There was a show on cable the other night, where Jesse James, the custom motorcycle maven went to Iraq with his crew for a week. The objective was to work with the military guys over there to rebuild a Humvee into a custom that could do wheelies.
Well, it was pretty embarrassing. They put a tranny in and did not put fluid into it before putting it in the vehicle. That was on the advice of some of the Army mechanics, who said they had done it without fluid lots of times and it wasn't necessary. They started it up, tried to get it into going, and the wheels barely moved. Turns out the gears in the torque converter broke!
Then, apparently the HV they were working on was a smaller, diff model one, because they couldn't swap trannies or parts. So, Jesse tried to heli arc weld the gears. Then they re-assembled it and it failed again.
Really was quite an amazing screw up for a bunch of guys that are supposed to be pros. I'm no tranny expert, but I'd never put together a metal pump without making sure it had some lube before starting it up. And I'm not sure what the point to skipping putting some oil in before assembly was. Doesn't seem like it would have saved more than a couple mins time.
In the end, they wasted a day because of this and without parts, couldn't get it going before they had to quit and return home. They did ship the HV back to LA and Jesse got it going there.