Things not to do in your garage

[cwcox]

Gee whiz. Sure are a lot of STUPID people here on this web site. Glad I'm not like them..... Of course, there was the time I was trying to get BIG bolt out of hitch to frame bracket. Very rusty, but no problem. Just used giant 3/4 drive and 3 foot breaker bar. I'm sitting on the ground, indian style, pulling towards me as hard as my 260lb farm boy frame can pull, and BANG! Wifey wakes me with her hysterical laughter while trying to wipe copius amount of blood from forehead!

Then again, I do recall a time finished changing the oil (in a customer's car), and proceeded to do a quick repair in the interior. Blazing hot day, gargae is steaming, so I decide to start the car and run a/c while I fix the seatbelt. Sitting there assembling new pieces, suddenly I'm curious about odd RED light on dash. *^%#! Forgot the %$& *@#& oil!!! Shut off engine quick, add oil and restart, quickly rev to 2000 for a few minutes. OK, we're good.

Oddly enough, that reminds me of the time I removed all (ALL) of the fasteners holding on a right front suspension assembly on a front driver. Car on rack at face height. Suspension sort of balanced, turned slightly to grab tie wire- WHOMP! Right big toe now better used as flipper.

Note to self: Go back and erase first two lines.....

 

[RBrunson]

CW, that is what I thought after reading several pages, a lot of candiates for the Darwin Award here. Lots of good humor also, glad everyone is still alive. What about me?, no I have never done anything dumb.

 

[nickleinonen]

Oil tastes great! Although I didn't do this in the garage wich I should have. I changed oil on my sister's truck outside on a windy day. Pulled the plug and the oil poured into the pan. The a swift gust of wind blew through and blew the oil into my face.

really? i don't much like the taste of it... i got a full load of lube oil on myself. i was working changing out a power assembly at work [piston/rod/liner/head assembly] and while i was going to roll out the old upper conrod bearing, the mate i was working with decided to "accidently" bump the engine barring tool [basically hydraulic jack] enough to make the bearing float just slightly and splash it rolled over and into the sump it went getting my face completely covered in heavy dirty black used engine lube oil. i was not impressed. the oil was sitting at 1" below the crankcase hand hole covers. i now make sure to drop it to around 6" or more below hand hole cover before i work on the lower end of an EMD engine.

 

[JEccles]

when i was 17 i had a 72 MGB GT loaded to the gills with performance stuff. one day i was letting it idle and i was pushing on all the spark plug wires just to make sure they were on there good... ... as i checked the mallory high performance coil it shocked me so bad i was left lying on the garage floor still twitching in time with the MG's idle. lol, i still remember hearing the engine load up as it started shocking me

 

[crobertson1]

JL Penner,



That was brilliantly written! Hilarious too!

 

[JPlybon]

I guess I will tell on myself too. When I was 16 a friend and I took his dads boat to the Missouri river to try and start it, so as I was dumping gas in the carb I told my friend not to start it yet , well he did not here the NOT part and cranks the boat and the carb back fires and the tip of the gas can is now on fire. So I tossed the gas can in the river, did you know gas is lighter than water . So now the river and the side of the boat is on fire, I then jumped in the river and splashed non flameable water on everything and put out the fire. And besides a black mark on the boat nothing was hurt.

 

[TRCM]

Dang, I don't feel so bad now. Almost feel like I fit in.



Let's see, I've done the forgotten oil plug thing while refilling the crankcase... ... . done the transmission fluid in the face as the 'balanced' full pan just touches the frame as you lower it and tips it just enough to be no longer balanced... and of course it is leaning towards my face... . but have you ever set the parking brake, and started the engine and put it in gear to check something ?? And then stood in front of the car and suddenly forget it is in gear, and reach up and blip the throttle ? Good thing the brakes worked well. All I got was a big bump on the noggin where the hood tried to close on me as I fell against the grill that just knocked my feet out from under me as the car jumped about a foot forward.





My 1st oil change was a lawnmower. I figured if I tilited it sideways, I could get more oil in (7 yrs old). It wouldn't run, or even turn over. So when Dad got home, I told him I changed the oil but it wouldn't run. He pulled the fill plug and oil started gushing out. He laughed, but made me clean up the mess.



I think the stupidest things I have ever done tho, was go during fishing trips with some friends of mine when we were about 12-14.



1) 3 teens in a 14 ft jon boat. With us & our gear, the sides of the jon boat were only about 4" out of the water. While we are fishing, we see an alligator in the area. This gator is at least as long as the boat we are in. One of the 'friends' decides he is gonna catch this gator, and before we could stop him, he has snagged it with a 6" jitterbug.



We managed to cut the line and get out of there before things got real bad.



2) Fishing again, with the same friends, in a phosphate pit (deep). The shoreline was nothing but weeds & coontail moss for about 200 ft out from shore. We decide, 3 of us, and our gear, to go out in the water on an 8 ft square by 1 ft thick sheet of styrofoam, using it as a sort of raft. Every time we would move, you could feel the foam flex. Now, I realize, that if the foam had broken, we would have probably all drowned, as the moss was too thick to swim in.



Ahhh... the stupidity of youth.

 

[daveshoe]

A guy I know submitted an unusual insurance claim to a John Deere liability insurance carrier. It seems that a Mechanic working at the dealearship noticed rather large flames coming off the tip of a customer's cigarette when he was working on a combine. He asks the customer what's up and the customer's buddy demanstrates by proceeding to get a mouthful of oxygen out of the torch to blow thru the cigarette to produce the flame. Turns wrong valve and the acytelene explosion breaks his jaw. When they turned in this claim,there was concern over whether it would be paid. The agent said ''no problem''and related a claim he had received a week earlier.

Another dealer put in a new shop bay and was using shop employees to staple plywood liner to the walls. One employee tied down the safety on his air stapler, ascended the wooden ladder and stapled-- the most masculine part of--''himself''. Oh, the humanity!

 

[10-9jc]

Remember my first "experience" as a kid maybe 10 years old. I'm walking by the

local gas station, a big kid (all of 13) is trying to start an old Cushman scooter.

Says, "hey come over give me a hand - hold this wire while I kick this thing!"

Yeooooowww! - well, he knew it had spark (I did too!)



Anyway - liked all the stories - I've done the oil spills, etc.

A guy I worked with at the FD came to work with big welt on his forehead. Told

us he decided to change the U joints on his van. Gets under, pulls bolts on rear

U joint, van starts to roll (his driveway has slight incline). OK as long as he hangs

on to driveshaft, works his way as far out as he can - then makes a dive.

Almost made it.



For me best (funniest) is an AF story - not in a garage, but a mechanic thing!

Worked on the flight line, serviced C-97 (4-engine piston driven Acft),

at the CA ANG mid 60's. Besides fuel, oil, service and various maint. -

Planes had two toilet rooms on upper deck.

You would drain them by hooking up a hose to a connector on the exterior of the plane. To do this you had to stand and reach above your head to remove cap over the connector.

Then open a valve inside the plane to drain the holding tanks into a cart which received the contents. [Kinda like draining the holding tanks on your RV]



However - if the valve was accidently left open (and/or you didn't

check in advance), bad things would happen when the cap was removed.

A guy was showing me how it was done - got to witness a "s**t shower"

(plane had been on a long flight too!).

I DID learn to always stand well to the side before removing said cap!

Besidse being literally s**t on, my "instructor" was less than happy when I was rolling on the tarmac laughing!

 

[TRCM]

Oh yeah, remembered another one this morning whe I looked in the mirror.



I had just put an NP205 tcase in my truck, and the 205 was shorter than the 203 I removed. This was all at about 2 am by the way, trying to get it back together for a club run. Well, I was trying to see if any of the drvieshafts from my parts trucks & spare parts pile would work. I am laying under the truck, and I hold one end of the d/s at the pinion with one hand, and stretch the d/s with the other hand to see if it will make it to the tcase. Well, I was almost there when WHACK !!!!!! the slip joint came apart, and the heavy end with the splines came down and smacked me in the forehead about 1/8" above my right eyebrow. I sat there for probabaly 15 minutes trying to recover. That sucker hurt worse than any of the times I got smacked in the head by line drives when I use to play baseball.



Anyway, to this day, I have a reminder above my eye of my stupidity. And yes, I was lucky it didn't hit my eye and reduce my vision by 50%. Someone was looking out for me that night for sure.



And no, I didn't make the club run. It turns out, neither did anyone else due to illnesses and parts breakage.

 

[nickleinonen]

However - if the valve was accidently left open (and/or you didn't

check in advance), bad things would happen when the cap was removed.

A guy was showing me how it was done - got to witness a "s**t shower"

i nearly experienced that at work... the shat houses on the loco's have a standard chemical toilet that needs to be hooked up to an evac system before you pull the trap in the cab. there is suppose to be a 4" camlock cap on the end of the fitting outside the cab, but most are missing this... well i was working bottom deck inspection that day [brake shoe technician along with visual inspection of wheels, brakes, trucks - basically anything below the running boards on a loco] and well the guy doing the toilets didn't remember to hook up the evac pipe and there was no cap and he pulled the valve open in the cab. it got my left arm slightly [was disposable wearing paper sleaves and gloves and barrier cream on my arms too] oh i was mad... i nearly beat the guy with the 30" prybar i carry with me during the inspection [need it to change brake shoes out]...



i've also can't count the number of times i have nearly had a #2 fuel oil shower... the auto shutoff's don't work reliably on the fueling rigs so at times if it sticks, you get a mass of fuel coming out the tank vent pipe which is 2" sch 80 pipe and fuel pressure filling is around 75psi... one day i know i will get a fuel shower. . not looking forward to that day

 

[bighammer]

And don't put new electrode's in you stick welder, bare handed leaning on the grounded item in shorts on a hot day.

I was welding in the mount for my stack in the bed of my old truck. It was winter, and I was in a hurry. Didn't shovel out the bed, just the corner where the stack went. So kneeling in slush (melting from welding) and needing a new rod but not able to pick it up with gloves on, I pull off the glove and clamp it in. YEOOW knees to hand complete circuit.

Another time in the summer (nearly 100 degree weather) I was working with no shirt on something under the hood. I reached accross the battery terminals which made excellent contact on my sweaty chest. 12 volts can really make you jump if the amps are there!

 

[biggy238]

Don't wait until you are elbow deep under the brake booster putting on a new fuel filter in 100* heat to find out that your two new 1000CCA batteries are alive and ready to play. The sting isn't that bad... it's that the initial shock/jerk causes you to get caught in place with no way to get ungrounded.

 

[rrausch]

Ok... I've got two I'll talk about! First one I was 10 years old, and Pop just brought home a little Massey Harris Cub tractor that he got a good deal on. He said I would have to learn how to drive it, so I started practicing out behind our barn. He was gone, and I had it wide-open (of course) in 4th gear, doing laps around and between the blackjack oaks when the rear tire hit a rock about the size of a pumpkin. Threw me right off. I hit the ground and looked up in time to see the Massey headed straight for an oak tree. I jumped up and ran after it, managed to climb on and hit the switch just as it made contact with the tree. All that happened was that the Massey got the grill mashed in about 4 inches. I still have that grill hanging in my barn. Pop looked at me kind of strangely and just shook his head when I told him what happened. Years later my Mom sold that little Massey for $50!



The other thing I've learned is this: When you are doing a brake job on the rear of a rusty old truck, and the drums are rusted & stuck to the axles like they are welded on, and you have read that putting the truck up on stands, starting it up, putting it in gear and hitting the gas, then braking hard will loosen the drums... when you do all that ALWAYS put a couple of nuts back onto the studs before you hit the gas. When drums are turning about 40 mph, and suddenly free up and fall off the axle they sure do mess up a garage! In fact it is just amazing how many things they can careen into and bounce off of and tear up. Luckily it wasn't my garage

 

[JL penner]

JL Penner,



That was brilliantly written! Hilarious too!

Thanks! I shoulda been a writer! :-laf



some more things not to do:



My Dad sent me down to one of our smaller mare pastures to pick up a bunch of wood that he had just cut. I backed my truck up to the pile and started loading the logs in. That's when I spied his hay hooks laying up near the cab of the truck. So I grabbed them and started picking the logs up with the hay hooks. Everything was going great until I missed a log and sent a hook into my kneecap!



I had to crawl back to my truck, pull myself in and drive back up to the house. Then the worst part came, I had to explain what happened! He wasn't too thrilled when he found out what I was doing with his good set of hay hooks. btw, I was 16 at the time.

 

[JCutter]

All i can say is JACK STANDS, JACK STANDS, JACK STANDS. Dumb ***** me had then sitting 10 ft away when i was working on a suzuki samurai and a front axel and didnt use them :{ Now i have a perminant straight middle finger courtious of the frame and leaf spring.

 

[CSnyder]

However - if the valve was accidently left open (and/or you didn't

check in advance), bad things would happen when the cap was removed.

A guy was showing me how it was done - got to witness a "s**t shower"



I have a story that makes me quiver with laughter every time I think about it yet... . I grew up on a farm and dad always hired a guy to keep up with chores and such while we did harvest. The guy was working on pumping a manure laggoon under a hog house all day and spreading the manure in a field where we were working. The hired guy had managed to get to the bottom of the pit and dad told him when he finished to be sure to remove the ejector pipe from the rear of the tank when he finished(it's held on by 2 big spring clamps) and hang it on the side of the machine to prevent freeze up and to let it drain completely. Dad and I were talking back and forth on our 2 ways when we see him going across the field with the pump going and no manure discharging but he didn't have a radio to contact him on. He goes to the edge of the field and starts unhooking the tank and we watch him go to the rear to unsnap the ejector pipe... ... and WHAM he gets knocked backwards about 20 feet by about 2500 gallons of liquid manure. We were laughing so hard at him we had to quit running the harvest for nearly 2 hours. He stunk soooo bad for almost 3 weeks from being sprayed with that nasty manure that we started having lunch in the shop because it made mom sick to smell him. He never got any injuries from the mishap but sure was humiliated by it. He had sucked up a piece of wall plastic that had plugged the ejector and stopped the flow but the tank kept building pressure until he shut it off. Dad took a paint marker and wrote real big on the front of the tank... always check tank pressure guage before removing ejector. After the incident we had to wash him down with a garden hose and he drove home in a pair of mechanics cover-alls to change... of course he threw his clothes away from that. I remember dad giving him a $100 bonus for going right back to work after the humility.

 

[EMD Diesel Power]

really? i don't much like the taste of it... i got a full load of lube oil on myself. i was working changing out a power assembly at work [piston/rod/liner/head assembly] and while i was going to roll out the old upper conrod bearing, the mate i was working with decided to "accidently" bump the engine barring tool [basically hydraulic jack] enough to make the bearing float just slightly and splash it rolled over and into the sump it went getting my face completely covered in heavy dirty black used engine lube oil. i was not impressed. the oil was sitting at 1" below the crankcase hand hole covers. i now make sure to drop it to around 6" or more below hand hole cover before i work on the lower end of an EMD engine.

:-laf :-laf :-laf :-laf :-laf Gee... . I never had problems like that! Must be a Canadian thing.



Con bearings werent too bad to do... . Mains were a PITA at times..... especially in a F/P45 unit. For those that dont know... . thats a full cowl carbody unit... . like the old streamliners... no #@$%! #@$%! #@$%! room to lay down or work comfortably. Yeah... I always dropped the sump oil level a good 6 inches to accomodate me with big arms.

 

[AfterBurner]

Well, I'm glad I've never done anything as dumb as ya'll , but i did have these "freinds" that did something dumb once. It was the summer after we graduated High school, and these buddies of mine ran up to New Mexico to work at a mechanic shop. Well, eventually, they get a snocat that has to be fixed (now i mind you, these TX kids had never seen one before). And to fix it, they have to pull both tracks off. So they take this thing, park it on the long driveway (inclined of course), and proceed to unbolt the tracks. They plan on pulling it off the tracks with another snocat that is behind it, so instead of chalking the thing, one guy jumps in the cab and holds the breaks. Apparently, when you unbolt the tracks, the brakes don't work anymore, at all! So needless to say, this guy goes drifting off in the snocat with no steering or brakes headed straight for the highway. They both made it home, so i guess they survived, but i did here that the brown stain didn't come off the seat cover, so the shop threw in a free set of seat covers with the job. :-laf

 

[Kennywould]

I had a little incident one time with gasoline and lightning. I was working on a 1966 GTO sitting on jacks in the garage, I was laying on a creeper putting the driveshaft back in tightening the bolts up. Well I had the back door open and the garage door up about one panel when one heck of a thunderstorm rolled through! I had about half a bread pan filled with gasoline and oil mixed in it for a parts cleaner solution sitting on the work bench. I recall hearing and feeling the crackle of electricity and a loud boom! I was propelled out from under the at a rather high rate of speed (did I mention the garage door was up one panel) yep, into the street, one heck of a ride but the garage and the car did not make it! That was over 25 years ago and I still shut all the doors when I hear thunder!