Wake up Call!
 

Well,

As the title of this post says wake up call. I can laugh about this now because no one got hurt and nothing got damaged. But anyway, was working on my brothers truck today, putting valve cover gaskets on. I sprayed them off over the garbage can with brake cleaner, installed new gaskets, and put the valve covers back on. Then I proceded to tune it up with plugs/wires/cap/rotor. After he was about to leave, we metioned to me that his exhaust was loose. I took a look underneath, and sure enough, broken hanger. So I grabbed the piece of 1/2 rod that I had, and looked for a good place to cut it off at. I then decided to lay it across the garbage can (long rod) so that about 3-4 feet was hangin off of it. I only needed about a 4" chunk. So I fire up the torch, get about half way through cutting in and then BANG!!!!!!!!!! The garbage can erupted into a 6 foot tall flaming inferno. I had forgotten about the brake cleaner that I had sprayed almost an hour earlier. The can was full of fumes, and it exploded with fire. Burnt all the hair off my right arm, and singed the hair on the right half of my head.

Thankfully I was smart enough to have installed multiple fire extinguishers throughout the building, and the fire was out just as fast as it has started.

BUT A WARING TO ALL, EVEN IF IT IS LATE AT NIGHT, AND YOU ARE TIRED AND YOUR BRAIN IS NOT FUNCTIONING AS IT SHOULD BE, PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!!!!!!!!! THINK!!!!!!!!!! INSTALL MULTIPLE FIRE EXTINGUSIHERS!!!!!!!!!!! SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just thought I would pass along the info and offer a fair waring to everyone.

lol Your telling us to think.

I'd imagine you blackened the ceiling pretty good.

Lol it was a tall ceiling. I would have to say that was by far the dumbest thing i've ever done. Trust me i'm not the type to usually do something like that. Thats why I thought it was important to post it as a lesson learned.

You need to post this in the "Dumbest thing I ever did in the garage" thread.
That thread hasn't been posted on lately and a good story like this one should resurrect it for a while.

Glad you are ok!

Glad that you are ok. Very valuable lesson learned here.

Someone link me to that thread, I've got a story involving a MIG welder, the NiCad battery from a cordless phone, a soldering iron, a truck battery, and a spayed tiger cat.

Yea man fires are not exactly the most thing on the planet I had bought an old 1972 motor home to live in they are cheap and way easy to take care of you know college kid budget living style. One of my propane lines had come loose while driving it to a parking spot and I didn't know not like I would have been able to know anyways I guess in the 70'sit was legal for then to use pressure couplings in the walls. So when I went to light the propane furnace all the propane in the motor exploded giving me 2nd burns across 37% of my body not fun man not fun but morphine is lol