When things go wrong at the scrap yard

I thought I would start a thread about things that go wrong at your fav scrap yard..I was working at a yard in Southern Ontario Canada, it was called Griffin Motors and had about 301 late 40's, 50's and early 60's cars and trucks, the owner had passed away I was liquidating the parts and cars. I had shown a guy a old Caddy and he was going through the trunk and interior when all of a sudden he came stormin by me and my son , he was followed by the biggest swarm of hornets I have ever seen , they chased him for about 600 feet , he ran into main shop and slammed the door, I went in after him and found him taking deep breathes. As he was laughing about it we found out that half the hive had gotten into his coat and pants, so off he ran again as he ran I kept yelling to him " Take your clothes off man " and he did just that within 20 feet he was down to his gotchies..lol..For weeks when ever he came back we just told him to strip now and save time later..lol..So who else has had bad finds in your local yards?..Roy Boy

 

that's hillarious.....I don't have any stories that good but have in the past stumbled onto snakes, wasps, etc when digging out old cars.

 

I reached under a bumper one time and this big old fat black spider bit me and held on.
My hand was fucked up for a month !

 

i needed the front radius rods of a v8 car to complete my 6 to 8 cylinder swap on my falcon. went to a local yard and found a maverick that had what i needed, but it was sitting with no tires and i couldnt get under it. so they came with a huge fork lift, rolled the mav on its roof and torched the rods off the car for me. in the process they set the car and the grass and oil soaked dirt around the car on fire. the funny part was nobody carred. they handed me the parts and said have a nice day, all the while the fire was growing. still no concern they just went about their day as if this was normal. i didnt stay to watch them extinguish the fire, but i could see the smoke for a good distance as i drove away. the part that sitcks in my head is the growing fire behind this guy as he handed me the parts and his carefree attitude about it. i wish we had caamera phones back then.

 

Was at a yard with my dad when I was 8 or so... he was looking for specific parts I was just wondering around (yea the good old days when an unattended kid could use a junkyard as a playground) and found a clapped out T coupe shell and frame. I climbed all around it and then got in and was "driving" when all of a sudden it sounded like I was inside a drum with a squadron of fighter planes. Turns out I too had found a hornet nest. They were everywhere and I was lucky. I took off on a major surge of adrenaline and never got stung, but boy did it scare me.

 

Years ago the stereo in my daily driver was ripped off. I went to the local u-pull it yard with my brother and while we were walking around all the wrecked cars, I mentioned I hope we don't find any dead, mangled bodies in them. I found the car like mine opened the door and about jumped out of my shorts.......Some guy was laying on the floor pulling something from under the dash. To say my brother laughed his ass off puts it mildly.

 

Another one to add to the "bees" - always looking out for vintage tin. #1 Approaching a 1950 +/- Ford truck, walked right up to it and started to look inside, out came the bees and I ran as fast as I could back to the truck. #2 Saw some old cars back in the trees and brush. Barely got to the first one, greeted by bees, turned and ran. I am glad to see others who have shared this experience as well.

 

I was in a yard taking off an exhaust system for my daughters' car, and gashed my finger bad. It was quite a walk out to my car, then a mile or so to the main building, so I figured that I'd better take the parts with me. I walked in, paid for the stuff, drove the 10 miles or so back home, and had to wait for the doctor to come back from lunch to get four stitches in my finger.

In the same yard, years earlier, before knowing about CA. one piece bumpers, I was taking the license plate backing plates off a '58 Chevy, and just dropped both bumpers to the ground, taking only the plates. It wasn't but a few days later that I learned about the one piece bumpers, so I rushed back, only to find both of them gone.

 

I was at a yard pulling a flattie out of a '50 F1. The owner had goats to keep the weeds down. I was told to keep an eye out for a mean old red one but I obviously didn't pay enough attention. Needless to say I couldn't sit comfortably for a week or so after being head butted into the engine compartment!

 

^lmao

 

I was standing in a salvage yard in South Jersey (Blewitt's) back in the late 70's...one of the guys in the yard was doing donuts in this old bomb and yelling out the window when another guy in a giant forklift comes zooming over..this is one of those jobs with the telescoping hydraulics that goes about 30 ft in the air for stacking cars...he crashes the forks under the car and lifts it up in the air to the limit. The guy in the car is hanging out the window now, he's got the engine floored so there's smoke pouring out and the back wheels are spinning off the car. He's raining four letter words down on the guy in the forklift, so he starts jogging the hydraulic controls to get the car bouncing up and down and teetering half on and half off and he's laughing his ass off ...all the while the other guy is up inside this car and he's cursing and laughing. I'm shading my eyes from the sun looking up at this guy and my heart is pounding out of my chest cause I know this guys gonna drop off and get killed right in front of me. About that time the old man comes out of the office and says "can I help you" ...I'm like "did you just see that" and he says "what" ?
I quess that was the kind of shit they did for laughs all the time there but it freaks me out even today when I think about it. They probably did it just to see my expression.




.

 

I was told by a friend a 428 was going to be showing up at the Upullit yard. I threw all my tools in the truck to get it. It was in a badly rusted 67 Galaxie. I was able to get it up in the front on two wheels laying on the ground. Got most of the bolts off the bottom and was using my cordless saws all to cut the left exhaust pipe as it was the last thing left. Just as the saw hit the bottom of the pipe the drivers side frame breaks and the car drops a foot. I about crapped myself. I am 6.1 330 and take up a lot of space. I was able to slide out with no damage and had the yard guy pull the engine. Next time I will bring a couple jack stands.

 

Oh shit....laughing so hard I'm crying....

Reminds me of these knuckle head brothers I used to know who worked on a farm back home. They were always doing stupid shit and getting hurt.

 

Hornets and black widows have haunted me for years at our local yard, the best thing that went wrong was finding a stack of old polaraoids of this 250 pound gal naked having a good time, that hurt me for life!!!JOKER JASON.

 

What's with all the people afraid of bees? 10 feet to the left of this was bee hives (the kind for harvesting honey) and I took this with a wide angle lens, so I was close, and even walked around it looking in the cab and bed.

 

bees don't bother me....it's the damned hornets, yellow jackets, wasps....they'll sting you for no goddam reason at all.

 

No comment!

 

I was 50 feet from a 19 year old kid cutting a leaf spring out of a junk.
He cut into the gas tank..........was killed. It was 35 years ago but to this day i dont weld gas tanks unless i am building one from scratch.

 

I had a mid-60's Elky once. When I hooked it up to drag home I noticed some bumble bee's hanging around, but they didn't bother me so I forgot about it. That is until I got under the dash and started taking out the radio, heater controls and such. I heard this strange buzzing sound and took off. Then here come the bee's. Seems they built there home under the carpet and I was right on top of them!

Then there was the time I was selling a '57 Chevy that my parents were keeping for me. I wanted to save the bench seat that was in the car, but not bolted down. I opened the door and me and my helper lifed it up. Suprise! Mr and Mrs Possum had built a home. Thankfully they just got up and walked off and no young ones. Later that day I covered the hole in the floor.

 

I found a large bag-o-weed in the pick-a-part in SD. They were more worried about the fan belt I got as a cover than the contents of my tool box.

 

How about melting yer Packard taillights flamethrowing eh Roy Boy

 

Honey bees won't bother you, it's the yellow jackets and other wasps that will get you, they don't even like you being near them. also Honey bees can only sting you once and they sting only as a last defense, the other critters would sting you until you are dead if you fell. they can sting you over and over. you are talking about two different types of critters here, also remember the killer bees are out there now, they look like honey bees, but are as aggressive as wasps. they never give up.

 

Whats the saying, "You just can unsee that"

 

I've been stung by hornets in yards on more than one occasion. They usually have nests behind nice shiny chrome bumpers. IMO, hornet stings don't "sting" as bad as bee stings, but they are more easily pissed off. Also, it's never just "one" hornet sting. When they get you, the little fuckers bring their friends.

 

Many years ago we were hooking up a 1956 Chev nine passenger wagon and felt something sting me under the arm. It hit worse than any hornet or wasp, and I have felt their wrath on more than one occasion. Nothing flew out of my shirt as I ripped it off. About that time, the owner says "Oh, I should tell you we have some scorpions around here." Dang underarm swelled up so bad it looked like I had an orange in my armpit.

 

Those Oklahoma scorpions suck! I got nailed by one about 20 years ago

 

"Cutting classes and harvesting parts in a junk yard." is my answer to the oft asked question, "Do you remember what you were doing when JFK was assassinated?"

 

we have these all over the place here, they are harmless, but they are big as crap, they are in the garage, house, everywhere. To the average person they look like the spider of death, but to those of us who know, you can pick them up without them hurting you. it's really funny to put one on someone at the yard and watch it run down their arm, or put it on the dash of a car. We are not far from Florida so we have every species of spider known and unknown to man here.

 

The only story I have is a buddy and I were at a small local yard of 50's Fords I forgot what we were getting, but I had a can of the bug spray and ended up on the trunk lid of a 56' more door fighting the hornets off my buddy with the spray. Good times...

 

Funny until someone beats the crap out of you anyways.....