Using the right safety equip... still kills! DOA Fresno.

This brings up another very important safety point, block the wheels, especially if you're working on a slight incline.

Somewhat related, when I worked in a truck body shop we were remodeling a city fire truck. The semi type with the tiller steering in the back. We disconnected the trailer from the tractor, which had a big double ring hook up not the fifth wheel type and set the front on heavy duty truck stands. On day at lunch the guy working under the trailer came into the lunch room pale as the proverbial ghost. He was under the trailer cutting away braces, just like he had been doing for the previous two days when he noticed some slight movement and rolled out from under the rig just before it came crashing down. They didn't think of blocking the rear wheels and some how the rig started to shift. Maybe he was banging on something underneath. The boss had to call in a heavy machinery mover to come in and raise the rig back up because the shop forklift couldn't do the job. We blocked the hell out of it after that.

 

When you do something, no matter what it is, so many times that you stop thinking about what you're doing...you're gonna get hurt.

 

My son in law is alive because my daughterknew how to operate jack after it dropped on him. I went next day and bought stands and a better jack for him. Told him if he didnt use them ,well you know the rest.

 

Don't forget about your eye protection!!!!!!!!!

 

Had a friend killed using cement blocks standing on end to hold up the front of his car (front tires removed). They must have crumbled (or at least one of them) because they were shattered when his mother found him a few hours after the fact.

Frank

 

My old house had a sloped driveway and I used to block the wheels, put my $10 jackstands on squares of plywood, and then shim the whole works up with cedar shingles until they looked perpendicular. It always kind of gave me the willies to crawl underneath.

 

FACE protection. The week of Thanksgiving while working on our HA/GR I got a small piece of metal in my eye while wearing safety glasses. Not sure how it happened but it did. Full face shield is in the near future. It's not fun in the ER when they use a medical version of a mini Die Grinder to dig metal out of your eye.

 

Another lathe warning, never take your hand off of the chuck key if it is in the chuck. The key is either laying on the ways, on a rack on the wall or in both of your hands while you tighten or loosen the chuck. You don’t want to know what a chuck key that has been spit out of a spinning chuck will do to a forehead.

 

While were on the subject - ear protection! I have severe loss in the right ear and moderate loss in the left. To much rock and roll in my misspent youth and too many air tools as a tech. When you lose your hearing your world isnt quiet, there is constant ringing 24/7/365 and its permanant. The only time it goes away is when your sleeping. Its like Chinese water torture. Its not fun

After 12 broken bones, too many stiches to count, 5 back injuries I wear ear covers, safety goggles over safety glasses, heavy duty jackstands on flat concrete with floor jack in place and at least 2 wheels under the car, long sleeve shirts or plastic paint suit when painting or fiberglassing, gloves etc, etc..... I dont care what people think anymore about the way I look.

 

wow. easy to get careless, or more specifically to not think it all the way through. plywood or something similar to disperse the weight on potentially less than stable ground--gotta think of the little things too. i am a details/safety freak, so to me it seems like a no-brainer, but i can see how it would EASILY go the other way too.

sad scenario, it just goes to show you can NEVER be to safe. shit happens in the blink of an eye.

be careful!

 

Sad news. I hate getting under my car, no matter how good of a job I do securing it I'm still worried it's going to flatten me.

 

Wonder why they don't make jack stands with a welded-in flat steel base (like the plywood squares mentioned) on them? Might make them stronger, too, besides safer. Gary

 

Never use the cheap "split pipe" style jackstands unless the base is welded to a plate.

I alway use 2 pair of jackstands on each end. 8 total to raise the entire car.
Yea, overkill but I'm still here........

 

I wouldn't even use them, then, most of the failures I've read on those things they just split entirely or collapse - a plate on the bottom isn't going to keep that from happening.

 

I also leave the jack in place. I lower the car on to the stands, then raise the jack back up until the pad just contacts the frame and then I lock it there. If nothing else it will slow the fall of the car.

Then before going under the car I grab a door handle or the fender and give the whole thing a good shake. I want no movement.

And even after all that, I won't go completely under the car. I always try to stay in a position that I can roll out from under in an instant.

I hate working under a car!

 

Also happened in sacramento yesterday.

Rancho Cordova man crushed while working on minivan



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By Chelsea Phua
[email protected]
<!--& /mi/pubsys/story/bug, format=>q{[/mi/pubsys/story/bug]
} &--><SCRIPT> //$(document).ready(function(){ // $("#bug").dialog("autoOpen","false"); //}); </SCRIPT>Published: Monday, Dec. 14, 2009 - 9:52 pm
Last Modified: Monday, Dec. 14, 2009 - 10:29 pm
<!-- CLOSE: #story_header -->A 49-year-old Rancho Cordova man died after a jack fell off and the minivan he was working on crushed him Monday afternoon, fire and coroner officials said. Sacramento County coroner's office identified the man as Altaf Hussain Shah.
The accident happened about 4 p.m. in the 3300 block of Butler Court, said Capt. Christian Pebbles, Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District spokesman.
Shah was pronounced dead at the scene.
"It's sad because it's so preventable," Pebbles said, adding that the fire department receives one or two similar calls a year.
Officials advise people working on their vehicles to take extra time to secure jacks and check that safety measures are taken.

 

As of this year I still see NASCAR crew members sliding under cars that are only on the jack. Hard to believe it hasn't been addressed yet. I know it's racing and seconds count but it always makes me cringe.......

 

Two words= Shipping Weight.

It's a hell of a good idea though and not expensive for any of us to do on our own.

One more note, If you have steel grates over the drains in the floor, do not put the stands on the grates. They will kick out from under the vehicle.

Around here several of the wrecking yards use wheels that are welded together with one laying flat and one standing on it to hold cars up. I have a pair at home that I use under my 71 truck and anything else that I can lift high enough. They are pretty stable. Cheap too.

 

They use those in the Upullit yard near here...I've climbed on some of those cars, bouncing around, and at a weight of "bigger than you need to know", those rim things do a darn good job. I'd make a set just for a backup for the jackstands (and I think I will)

 

Don't trust the car either!!!!
One more that I had not really thought about. Had the front of an old Mustang up on jack stands with the stands positioned under the torque boxes. I knew one of them was weak and needed to be replaced. I just happened to be in the shop the following week when the jack stand went through the floor. What a sick feeling. What if my son had been under there?

 

I do the same. When I'm working at Mechanic's Ministry I always teach the kids about jack stands and safety when under a car. I grab the car and shake it with all my might once it is on the jack stands. I tell them I would much rather fix a floor pan than get flattened. I also throw the wheels under the rockers. I also leave the jack somewhere under the car.

Don't forget about just letting people know what you are doing. I have pretty much stopped climbing under a car without first telling my wife not only what I'm doing, but about how long it will take. I don't want to be pinned under a car for 8 hours trying to dig my way through a concrete floor with my fingers.

 

As said before, look where you suport the car too (frame not floor) not everything is solid under there. No fun to get crushed, no fun to get burned either so disconect your battery too.

 

Thank goodness I have craftsman jack stands. I had the car jacked up for 3 days in the driveway and when I brought her down the jackstand hand sunk into the asphalt an inch.

I thought 'weird' at the time, not 'oh shit' like I should have. Scary stuff.

 

Yup, I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy myself. Nobody goes under a car in my garage until they have tried to pudh it off the jackstands.

The boy learned his lesson about using those cheap rubber gloves around air tools. The socket caught the rubber and pealed that glove off so fast he didn't know why his hand hurt.

 

That's what I do. I've heard to many stories not to be overly cautious.

 

All I remember about my last little shop accident is the anaesthetics pouring out of the five damaged major vessels again, when the physician injected the syringe alongside the edges of the wound.

Dress accordingly. Leather aprons, tight clothes (preferrably flame resistant), gloves, eye-, ear- and respiratory protection do serve a purpose.

 

Watch out for old concrete floors....My oldest son had a garage that had a hollow spot under the floor.....we found it by chance....rolled a floor jack across it and heard a hollow sound....was a spot about 8 foot square...turns out the drain which was next to the wall just dumped out under the floor causing the fill to settle. Hate to think what could have happened to a car on a jack or jack stands had the floor collapsed.
You can check your floor for hollow spots by tapping with a hammer. Even the fill under a new floor can settle if not compacted correctly when constructed.
Be safe out there guys !!!!
Carey

 

Watching old re-runs? Going under the car without at least one stand along with the jack has been illegal in NASCAR for many years. Gary

 

Safety first. The first 9 weeks of my auto shop class was what safety equipment is, how to use it, how to properly use tools, know what chemicals can do to you and when and where to use them.

There are daily reminders of what a little safety can do for you, locally in your community or what you read like here on the HAMB. My biggest thing is never be in a dangerous position alone, and atleast let someone know where you are and what you are doing.

Here are some stories for you. My neighbor was going to clean out his grain bins this one hot summer day, he was a fairly old guy with a pacemaker and shouldn't have been in there in the first place, let alone by himself. The story was, the hired hand told him that it was just to hot to be in the grain bin today and they should do it tommorow, well the old guy wanted it done now and got in there by himself, his neighbor drove by later that night and the auger was still running and nothing had changed from that afternoon, so he looks in the bin and finds part of him in there and the rest of him in the truck. They still don't know what happened. Having been in a grain bin aswell I can atest to how tough it can be, even for a teenager on a hot summer day, Wearing a mask, not one of those paper mask, the ones that cover your nose, mouth with the 2 big filters on the side to keep the crazy amount of dirt and dust from plugging your lungs, constantly shoveling and it being about 110 degrees in there just isn't very fun.

Another story is that of my G'pa, when he was around 13 or so he was working on a corn picker that got plugged up and since he was in a hurry he didn't shut it off before trying to pull out what clogged it and the auger grabbed his arm and took it off just above the elbow. He has to have a hook on his right arm to use for the rest of his life.

 

Seriously, I have seen some crazy shit contrivances, including my local country boys who had little (toolwise) to work with. BUT THIS takes the cake!