rwh776 - what is it about young guys and getting trapped under vehicles? I bet your dad tried to drum safety into you as mine did... Take a look at my version of what happen to you (post #266 in this thread). One thing though, once you've had this experience you always make absolutely sure the tons of metal above you are well supported. I've been using the same big chunks of wooden beam as extra axle supports for years - won't go under without them!
1. I pulled the wheels off my motorcycle to take them in to have new tires put on, so the bike was up on the jack. I realized I'd reattached a tortion bar for the rear suspension backwards, so I went to redo it, with the bike STILL ON THE JACK with no front wheel.
Bad idea. The bike came crashing down on me, and I had no way to get it back up without damaging the forks. I ended up doing a halfassed install of the front wheel with it lying on the ground, then picking it up, re-jacking it, and taking the front wheel off and putting it back on again. My wife was standing there the whole time...
2. Siphoning gas out of the tank of my 66 F100 in order to remove the tank to replace the floors and cab corners. I went to take a call, and when I came back out, there was about 4 gallons of gas on the garage floor. Needless to say, no welding was done that evening.
I'm pretty sure I still hold the worlds record for jumping a '75 Mercury station wagon. I was out in high school (many years ago!) with some girl I was dating and another couple. On a road south of town that led to her house, she said "go real fast over this bump up ahead!". The bump was a railroad track that dropped off huge on the other side! At 90 mph, the car was almost vertical when it landed on its front bumper, the back bumper, the front, til it finally landed on the wheels! Bannana'd the frame so bad, had to kick the doors open! My Dad was NOT impressed!
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Pat W.
Nebraska Chapter Leader and Official #2 Slackmaster! 2006 F-250/ 1997 F-150/1967 F-100 1967 F-100 Project
discochris - concerning your 'siphoning gas' snafu - there's something about the distraction of the telephone that has got me in trouble several times. I am told that ladies can multitask at work much better than guys and I believe it. Learned long ago that men work best when they are not interrupted. I always turn off the bloody cell phone when I work - this policy has saved much misery and embarrassment. If you want to see the effect of gas on the ground and a spark, look at my post #252 (on page 21) in this thread.
The other obvious distractions are fatigue and booze - if I'm still working at 3 in the morning and have downed a couple of beers, my usual super-rabbit brain becomes completely harebrain - almost guarantees some stupid mistakes!
Ok I really hate to admit this one but it doesn't look like I'm the only idiot out there: Decide to check for spark, pull spark plug carefully set it on manifold where I can see it from the cab of the truck. Jump in turn key, found out I had great spark, motor catches fire
84 Ranger, changing fuel filter at carb...start to check for leaks, it did, so I shut off to tighten, but did not wait for gas to evaporate/go away before restarting. Fire ext is in kitchen, rolled ranger down driveway so it wouldn't take out garage, just in case. Lucky for me, I had full coverage insurance on it, and they fixed it!
Last edited by stresssolutions; 03-12-2006 at 12:51 AM.
was helping a buddy out who knew nothing about engines.. Parents bought him a '70 mustang w/351... showed him how to remove the filter on the carb, and told him to put the new one in it's place and tighten it... He tightened it so much, he broke the carb! His parents were not impressed, and now a simple tune up required a brand new carb.
Isn't it great that we can laugh at ourselves and others after we do something really stupid................. I had a leak in a gas tank so I took it out of the truck, drained the gas, and being smart enough to know about remaining fumes I filled the tank with water to purge the fumes before brazing the tank. Not thinking about gas and water not mixing I dumped the water back out. The remaining little bit of gas replaced the fumes and when I hit it with the torch there was a whoomp and the tank jumped off the ground and bulged out like a watermelon. I was lucky it held together and I couldn't believe I was dumb enough to pull a trick like that. "Too soon old we get und too late shmart."
Sister came home last night & told me my spare tire was hanging. Went out and looked and sure enough, one of the bolts for the mount must have rusted out & broke. So this morning before work I take the spare off and go to unscrew the mounts so it doesn't fall out on the highway...and I hit a brake line. Didn't notice when I did it because the line is up behind the frame rail, but when I got in to start it, the brake pedal went to the floor. Got out & walked around to the back to see a nice stream of brake fluid coming out from around the top of that bolt.
Those things hold a hefty amount of fluid, don't they?
I got one. I was removing the pulley on my power steering pump last Friday. The bolt that the removal tool thing came with was all worn down, total POS. So I go to home depot and buy a grade 8 brand new bolt, put it all together, works great. I get a ratchet on the end (lesson one, use a wrench) and a wrench on the "loosening" part. The thing keeps getting further and further out. I finally get the pulley all the way off and realize the bolt has moved so far I can't get the ratchet off of it.
Doh! So after a little careful thinking, I put rags all around the engine, radiator, and everything and proceeded to Dremel the new bolt in half. Never occured to me it might be too long for the job lol.
Now..what started as simply replacing the power steering pump turned into the truck being towed to the mechanic yesterday after the "remanufactured" pump (aka crap) leaked and seized. Mech's gonna put a brand new MC pump in, hopefully that will fix it.
was out in the garage playing, and decided to make a new antenna mount for the light bar that is on top of the 88. cut the metal, and was going to drill it when i remembered that the chuck on the drill press was loose. so i grabbed the chuck and pulled down to take it off the shaft... and proceeded to smash 3 knuckles into the drill press vice sitting on the table. i am now sitting here, typing with my left hand, while the right hand is wrapped in a bloody towel covered with ice to try to stem the swelling, hoping i don't need stitches.
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Tom
JOIN THE NEW JERSEY CHAPTER CLICK HERE
About 3 hours ago at work.... Wasn't paying attention when I was getting ready to move the forklifts in for the night, fired one up and parked it, hopped on the other one and started backing it in got distracted and stopped, thought I had it in neutral, hopped off knowing it would stall anyway. It stayed running and actually revved up a bit, it backed itself right into the other one. Other then they paint swaping they did you can't tell.
351M similar story back in 66 - was working in a big food warehouse the summer of grade 11. The Boss had just allowed me to start using the fork lift the week earlier. Had a skid of 5 gallon pales of pie-filling stacked too high. You can tell where this is going.... Drove over a board that magically appeared just as I was lifting to a 10 foot steel shelf and the whole thing started rocking. I tried to stop the swaying by giving a little throttle. Down it all came to make an amazing pile sticky muck. The Boss wanted to kill me, took hours to clean the forklift etc. but I didn't get fired!
LOL, at least you got to keep the job. I was asked how it happened and just said the shifter dropped back into reverse. So they said try not to let it happen again but also that I wasn't the first LOL.
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GO HUSKERS!!
i am now sitting here, typing with my left hand, while the right hand is wrapped in a bloody towel covered with ice to try to stem the swelling, hoping i don't need stitches.
