably heard of or seen before and others may be new to you. They’ve all cemented themselves into the annals of gearhead internet lore….most for the wrong reasons.

From misguided repairs to foreign substances applied to sensitive portions of one’s anatomy to absolutely insane notions of “ground breaking” engine technology these message board threads managed to strike a certain cord that fueled their meteoric streak across the world wide web. It is rare for stuff to truly “go viral” because by nature it has to have some element that LOTS of people want to see. The fact is that the automotive community is largely broken into hundreds, if not thousands of segments and most times those segments stay in their “lane” so to speak. We’ve always provided a broad base of content on BangShift and our forum section is completely non-denominational with respect to cars and trucks so you’ll see all kinds of stuff in there. That being said, that isn’t the norm. We like the diversity that the automotive world has to offer and that will always be something we strive to include. Now the tales you will see below are the most well known threads of automotive infamy on the internet. Surely we’ll have missed a few that YOU know of, so share with us anything that is missing below. Buckle up kids, this is going to be interesting….

How do I get Herculiner off my Hootus? – 

On 8/16/2000 this question was asked on ExplorerForum.com and soon thereafter every gearhead with a computer was following along with the saga of a kid who was using Herculiner product and then stopped to take a leak half way through the job. Members of the forum immediately responded with suggestions like Acetone and other products until they realized that a “hootus” was. Not surprisingly, the kid who started the thread was not too excited about dumping Acetone on his wang and sought alternate methods. Did he manage to clean himself up? Is his hootus still sporting Herculiner for her pleasure 14 years later? Hit the link below to find out –

HERCULINER ON HOOTUS THREAD

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Direct exhaust injection –

On November 7, 2002 a technical thread was launched on the Nebraska GM Modern Muscle message board by a member who suggested that he not bother with adding a turbo to his Corvette but instead route the exhaust straight back into the intake manifold. He deemed his idea “direct exhaust injection” and in a turn that will shock no on the internet took great joy in highlighting this guy’s wanton stupidity. Within four days the thread had over 100,000 views and the not-so-constructive criticism of the original poster had shifted into high gear. The thread got so much traffic that it was ultimately pulled from the site but due to the magic of the internet “Way Back Machine” we have all of it right here for you to revel in.

DIRECT EXHAUST INJECTION THREAD

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Porting intake by sucking sand into running Audi engine –

2007 was apparently the golden year for people to post insane things on the internet looking for help. This one seems so crazy that it seems like the whole thing had to be a hoax but the deeper you go into the thread the more real it seems. The premise of this disaster is that a kid heard about intake porting and he decided to try it. His method was to suck sand blasting sand through the intake and into the engine because he didn’t understand that the intake needed to be ported while not bolted to the motor. Whoopsie doodle. This is an actual line from the original post – We got a bag of sandblasting sand and hooked up into the intake and started the car. We had to hold the gas so it would run. He wanted to let the engine suck in the sand through the intake so it would port it out and then push it out the ehxaust so it would port the exhaust manifold. As you can imagine, it was all downhill from there.

SAND PORTING INTAKE MANIFOLD WHILE STILL ON CAR THREAD

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Guy dumps NOS energy drink into fuel tank instead of octane booster –

This whole scene is effing genius because the guy truly believes that he dumped octane booster into his bike, the rest of the guys on the thread think he dumped real octane booster into his bike and then slowly they realize that the guy dumped two cans of energy drink into his motorcycle. This is top shelf comedy because the guy who did this is either an amazing actor or really just a clueless dude who thought that adding some octane booster into his tank would help his bike from running like junk. The tide turns on him hard when he mentions that it was two 20oz cans he dumped in. Once he mentions that it becomes open season when the throngs realize that it was a soft drink he “fueled up” with. Whoopsie doodle

GUY DUMPS NOS ENERGY DRINK INTO FUEL TANK THREAD

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A bike “mechanic” drills through the ECU multiple times – 

9-15-2008 was the date this fun began. I guess the motorcycle guys are getting it bad in this deal because here is another thread from a motorcycle message board. Like in the Audi thread above, this guy trusted a “friend” who was handy with motorcycles to make some modifications to the tail of the bike. The guy managed to drill multiple holes through the ECU of the motorcycle, rendering it a giant paper weight and the cost of a replacement unit at the time was $900+ dollars. You have to scroll through some stuff to see the photos of what happened to this poor ECU but the guy really did a job on it. This wasn’t one hole. It looks like someone attacked the thing with a tommy gun.

GUY DRILLS HOLES THROUGH MOTORCYCLE ECU

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Guy takes Sawzall to wheel due to lug nut problem –

It was November of 2009 and the days were getting shorter. The weather was getting cold and the guy who started this thread had a lug nut that he stripped the ever loving daylights out of. His solution? He busted out the sawzall and cut the wheel apart. We’re not sure if we should fault him for getting to the point of thinking that was a good idea, actually cutting the wheel to pieces, or owning a VW in the first place. There are a bunch of ways to go with this. We’ve been there ourselves but frankly we’ve never gotten to the point of actually cutting a wheel off of a car…that we intended to drive again. You?

Guy takes Sawzall to wheel due to stripped lug nut

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Guy gets completely boned by “performance shop” who built his Camaro as a SEMA car –

SEMA cars are often finished as they’re being rolled off the trailer and into the convention center in Las Vegas but this is about 100x worse than that. The guy in this thread handed over his 5th generation Camaro to be modified by an outfit and ended up with a car so slapped together that there were wood screws holding stuff together and panel fitment that could be measured in factors of a foot rather than millimeters. Go a couple of pages in to see the full level of the disaster here.

Dude gets boned by shop building his Camaro into a SEMA show car

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Guy lowers Honda by raising strut with hardware store nuts and bolts –

We’ll end this exercise in infamy with the most recent thread of them all. This one sprang to life in 2012 and quickly captured the attention of the gearhead universe, gaining fame on placed like Jalopnik and others. The short story is that the thread shows a kid lowering his Honda Civic by raising the physical height of the strut with some longer bolts and a bunch of nuts from a hardware store (or worse, national home improvement chain). Things start out OK when the kid shows what parts he is going to use and then take a turn for the awesome when he reveals the quality of his work and what it looks like. Members rush to both stop and help him with detailed drawings and other aids but he’s hearing none of it. This is expert level hackery for the world to see.

Lowering Honda with cheap nuts and bolts 

 

 

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Mustang owner “done” with his car after flushing engine out with water

So let’s say that you are a clueless guy who shouldn’t even own a car. You perform an oil change and notice that the oil is very dirty coming out of your Mustang. In true genius fashion you hook a hose to the engine and proceed to “flush” it with water. You then decide after a couple minutes that the water will have done its job so it is time to crank ‘er up again. You destroy the engine of your car and then seek help on a Mustang forum. Seconds later you life goes to shit.

Click here to see the thread

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The Spanish tuner car

This one has some international flair because it involved the build of what could be the biggest disaster of a car we have ever seen except it takes place in Spain. There are many stunning things happening here and the first page provides some of the most incredible photos with how the cylinder head was modified and “finished”. It only gets worse from there and we’re going to include a stunning image below which is how the builder managed to take two completely different clutches for two different cars and make a “racing clutch” out of it. This is incredible.

Click here to see the thread