The ignition on '50s Buicks is cool: The ignition switch has three positions: Lock, Run and Off. Go to Lock, pull the key out, and the switch is locked. Simply go to Off and pull the key out, you can flip the toggle back from Off to Run without the key. With the key in the Run position, the coil is charged so--you step on the gas pedal (just like a golf cart) and the engine fires up. I was at our company shop one night working on the car, and left the key in the Run position for a couple hours. The coil got incredibly hot, and I didn't know it. I grabbed onto it with my right hand, and started to undo the wires and connections. Blistered the whole palm of my hand. Cold water, paper towels wrapped in water and ice cubes didn't bring the swelling down (or make the incredible pain go away), so at 2:30am I called my wife and asked her to come get me (20 minutes each way), because I couldn't drive my stick shift truck home. She didn't complain a bit. Had a wire from a wire wheel on my bench grinder come off and shoot through my jeans. 1-inch wire went into my leg 7/8 of an inch. Didn't hurt, but felt weird as I wiggled it around down in the muscle. (I thought it was a small piece, just stuck to the skin, so I tried to flick it off a couple times) Had a jack stand fully extended out in the garage. I was wearing sandles. I somehow bumped the jack stand, and it tipped over, with the very edge of the saddle tomahawking my big toe, right where the nail meets the skin. That was once time my wife wasn't being so great in the shop, and was in there badgering me about something that may or may not have been my fault. The jack stand hit, I bellowed like a raging bull, bent over and grabbed my toe, gasping for breath I collected my wits just long enough to tell my wife that this wasn't her fault, but that she needed to leave RIGHT NOW. Then I proceeded to gasp, swear, limp around and weep like a little girl. The aftermath tells me I probably broke the toe (swelling, black bruising, tender for over a week) but if there aren't large quantities of blood or obvious limb misalignment, I have a hard time justifying a trip to the hospital. And my personal favorite: had a steering wheel just on the threads of the shaft in my '56 Chevy--was never tightened down, and didn't have the nut on it. It was slid on lightly just to point the tires while rolling the car. It sat like that for a few years--the heat and cooling cycles mated that wheel to the shaft as good as any press fit you'll get. I recently sold the steering column to a guy, and went to pull the wheel off. It was stuck, so I leaned in and jerked a few times really hard. If finally off, and rocketed right into my face. I caught the top of the wheel in my bottom lip--split the front of my lip where the wheel hit, the back of my lip where my teeth hit, and my bottom front teeth were slightly loose for a day or two. -Brad
The chrome on the corner of a bumper started to separate as I was removing it from an old Impala for my racecar. I somehow slipped and managed to slice my hand on the peeling chrome. It was kind of like a paper cut, but done with metal and it went about 1/4" into my hand. I was at the junkyard that sponsored me so I had to act like it was no big thing, but it was about 90 degrees out, and there was so much blood I thought I was going to pass out.
so I'm building some motor mounts, cleaning them up with a harbor freight hand held 8" sander/grinder. parts are in a vice. I'm wearing this T shirt that is going to the rag pile after this day cuz it has a big hole in it. leaned a bit too far into my work and the grinder caught my T shirt and wrapped the shirt around itself sanding a nice 6 inch abrasion to my chest. went about 1/2" above my nipple. it almost sanded it right off which would have sucked cuz they are a pair. luckily it was my friends cheap assed grinder. the T shirt actually stopped the motor, but the way my hand was all wrapped up and it happend so fast I could not let go of the trigger. if I had been using my Milwakee it would have been a lot worse. no way a T-shirt would stop that one. other than that it's you regular cuts and weld burns.. along with one peice of metal in my eye that required a visit to the doctor.
kind of off the topic but.. watch out for bungee cords. I know a guy who lost an eye from a flying bungee when he was strapping stuff on his motorcycle. lost it... has a glass eye now.
Got myself pinned by our '55 Vic when I was still in highschool. Learned to never use 2 bumper jacks to change out a rear end. Pinned for about an hour or so, I rolled into a hole that my dawg had dug under there. bruised the hell out of my shoulder. Got whacked in the eye by a tow truck hook. Knocked me off the top of the fender, I saw stars. We were pulling the 283 out of a '63 Impala to drop a 327 in its place, I was wiggleing the motor with my foot and the chain broke. Got wallered by a 3/4 ton suburban in the '80s. I had jackstands (those cheapo sheet metal ones) one folded up. The car came down pinched me out and my arm got bent between the brake rotor and the ground. Chipped my elbo etc. I was there until someone came along and jacked it back up off me. learned to never get under a car with disc brakes. Dropped a duece chassis on my foot once don't even ask. Suffice to say that 427s are heavy. Broke a toe and bruised the hell out of my instep. The Raven whacked me with a 4 lb hammer a couple of years ago. We were dimpleing a firewall I was holding a big punch ( 1" bar) and the raven was swating it. I think it must have hurt but we finished up and I'm still driveing that one today. Those are just the highlights I've been beat around my share in the last 30-35 years.
This really hurt, I was underneath a friend of mines racecar with a air grinder with a 4" cut off wheel. While get my big body in the right position I rolled over on the trigger of the grinder, it was on and I was on top. Now I have a six inch scar under my left tit..... This one really hurt my buddy. While in autoshop in high school we were changing the clutch in an Intertrashional schoolbus. Got the tranny and clutch out of the way and the flywheel would not come off. My buddy pries it off with a long screwdriver. This flywheel weighs alot, he can't hold it with one hand. It slips out of his grasp and the ringear portion hits right on the bridge of his nose. The only thing holding his nose on was the skin between his nostrils. Needless to say he was out of school for 4 months.
Who did that? I missed it. And for the record, you're the one that lost the most blood. I really didn't think you'd eat that gnarly piece of flesh that came off too. yuck. My worst was trying to cut a hose with a box cutter, slipping and coloring my buddy's garage floor red while I tried to figure out what garage material would hold my hand together best. Turned out a big wad of paper towel and masking tape did the job.
I was changing the shoes on some drum brakes a few years back and didn't have all the proper tools, (do I ever?). I was trying to pull the adjusting spring with a pair of pliers to hook it up to the inside shoe, pulling towards myself, the pliers let go of the spring and I socked myself in the face with the pliers full bore, since i was pulling with all my strength. Gave me a black eye and a cut along my brow. Not to mention the stupidity I felt from hitting myself in the face! HAHA!
Last tuesday nite I was working on my 37 ford pick-up and I was shortening the radiator support with a metabo cut off disc on my grinder and it kicked back into my index finger cutting it nearly off 22 stitches a steel pin in the bone 5 hours in the emergency room and a lesson learned move your finger. WeedsSpeed
he he he he... Lessee... stuck a radiator hose removal tool into my jawbone right under my teeth- nothing sucks worse than a peircing you didn't want- it was almost as hard to pull out than it was to stick into it!. multitudes of grinder incidents- my favorite of which didn't even involve cars. I had to use a 7 inch grinder with 36 grit on it to grind the old adhesive off our concrete floors- I touched the extension cord , pulled back to avoid it and slid the side of the disc right into the top of my thigh. I remember thinking..."wait a minnit...I'm wearing grey underwear...what's the white all about?" it was the fatty tissue in my thigh. damn disc went through my pants and skin like a hot knife through butter. I still have a perfect rectangle scar from that one. I have experienced the "wire wheel wire stuck deeper than possible" trick once or twice,too- my favorite is when it's only annoying because it is catching on your clothes. I could go on for hours. My favorite was when our straps that held down our race car slipped off while I was behind it- a great big slick pinned me to the trailer for about 5 minutes...no pain, no injury, just trapped with a big assed tire sitting on me.
About 5 years ago i had just got a 455 buick motor out of one of my cars and had it hanging on the cherry picker so i could get the starter off. well about 5 seconds into unbolting the starter the chain snapped and the motor dropped flywheel first right on to the top of my hand. got me between the thumb and index finger. it used to be a perfect scar of the ring gear but now its just a line. crushed my damn hand and hurt like hell. but it was way more painfull getting my hand out from under the flywheel.
I get burned somewhere practically every time I weld something. I own welding leathers, but I'm too lazy to put them on and usually wear sneakers, jeans, and t-shirts. The weld splatters usually wind up inside my sneakers, on the insides of my elbows, or on the top of my chrome dome head. I have a leather apron that I drape across my lap if I'm sitting Indian style while I'm welding on a frame, because one time I was wearing some old shredded up Levis while welding like that, and the crotch caught on fire. It scared the hell out of me for a second when I saw all the flames, but I patted it out before I got burned. Except for smashed fingers, minor burns, and bruises. I've been pretty lucky. I think the worst beating I ever got was when I was lying on my back under a truck drilling a 5/8" hole in the bottom of a frame rail using a really powerful heavy two-handed industrial type drill motor with the drill motor right next to my head. I was in a really awkward position and didn't have a good grip on the drill motor. It was a brand new sharp drill bit, and the bit ripped into the metal too fast and it grabbed and seized up and the drill motor yanked right out of my hands and took off spinning, and the long side handle of the drill whacked me in the jaw and knocked me out for a few seconds. I woke up and saw stars and couldn't hear anything but a whistling sound for a few minutes. It felt like getting kicked in the face by a steel toed boot.
Super Dave. He did it while knocking the bearing retainer out of the Toyota's spindle. Twas just a flesh wound. Seriously. It's almost completely healed already.
I was helping a friend get some parts from his garage. I jumped out of his truck and went to open the garage door. It was a roll up door spring loaded. I had both hands on what I thought were the handles.They were the stops. I lifted as hard as I could to get the door moving and then the spring kicked in and WHAM against the top frame! I pulled my hands out and watched all 8 fingers swell up and explode. Worst pain in a long time. My buddy says, "Oh , I should have mentioned that. I did the same thing when I moved in" thanks man
Besides all the usual cuts from sharp edges , learning NOT to weld when not wearing socks. Always wear safety glasses eventhough they are a pain in the butt some times. Also hang onto brake springs, they can take a hunk out of your hand, still have the scar from years ago.
man, funny coincidence, I just got done meetin' with the supplementary insurance people here at work to renew my benefits, knew they might come in handy. bout the worst that happened to me, is I had my grandmother's car up on a bumper jack to change a flat, and the neighbor comes over to explain the dangers. I said, 'yeah, I know". Not two seconds after he left, I leaned in the trunk to get the spare, and the whole car collapsed, the trunk smashed me in the head and knocked me over, I fell head first inside, and was damn lucky I wasn't under the car! Nothing as serious as any of this stuff, no broken bones, knock on wood
My personal best was trying to pull corroded battery cables off a battery in a friend's car......bastards wouldn't budge, so I grabbed the first thing within reach-a big pry bar, leaned over the battery, wedged one end under the negative side, applied force.....bar slipped and the other end landed on the positive post, shorting shit bigtime, and the battery blew up in my face. Sounded like a 12 gauge going off. Had chunks of battery case in my beard, and a nice acid bath. I wear glassess, thank God, but the whole engine compartment was hosed.
I was using a die grinder this weekend and had on glasses. I was in a tight spot on my back and some of the slivers or at least one found it's way into my eye.I had surgery on it this afternoon. TP
(CAUTION) This is one no one you don't want to see. Not car realted , but work related. A few years back, I worked on the docks loading and unloading trucks at Consolidated Freightways. Everyone was towmotor trained and certified. A new guy was a little lazy to get off the towmotor to read the little sticker (shipping barcodes) that they put on the pallet, we have all seen them. Well now imagine your sitting in the seat and don,t want to get off to read, what do you do? Lift up the pallet about shoulder level and lean foward to read, right? Well, this IDIOT, leaned over putting his head through the mast and while leaning over to read, bumps the down lever and removes his HEAD. Lots more safety training for everyone.
MIG wire through the glove, skin, to the bone, then somehow popping doesn't hurt. At first at least. That sanding disk getting caught up in my shirt, by the belly, didn't seem so bad either until it make it through the second shirt. Moving motorcycle engines in and out of frames doesn't seem so bad. Well, until you lay on the floor thinking about it for a few hours. All of my really good stories involve those damned skateboards, though.
well, was sitting on my haunches freakin mig welding something, with a stuffed up nose. Whats the stuffed up nose have to do with it? Well under normal circumstances i could have smelled something burning and stopped to look, but this time i didnt know anything was burning until my hood completely filled with smoke. So i throw up the hood throw the gun, and yep, there is the crotch of my jeans burning...and the crotch of my underwear....and...well my crotch. so after some hair loss, blistering, and walking around the rest of the day 'exposed' i now bend at the waist when migging something rather than at the knees allowing the slag to fall into my lap. other than that, yea, i get hurt daily, im used to smashing and gashing my fingers, its comical when someone is watching, im so used to it i just keep working, im sure you all know how it is....
I had a Dynaflow land on my chest and broke my sternum and broke my back (L3 L4) bleeding brakes, long story and the usual smashing, poking and burning for past 47 years. I still got all my fingers but I'm down to 11 toes.
One of the worst I ever seen happened at the garage across the road from me in about 1966. The local school bus had blown a main engine seal, and the bus was too high to fit into the garage. They parked it out beside the garage, pulled off the rad and the hood, and used the wreckers truck to pull the motor and take it into the garage to work on.---they left the 3/8" diameter radiator support rods in place that run from the firewall out to the top of the rad----you know where this is going. The mechanic, a man named Jim Edgar, went back out to the bus about 11:00 in the morning to get something, bent over to look----and drove the threaded end of the one radiator support rod right thru his eyeball and was stuck there bent over squealling like a pig. The ambulance guys came out from the nearest city about 15 miles away and couldn't figure out what to do to get him off the end of the rod---they couldn't saw it off---the vibration would have killed the guy. They got the shop helper to come out, wrap a wet rag around the rod about half way back to the firewall and burn it off with the oxy-acetylene torch. They loaded Jim into the ambulance with the rod still sticking out of his eye, and went away, sirens screaming. Now comes the really amazing part---the rod had not penetrated his eyeball---it had actually "rolled" the eyeball sideways, went to the back of his eye-socket, and lodged against a thin layer of bone, so it hadn't penetrated into the brain. He was in surgery for about 2 hours getting the rod removed, and spent a couple of days in hospital, and a month wearing an eye patch, but eventually the eye healed up good as new.----A very, very, lucky man!!!
Done a lot of hurtfull things over the years, but one day last year I was over to the neighbor's. He was welding with his gloves on and the Mig slipped and the red hot tip of the wire went through the glove. A couple days later I saw him on his way to the doctors with his hand swollen like a balloon. Dotor had to cut into his hand to get out a tiny piece of the glove that the wire had pushed in and cotterized over it.
Man, Reading this is making my balls retract and my ass pucker like you would not believe!!! This is the reason why I wear safety glasses AND a shield! Danny
Damm you guys are careless! LOL I remember putting an exhuast system on a 73 Cutlass, ended up with metal slivers in my eye from drilling out the manifold studs, this was just after the big socket slipped off the bolt and hit my forehead, 4 stiches at local hospital and down the road the the big city hospital to remove the slivers from my eye. How about using duct tape and paper towels or toilet paper for a Bandage?
I was working a rusted on rim off a drum with a tire iron. The left one came off easy enough but one thing led to another and -POW- caught the iron right in the nose. Lots of blood.
Ok... Here's a warning against using no-brand Vice-grip rip-offs. I was younger and still living with my parents. I was clamping a rather large patch panel to my big-assed Chrysler 300, getting ready to go grap the torches and tack it in place, when I realized something... I clamped the webbing between my thumb and finger down with the panel. It wouldn't have been so bad unitl I realied it was my Dad's cheapie Chinese one that had no release on it. I had nothing close to break it free and I was stuck to the car. It sucked... I had to yell for my Dad to come outside. Lucky it was summer and the door was open, but I did sit there 15 minutes before I could get someone to find me (haha).
a lot of bloody nuckels and i always seem to burn myself that slag from the tourch allways fall right in my shoe got my shirt caught in the grinder once that was scary
The Jalopy Journal
