Share you "Car Disaster" stories

[4hammers]

Hi All.
I am officially back online, a new computer & all!

I have been scanning the posts & everytime someone asks a question, I seem to have had similar problems & sadly enough, a stupid story to go with it. I may be getting a bit paranoid, but some of my attempts at "Aussie ingenuity" have left me scarred & sore & I am begining to wonder how I have made it to 33 years old.

What about making me feel better & posting some of your stories up here as a warning to others? Man, I hope you guys have some, or I may not be so paranoid after all. I will start the ball rolling with one of about 10 dumb-arse tricks.

About 15 years ago, on my first FC sedan that I restored (I use that term loosely), I was laying a nice thick coat of body schultz over my brand new floor pan (Welded in four new floor sections). On the very last section, I noticed a join that I had not finished. I had run out of the MIG wire earlier, with about 100mm to go & had just forgotten to finish it off. So all keen to get it done, my mate handed me the MIG. I put my mask on (Having given myself a flash burn during the floor installation), lined it up, flicked down the dark bit & proceeded to weld. Well, all of a sudden, there was a "Whoosh" followed by a REALLY warm wind
I also noticed that I could see a fair bit through the tinted bit of the mask, so that had to be bad . I jumped back out of the door opening, while my mate was screaming something about "Fire" & all of a sudden it clicked. The fumes from the Schultz had ignited as soon as I started welding. We ran around bumping into things & each other for about 10 seconds, then grabbed a big canvas tarp that we had put there earlier (In case of welding fires) & dropped it into the car. Fixed.

That is one of my stories, so please guys, tell me some of yours, otherwise I will have to check myself in for therapy. If I get some replies, I will tell you about the laser eye surgery I endured!!

Rob J

[FC0058]

Hi Rob
It seems that you must have the only stories to tell. I still remember the one you told about your drive home from work not so long ago. I think it had something to do with a lack of oil in either your gear box or was it the engine.

As you know I am only new to this game and my stories are still to come. I started the big strip down on Monday and from what I have seen so far it will be a lot cheaper to buy another body and use old grace as a donar.

So standby my stories/tales of woe are about to start. I also started a digital diary of my dismantle and hope to use some of these photos in the what to look for string started a while ago.

So standby every one coz my stories and questions are about to start.

[normd]

Hey Rob
  Good to have ya "back on line" , mate.

  Yea , a couple of mates an I had a "little problem" before I bought "the yella beast" , (had forgotten about it till now)
     After seeing the FC racer a friend used to own ( Now MINE   )  3 of my mates & I , decided to build one about 1973 , got a shell (for free)off another friend from Schofields (west Sydney), Peter Valencis , took it home and proceeded to work on the body , bought an HR front front end , bolted it in , then 2 of us got to work on flaring the front guards by beating them on a "sandbag" to cover 10" rims , 2 other guys working on the back guards , got them finished , looked good (no welding).......weeks of work ....put a standard set of wheels on pushed it in the garage & got into rubbing the body back to metal , great NO RUST....  weeks more work ... decided to jack the car up to start cleaning underneath ....    thats as far as we got ....   Trolly jack went "straight through the floor"     .  floor was "tar coated"   covered entire RUSTED FLOOR ,  completely P........  O..'d  shoved it on a trailer and took it to Blacktown tip (no sense at 19 )  GRRRRRR
       Decided to have another go , bought an EJ , Thinking about doing the right thing , we rubbed it back first , mmmm    RUST EVERYWHERE ..  P..O'd again , got the Oxy out to "cut it in half"  (thought we'd feel better) , asking one of the guys " did you take the lining out? "  him said "yes" ? ? ? hit the roof of the car with the oxy ...   well , just as well we had fire extinguishers there , He thought we meant DOOR LININGS ... well you can guess .    Lucky our mate still had his garage in one piece  .   After all this , the other 3 guys "gave up"   3 months later I bought the Yella Beast (green then)with ALL THE WORK DONE ,    just needed motor & g/box .  Rest is History
   Would never again try and build one from scratch ..

    Norm  

[Ed]

Im glad to see others have lit up their pride and joys too.

I was welding in a small rust repair panel just above the rear wheel arch on a friends HR.

A stray spark, caught the fibrous stuff which was inside the C pillar, and whoosh, in the next instant the whole rear section of interior roof was on fire.

to put it out i kind of hit it while wearing my welding gloves, and got covered in all this hot ash and crap which almost sparked up more spot fires.. there was no extinguisher or fire blanket on hand either.

the HR is still there, and my mate still talks to me.

i kind of owed my mate one (karma wise), becasuse as he was driving my old EK, the gearbox ripped off the floor, and tore the motor off the mounts, and left the arse end of the box on the ground with the tail shaft at funny angles.  we pushed it in next to a servo and then we got robbed by a bunch of abo's...

Speaking of which  i just got robbed this morning by some indigenous folk.. say goodbye to a G4 powerbook.

Say "sorry" my arse, reconciliation?? a punch in the head!


Cheers

Ed

[-KIWI-]

you cant have been robbed by kiwis they wouldnt know what a g4 notebook is  

[4hammers]

Bloody hell, Fellas!
Is that it?   I thought there would be heaps more out there.
Rob J

[robbzfc58]

ok  rob.  i'll tell my story..as long as ya dont tell anybody
in the mid 70s i had an fj van.i had just finished it & had it booked in for rego inspection on a friday arvo.i had to borrow wheels cos mine werent legal..so on the way i called at the other guys place to do the wheel swap.i was running late ,hurrying & talking while we swapped them over...then off i went .     as i went past the school at about 3.30, the left front corner dropped & went bang..my 1st thought was "shit    i didnt see that hole"
then i saw a wheel rolling down the road.    there were  mums & kids everywhere just to add to the danger & the embarrassment.   a kid grabbed  my wheel & rolled  it   150m back to me.   it missed all the ppl & all the traffic...i dont know how tho.....i still shudder at the thought...& i didnt get it to the inspection that day ...& i've never had loose wheel nuts since                                         
                        cheers  trev

[gp]

Well, there was this one time at band camp.........

Oops, wrong story!  I used to have an EH Wagon, and I seem to recall going through about 3 gearboxes in a week. One of them didn't even last long enough to get out of my street! Needless to say I was getting pretty quick at changing them over. I can't understand it though, I mean those 3 speed crash boxes are pretty tough (not), and I didn't drive the car very hard at all, honest. Just ask Richard and Alex. I've always been a very sedate driver!  

Cheers,
Graham.

[mcl1959]

Probably the stupidest thing I have done was to drive my first FC up a set of ramps and then proceed to take out the tailsaft to fix the front uni.  Handbake was on but it didn't work - SURPRISE, as soon as I undid the tailshaft the car started to roll down the ramps with me underneath.  I hung onto the crossmember and it dragged me along until stopping when the car ran into garage door  DOH

I can tell you I have never got out from underneath a car so fast before or after that time!!!

Ken

[fccool59]

here will I start?
FIRES AND WIRING
I originally bought my FC wagon for a parts car for a FE sedan I was doing up but it turned out the car had rego. Since my japanesse runner (ke 30 corolla) had just kicked the bucket second time around I decided to use the FC for transport till its 9 months of rego expired.
Since the car had pretty much sat in grass for two years pink sliped by the previous owners mate the brakes were pretty much not there but the more I drove the better they got even though you had to leave plenty of stopping distance and fight the steering wheel to stop.
after driving it nearly constantly for 24 hours I had a couple of fuel problems that I ended up fixing with a electric pump of the FE. a couple of weeks later I had the choice of going to the canberra (1995) nationals in the rough FC or my mates Nissan.
I just about had them brave enough to ride with me and leave the nissan at home but then the day before the nationals I snaped a clutch fork and they decided that they were definately not riding in my car.
next mornig I picked up a fork and told my mates that if they gave me a hand we could be on the road in a couple of hours.
being the good mates they were they packed the boot of the nissan and headed of, I waved bye with my middle finger and proceeded to the back yard wich was drowning with heavy rain. I was extra keen to get there now and climbed under the car in the mud with a beer and wipped the box in and out with the new fork, packed my car and drove down to canberra in my FC to prove my point that it would get there. ya shoulda seen the look on their faces when they saw me pull up.
every thing went pretty smooth except for losing the last bumper bar bolt on the front drivers corner resulting in the bumper being held on with electrical wire. Unfortunately heading home as I pulled into the twin servo's my motor stoped from a lack of fuel, Me and a couple of other club guys mucked around with it a bit but couldnt get fuel through. After someone called someone (I think Alex) I had a fuel pump on the way but then the car carrying the fuel pump did a wheel bearing and I waited at the servo for about 8 hours till I discovered that the fuel pump had a bad earth wich took seconds to fix.
A couple of months later I was running every one home at about 5:30 am after spending most of the night at various pubs when I noticed smoke and a orange flicker around my feet, I pulled over, stamped it out and pulled of the battery lead then went to source the problem wich was quickly found after burning my finger on a disconnected choke cable that caused the short.
After driving arond for a year in house paint I decided to pull it off the road for a couple of weeks to give it a repaint and repower as well as do some rust repairs as I had kind of grown attached to the wagon and now wanted it for more than parts. one night at about 2:30 am my uncle and I were doing some rust repairs when the sound proofing on the fire wall went up in flames. next thing we were running for the tap filling up what ever we could to put it out as neighbours lights came on and the new primer on the cowl panel and dash bubbled away.
shortly after it returned to the road I came down from newcastle to sydney, I reached castle hill road and the cars started to shit itself followed by a whole lot of smoke pouring from under the dash, no bastard would let me into the left lane so I stopped on the middle lane and disconnected the battery before so my car wouldnt burn to the ground, it was pretty risky but thats life on the road in Sydney. I ended up getting the car over to the left after about 15 mins of waiting for a chance and nearly fifty rear enders almost happening and found a melted wire supplying accessories had shorted out in a spring. I took the car to the nearest servo and replaced the wire so I wouldnt have to do the last ten kilometres without music.

[fccool59]

TIMING GEARS at MT WHITE
Back when I was still grey powered I was heading home from Syney when I decided to pass a truck at Mt white, just as I got in front of the truck I heard a grind and lost all popwer, although I had never striped a gear before I knew instantly what happened and after putting my last $10 in the tank I knew I would have a bastard of a time, fortunately a mate was heading up the highway about 6 hours later with a truck and he loaned me cash to hire a trailer and dragged the old wagon home, I ended up putting in a 2nd hand gear and cam from a fj motor and the motor didnt seem to go as good so a week later I turfed it out for a stocker 202 from a torana in my nans back yard and a holley and X2  headers off my FE.
A couple of weeks later I was running down the freeway with new paint and a more modern powerplant as I passed that same area and reminised the timing gear incident, I then passed a truck thinking my new late model 202 would be more reliable at speed but just as I passed the truck I got the same grind again only metres from the last incident but on the other side of the road. now I was pissed and decided that a new motor would be going in with a alloy or steel gear.
the car was towed home again and the new motor was started on that day with a alloy gear and new everything.

[fccool59]

GEARBOXES, DIFF'S, AXLES and UNI"S
I have no Idea of the amount of these things I have been through but I remeber keeping a good stock at home and probably changed these parts more often than my under wear till I became a family man (no I dont change my undies more now) my first diff in the wagon was blown while smoking it up at 3 am in a culdesac when I was 20 while dropping mates of after crawling pubs after crawling pubs all night, I changed it the next morning on the side of the road in Bualkham hills meters from my fresh tyre marks.
I have done 3 diffs, an axle and a uni in one week. however the last diff was the first one welded up wich survived a hard night at the second newcastle motordrome offstreet burnout night, I snaped the axle in a spot were I had a mate living on either side of the road, one wich had a neighbour with a couple of FE's and FC's.

[craiga]

Leon,

I've have a similar story.

Out with a few mates drinking and having a good time doing burnouts in an XU1. At about 11.00pm we thought we would go for a drive out to Colo River, basically the middle of nowhere. 130mph out Putty Road until we came to the bridge at the bottom of the hill. Had a few more beers (the last of them) then left the dirt car park doing a burnout (of course). When he hit third gear the rear tyres hit the bitumen and BANG no diff centre. The car rolled back into the car park, where it, and we, sat for two days and nights. Trouble was I had fallen off a motorbike 5 days before and was covered in huge gravel rash/burns - the flies loved me! AND NO BEERS  :-/ Four blokes sleeping in an XU1 wasn't pretty either.

New diff was bought out to us, fitted, and we were back on the road but a lot worse for wear.

Growing up, you wouldn't have missed it for the world!!

Craig.

[fccool59]

sounds like fun craig, we tried sleeping four in a LX one year after spending all our money on beer at the summernats in I think 94, by morning to of us decided that it was more comfortable to sleep on the gravel a couple of feet of the road wich was Northbourne Ave, none of us had gravel rash but the fact that we all got severly sunburnt didnt make the torana or road any more comfy.
I have found the wagon to be pretty good in these situations and have spent many nights sleeping above a busted diff.

GEARBOXES, DIFFS, UNI'S and AXLES contd.
now that I think of it, it was only like a week or two that the diff blew again after that week with the bad run of diff's when I was heading to a 50's cruise night, I was running a little late but making time with a bit of speed when I spotted a couple of hot rods, I was about 5 car lengths away trying to catch them when I went to change lanes, only problem was that I had some dickhead in his new BMW in the rite lane playing silly buggers and not letting me in by accelerating everytime I tried to change lanes, I got the shits, threw it in to second and floored it as I let the clutch go, next thing I was limping of to the side of the road watching the hot rods dissapear. To really rub it in an hour later the cruise passed with about 60 cars and they all waved as they passed me, then two hours later they did the same on the return trip, later in the night a mate pulled up in a FB ute and called one of my other mates (who had a EK )and I had a diff and tools delivered to me at about 11 the next morning.
When I first fitted the red 202 I kept the crash box from the grey to save all that mucking around, after a couple of days and still excited about the speed of red power I was heading to work one morning a few minutes behind scedule. There was a small tunnel with a give way sign down the road that you had to stop at to give way to cars coming from the other direction, this one morning I saw a car coming but thought since I now had red power , no cops were around and I was late, I decided to just floor it and let the clutch go. the car jumped forward with a big bang and stopped in the path of the oncoming car that had rite of way and just stopped in time to aviod a head on. The car was towed home by a Austin 1800 and I was 2 hours late for work, the next week was spent enlarging the transmission hump and a guy at work supplied me with my first  3 speed all synchro and speco centreshift.
One time I changed a diff in a hurry on the side of the road and didnt pull out all the old chunks of steel, The next week end I drove to sydney and started to notice a knock coming from the new diff, I pulled it out in my nan's front yard and found the bits of my old diff had attacked the new one, I replaced the new one again in mud and heavy rain with long hair, this time everything was thoroughly cleaned but the combination of flowers in my nans neihgbours yards and laying in mud left me with nuemonia for the next 5 weeks.
my first ever diff experience happened in a non FE FC car, this was a datsun with a 2 itre 4 cyl running twin sidedruaghts and a 2" sports exhaust back when 2" was big for a four cylinder. I had my liscence now for about 5 days and decided to try some figure eights in a gravel car park, I went for about 60 seconds till I noticed a loud knocking noise coming from the back of the car. I limped home and ended up having to tow it up my drive way, fortunatly I had a spare at home but after my mechanic mate and I did the swap of the whole assembly doing one side each we took it for a test drive but it was making a bad clunk nearly as bad as the one in the first place, I pulled in at my nans house up the road to pick something up and told my nan about how dissapointed I was after changing the diff and it still clunking. my nan who has never driven before said " I hope you did the wheel nuts up tight", I said offcourse nan were not stupid. we then drove up the hill a bit to were we were out of my nans site and checked the wheel nuts wich both of us seem to have only done up with our fingers. I ran home and grabbed a wheel brace and we got the diff going smooth as a newy in no time.

[HARKO]

In one of my past lives I was a Tour Guide in FNQ Far North Queensland ,We were situated at the edge of the rainforest with a fruit orchid boasting fruits from all over the world .
On a regular day I could swing a tour in about 1 1/2 hours taking our guests through the orchid ,down a steep decline into the forest explaining about tropical fruits and their uses and detailing plants evolved from gondwana land 250 million years ago.
I would head down deep into the forest throwing in lashings of my strange sence of humour as we'd go ,Things like hiding rubber snakes in a tree above the river ,floating up to it and bumping it out into the dukw -Sorry all the tours were in a 6 wheel drive 1942 Army DUKW - amphibious.
Or telling guests about the spiders that live in those webs on the wall we drive past that they can jump up to a metre and their venom can kill humans within minutes - then preceding to reverse the dukw into the wall and having a good old chuckle at the squirming people on the back row hehe.
So in chinese new year we crank out the tours at about a 1/2 trip , An interpreter telling his own stories and me driving the old six speed to its full potential with severe drops off both sides and if by accident you were to hit neutral the brakes dont hold it so KYAGB-kiis your ass good bye.
I hit the water like a tidal wave with a few screams from behind to know I had done a good job ,I shut it off and drifted up to my tree with that devious glint in my eye and bumped the snake inboard - Lets just say Karma has payed me back for that one and whilst in the commotioin I noticed the smoke starting to bellow from under the dash, All the wiring was starting to fry and I panicked pretty quickly (Rust holes didnt get repaired we just added more bilge pumps) so she was sinking , But the Korean crowd were cheering and laughing as it seemed all part of the show and must have been bloody realistic for them.
I had jumped on the front lifted the bonnet and pulled the battery cables but it didnt stop the beutifull green smoke from growing, So I radio'd back to base in code We have a code 23 wthl the thought of mayday crossing my mind.
Anyways I got another army dukw to rescue us and boarded all the guests who all wanted to shake my hand and get a portrait with me and the flames in the background with water lapping over the bonnet then proceded to flood the dukw with foam and wait for a tow .
I drank quite a few bourbons that night.

[RET]

DIFF:

I was hurtling down Eldridge Road in Bankstown about midnight one Saturday night, and approaching Chapel Road the back of the  FC (a station wagon) just locked up completely.  It stayed in a reasonably straight line and I crossed straight over the road into the driveway of what used to be a factory unit and is now Freedom Furniture/Christies.

It didn't take long to figure out the cause was a locked up diff, but none of the spanners I had were big enough to get the plug off.  Anyway, fortune smiled on me that night, because a security guard for the factory pulled up and asked me what I was doing.  He took pity on me, and unlocked the factory and let me poke around until I found a dirty big shifter that would do the job.  The guard told me just to toss the shifter over the fence when I was finished with it and left me to it.

Once armed with that the sump plug came out with no drama, and the - shall we say - under-lubrication of the diff became apparent.  A walk of about a mile up Canterbury Road and back to an all night servo that stocked diff oil and I was good to go.  Only a 2 hour delay...

More stories when I have time.

cheers
RET

[4hammers]

OK. That's better.
Here is one that doesn't involve personal injury to myself.
Not in an FC, but of course Holden.
I had a very nice HQ Coupe when I was about 18. It was running a nice 350 Chev, but at this stage, I had it out to give it a warm up & paint. Being very impaitent, I could not wait for the 350 to come back (4 weeks wait), so I decided to bung a 202 in for the time being. Pretty straight forward.
problem was, I drove it like the Chev. Barrelling along a place called "Copping Straight" down south, I had the urge to overtake a bunch of cars. No problems, foot flat, 202 pinging away like nothing else & off I went. 1,2,3,4,5----BANG!!!!!!!-5,4,3,2,1 & over I went to the side of the road. Can you imagine how bloody embarressing that was. Big Red HQ coupe, 265 T/A's on the back & all those cars I passed, suddenly passing me on the inside lane as I stuttered to a halt.
The motor was still running, but VERY smokey & noisy. So I clunked it into gear & off I went. 5 k down the road, it was sounding really bad, so I pulled over. I turned it off & had a look under the bonnet. Nothing I could see. So I tried to start it again. 3 turns & clunk, it would turn anymore.
We towed it home & off came the head. A mate was there who wasn't really into cars, but understood the basics. "I think that may be the problem there" pointing at number 3 cylinder. "Could be right" I replied. The entire piston was gone, only the conrod & gudgeon remained which had flogged great dents into the bore. In the sump, the biggest piece of piston was about the size of a 50 cent piece. the rest had been chewed up in the crank & nicely dispersed throughout the block.
202 = Chev 350??? No way.
RJ

[craiga]

Here's another

My younger brother had a HJ 253 premier, quite a nice car but he wanted better. I was driving round Sydney and spotted a really nice HQ Coupe in a car yard, and I mean REAL nice. Original dark red, houndstooth inserts on black trim, power windows and steer, 308 trimatic. We drove down there in the HJ and talked turkey about a trade in deal.

A $3000.00 changeover to be done the next day. We both left the car yard very happy and started to drive home. Well in his excitement he failed to see the stretch Mercedes limo as we turned right and t-boned it right in the back door. Nice and good let me tell you. Cops came and left and we limped the damaged HJ back to my mates panel shop where my other brother worked.

Two cases of beer later the HJ was "fixed", a true bog recreation and sculptor would be proud of. Next morning we drove the car to the dealer and promptly traded it in, wet paint and all. If you pushed on the areas where we did the repairs you left a finger print  

How fast do you reckon we left the car dealers in the Monaro!!! and always keeping an eye out for stretch Mercedes  

The poor Monaro ended up into a fence, repaired and sold but that's another story........

Craig.

[fccool59]

PAINT
The previous owner of my car used to give the interior a clean up by jumping in with a tin of paint and a brush.
The day I went to paint my car for the first time I had the whole car primed except for all the interior and door jambs apart from the dash.
I rubbed it all down inside so it would be ready to prime early in the morning with intentions of painting the car at mid day.
As not everything always goes to plan, A couple of minutes after squirting the primer it all fried up. Whatever the previous owner was painting the interior with didnt like the primer, I spent the next day rubbing of all the fried up paint and didnt end up finishing the paint job till 10:30 pm the next night.
A simular situation occured when I painted the engine, I bought two cans of engine enamel from the new PEP parts store in cardiff. after using up the two cans I still wasn't content with the coverage, I didn't want to spend anymore on engine paint but it was now or never as it was time to put the new engine in its new home.
After uming and aring I went down to the local autopro shop down the road and bought a can of paint, I got home started squirting away I was pissed at the color difference but after a couple of coats I noticed it was all starting to fry up.
by time I got all the paint off and more paint back on I spent near $100 and a whole weekend painting the engine.
Back in 98 I smashed the FC into a lost driver.
after the car sat for a couple of weeks with the front pulled apart I decided to get it back on the road for the second Newcastle motordrome burnouts night.
I spent all after noon and night repairing the panels trying to not use to much bog, I got a bit carried away on the bonnet wich was donated by the bush and rubbed of to much steel cuasing part of the bonnet to sag as it still does now. I mixed the paint at about 5 am and had all the paint on by about 6:30, looked ok but when I got to work I parked the car and then turned around to notice a pretty nasty color match, I drove it around for a couple of months but it bugged me too much so I decided to paint the whole blue area again.
This time it got a pretty rough over night prep up but I had access to a booth the next day. In the booth everything went like a dream till I got a bit carried away on the last coat ending with some pretty nasty runs on the drivers door, fortunately I got the runs out with some 600 over my fingernail.
Shortly after painting my car to get all the color match spot on my boss gave us a demonstration of how volvo drivers get their name. I was working away at work when my boss stormed in going on about how much it was going to cost to fix his volvo, I didnt quite catch what he was on about at first but then I looked outside and noticed his volvo was awfully close to my FC, I said you dont want to have touched my car, walked out the front and screemed the F word out, My car was left undrivable.
It wasnt real good timing either as we were of to hospital for my first son's birth the next day, due to this I allowed the car to the hands of a panel beater who made things even worse, have you ever seen a FC with one guard welded and bogged to the stone tray, I explained the color and how to make it but they just ignored everything I explained. when I went to pick it up he tried to convince me that it was a factory color from a ford or something, what bullshit, I just poured in some tinter to white till I liked the color. He had done a match ten times worse than the one that I had resprayed the entire blue area to cover.

After a loose steering wheel nut led to a striped spline inside my steering wheel in a car park I had to replace my wheel.
I cleaned up an old wheel to paint up and whack on, went down to Go Lo grabbed a can of primer and gloss white, went home, squirted away recoated it every hour till all the cans were empty and left it to dry.
next day I went to grab it but it was all sticky. I gave it a couple more days but on the Saturday it had to go on as we were going for a weekend away. I drove from newcastle to peats ridge holding the wheel with a couple of fingers but once I hit the windy wisemans ferry road the wheel just started turning black as I had to handle the paint that had refused to cure.

[fccool59]

WINSCREEN MOULD
This is no biggy and has probably been done before but I made the mistake of deciding to put the mould on another day, this doesnt look so bad on a standard or commercial but is pretty messy on a specail. About 3 weeks after carefully replacing the screen without damaging the old rubber I decided to polish up the moulds and wack em on but as many probably know you can't just wack them on with the screen already fitted, about 10 months later I ended up fiting the moulds.

Gee ED, sorry to hear about your new mac, you must have been pissed off and as for someone having the hide to rob you in the situation you were in sounds pretty bad.