Stupid shop accidents

[RVAnderson]

OK; what have you folks done out in the shop or garage that makes you look or feel like the world's biggest idiot afterward? The kind of thing that makes you want to cry when it happens but that you and/or your buddies can laugh at a decade or two later, down at the local coffee dive?

A buddy of mine was having a hard time with a part not fitting; he tried everything but no go so he suddenly sat up and hurled it with about 6Gs of force at a steel workbench. He watched it bounce up and take out his rare, vintage, perfect, working Pepsi clock, hitting it dead center. He'd just turned down $350 for it a few weeks before.

Anybody else??

[Guest Moepar]

I'm gonna squeal on my husband so don't anyone rat me out! ha ha.

We had gone to our barn to get out our car club trailer that we use to haul the club stuff (like the music system for the cruise ins). He was using our '87 Jeep instead of the '72 Dodge truck, which at the hitch is a few inches taller. He decided to take it under the carport. I hopped out to help because of it being a taller vehicle. Of course he couldn't wait an extra 10 stinkin' seconds for me to walk in front of him,& he raced on. Of course he couldn't hear me screaming at him to stop because he doesn't bother to open a window. Instead, he takes the roof off of the trailer, doing $1,200 damage to a $2,200 NEW trailer. That was back in October. They just got the roof at the trailer dealer last week (had to order 3 times-kept coming in wrong) & we have to pick it up on Friday. There goes our vacation fund for the next two years!

[West Peterson]

I had just finished restoring my 1957 VW Karmann Ghia. I was adjusting something, I don't remember what, but I reached in the window to start the car. It started right up. Unfortunately, it was in gear and proceded to smash into the car that was six feet in front of it. The front bumper of the Karmann Ghia is very low and provided no protection for the perfectly painted front end. I wish I knew where that car was today. I sold it in 1988. Went to Utah. Color: Tomato red with creme top. Anyone??

[Twitch]

There's some weird phenomena at work that we've all seen in mechanical things. You have a non-functioning or ill-functioning thing that you decide to disassemble to see what's wrong. You find nothing wrong. You re-assemble the thing and it works fine. You didn't do anything but it works and you have no idea why.

[ex98thdrill]

Just last Sunday, the freshly painted fire truck frame fell off of the sawhorses and slammed onto the floor of the shop. Marked the frame up, marked the floor up, and hurt our pride..... but neither one of us got hurt.

We've done others, but this is our most recent.

[West Peterson]

What's even more frustrating is trying to figure out a problem that isn't consistent. A problem that picks different times not to work.

[Ron Green]

Years ago I did something similar. I was so mad at something while working on my Corvette I picked up a wrench and hurled it at the direction beside the car (or so I thought) only to have it hook and hit dead center on the hood and bounce off the windshield. Of course it was a freshly painted car.

I was at my friends restoration shop a few months ago and questioned him on how the Rolls Royce he was working on got dents on top of the trunk. It seems that this car raises up once you turn it off and exit. Unfortunately he parked the rear end under a porch overhang and the clearances were a little to tight once it raised.

[Shop Rat]

Two stories from a friend of ours. He was the shop manager at a local Ford dealership. He walked out into the shop one day and tapped the guy on the shoulder that was using a cutting torch and asked him what he was doing cutting the drive shaft in half. OOPS!!! The guy was supposed to be cutting the old exhaust pipe off. Guess his welder's helmet glass was a bit TOO dark.

Same friend, Doy, goes over to his best friend's house to help him with a welding project. Harry, who has since passed away from cancer, missed what he was welding and ran the welder across two of Doy's fingers. That took quite a while to heal.

[Guffin]

Not in the shop, but on the road.

Many years ago I had a problem with the vacuum gas pump. A while later we went on a long trip with the car when it suddenly stopped. The pump again, I thought. I took the pump apart but couldn't find anything wrong with it. Then it suddenly struck me, is there any gas in the tank. We had just run out of gas.

Jan

[ronbarn]

Several years ago my friend Dave Kolzow was getting ready to show the just finished 1895 Benton Harbor for the first time and was trying to get it started in the motel parking lot. He turned the flywheel over and over, but nothing. I finally asked him if he had gas in the tank. He gave me an irritated look and said there was plenty of gas. After a few more tries I asked him to humor me and look in the gas tank. Reluctantly he took the gas cap off and sure enough, bone dry.

I said not to worry, I had some gas in my trailer just a few yards away. We poured it into the tank, Dave pulled on the flywheel and the engine started, but ran for less than a minute and died. Dave took the carb off and found that all of the shellac on the cork float was gone and the float had sunk. Then I remembered that I had just bought that gas in a filling station that used alcohol-gasoline mixture. The alcohol ate the varnish.

While Dave cleaned up the carb and dumped the gas with alcohol, I went off to find some non-alcohol gas, some varnish and a brush. He applied the varnish, waited about 30 minutes to let it try, put in the new gas, and the car ran fine. I was so relieved that I had not terminally killed one of the oldest American cars.

Incidently, Dave later donated that car to the AACA L&RC where you can see it in the lobby if it has not been moved to the Museum.

[Steve Moskowitz]

Dave's car has been at the Museum since the opening Ron. Looked great in the lobby. I remember seeing it run when he first started shwoing it.

I may have told this story before. I was balancing the wheels with a high speed Hunter wheel balancer. It had a device that clamped onto the wheel with I think 3 large clips. I apparently became mesmerized with the wheel spinning and allowed my hand to drift off the weight adjuster and it sent my hand flying around in a circle, getting chewed up by the clips and leaving me with scars I still have today. Sadly, this is only one of my stupid accidents...I may be the poster child for this thread. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

[Guest]

In my youth I had a summer job that occasionally involved cutting up old automobile chassis. Well, I sat on one frame rail and cut through the one across from me and then reversed my position to cut up the rail I had been sitting on. You figure it out.

hvs

[tomchaney]

Years ago I managed a nursery. We sold half whiskey barrels for planters. I always told my guys that when they loaded one into a customer's trunk to gingerly lower the trunk to make sure the barrel would fit. One of the guys did exactly as he was told but didn't know that the Cadillac he was loading the barrel into had an automatic trunk closer. It grabbed...the lid went down and a perfect crescent appeared in the trunk lid. That cost us. I should have talked the customer into putting a Cadillac emblem in the center of the crescent and pretending he had a trunk lid with a fake Continental kit!

[Guest Skyking]

I was just finishing up the restoration on my Met and I wanted to see how the antenna was going to fit on the fender. I had it on top of my cabinets above my workbench. On the end of this antenna was a sharp point that the wire from the radio would screw into. After I saw how it was going to look I put it back above the cabinet, but this time with the point facing forward, and the round end of the antenna facing in. A few minutes later I needed something inside of the cabinet and when I went to open the door the antenna got caught on the door and it came flying down with the point first. It hit the top of a can of red spray paint that was on the bench poking a hole in it and sent it flying to the floor spinning in all directions. At this time both my Met & 62 Buick were parked in there and this can is going crazy painting everything in sight. I grabbed the can and tossed it outside spraying the outside of my garage, shrubs and walkway. It finally ran out of paint and stopped. the only thing that got painted on the cars was the front tire on the Buick.......I was lucky, and laugh now.

[Shop Rat]

Whether you fell down or got pinched....OUCH!!!!!

[Shop Rat]

We were at Wal*Mart one evening and I was helping Bill look for the red paint that we wanted in a spray can. They had just stocked the shelves and there was very little room to lift a can of paint out. So I grabbed the cap thinking it would be safe to pick it up that way since most of them you have to take a screwdriver to pop the lid off. NOT!! The can dropped loose from the lid, the nozzle hit and flew off and the red paint started oozing out. I grabbed up the can and held it trying to catch as much of the paint in my hands as I could. Luckily the guy at the automotive counter saw me and grabbed a trash can to put the can and paint in. My hands were dripping with blood red paint, I looked like I had murdered someone. I wiped off as much as I could but my hands still looked like a dye-pack had exploded in them. The stain is still on the floor at Wal*Mart and there is still some red paint in a pinkie ring that hasn't come off. It has been a couple years and the paint is still in that ring.

[Guest HeyPop]

OK... I haven't shared this with too many folks as yet but what the heck... The Model A was together. It was time to take it for it's first l-o-n-g trip (about 12 miles into town for the first of many retiree breakfasts it would be part of). About a mile from the house it started to sputter and then quit. Couldn't get it started so I drifted it backwards thinking maybe there was some junk in the fuel lines that finally settled together clogging the juice. Once on level ground I tried to start it again. Vroom... started right up. Back to the shop... removed the fuel line from the carb and ran some fuel through the line while I tapped it here and there. Got a little junk but not much. Back together abd ran it for a couple minutes. Down the drive again... Quit at almost the exact same spot. Same scenario .. back to the shop. Took the other truck and went to breakfast. Went through this for about a week or so trying all kinds of different fixes. Looking back through some old issues of 'Restorer' I found a question from a fellow Model A owner that struck home... Hummmm .. same situation. The answer from the tech advisor brought on a light and an embarrassed feeling as well. "Make sure you don't have a radiator cap on your gas tank." DUH!!! It was chrome so I put it on the gas tank! Funny how that little hole that is present in a gas cap isn't there on a radiator cap. Once a vacuum is pulled in the gas tank from not having a breather hole ... the vehicle stops!!! Been running great ever since...

[Guest]

No Susan. I sat down on the metal I had just cut with the torch. Get the picturs?

hvs

[novaman]

I've been working on finishing my garage so I can move my cars from my parents place to mine. I was trying to get a piece of drywall to fit snug between the overhead doors. There was one spot that wanted to bulge out. Simple: 1. get piece of 2x4. 2. Get hammer (2lbs sledge type. we want to make sure it goes in place) 3. Swing hammer, miss board completely hit knuckle on little finger. 4. Spend the next 4 weeks recovering from the fracture. Week 5 is here, still hurts some and can't make a fist.

Last Thursday at work I had got done grinding a piece of tubing for the chassis I was working on. Went over to the car and thought I smelled smoke. Looking around I didn't see any or any reason for there to be smoke. Nobody else was in this area of the shop for me to ask if they smelled it too. So, I looked down at the chassis on the jig to put the tube in place and saw a little smoke coming from under the edge of the jig. Backing up relieved that the slag from grinding now had my shirttail glowing orange and smoldering!! needless to say, I quickly patted it out.

Steve, if you don't get the poster child position for this forum, it'll be me.

[Guest Skyking]

Shop Rat, I'd say you got caught "red handed"......

[Shop Rat]

Oh, okay. Now I get the picture. Guess it isn't just cattle that get "branded".

[Shop Rat]

Good pun Skyking. I will say this, when I got home the GoJo took off most of the stain.

[Jim Bollman]

Since we are all sharing. I have many stupid stories to, but one I think of often when working on cars. I was 19 and parting out a Metropolitan to put a convert back together to sell and stash some spare parts for my driver. This was back when Mets were either drivers or junk, weren't old enough to collect. I was working by myself in my Dad's shop they were both gone for the day. I jacked up one side using the factories trick jack. Preceded to pull the wheel off yjay side and was sitting with my legs under the car working on pulling the brake drum off the rear axle. Just then in slow motion but not so slow that I could get out from under the jack pushed right through the rusty floor and my legs were trapped under the car. I wasn't hurt I just couldn't move and no chance of anyone finding for many hours. I don't remember now if I pulled on the sheet metal thinking I could lift the car or was just frustrated but the rest of the fender was just as rusty and I proceeded to bend the fender up and out of the way and slide out.

I own several sets of jack stands now and a floor jack.

[R W Burgess]

I might have mentioned this story some time ago. Back years ago when I used to work on my raggededy old trucks, my driver calls me. His truck was almost loaded but would not restart so he could pull it out the building where he was loading it. I figure another starter has had it. I drive the 15 miles to the factory with my toolbox and spare starter. It's getting late now, people want to go home and I want my supper on time. I jump under the truck and say, "This won't take long, three bolts to take off, plus the hot and ground wires on the starter." Don't even have to unhook the battery cables this time. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" /> Well, that speed wrench with the two extensions and the 3/4 inch deep socket go spinning as I'm rushing to get this over with. Handle of ratchet spins around contacting oil pan which contains 13 gallons of dinosaur's best. Well, at least I know the 4-12 volt batteries are up as the power has just burned two nice "big holes" in the pan, and the oil is emptied in seconds. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

Plan B means taking off pan, welding holes...OH, the heck with it. We'll fix it tomorrow. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I'm hungry! <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Wayne

[Guest Hal Davis (MODEL A HAL)]

I did something similar, Wayne, while I was in the Army. I was replacing the starter on a bucket loader. I didn't bother to disconnect the battery. I'll be careful. What could go wrong? Right? The raggedy ratchet I was using to remove the hot wire to the solenoid took that inopportune moment to give way. The handle slipped from my hand, rotated around until it hit the frame. Sparks everywhere. I managed to knock it loose. There was a gash in the handle of that ratchet that looked like you had cut it half way through with a torch. Oh well, Uncle Sam bought me a new one. I did learn why you are suppose to disconnect the battery, though!

More recently, the brake light had stuck in the "on" position on the Model A and had run the battery down. I thought "Well, I'll just hook up the battery charger to get a little juice to the coil and crank it by hand." Not a bad idea, but you have to remove the floorboard to get to the battery. That's a pain in the neck, so I decided to hook the battery charger to the starter terminal and a good ground. The car started up just fine, but ran real rough, popping and backfiring. I thought it must just be low voltage. I checked the amp meter. Discharge! I revved the engine. MORE discharge. What the heck is going on?

Figured it out yet?

I hooked the battery charger up as if it were a negative ground. That polarized the generator in the opposite direction. If I had removed the floor board and hooked to the battery, I would have immediately remembered the positive ground, but not seeing the battery, 25 years of negative ground intuition took over.

[Guest 53Nailhead]

Back '68 my father owned a Sunoco Service Station, that was when you pulled up to the pumps & the attendent would actually come out ask you how much, what type, clean your windows(& not damage the paint) & ask you to pop the hood & check your oil. Can you beleive it! Anyway, the front window was broken service area so everyone was walking thru the opening instead of using the door. Dad went to lunch & by the time he got back they had replaced the window. He walked right thru the plate glass, hitting it with the steel toe, almost lost his nose!

[Guest Andynator]

Not a shop story but on the road. In high school I was out cruising around with some friends, my buddy was driving his dad's early-seventies Caprice. Just as we come to a stop at an intersection in town, there is a loud "clunk" and the sound of metal dragging from the rear. One of the guys in the backseat opens the door and leans out to take a look underneath. It's twilight so it's tough to see under the car, but finally he straightens up and says, "the exhaust pipe fell down. Hit it, Gary!"

We bailed out of the car in a panic when the car began to flog itself to pieces. The rear universal joint had failed and the Caprice was literally beating itself to death with its own drive shaft. Gary, who in retrospect was "a little slow", was so focused on wondering why the car wasn't moving that he kept his foot in it for a good while before noticing that we were gone.

Andy

[Matt Harwood]

I'm having a hard time not chiming in.

My worst "almost" disaster was working on a customer's supercharged LT1 Corvette. The LT1s had gear-driven water pumps that were internal, not a traditional belt-driven setup, and this one was leaking. So we tore the top of the motor down, including the intake manifold. As conscientious mechanics, we placed a few shop rags in the intake ports. We found the leak, fixed it and buttoned it all back up.

That night, the guy I was working with had a dream. The next morning, he says to me, "Matt, I think we left a rag in there. I had a dream." I laughed at him thinking it was one of those dreams we all have. But he wasn't so sure it was just a dream, so we got the scope out, removed the upper intake and had a look. Sure enought, bright red rag material in two of the intake ports. Fortunately, we were able to hook the rags out without removing the entire intake manifold again.

Behold the power of dreams!

[Restorer32]

We restored a 1919 International which had already had some chassis work done. Knowing that on that particular truck the differential gear set could easily be installed backwards we punch marked the case and gear set so it would go back together properly. Fast forward a year or so...the restoration is complete, the freshly rebuilt engine is installed (crank start only). August, hotter than the hinges of Hades. Vehicle is due at a show in 3 days. After failing to muster enough muscle to crank the engine for its first start up we resorted to that ago old trick....we'll tow it to get it started! Well, after towing the thing back and forth maybe 3 miles, with the owner running alongside and fiddling with the carb, etc. we finally realized that the engine was turning backwards...yep...the previous "restorer" had gotten the gear set in backwards...No problem, swap the gear set around, should start, right? Wrong ! We finally determined that the cam had to be in 180 degrees out. Called the large and well known shop that had restored the engine, explained the apparent problem. Their head mechanic with 30 + years experience swore that he could not possibly have installed the cam wrong. I insisted that that was indeed the case and that we didn't feel we wanted to open up the engine. Finally agreed on a wager. The mechanic would travel the 200 or so miles to our shop and open up the engine. If the cam was wrong, he bought lunch after fixing the thing. If it was correct, we bought lunch and paid his expenses. Yep, the cam was in wrong. Lunch was good, the mechanic left shaking his head and muttering to himself. Then there was the time I broke my right arm cranking a 1928 Autocar, but that's another story all together. Stoopid is as stoopid does!

[DizzyDale]

This is going to fall in the ALMOST stupid shop accidents.Had the last drag car i had,48 Fiat altered,the body flipped up like a funny car on ramps in the front and jackstands under the rear end.I just changed the torque converter and wanted to stall the engine to see what the converter flashed too.I got the engine warmed up and put the trans brake on and FLOORBOARDED the throttle well the BIG mistake was i didn't let the engine come back to an idle before i let the transbrake button go .The rear of the car must have JUMPED a foot off the jack stands and landed right back where it started.ALL i could imagine was this thing going through the garage wall and into the street.I do believe i said every prayer i knew after i shut the car off.diz

[Ron Green]

Matt, I wish I would have had that dream a year ago around this time. Having had the radiator rebuilt, new hoses, new thermostat, gaskets and a shroud from h*ll to install the car would come up to normal operating temperature and then slowly creep up to hot. Sure enough the culprit was a rag after burning out many brain cells trying to figure out what was wrong.

On a side note I did the heater core for the same car this year. I put the hoses on and clamped them down before I remembered that the rag was still in. As they say if you don't make mistakes, your not doing anything!

[Jack Harlin]

Restorer

Is this story why Smokie Ynick came up with his reverse tourk engine for racing?? Funny but not a HA HA. with 2 things reversed. Jack

[EdA]

Not a true shop accident, but a funny shop story from a "flat tire." 36 years ago, I was in US Air Force stationed in eastern Turkey. We were 200 miles from our support base and had a flat tire on our Air Force pickup truck and had no spare - so caught a ride from a local trucker who took us to nearest village - local service station man thought he'd found a couple of "prize idiots" when he took tire off rim and saw "no tube" - he'd never seen a tubless tire and was convinced we were totally nuts when we insisted "it came that way." And, of course, the only "fix" option was to put a tube in - which made the Turk feel very superior as we "Yankee fools" caught a ride back to our truck. As we passed through the village an hour later, he had crowd gathered to "see the idiots" that didn't know tires should have tubes in them!

Ed

[Al Smeraldo]

I taught Auto Mechanics for 28 years and have many stories that fall into this category. One time two students were checking for a leak on an engine. The car was on jack stands one kid under the other looking down from the top. The kid underneath called out "hey Bob I found the leak". Bob answered "wheres it leaking?" "On my chest" came the answer.

[RVAnderson]

Not a "shop" accident but it's the kind of thing that happens in shops:

It was 2 weeks before the wedding, and Mom drove out to Dad's farm to pick him up for some appointment or other. Dad was running late and he just had a bit of field work to complete before it got dark. In a hurry, Dad cranked the old Case leaving the spark in the "run" position. You know the rest of the story.

One of the wedding photos shows Mom "twisting" Dad's arm, in its cast from wrist to shoulder. She'd pretty well tired of the jokes by then but went along with the photographer one more time.

[R W Burgess]

AHHHH, Farm fields and young people! Yes, I was young once, out plowing the 40 acre field late on a Saturday. In those days, I'd sing to myself, imagining what the night would bring. At any rate, My new wife and I had planned on a crab feast at another couple's home, with plenty of beer and mixed drinks for people like me who don't like beer. I'd been working in this field for at least 2 hours and had been working it for years, but somehow while thinking about those hot crabs and liquid refreshments, I forgot about the second of two big light poles that ran through the field. You guessed it, the left front tire of the open front wheels on the Farmall caught that pole, jecked the steering wheel out my hand, and brought me to a sudden stop. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> While surveying the situation from the ground, I noticed an awful lot of power steering fluid dropping on the ground. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> Yep, the sudden stop had pushed the piston in the steering cylinder so hard and fast, it had actually broken the front housing of the tractor, the part that the axles, radiator, and frame hook to. Dad was not happy! <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> Don't even remember what the crabs tasted like. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Wayne

[Guest Albert]

I have had a few muck up in the past, I was mig welding in some patches in the front end of a friends Honda when i found my Croch was getting warm only to find out the sparks had set fire to my jeans, no damage except for the jeans thankfully. Another time i was doing the heads on a V8 Mercedies and after many times having to remove the injector lines for one reason or another, I guess one just was not quit tight enought when i "FIRED UP" the engine, we had a 5 foot high flames under the hood, thankfully the other mechanic there was quick at grabbing the fire Extinusher and passing it off to me, somehow the only damage done to the car was the foam rubber hood pad, and pride. It took another two hours to clean up the mess of the extinusher and the remains of the hood pad. Customer was never told what happened...

[DizzyDale]

ALBERT,NOW I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY MERCEDES!!!!!!!!!!!!!MY ATTORNEYS DEWEY SCREWEM and HOWE WILL BE IN CONTACT WITH YOU.diz

[HarryJ]

This is stupid.....The other day I was working on my '21 Studebaker Light Six. The car was not registering consistant oil pressure, so I had disconnected the oil line from the oil pump to the guage and temporarily connected an extra oil pressure guage to the pump; this test out of the way I removed this test guage,but did not reconnect the dash unit. I busied myself with other jobs for a while and then climbed in the car and started it, got out and walked arround to the other side to witness a stream of oil squirting out onto my clean shop floor. It took two hours and many rags to clean up the mess. Maybe this post should be called the adventures of Mr. Badwrench.

[Bill Stoneberg]

We were fixing a tractor on the farm that had died in the field. Dad's new pickup truck (first one in 30 some years) was parked behind the manure spreader. The PTO was locked so as soon as the tractor started, s**t went flying all over. By the time we noticed it and got the tractor turned off, Dads nice silver truck had turned a deep shade of brown. I never left a PTO in gear again.