The worst time for me was grinding my rams horns smooth and took some shrapnel in the eye. Next day the doc removed it and then had to drill out the rust. Yeah, that was real fun. Made a full face shield standard equipment in my garage.
You know you've done your job on this post when the reader visibly cringes! My vote goes for needle nose pliers in the eye or the fork-lift decapitation. Goddamn!
A freind of mine was welding a metal box for the back of his truck in shorts. I was waiting for something bad to happen but he made it through unscathed. Until the next day when he said he had a sunburn on his upper thighs. The worst I recall is cutting the knuckel skin almost off in my right hand. i wiped oil off in the grass near myt truck and didn't see the broken glass in the grass. Guess it was Greenie karma, or perhpas my penance for not cutting the grass. I wonder what would have happened if I had went over that with a push mower though.
Man, I have set myself on fire too many times! But the worst was during 1987 in my mother's barn where I was rebuilding my 1963 Ford Galaxie. I was test running the newly rebuilt 460 feeding it from a gas can, when the short exhaust ignited the gas can. It was a barn with 4 horses downstairs. I was a Lieutenant on my town's fire department... the youngest one ever.... I'd been promoted for less than a month... and here I was burning down my mother's barn and killing her horses. Well, I was able to put the fire out, the horses were fine and nobody died. I also didn't have to lose face in front of the entire Fire Department. It took all 4 fire extinguishers in the barn to do it though. I then had to spend the rest of the day with a belt sander removing the char from the floor and some of the columns. I was completely uninjured. However, Lady Luck caught up with me a few weeks later when I was hit by a drunk driver a block from my house and my department transported me to the hospital then. Thankfully, the car I lost then was just a 1987 Plymouth Duster.
5 pages of the best stuff I've ever read. Guess I have to add when I stuck my fingers in a running Chevy 6 fan. DING, now I know why it's called "SMARTS"
The needlenose pliers didn't hurt, the headache from it had me on oxycontin for about a week. Now I just get dizzy from the drunk goggles view that I have. The decapitation made me shiver.
Changin spark plugs on my 56 Merc, 390 GT engine. Last one pass side rear. Ratchet hits the hot side of the battery. Gold wedding ring turns red! 47 stitches later I still have my finger. Don't wear rings now....OLDBEET
A buddy of mine who worked for AMF in the 70's had a similar decapitation story. He was a fork truck driver and was watching a maintenance guy work on a steam pipe or something. He said he looked up and saw the guy then looked away and heard loud pop and his and when he looked up again the guy was still holding on to the scaffolding but lacked a head. I had forgotten about that one.
Everytime I read the heading for this post I think "when don't I get hurt working on a car?" Nothing too serious though to speak of. I remember when I was little girl watching my dad working on the front end of a '68 chevy pick up and scraping his knuckle off with a flathead screwdriver. Sick. Absolutely sick.
How much do y'all want to hear about? I'll skip the small accidents like cuts, welding burns, smashed fingers, major blood etc and move onto a bit of the major stuff. I was run over by a '71 Ranchero back in the '80s. Had it on ramps, couldn't get it out of gear to coast off, so I chocked the rear wheels well, got under it and knocked it out of gear with a hammer. Of course, it jumped the blocks and caught me in the side. The net result, 3 broken ribs I rolled a Slant 6 onto my left foot while moving it with a piece of pipe. My foot hurt like hell for a month and finally eased up. I tore the ligaments out of it the following summer (non car related) and to go to the hospital. The X-Ray tech asked me when I broke my foot. I told her never. She said Oh Yeah You did! Oh well.... While chopping off an exhaust, I ran the torch across the back of my hand. Didn't hurt that badly when I did it, but sure did for a month or so afterward. I was sawing a pice of tubing for a shock spacer for a stock car and the hack saw came through quicker than I'd figued and cut about an eighth of an inch into the side my wrist. I duct taped it together and drove to my dad's. He said that maybe we should go to the hospital, I said no (no insurance) and he said ok, we'll patch the motherfucker together. Almost 20 years later, I still have the scar. This past summer I had two kinda nasty accidents. I was trying to load automatic trannies into my pickup. I got the Powerglide in barely, then tried to balance a C6's bellhousing on my tailgate. It slipped, I fell and did a perfect split. Now I know why there aren't any 55 year old cheerleaders as I pulled every muscle in my thighs.. It IS one reason that I'm glad I'm a woman, though.. You guys couldn't have handled this one.... Last one for now.... I took my '37 Chevy circle burner to my storage building to swap for my Ford. The Ford wouldn't idle right, so I ran it up the ramps of my trailer about 20 mph and jumped the stops. While Trying to figure out a way to get her back on, I pushed the tailgate up because I'd left it open. It jammed on a chain, dropped and the edge caught me on the side of my head. I wrapped my head in a rag because it was bleeding like hell, got the gate up and got the Ford back on the ramps. By then,the blood had slowed and I drove home. But later that evening, Igot a BADASSED case of the whirlies while helping my buddy put the body on his '34 Chev circle tracker. I didn't say much, but somehow drove the 40 miles home. Went to the doc's the next day and found out that besides the head contusion, I had a bad concussion. For the next week or so afterward,I don't remember much. BTW, I'm a big baby. I HATE to get hurt. But I consider such things the downside of playing with cars. OH well.... Jan
I can remember the time I was using an old single speed high torque 1/2 inch drill with a 7/16 bit laying under my car trying to drill a hole in the cross menber when the bit caught and the drills pipe handle hit me in the temple and I was out cold. I can remember the time one of two chains holding a small block slipped off the hook and the engine swung down hitting my foot. I can remember the time...
I'm left handed to so I guess accounts for some of my clummsiness. I'm not polish but my dad was born in Arkansas and mom was born in South Georgia. That probably has something to do with it to. I got one more, not working on a car but an electric motor. Me and a coworker were taking the end bell of a motor off. It was stubborn so the other guy gets an old chisle. The end was mushroomed and cracked from years of use. When he hit it the first time a piece came off and hit me above the eye. It sounded like I had been shot and felt like it to. I was not wearing safety glasses and after 4 years it still feels like there is a lump under the skin where it hit me.
A few years ago my buddy and I needed to put a front coil spring back in a car. We were to cheap and lazy to go rent a good spring compressor so we decided to make one with a piece of threaded rod and some bent up flat iron. Well we just about had it to were we wanted it when the whole thing let go hitting my buddy right between the eyes and knocking him about 6 feet to the floor. I thought he was dead till he started swearing. Took him in the house to get the blood off to see how bad it was. Actually wasn't bad and could have used a stitch or two but he hates doctors. Went back out to the garage and found the spring and threaded rod but all we could find of the rest was a bunch holes up in the 16 foot ceiling. We got a real compressor and finished the job.
Man!..I stayed up till 1:30 last night reading this stuff..my vote goes to the needle nose pliers and the transmission on the shin a close second..I can tell because thinkin about them makes my balls hurt...I did hear a loud bang next door to me one time and ran over to see two guys layin on the floor, one with a broken arm and one with a broken leg. They had been trying to monkey apart a big split rim wheel off a diesel truck....Rick...rixrex
I did this to my little finger back in july(posted pics back then),spinning engine fans bite especially the nice shiny aftermarket ones. Just one of the many injuries inflicted while messing around with cars
My only comment to this, Does a bear shit in the woods?? Typically it's the time when you're actually trying to not injure your self that you manage to do so. Well, atleast for me it is.
THIS THREAD IS BAD LUCK!!!!!!!!!! story time..... So this morning was like any other. Wake up, take shower, get dressed and read the HAMB before work. Everything was going good, read Ryans new J.J. post and thought about puteing together a similar box o goods just in case. THEN... I came across this thread. Im getting scared as hell and nervous about going to work (school bus mechanic). So of course I continue to read then the time comes for me to head out. ......The day is going by good and smooth. kind of a slow day with no break downs so I bust out a couple of services since I had the time. So Im adjusting brakes when I decide this bus is to low and go to raise it up a little. While I was going to walk out from under the bus I turn and walk right into something!... BAM!!! I get stabed in my right eye by the body of the bus, (happend to catch one of the only sharp edges on the whole damn body!) I hit so hard that I landed on my back and screaming that "I got my eye". So after washing my eye out for a half hour the boss sends me to the hospital. Doc puts in the special dye and looks in with the microscope. "yep, you got your eye all right" he says... Turns out I CUT my eye ball in six different places and scratched the hell out of my cornia and lower parts of my eye ball. TALK ABOUT PAIN and a teary eye! I am now typeing this with a patch on my eye and a shit load of numbing drops! To top it off I have two days off work and I cant drive till the doc releases me.....lol WERE YOUR SAFETY GLASES!!!
chick dont actualy dig scars, i know this from first hand experiance. Lots of eww and gross, the just dig guys with scars.
I was grinding the inside of the spare tire hole in the trunk of my 56 and the damn grinder got away from me, came right up the side and jumped on my face, damn near ripped my ear off, other than that just a scraped cheak and one less side burn
been pretty fortunate over the years. lots of cuts on the hands and hit my head on lots of stuff... but nothing major. some dangerous "almosts" though-- hands in fans, caddy falling off jacks next to me, etc. -scott noteboom
Wow, I feel lucky. I just put the needle nose right into the middle of my forehead finishing up a set of Civic brakes (wouldn't you know that every fucker in the shop had to be watching). Bled all over but didn't really hurt me at all. Just kinda' embarassing. Working flat-rate, I had a number of little annoying injuries, but the only halfway interesting thing happened just looking at something in my Dad's garage, and ended up with my buck teeth getting fixed. I was going to move a '32 Stude shortblock, and was lifting one end just to get a feel for the weight. Dad saw me lifting, and came over to help, but I didn't notice. What I did notice was that all of a sudden, the engine got a whole lot lighter - and jumped up and knocked a chip out of my left top incisor. On the bright side, my dentist just ground down both of those front teeth, so now they match the rest so now I don't have to worry about hearing 'rabbit teeth' anymore. -bill
Dang man, I'm sorry. This thread must be bad luck. Hope you have a short recovery, but you're right, wear your safety glasses.
i just froze my knuckles off and bled them to death after accidentally scraping them on a sharp piece of extruding chrome peeling off my rear bumper of the Olds tryin to get ice and gunk off it this mornin. it was a fuckin blast.
The Jalopy Journal
