So who else has blown anything up in their garage

Long time ago I had The Batt charger on the Batt in the car. Back then you would take the Screw in Caps off to let the vapors out while charging. I bent over to check the Belt tension with my Pall Mall in my Mouth. With the Noise and instant Burn I thought for sure I had been Shot with Rock Salt again. (Don't ask about the First Rock salt event) I've never done either one of those events again.

Then there was this time while working in a Shop a Friend brought over a Home Made Cannon. He wanted some pivot pins welded on it so it would sit in his Kool Home made stand. Got the Weld part done and asked him what he was shooting out of it, thinking Home made led balls. He said these right here and showed me 2" steel ball bearings. I said Kool, let's try it. No, he said, the base isn't finished. I looked at the Bench Vise and the back door right next to it and said "NO PROBLEM" Let's clamp it in the Vise and point it out the Door. Frickin Kool!! Well after Blowing 30 years of collected dust out of the Rafters, Shit falling off the Walls, Florecent light tubes (all of them) coming out of there fixtures and the Home Made Cannon flying through the Shop backwards bouncing off a Customers car, we thought we better get out till the Dust setteled. Once back in we discovered the work bench that probably had a Ton of heavy Iron parts was moved from the wall about a foot and a half. My buddy said "probably to much Black Powder"!! The good part was once we found the Cannon my welds held up just fine. Come Monday morning I was looking for a New Job. I still laugh about that and it was 20 years ago.
The Wizzard

 

First off: Thank the lord no one was killed in any of the followig stories.

Second: This is the funniest thing I've read in weeks! Some of the stories had me in tears. I've done to stupid shit in my life, including blowing up batteries trying to jump them or trying to use a full gas can to "stoke" the shop wood furnace to get it going. Apprently, gas is flamable.


but funniest thing to happen to me in the last couple of years happened to me at the local NTB.
I got a nail in the tire of my 2001 F150. I was too lazy to demount it myself and or plug it with a kit. so i figured the $10 at the NTB up the street to plug it from the inside was worth my $$.

I ended up being the last truck in the shop so I was wandering around and watching the tire guy. He got the tire unmounted and ground a rough spot with the air grinder on the inside where the patch/plug was to go. he then proceeded to wipe the entire area down with a laquer soaked rag. He then layed the rag on the inside of the tire. After glueing the patch/plug in with rubber cement, he again wiped up the mess with the soaked rag, laying back in the tire.
Then he got out his cig lighter and lit the patch on fire to "seal" the patch. that of course caught the entire area on fire including the rag. He freaked for a minute, then reached in and grabbbed the rag and threw it on the ground and started stomping on it...
Which of course caught his boot and pant leg on fire. He starts running around like an idiot (with me laughing my ass off!!) when the other NTB guy who was watching from the lobby walks out, gets a hose and preceeds to spray the guy from head to toe.

Once out, and me still laughing, he couldn't believe what happened. soaking wet and burnt, he remounted my tire and we put it on. I gave him a $10 and thanked him for the show.

God that was freaking funny... And yes, the tire is still holding air. I've never been back to a NTB since.

 

For one of the guys in my shop, we got him a "Love Ewe" as a gag gift. Only thing is that I had filled it up with ace/oxy from the torch.

Smart ass that he was, he took his cig and went to burn a hole in it. We all ran for it, and the healthy KABOOM shook the shop. We went back in and he was sitting on his ass dazed, and everything in the shop was now covered with the crap that the explosion shook from the rafters.

We had to clean it all up while he went home waiting for the ringing in his ears to stop. I guess the joke was on us.

 

Ok, this is funny! Needed a little something this morning so it was a great post to get into!

I can think of lots of things blowing up but maybe the biggest one I got is my redneck oil stove. Just a plain old wood stove, 5 gallon bucket, little tubing and a valve. Works pretty good actually! The catch is that if somebody has spiked your fuel with something a little hotter and say that stuff also separates to the top and you let the thing run itself outta fuel....BIG BOOM! First time it happened nobody was in the shop so it was a bit of a mystery. Second time I was there! GOOD STUFF, nice mess to!

 

A buddy of mine in Auto shop decided to hop up a 5HP Briggs. Shaved the head, welded up the cam and reprofiled it. Damn thing ran great, ever hear one with a healthy lope to it? He then decided it wasn't enough. Grabbed the torch set and shot oxygen to the thing. Blew up all over the shop, found parts for weeks.

Needless to say he was never allowed in shop again.

 

A few stories come to mind:

In high school auto shop, grade 11, two of the grade niners were working on the janitor's riding lawnmower, charging the battery up. Somehow one of them drops a wrench across the terminals and BOOM!! battery acid everywhere. I grabbed one and somebody grabbed the other and we threw them into the washup basin and hosed them down. Their clothes just kinda fell apart and they had to wear gym shorts for the rest of the day. Nobody hurt though.

Another time I was working on a Pinto we had just put a new timing belt on and it wouldn't start. So I tell my brother not to crank it while I adjust the distributor a little bit. I had my face near the carb trying to see what I was doing when genius decides to crank the motor. All I saw was a bright flash as it backfired and after I put out my moustache and eye brow, all was good.

My brother welded up a floor in a 70's Pontiac. He gets the patch done and spays it with rubberized undercoating. He notices a spot he should have welded better and hits it with the mig - BOOM! he lost both eyebrows, his moustache and some hair (he used to have some up front). He looked like he had a bad sunburn for a few days, but healed up okay.

We did some work on a buddy's camaro, headers, cam, intake new dual exhaust. We cranked her for a while to get it going and it wouldn't fire. Figured out that a float was stuck in the carb, fixed it and tried again. BOOM!! One of the new turbo 400 thrush mufflers was full of fuel vapours and the case was blown wide open! Took a while to get our hearing back on that one. BTW we just hammered the case back together and brazed it up, worked fine.

Amazing I am still alive some times.

 

Side note:

I've welded a few 8hp kohler pistons to the cylinder using the "Nitrous" method. Screams like hell for a minute or so.

Lesson learned: boost is the way to go, but needs a strong rod.


Ok, Back to the blown-up stories...

 

One I did and one somebody else did.

I was cleaning one of those cheapo chrome aircleaners with a big old wad of steel wool. Set it down without paying attention right on the battery. Steel wool caught fire from the battery and ignited the fumes in the battery and it exploded big time throwing battery acid all over me and the car.

A guy I know worked at a cheapy paint shop doing $500 paintjobs and used to get paid by the piece so he would work through the night when nobody was there to bother him. Well at night the place was filed with rats and that freaked him out. One day he placed a stick with a string on it propping up an old garbage can with a scrap of food under it. Rat went for the bait and he pulled the string trapping it under the can. Then he didn't know what to do, so he thought he would make the rat pass out by pouring some laquer thinner on the floor and sliding the can over it. A few minutes later he pulled the can off and the rat was still alive but it was acting more like it was very drunk or high and started to try and get away. He was a wuss so he couldn't bring himself to smack it so he decided he would put it out of its misery by throwing a match on it. When that rat caught fire he took off like a bullet running through the shop setting just about everything on fire with all of the masking paper laying around from the cars he had painted there were blazes everywhere and all kinds of flamable paint and thinners. He emptied every fire extinguisher in the place and finally got it put out, but there was scorched and smoke damaged freshly painted cars, scorch marks on the walls, smoke everywhere and of course fire extingusher powder efverywhere. Yeah, he did get fired.

 

A buddy of mine didn't blow it up, but his snowmobile caught on fire and burned for a good 3 or 4 minutes in his driveway before we could put it out.

 

Naw, burlyman Ice Climbing clothing. Great for winter, no likey sparks and heat

 

When I was twelve or so I came home from school and nobody was there as usual and I had forgtten my key and couldn't get in. So I checked all the doors and the back door to the garage was unlocked so I went in there I got bored and noticed that my Mom had a shelf with all kinds of canned goods and I was hungry. So I took out the propane torch and commenced to heat up a can of pork and beans with the propane torch. I was just about ready to get a screw driver and hammer out of the tool box to open the can when the can exploded and through hot beans all over the ceiling and thecan hit the sheet rock and knocked a whole in wall. Scared the crap out me. It took an hour to clean as much as I could. I week later the old man was putting stuff up above the rafters and saw all the cooked beans plastered to the roof and asked, what the hell is that, and in my usual response I said "I dunno". I didn't tell him until 40 years later.

Other smart things I have done and highly recommend not doing cause they blow up and make a big mess>

1.) Never Check the battery acid level with your Bic lighter.
2.) Never Fiddle with your flooded carberator with a cigarette in your mouth.
3.) Never Clean your garage floor with paint thinner especially if there is a gas drier with the pilot light door missing.
4.) Never locate your trash can below the vice where you are welding.
5.) Never weld on a shock tube.
6.) Never put a scotch brite wheel Rated at 3,000 RPM on your 24,000 RPM die grinder.

 

Oh yea one more never try and temper a piece of steel by heating it to almost white hot and then drop it into a a pan of Oil.

 

note to self:
I need to move my fireworks out of my garage.

 

had a hillman husky with a 28 v6 sitting in the garage on stands for weeks because id damaged the sump pan when i finnaly stop sulking and decicde to fix it i drill a hole in the sump pull the dent with a slide hammer and weld the hole [to lazy to drop the pan] so i touch the mig to the hole and boom the loudest bang ive ever heard and smoke and dust falling everywhere.

turns out the carb was fucked and the fuel had siphoned from the tank to the sump so after cleaning my underwear i think well it cant happen twice, how wrong can you be still i learned that day that it wont happen three times.

this post is making me laugh but i have manflu so its hurtin but i kept reading

 

A little off topic...

My kid brother tried to start his antique jeep in the garage one time by just reaching in through the window. Started fine... in gear.

It damn near went through the back of the garage after completing terminating our wood burning stove and the block chimney (and making a hell of a lot of noise).

When my Dad got to the garage, all he saw was gray "smoke" pouring out of every window and door and my brother coughing and sputtering coming out of the disaster area.

Seems the accident had also ripped the outlet off of the air compressor which proceeded to blow all of the stove ashes all over a huge radius.

Dad thought sure Mikey was a goner in a huge explosion of some sort, and then was pissed when he figured out what really happened.

No one was laughing for a few days...

 

I was there!!! I'm tying my shoe, I turn around and hear the ear piercing scream of bottle rockets that eventually caught the entire brick of firecrackers on fire. The garage was filled with sulfur and fire extinguisher excrement for the next hour or two. It was chaos...definitely needed a PBR after that.

 

When I lived in the Pines ,,they would fill up garbage bags with Acetylene from the torches or something and tie toilet paper round teh end and light it.. Nice boom

 

So my buddy thinks he is a welder and tried to make a trailer out of a mobil home frame. After butching up the front of it trying to get the tongue on, he decided he'd ask my help. I go over and figure out what he wants to do ,tell him hey ya screwed up cut it off and weld it here and here, brace here and few more welds and should be good to go. looks at me and says, so what you doin??? Since it now is begining to rain we decide it be a good idea to turn the trailer around ,shove the nose in the garage and do the work there..pretty smart of us right?? well I always forget to consider the guys name is fred, and he kinda reminds me of fred sanford.. ya know with all the shit piled around his house..junk cars,trucks,motors..back yard looks like a junkyard.. well ol freddys garage aint much better.Crap piles from floor to ceiling..two car garage that we had to move a bunch of crap to get just the front of this trailer in. So we are in there, I'm torching the hell out of this brace I have no idea what the hell he put it on for, get pretty much through it and have to stop cause cant quite get to the last bit due to the angle and the part of the frame I want to save.. I hand him the torch..which is still lit.. now the dumb ass grabs the hose and holds it that after he takes it from me, at this time I'm beating the crap out of this ungodly useless brace, I hit it with the 5lb sledge once, twice see its almsot bent so I can get it, then stop cause I smell something burning.. I look up from under the frame..and see him leaning over trying to see what I'm doing..look down and say,hey you got some crap on fire next to your leg.. he looks down and its a pile of old coveralls,tshirts and shop rags..so dip shit kicks the pile and stomps on it, then catching his leg on fire..at this time I'm laughing and smash my head agaisnt the frame of the trailer as Im climbing out from under it..I get out rubbing my head , stand there laughin more until now I notice one of the shirts he kicked is up agaisnt the wall ontop of magizines, along with who knows what else on fire..of course now the wall catches fire, because, Cuz has gas and oil spilled and trash everywhere. I beat it out the door, he finally gets the fire out on his leg.. starts throwing crap out of the way so he can get to the fire on the wall.. I grab the hose and of course its to short to reach.. His wife hears all the yelling ,see's whats happening, calls the fire department.. I go tell him to get the hell out of there.. he throws a freakin cylinder head over his shoulder agaisnt the back wall of the garage, and I honestly dont know if it was a propane tank, oxygen tank or what, all I know is there is this huge clank,hiss and bang. a valve goes flying in the air and this huge hole appears in the back of the garage wall where something went through it at a high rate of speed, then another loud bang and glass breaking and something bouncing agaisnt other stuff. I walked into his house and opened a beer up and swore never to work with him again..

 

I work at a chain tire/service garage, a few years ago at one of the other stores there was an explosion. This is a 7 bay shop attached to the retail store. one of the guys was welding something using the 275 gallon waste oil tank for a bench, needless to say a spark made it into the tank and she blew! Hard! The tank flew across 3 bays "taking him with it" only to be stopped by the car lift. He suffered a broken leg, flash burns on most of his body and permanant hearing loss. Some of the other techs had hearing loss as well and everybody had to go and change there shorts! the explosion seperated the roof from the wall on the other end of the shop, the gap was about a foot wide and 10 feet long. also the oil that did not burn was all over the shop and clean harbors had to come and clean that up, it was over an inch deep in some spots. Customers cars were also covered with oil.

 

Just wanted to thank everyone so far for sharing their stories, and getting a good laugh at my expense, because after it happened i thought it was funnier than shit. There's definitely a lot more chaos that goes on behind the scenes that needs to be talked about, and as for lessons learned i now keep all fireworks in a cardboard box in my rafters, labeled FLAMMABLE.

 

A full pack of 000 steel wool and a steel cut off saw..do not mix well..strange ass fire.

was cutting some steel angle for somethign i was making one day, didnt realize the bag of 000 Steel wool was right in the path of the showering sparks of my Abrasive cut off saw..

 

When I was a Teen, I had a friend who was building a 1970 Pontiac Firebird. He had an old steel stove in the corner of his garage to keep it warm durring the Idaho Winters. He also had a compressor with a hose that hung from the ceiling. One day the hose cought fire and the compressed air burned all the way up the hose and cought the ceiling on fire, the biggest mess came from him putting it out with a out dated, powder style fire extinguisher.
It made a huge mess, but fortunately, there was not much damage.

 

One I didn't actually get to see..

My girlfriend was moving into a different house. The previous owner had left some misc furniture and crap in the basement so I was taking it to the shop and burning it in the burn barrell. About 9:30 a buddy comes up to her house and is like "Your dad, the fire dept., and the cops are at the store." So we keep cruising by a block away until the cops leave and it's just my dad. We had a waste oil furnace at the time and had empty 55 gal oil drums on palllets by, but not right by, the burn barrell. Appearantly something had fallen or blown out of the barrell and started the pallets under the drums on fire. There were close to a dozen drums with the ends blown completely out of them scattered all over the back lot of our shop. The farthest one was over a 100' from it's launch point. I wish I was there to see it, still the only one that thinks it's funny.

One I was there for...

We sell grain augers at the store. They come in on a semi and we unload them with our crane, a 400 series National at the time. Normally they'd come in on a company truck and the drivers would help unload, but sometimes the company'd hire an independent carrier. This was one of those times...

The driver was a tool, bitched about everything including the fact that he thought we shouldn't unload the augers underneath the high voltage lines that run behind our shop. Finally I'm like, this is where we always unload them(still do) and you're gonna be here all day if you don't help. He's got my old man(who's running the crane) pissed, so he's operating it even more like a madman than normal. I don't know what exactly, they were going back and forth, the old man gets distracted and sticks the crane right in the power lines. I'm hanging onto the auger that's hooked to the cable. I remember in this situation to remain still so I stand there for what seems like 2-3 minutes while the sparks, flames, things of that nature, shoot between the boom and the lines. Finally the transformer at the corner of our lot exfuckingsplodes. If you've ever been near ground zero of a big lightning strike, like that. Didn't know it at the time, but we put the whole town down(small town). I say to the driver, the lines are dead now happy? We finished unloading him like nothing even happened. Even got the crane put away before the city guys showed up.

I believe that driver refused to ever deliver to us again, go figure...

 

Burned up my hole garage two years ago.I was welding a 6banger header and just went in the house for the toilet.As i came back there was nothing but flames.Had my mustang in there and (even worse!)the dog in the car!Dog was too anxious to come out.Huge but soft mastiff,you know.So here i am gunning the stang out with an open header in the middle of the night..Well if there was a neighbor that had not see the 10foot flames of course they hear the car..LOL..
Had to crawl in the damn burning garage to get a 22pound,fresh filled propan bottle out..ouch!
After all its the lost tools+machines whats hard to take.

But in the end nobody got hurt,so what.
Just beware of old oily cardboard and stuff laying around folks!!

see ya,
Lincolnolli

 

Seatign beads using ether...
Dam those Low Profile Hood wheels

 

I've had 3 fires........

One, I was showing off my flamethrower on my '50 Plymouth to a girl while forgetting I was backed up to my friends carport. We passed the fire truck on the way out!

Two, working on a supposedly "dead" Firebird, got gas all over my left arm from the injectors and then the ignition caught. Arm's covered in flames, I notice it tickles and looks cool - for a sec- then I did the tuck and smother. No harm!

Three, welding a crack in the same '50 Plymouth oil pan, started a fire inside the engine. (Pan was still installed, oil drainded out). While smoke billows from the engine, and you can hear the fire inside, we quickly lower the car on the hoist and fire it up. Running the engine put out the flames. Then we added oil. No problems.

 

I always wore Australian Safety Garments when welding- Short pants, t-shirt and thongs(flip-flops to you Northern Hemisphere earthlings) and never had any serious problem. Did a safety course for work and thought, "yeah, I should really wear boots, overalls, etc, at home too", and did so until I set the fuzzy bits on fire, burnt my leg, smelt like a pork roast, still got the "scars of stupidity" to show for it.

 

Plasma cutting a floor board out, forgot about the fuel line under neat... nice swoosh sound. Luckily Chris was around with a extinguisher after a few seconds.

 

I’ve been caught by a battery as well.
I was a 2nd year electrical apprentice in factory keeping a line of mig welders going. I decided to pull the battery from my, car a nice new one, and give it a charge. Decided to test a mig I had fixed by welding some scrap on the bench where the battery was being charged. Welding mask on, weld weld, bang, mask off what was that? Look around nothing to see. Welding mask on again , weld weld, Bang, mask off what was that? Look around nothing to see. Welding mask on one more , weld weld, BOOM , mask off what was that? Look around this time the top came off the battery, acid all over the place, Remembered Battery theory from trade school “battery on charge gives of hydrogen”

Learnt that batteries are Dangerous, Nope not yet.
<O
3<SUP>rd</SUP> year apprentice killing time in the work shop waiting for the end of shift hooter. Picked up a flat Duracell 1.5v dry cell from my bench (couldn’t be dangerous), decided I needed to know what was inside stuck a screw driver in to the top and prised it up. Turns out the insides were under pressure, alkaline acid in both eyes very bad according to the eye doctor worse than acid as it scars. Luckily there was a drinking fountain outside the work shop, I found it fast, lots of pain. 5 days in hospital with bandages over booth eyes.
I am now very careful with batteries.

 

So I just finished cutting a section out of my '29 cowl gas tank...Weld it back up, grind the welds. It's beautiful. Damn nice work I say to myself. Dump in a quart of sealer and roll it around....Shit. A couple of pin holes....maybe four. No worries, I'll just tack 'em shut. Tack,tack, tack, KAFUCKING BOOM!!!!! The filler cap was embedded in the ceiling sheet rock. Mildly embarrasing.