I told my close buddy this story, and told him never to tell anyone especially my wife. But here goes.... Had blown the engine on the Nash and finally found a good used engine for a replacement. The guys from the club came over to help me drop it in, all went pretty smooth. Had it up on jack stands to get under the car to bolt in the tranny crossmember. Left it up in the air and was going to wire it up and fire it later. Some time later finally got everything hooked up. Had cleaned and painted the engine prior to dropping it in the car, so had to still drop the distributor and get all the wires hooked up correctly. Also had put an electric fuel pump in. Turned the key and the sum bitch fired right up! Things never go this easy, right? My buddy says "Hey, why are the wheels spinning backwards?". I don't remember messing with the transmission linkage. Apparently something is different, the car has a neutral safety switch and it thinks it's in park but the tranny is in reverse. I'll check into it later (this is where I got myself in trouble). It's a month later before I get back to the car. I decide to let it down off the jack stands to work on some other small things. After I'm done I decide to lean in and start the engine just to hear it run and admire my accomplishments (remember it's still in reverse!). Car fires right off, knocks me off my feat and hits the garage wall. While I'm hanging out of the car I try to get to the key and I hit the shifter into drive and the car bolts forward and out of the garage and into the driveway, I'm still half in / half out of the car my feet and legs dragging on the pavement. I get to the key and turn the car off just in time before the car goes into the street. This all happened in about 4/5 seconds. Damage? Well the wall is pushed a foot into the laundry room. I fixed that that temporarily before the wife got home. That's it. Nash was fine because of the solid bumpers. I was wearing jeans and steel toed boots, so physically I'm fine (except for my ego). If the garage door would have been down or if there were any cars in the driveway it would have been ugly. If I wouldn't have gotten to the key the Nash was heading straight at the neighbors house. Hell, I could have been run over too. I'm pretty damn lucky it wasn't worse. I fixed the linkage problem immediately....
Ruffly a month ago (give or take a few days) the wife and I are out in the garage working on the '50 Ford flathead on the stand. I was tearing the motor down, because it was locked up tighter then fort knox. I believe it was a stuck valve guide that the wife wanted to give a shot at getting it out. I instructed her on what she needed to do and gave her the tools. The wife proceeded to wack away at the stuck valve guide. She ends up misjudging and striking her thumb with the hammer. I checked her thumb out and it wasnt broke. She just got the nail. I then grab the tools to give it a try. If it wasnt on the second swing, I misjudged and hit my thumb knuckle dead on as it was positioned against the block. I didnt break it, but bruised it pretty good. I got the block tore down and to the machine shop. The block has no cracks. As of Saturday it was going on the decking table. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
I have a bad back that is getting worse with age. A few years ago I was working the back of the Scout while it was on a drive up hoist that was raised a foot or so off the ground. As I went to step out of the back I slipped and did one of those slow motion falls as you frantically grab anything and everything to stop it. In my case, without success. In the end I land on a truck axle and the cross beam of the hoist. My back is wrecked (again) my knee is tweaked and my hands are cut to the bone from grabbing and clawing at sharp(ish) edges. The angry bruising on my thigh went from hip to knee and on my ribs from arm pit to beltline. In keeping with the hammer / thumb (finger) stories. My brother owns a service shop and many time vehicles come in uncleaned or with surprises in the back. especially in winter when the "surprise" is covered in snow. Rotting garbage piles and deer carcasses come to mind. For this story he gets a field truck from a cattle farm whose underside is completely coated in manure... cow crap... whatever... My brother gets this stuff in a small scratch on his hand and the resulting staph infection becomes so bad his ring and small finger swell up to the point of splitting, oozing, grotesque and infected red. Being self employed he takes a handful of antibiotics and keeps working. He's using a 2 pound hammer and a large punch to drive a stubborn pin out of a carrier when he misses and smashes the swollen staph infected fingers. Puss and blood everywhere. He almost passes out from the pain. 10 minutes later he's back using the hammer and punch. (Tough guy my brother) Angle grinder takes off my knuckle. Blood everywhere and flwoing freely. I think it's a right odf passage and use the blood to christen the project. Then the pain sets in. Takes 5 weeks to heal - bleeding everytime I bend the finger.
I've been begging my brother to charge a surcharge for oversized trucks, vehicles that don't move under their own power, snow in the box and for crap in the back.. Like I said in the above post, the winter is bad. I do not understand why people bring trucks that have 500 lbs of rotting garbage in the back or frozen deer carcasses into a shop and not tell the owner. Far too many times we find out after the snow melts and the stuff starts to thaw and leak onto our heads. Or the gomers that show up with tanks of something dangerous like aviation fuel in the back. Had one guy cuss out my brother for taking too long and then get angry when it was explained we had to do the work outside on the ground because his 250 gallon tank of farm fuel (Purple gas) made the truck too heavy for the hoist. Besides... the tank was leaking and the fumes were overpowering. He even had the balls to demand we fix the tank as it was "our obligation" to do so and then he wanted us to reimburse him for the lost fuel that leaked while we had it. This one came very close to a very bad injury... to the Customer
A friend of mine was doing the drum brakes on his 69 Mustang and while attempting to pull the springs off with needle nose pliers, they slipped off and he stuck them in his eyeball!
Yeah..so when your Mom says "be careful, you might poke you eye out.." Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
While helping a friend with his big block fuel injected altered, the throtle kept sticking at a high rpm. Kile was in the seat, George was running water on the small radiator stradling the front axle and Terry was holding his finger over the small air hole in the moon tank. Kile stood up in the seat to jerk the linkage back to idle when his knee hit the torkflite shift button. car took off toward the two car garage throwing kile in the seat, the front axle hooked Georges boot and Terry flew up ontop of the engine. The car crashed into the back of the garage pushing all of the stuff in its way with it. George was drug along with his head about 6 inches form the rear slick while Terry was like a bumper helping push all the junk in the garage along while hanging over the screaming engine. Kile was unhurt, George's only damage was to his jeans back pocket where his wallet was. Worn clean through. Terry had a gash where his head kit the injector tube, and his right knee was pretty screwed up and need surgery. Me? I watched it all, then changed my undies. 1971
Worst thing that happened to me was when a rusted muffler did not want to come off the exhaust tube. I pulled like crazy, suddenly it came off and I smashed it right into my face punching a nice round bloody cut under my right eye, full of soot and grime. I was very lucky that it missed my eye. Others are not so lucky: a local guy smashed with a sledge hammer on a stuck transmission. A small piece of metal went straight in his eye, he went to hospital but the doctor did not see anything and sent him home. The splint started to slowly move around in his eye and when he went to doctor again they had to remove his eye. If they had found it immediately the eye would have been saved. He sued the hospital by the way... A schoolmate of my wife was killed when he was working under the car and one of the jack stands gave in. He was smashed by the drum brake. I always have to think of this when lying under my car.
I've busted knuckles and been burnt a time or two. I guess the worse was when I had a 3/4 ton Suburban waller me. Even jack stands are not dumb proof I guess.
When I was working at the Midas at 30th and Troost in KC back in 77 one day I thought it would be a good idea to wear my shoes instead of my boots. So as I was using the slag ax to cut off some exhaust a giant glob of slag falls in the tongue of my shoe. So here I am trying to get rid of the torch and get my shoe off hoping around and get my shoe and then set my foot back down on the ground wright on more molten slag. Needless to say I never made that mistake again and I have a nice quarter size scar on the top of my foot to remind me every day.
Former co worker, changing a flat on his truck, takes off all lugnuts but wheel stuck to hub, bangs and pulls, finally gets hands on either side of tire and pulls hard and wheel comes off, stumbles back and loses balance, sits down with the wheel and tire directly on a log that was off the side of the road. He said he sat there in shock as he realized a broken branch just went right in his taint.......he was by himself and had to pull himself off the log and drive to the ER....oh, and finish putting the spare on... I wish I could remember all the jokes we came up with, but they all centered around having two assholes.....cost of tp just doubled, shits take half as long, dual note farts, etc....
Had my 63 Galaxie up on the stock bumperjack and was under the car trying to fix the lousy shift linkage. My wife opened the pass. door to get her purse out and slammed the door and the car fell off the jack. My skull was crushed because both front wheels were off and the bellhousing killed me. My wife sold all my stuff after the funeral to my friends and moved in with her old boy friend.
I got a messed up back thanks to a 78 or 79 GMC pickup. it was my shop teachers truck he had a flat and had the passage side rear in the air with no jack stand underneath it he told me to put one under it near the end of class. I grabbed one of the smaller jack stands and it would have been up a few to many notches for my liking so i left it under there and grabbed a bigger axle stand while i was under the truck i asked someone passing to jack it up a bit more and the jack "gave out" hitting me and then the small jack stand(im glad that was there) pinning me under the truck. thankfully im still walking most likely because of that small jack stand but i have a few badly damaged vertebrae
I have one degloving accident from indexing a free turbine to quill shaft coupling. My helper used the jacking screws to stand himself up. I thought I lost is. But that is not the worst. Two years ago I had four different nerve surgeries, two in both my elbows and the other two in the palm of my hands. I got to where I could not even hold a phone. I am left with two 5 inch scares in my elbows, and arthritis. This comes from years of turning wrenches and milling machine handles. The shitty part of all that was my employer would not pay for my wife to travel to help me out. She was in Alabama living and I was under orders in South Carolina.
Well.... Yesterday I was polishing a 50s/60s aluminium lunch box for a customer... The hinge got caught in the polishing wheel and the corner of the box caught me in the forehead... Lots of blood and a hell of a gash in my head along with a black eye from the lid.... And worst of all... I crunched the corner of the lunch box.... seeing how much I can straighten it... But I believe the worst I did was I was using a hole saw.... I dont remember what I was working on this was a few years ago... But the hole saw jumped and went across my left wrist... Had to rush to er cause I cut that artery in my wrist... It has the hardest time convincing the hospital that I didnt cut my wrist on purpose...
This I posted elsewhere here in the past. This was in 1976, I was helping a buddy change the clutch in his Mustang. The driveway was on an incline and we weren't hip to jackstands sinking into asphalt... and it was a motherin' hot day in June He was under the car and one of the stands toppled over.. pinning him under the car. Lucky he was a moose of a guy, 6'5" and 260 lbs. I got the jack under the car and he positioned it with his free arm, he was out in maybe 10 seconds. He was bruised up and had this threaded indent in his upper arm. His wife's sister was over, she's a nurse and took a look at it. Zero blood, just that indent. On her advice, he goes to the ER. Sure enough, he crushed the main artery in his arm. After a bit of surgery, he was home with a dressing and drain in it. We reconvened the following day and changed the clutch for him.
Kind of an old thread, but I remembered it and a (freshly sharpened) box cutter got away from me yesterday. My knife sharpening skills are intact, knife handling skills, not so much.... You know you've messed up when A) the blood's spurting with your heartbeat, B) the Paramedics can't stop the bleeding, C) they hang around to see what the wound looks like after they drop you off at the trauma center, and D) they wanna take pictures for posterity! The pics was taken with a tournequet installed as tight as I could stand it, and there was still a steady stream of blood pouring out! If your squeamish, you should NOT open this thumbnail! According to the EMT's, a box cutter is one of the most dangerous tools out there! I was actually in the process of putting it down and swapping to a pair of shears when this happened. Ryan, if this is inappropriate (ie. too graphic), please take it down.
I worked at Chevy for a long time ..... a tech was replacing front coil springs. He decided NOT to use a spring compressor. When the lower control arm was lowered, the spring shot out like a rocket, blasting him in the forehead area. He lost his eye, right then and there.
When I workd on the 56 buick wagon for 3 years .I don't know how many times I got hurt. I even forgot what flew out and clocked me on this one. Came very close to losing that eye. Good thing I didn't have my glasses on.Bruce.
I was working in a new shop around 1980. The shop owner and head mechanic were struggling in install a new front coil spring and had all sorts of pry bars going. I offered my assistance and was told to mind my own fucking business... so I went back to what I was doing. Minutes later... SPROINGGGGG... The spring came out under pressure and clocked both of them. The owner, knocked out cold with a huge egg on his forehead, the great head mechanic, his forearm had another joint in it. Someone dials 911 and 2 ambulances and a cop car show up. They were both eventually okay, but I left the shop soon after that event.
My brother did something similar with an xacto knife, one of those utility type, not the hobby kind. He sliced right through his thumb nail well up deep into the thumb. I was right there, we saw the cut and the blood followed about 2 seconds later. Took a bunch of stitches to close it up.
That looks really bad, man. I hope you are OK and that there isn't permanent damage to your hand. Hang in there. Ouch.
I saw a guy die when I was in high school working in a factory, he was doing something really stupid but it still was sad and shocking. While wrenching I've been lucky, but the worst injury I got was while working on a music video out in the CA desert; they were having me try to chop down a Joshua Tree (totally illegal). My first swing at it with the axe and one of the splines went directly all the way through the flesh of the palm of my hand. Luckily our truck driver had been a marine, he tried to cut it out with a knife but couldn't, nearest hospital three miles away. Ouch.
All those blood and gore stories are nothing! I constantly get hurt in the back pocket, yet I am too stupid to learn a lesson
The Jalopy Journal
