Well, I was prying the springs off my rear brake shoes today with my trusty Vise Grips when BAM. I slipped off the spring and put my fist square into my nose. This sent the back of my head into the wheel well lip. Lots of blood(yep, nose bleed) and a lump on the head. I though for sure I broke my nose but all is ok now after the eyes stopped watering.

Has anybody done this kind of thing? I can't be alone here. What kind of crazy thing have you guys done while wrenching on your stuff?

 

was loosening the tensionor pully on my truck, when my hand slipped off the ratchet and i SLICED the skin clean off 3 of my knuckles on the fan shroud then pinched the living heck out of my fore arm between the belt and the pulley, and it hurt like all get out when i ripped my arm out of there... All that took place in aproxamitly 2 seconds... now i make other people hold the tension while I straighten the belt up.

 

i use the proper brake tools.

good investment.

glad you did not do real serious damage.

 

Oh man that had to hurt. I'm just glad to hear you didn't break anything.

I wrench for a living. The list of dumb stuff I've done is pretty long. Let's see, caught my hair in a creeper wheel, cut the tip off of one finger changing a heater hose on a Roadrunner, lost most of a finger nail while removing a hood from an F750, split my upper lip while replacing a rear main seal on an International DT466, had a grindstone blow apart and bury a chunk in my right thigh just to name a few. Too many minor cuts and burns to count. The more severe stuff I can remember.

I have scars from Cat, Cummins, Detroit and International diesels, Fuller and Spicer transmissions and a real nasty one from a Mack spring.

I'm kinda proud of them.

 

I wrench almost daily, so I have a few stories, too. The best/worst would probably be the time I was pulling a driverside door glass out of a car for one of my customers. It was early in the morning, I was hungover, and I was in a hurry. I unbolted the glass from the regulator and was just starting to slide it out of the track when the regulator sprung up and caught my wrist between it and the inner door skin. I had to walk around with a bandaged wrist for a week, explaining to everyone that I had been working on a car, not trying to kill myself.

-Rod

 

haha my stupid one was workin on my buds 74 chev hah pullin the u-joints one of the clips was bein a pain so we were redneckin it (screw drivers pliers fingers teeth any thing within reach) yeh wen it finally came out it came out at mach 20 got me dead square in the center of my nose right tween me eyes 2 inches left or right i probly would look like a pirate

 

I do too.

Well, I was doing axle seals and shoes on my bud's F-350......

My hands were still kinda slippery from the hypoid and I was wrestling with the brake springs,,,

(you know where this is going, right??? )

In a flash the pliers were gone!
I felt something hit me in the side of the face.
I have *no idea* where they went,....until I turn my head to look for them.

That's right, somehow, they are hooked in my cheek.
I'm really fortunate not to have lost an eye.
I think of putting on goggles when working with springs now, but more often than not I'm so greasy or sweaty there's just no point.

I have hit myself in the face more than once really pulling on something in tight quarters when the bolt, or socket, let go.

 

My old boss used to buy $300 cars about every six monthes; naturally they had a lot of problems...

Because I was the only guy she knew who knew what a wrench was; I'd go out in the parking lot, while I was on break, and fix them for her, as cheaply as possible... Redneck automotive skills at their best (duct tape on the air intake, bailing twine on the exhaust, and my personal favorite; the cracked coolant resevour we patched with chewing gum)...

Well one night she complained about the blue smoke, and I asked if she had ever changed the oil... Nope, so I set out to do that... Much like the original poster I bashed myself in the nose with the wrench I was using to loosen the drain plug... It didn't help I was doing it in the dark either, haha... A roll of paper towels and I was ok, but makes for a good story...

 

HAHAHAHA That was HILARIOUS. I'm sorry for laughing at your pain, but you know, when someone says something that just strikes your funny bone. I'm sorry but that made me laugh my @$$ off. That made my day !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

ArdWrknTrk, my brother did bascially the same thing, but with wire strippers will workin on his *shudder* import. (he came back from the dark side though when he bought an explorer) he was wiring a lighted shift **** when the tool slipped off while he was stripping a wire and it caught him in the forehead. the phonecall went something like this;
me: hello
brother:can u put dad on the phone?
dad talked to him for like 30 seconds then i heard "u want to go to the hospital?" i went oh s... lol he was ok though.

i cant remember doing anything like that...yet. lol

ArdWrknTrk, what part of CT are u from? im from Waterford (by New London)
sry for off topic.

 

most interesting thing that happened to me was getting an eyelid infection from getting transmission fluid in my eye. The eyelid got super swolen for a few days.

I almost nailed the cat with a flying pry bar from that darn tensioning belt one time.

And on another occasion, I dropped a 12" section of 10AWG across both battery terminals, which was exciting to say the least.

I get so many cuts though from wrenching and I don't even know where they came from or when they happened. Just wrap with paper towel, duct tape and moove on...

 

When I was 16, my first car was a 1978 Dodge Diplomat ... basically a fancied-up Dodge Aspen. It was a true low-mileage special, with barely over 40K on it at the time I got it (in January 1994).

Anyway, one of the first projects I undertook on the car once the weather warmed up that year was to change the spark plugs.

Simple, right?

WRONG.

Mine had the 318 engine, which meant that the back two plugs on both sides were buried by wires, hoses and other assorted emissions-related crap (and also, on the driver's side, by the steering shaft).

I managed to get all but the very last plug on the passenger's side when I realized that my hands were soaked and red with blood. I'd taken all of the hide off of my knuckles, and was bleeding profusely.

Then the worst happened.

That last plug was stuck.

Whether it was the blood loss, my anger about the blood loss, or just stupidity, I applied all of my weight to the wrench, which finally broke free and slammed various parts of my body into whatever was closest.

My left hand slammed into a gap in the exhaust manifold, where my little finger twisted and broke.

My elbow hit the ballast resistor, where it got cut open on the sharp edge of the plug.

And my forehead hit the wing nut on the air cleaner, slicing the skin above my left eyebrow.

No stitches were required, but I looked like I'd been mauled by a lion.

About a week later, my Dad was under the hood replacing the fuel pump and he pointed out these neat little (obviously removable) panels in the wheel housings on both sides of the engine.

"Did you take those out and get the plugs out through there? You know that's what those are for, don'tcha?"

Well, no, I didn't. But I was too sore and too embarrassed to admit it.

 

You never read stories like this on "Explosives & Blasting Enthusiasts" forums....

 

I can't say for sure but maybe there's an afterlife internet.

 

I was grinding out a crack so I could reweld it with a big portable grinder. The grinder disc got caught in the crack and jerked the grinder out of my hands and threw it toward my face. Lucky for me I had a welding helmet on or I would have been in some seriuos pain had I just had safety glasses on. The force of the grinder hitting the helmet was enough to make the bottom edge of the helmet cut into my chest enough to make it bleed. That was like three years ago and I still have the scar to remind me.