Family is heading out on a trip through the mountains this weekend so I was doing some work on the truck today. Replaced my leaking front tank, replaced a missing u-bolt in front of the cat, and rotated the tires. While I was under the truck I decided to tackle replacing the u-joints. The truck has had a highway speed vibration for a while and I suspect that they need to be done. Anyway, removed the bolts holding the yoke to the rear pinion flange but the shaft wouldn't budge. So I gave it a few whacks with the hammer and suddenly the truck starts rolling backwards onto me. Barely got out of the way and then raced around to drivers door, stomped on the brake about 6 feet from a big cedar tree beside the driveway.
Had to push it back up the driveway. Bloody think is HEAVY. Took 3 of us.

Apparently, I should have set the parking brake before I started

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

...but it's good to hear no one, including your truck, was hurt.

 

I can just image the look on your face when it started moving. Scary.

 

silly boy .. glad you made it out OK .. and managed to save the truck ..

 

you could go extinct with stunts like that.

 

That would have made my bowels turn liquid.

 

I walked back in the house and I guess I must have looked pretty freaked out because my wife popped her head up out of her work and asked me what was wrong.

She won't let me touch her car.

 

Scary. seen a guy do that at a dealer i worked at years ago. brand new truck, around 2000 f150 4x2. had rear pinion seal leaking. put it on drive on hoist that had a few degrees tip to the rear. knocked out drive shaft carried it over to bench and turned around just in time to see it hit the floor from bout 7 feet up. All I said is that what the wheel blocks are for.

 

That was a close one.

 

Its kinda humorous to sit here and read this, but man that could have turned out badly. There was a member in the 7.3 forum that did the same thing, and was very lucky he didnt get killed!

It serves as a good reminder though to always block those wheels.

Im sure we can laugh about it now too

 

Here is a good one. A very junior mechanic was working on a handicapped van. The van was heavily customized with the lowered floor, drive up ramp, the works. Since the owner was in a wheelchair, there was no drivers seat. So for mechanical work, he had a short stool that the mechanics used to sit on and drive the van. The mechanic changed out the brake pads all the way around. But forgot to bleed the lines. He started the van, touched the brake just enough to get it out of park and into reverse, looked behind him, saw that it was clear in the garage, and gunned it out of the stall. When he went to hit the brakes, they went to the floor and he continued over to the other side of the garage, up on an alignment rack, off of the alignment rack, through three large toolboxes and through the front wall of the shop. No one was hurt which is amazing, but the total damage came to over $80,000. The van was totaled, the wall had to be repaired immediately to make the shop secure and the toolboxes had to be chased down.

 

In 1972 I was driving a Car Carrier and making a delivery to a dealer in North Carolina. I had to drive through an ICE STORM (notice the capitol letters). The temp was still well below freezing. The first vehicle off the truck was a Mustang. It came off the upper deck like a rocket. The tires were frozen to the truck deck. I released all the chains; climbed inside, fired it up, put in reverse and it would not move. I tried to rock the car with one foot out the door but could not get traction. I started to shift in and out of reverse to break if free. On the third or fourth try the car started to move.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
Before I could get my head turned around to back steer it was down the ice covered ramp at least 100 feet from the truck traveling at what seemed like the speed of light and headed for a row of parked cars. I think I bent the break peddle arm and torqued the seat back two or three inches out of position. The right rear tire passed over a patch of asphalt where a car had been parked during the storm, the tire grabbed, the car spun to the left and ended up sliding sideways. The sideways slide through the ice pushed up enough ice to slow the car down, blow out both left side tires with ice shards and stop me before I smashed into the parked cars. I stopped so close that I had to climb over to the passenger side to exit the car. I got out and could hardly stand up. I thought I was slipping on the ice until I realized that my legs had turned to rubber. The dealer had the truck moved in the service bays to de-ice before we unloaded any more vehicles. It took two hours to de-ice the truck and three to get feeling back into my legs.<o></o>

 

Just last winter I was working on my '57 and I had it up on jackstand ins the front but not on the back, the front crossmember sits about 2-3 inches off the ground and thats right about where my head was as I was turning over the engine with a large breaker and socket on the crank bolt, to get it in the right spot to drop my distributor in. Well I turned it a few times and then out of the corner of my eye saw one side of the jackstands was about and inch off the ground. The car was still in gear and I was pushing the whole thing foward and would have crushed my skull if my baby fell off the stands. I very carefully backed it back the other way and then got up and took it out of gear

 

There seem to be a little Darwin in all of us.

 

BTDT. Some 20 years ago I had all but finished restoring a '65 Buick Wildcat convertible. I had come home to run into the house very quickly for something and headed back out to the car in the driveway. Wouldn't start. No power to the starter that I could tell.

Now, GM starters have the relay (sometimes called a solenoid) on the starter body itself. Being the supersmart fellow I am (was), I crawled underneath to jump the two pins on the starter motor with a screwdriver. And it started right up - IN GEAR (which is why I got nothing from turning the key in the ignition). This is a Buick "nailhead" 401 engine, in a low-slung land yacht of a 2-ton pile of steel. My feet were sticking straight out from under the front bumper and I knew damn well the frame/suspension wouldn't clear me. Since the car was only idling (in "D") I had time to roll/slide out from underneath as soon as the LF wheel passed my head.

The steering was slightly turned to the left, so my neighbor's schlock-box Toyota acted as a parking curb. If the car had headed straight, it would have pushed through the back of my garage wall, down a short embankment, through a chain-link fence and into a huge grocery store parking lot - with me running full speed behind it.

The funny thing is my initial instinct was to stop the car from moving while I was under it (since I had nearly rebuilt the damn thing, I had a certain level of attachment to it), so I grabbed the LF suspension wishbone as it passed and tried to twist my shoulders vertically to stop it. Of course, this only served to drag me with it for a few inches before I let go.

And I have the road rash on my upper arm to prove it.

Neither drugs nor alcohol was involved in this mishap - it was around 2pm, as I recall. What was involved was not paying attention when I parked the car, and brain-farting a solution to the non-problem. Live and learn...