CRX Lee

Anyone for sharing any stories of dumb things you've done or gotten away with in the garage? I'm sure we have learned lessons and earned scars that can be shared. I'll start with a pair.

1) Had a butane cigarette lighter in my shirt breast pocket after lighting a torch. A bit later, I was under the racecar using a rotary grinder in close quarters and sparks from the grinding ignited and exploded the lighter in my pocket. BOOM! I've heard of muffler shop welders dying when their chest is blown out by the explosion of hot slag hitting a lighter. This one must have been pretty empty so I wasn't hurt, just scared and aware of boith stupidity and mortality.

2) Rattle can painted the roll cage of a racecar late one night in cool weather. To keep the garage warm for the paint to dry, I closed the garage door part way onto a box fan that was pointing out of the garage to suck out the fumes in the closed garage. Smart guy thought of ventilation and it worked very well. The next morning the cage looked great and the box fan was covered in yellow paint that it sucked out (no biggie-fans are cheap). I opened the door and my red daily driver CRX was sitting in the driveway with a very fine mist of dry yellow paint on all body and glass surfaces where it was blown by the fan. DOH! Luckily paint overspray is removed with a Clay Magic bar and one killed clay bar and some elbow grease later and both cars looked good.

Aahj

Here we go. There was a topic like this last year, I believe. Just halarious.

I have done lots of stupid things. The ones that come to mind are me spraying brake cleaner into my eye with my contacts in. I literally had to pry my contact off. It hurt.

Then the usual burns with torches and soldering irons (I'm retarded).

aj

.RJ

I was building a Spec RX7 last year and stood next to my buddy's kerosene heater with nylon pants on. We had both had a few and i melted the pants onto my leg. I was picking plastic out for a few days....

CRX Lee

My boss from my previous job did this...

He and his brother were bleeding brakes on his ITS Z car. Lacking a good brake fluid catch container, they grabbed an empty Diet Coke can. A bit later, the third crew guy (a Diet Coke guzzler who leaves his empties sitting around) comes over to work on the car. While working, he reaches over and chugs from the nearest Diet Coke can. You guessed it ...the brake fluid. He blew it all over the place and was spitting and wretching all he could. The other two were laughing so hard they couldn't render any help. He lived but learned.

sackdz

Drained coolant into an empty water jug, and put it behind me for a moment, right next to the jug of fresh water that I'd been drinking from. They say that animals like the taste of antifreeze. Well I didn't. For some reason I stopped myself from swollowing and held a mouthful of it while running outside to spit it out. I yacked for about 15 minutes and tasted it for 2 days.

bikeboy80

lets see...

me and my dad were working on a vw rabbit i had picked up for cheep, we only had 2 jackstands so we used a crank honda jack on the one side and a vw "pegleg" jack on the other side at one point my dad got pinned between the rear of the car and the side of the grage because the jacks had started to fall over, while i was trying to pull the car away from him

I was melting heat shrink tubing and stupid me grabed the metal part of the heat gun, I had some nice large blisters after that one

one thing that i did years ago as my first upgrade was to put coilovers on my car (the sleave type) that day went with out incident and i was so proud of my self that i did it all my self. Then about 6 months later, I am looking at a advertisement in a magazine and i turn to my friend and say "look at those dumb f#$ks, they put the sleave on the bottom and the spring on the top, It's upside down!" He just looks at me and laughs. Later that day I was fliping all my coilovers over to the corect way

Lt. Dan

one of the things we used to do to stay warm in the shop was to pour a puddle of washer concentrate on the ground, light it, and stand around it like a bunch of homeless guys with our hands out.. hehe... Well, one time I went to do that, and the lit puddle began to slowly spread across the shop floor... no biggie... but then it came in contact with another puddle.... OF GASOLINE.... Now THAT was cool!!!!

Dan

Lt. Dan

How about forgetting to put an oil filter on after an oil change? You want a mess? You've got a mess!!!!

Dan

Lt. Dan

trying to adjust a drive belt while the engine is running, and losing two fingers in the process.... I didn't do it, but I saw a guy do it...

Dan

Catch 22

Never physically injured myself, not from lack of trying though.

My dumbest moment was probably mounting a race seat bracket. I measured wrong, whipped out the drill, and punched a large hole in the wrong spot on my floorboard. No biggie huh? I didn't think so either until i heard the dripping sound. I had punched right through a brake line. Pure genius.

Lt. Dan

More dumb stuff I've done...

Bottle rocket fights in the middle of the shop... with customer cars on either side of you...

Dan


[Modified by Lt. Dan, 3:38 AM 2/2/2003]

Lt. Dan

One time, me and another tech were taking turns putting tranny gears on a screwdriver, winding them up with air blowers, and launching them across the shop at each other.... Finally, I let one loose at him, and he tried to stop it with his shoe.... Instead of stopping, it, launched straight up his body, giving him cuts all the way up, culminating in needing several stitches on his ear... lol...

Dan

Crosser1

Ok, Dan wins the retard award. The sad thing is I know Dan, and this is only a small taste of the dumb stuff this boy has done or been part of I am sure.

MaddMatt

I've chopped wood in the garage....

Catch 22

I've sported wood in the garage. But that is a different subject and certainly wasn't "dumb."

Knestis

I was taking a rear IRS trailing arm off of a boneyard VW - crawled under the back of the car with a huge allen wrench and a 2' length of pipe for leverage, poked it in the hex, pushed upward with all of my might (200+ ft/lbs before the rust)...

...and watched the two welded-wheel "jack stands" under the rear of the car fall over. I am not a big dude but I held the back of that bug up long enough to scream for help.

My brother put Coleman stove fuel in a kerosene heater and blew it up. Truly scary but don't get me started about him - he cut the end off of a buddy's finger falling off of a ladder with a running chainsaw...

K

PS - Dude. Wood? Put down the beer and go rent some ****.

Evan55

when draining gear oil in the slightly sloping driveway, i put the front up on ramps (and the car not in gear) because the jackstands were sinking into the asphalt.
after letting it drain for a while i decided more would drain if i jacked the back up (from behind the car)
I jacked the rear up, it rolled off the ramps, almost rolled over top of me, and crushed the drain bucket, spilling that putrid Redline Gear oil all over the driveway.
I spent the rest of the night (it was 9pm at the time of the incident) in a near-vomiting state trying to clean up the gear oil.

the landlord later charged me $200 for the huge oil spot when I moved out

DB2-R81

Once did an oil change in an underground apartment parking garage. After thinking I had completed the job, started up the car, proceeded to do a lap around the garage and intended to then check for small leaks. Little did I realise when I removed the old filter the gasket had stuck to the oil filter pad. Two gaskets don't work better than one and Honda oil pumps are wonderful under the right conditions. While doing the lap I was creating an oil slick around the entire length of the parking garage, dumping 4 litres, and $20.00 worth of oil. Thank god for kitty litter and push brooms. The change cost me twice the price and clean up time took three times as long as the original oil change.




[Modified by DB1-R81, 3:05 AM 2/2/2003]

solo-x

1) i was putting suspension on a mark 3 golf. only had the driver side of the car up while i was working on the rear shock. i didn't realize that the reason i couldn't get the shock out was because the torsion beam was pushing up against the spring/shock assembly. well, i figured out a way to pull the assembly out, unfortunately once it came out the torsion beam moved up, the car settled, and there i am with my whole arm pinned between the axle and frame. after 10 minutes of yelling, my old man finally came out and jacked the car the rest of the way up so i could get my arm back out.

2) dropped the tranny from my AMC Spirit on my pinky finger. lost all feeling in the finger for close to a year.

3) while diagnosing my poorly running camaro, i decided to verify all the ignition leads were securely fastened to the ignition cap. while standing in a puddle. with the engine running. the shock was so powerful i actually could feel the path it followed and the momentary skip it made my heart do. my arm felt much like it did after the golf incident.

nate-who makes up for magnitude with shear volume. yes, there are more. many more.

Catch 22

A buddy of mine who was prepping a '74 Jensen Healey (so you know where this is going) for EP decided to attack some of his troublesome oil leaks with copious amounts of Permatex. It worked. Most of the leaks stopped. But as he wiped off the excess permatex that had squished out when he bolted parts together he didn't really consider the permatex squishing out on the INSIDE of said parts.

A short time later... BOOM!
Oil system was clogged with gobs of permatex.

Another british sportscar story:
A well known local Triumph builder tells of the shell he had in his shop for years. It didn't have a motor in it and hadn't for a very long time, but every time they moved the car there was an oil spot underneath. Seems oil had saturated the entire car and was weeping out slowly. True story.

Scott, who will never own a british roadster. Not even to use as a parts shelf (like Karl's).

Catch 22

Another guy I know decided to crawl under a GT-1 car while it was just supported by the jack... in a dirt paddock... without a board underneath.

He was found attempting to bench press a tube frame Monte Carlo. Amazingly enough he only had a few bruises and scratches.

I did once talk a neighborhood kid into holding the spark plug on my lawn mower while I pulled the starter cord. You know... "To see if it is working." Heehee. That was fun. I've already labled him as a future ClubSi member.

Dropspeed

I needed to move a car a few feet, while kneeling down grabbed the spokes of the wheel and rolled it back about a quarter turn before I crushed my middle finger between the spoke and the caliper. 28 stitches, 2 pins, 2 repaired tendons in 2 surgerys I learned

The best part was I didn't want to miss an event at Gingerman so I drove with 2 finger splints on and had surgery the following day.

Mattj

Kamin

Hmm my turn...
i was replacing an axle on my b16 and was re-installing the lower control arm, (no splitter so i just removed the LCA and let it hang by the ball jount, pull the hub away from car, volla axle removed) when i was tightening the bolts my arm slipped off the wrench and i gave myself a 6inch gash down my forearm from the cotter pin on the ball joint. i didnt even quit working just dripped blood all over my garage till i finished about 20 minutes later.

while i was doing my engine swap my friend was under the car guiding the engine in while i lowered it (bad idea, no?), and the engine got hung up on the frame as it usually does when installing it and the chains on the hoist went limp, WHAM engine falls and hit my best friends nose. one more inch and he would have had a flat face. he crawled out from under the car and said "that was a bad idea.." i just nodded my head.

johng

This is good stuff.
After putting a bolt-in roll cage in my old car, the passenger side door hoop was hitting the door panel making it difficult to close the door. I figured since the door panel is mostly plastic, I'd try to melt it. So I whip out the 'ol trusty Benzematic torch and try to melt the spot where the cage hits.

Plastic melts and catches fire very quickly. I stood there for a minute thinking that the flaming door panel was a good thing and would help with my little clearance issue. But now, how do I put the fire out? Good question.

I started swatting at the fire with my bare hands only to have hot sticky plastic melt to my skin creating a whole new problem. I eventually got the fire out and decided not to try that ever again.

preparedcivic

Oh, this is so theraputic to read all this stuff..........

Working underneath the front of the Civic, with some fairly large wrench, which i dropped, catching it with my fake tooth front cap. When I went to the dentist for a check-up a month later, he says there's a fine crack in the porcelain, and it will have to be replaced.

Dropping floor jacks on my toes not once, but twice. 1st time I'm sure I broke bones, because I couldn't wear a shoe for a month. Did it while repacking trailer wheel bearings. I had just finished one side, and picked up the jack to carry it around to the other side when it just oozed out of my greasy hands. 2nd time was when I was moving, and putting all my garage stuff into a storage space. I had two things left from the rent-a-truck to put in: a kids bike and the $^#^! jack. Was in a hurry, picked up the jack and whoosh! It hurt so bad it brought tears to my eyes. But I was walking normally within a week, so it wasn't a bad as the first time.

Oh, and almost burning my house down. Cutting a 1/4" steel plate for something car related in the garage, making all kinds of sparks and slag. Wifey complaining all day she smells smoke and burning. etc. I say look what I'm doing, what to you expect? A few months later moving some stuff away from the garage wall common with the house, I find a totally charred roll of what was paper towels. Uh oh, I know how this got this way. Sparks etc. got behind there, lit up the roll, and it smoldered for who knows how long.


[Modified by preparedcivic, 7:57 PM 2/2/2003]