I've done the extra gasket on the engine thing. The bad part was that i swore that i checked to see if it was on the old oil filter. For the life of me i couldn't figure out why oil was spurting out around there even though i tightened the MF up as tight as possible. I must've tried 2-3 different filters and a couple hours later before i got out a flashlight and squirmed all the way under my 72 351 to visually check and god darn it there the extra gasket was.
Another time when my dad and i were putting the manual tranny back into my 89 ranger we had the tranny up on the tranny stand up to the engine. We were lining things and manuevering it.. well i got it in the right place and was reaching under the tranny (arm under the plate of the tranny stand) to start the far side bolts in.
Well for some reason my dad thought the tranny still needed to be lowered a lil bit (read very lil). While my arm was under the tranny jack top plate (holdign the tranny) my dad takes an
air rachet and procedes to lower the tranny stand w/o telling me (i could'n't quite see him and wasn't paying attention to him) only instead of lower (abiet too fast) the tranny jack failed and came down all the way with my arm underneath pinning my upper arm under the tranny and the base of the stand.
I swore for about 10 min (in front of my mom and granmother who came rusing out of the house after hearing my initial scream of pain) it took my mom, dad, and my one arm (who could barely fit under the lifted up truck) about 5 min to unstrap the tranny off the jack and shove the tranny off safely so that i could get my arm free.
I spent the next 5 hours in the emergency room (with my dad who hates hospitals, but he was more afraid to stay at home with either my mad grandmother or mom). Luckily it turned out that i had only very badly bruised the bones in my arm (along with the several deep gashes).
When we got home i made my dad maneuver under the car and put the tranny up while i operated the tranny jack. Funny thing is that he hid the air rachet from me that day.
Oh and while i was in the hospital i was lectured about keeping my hands clean and not dirty even after i told them i was working on a car.