So who else has blown anything up in their garage

when i was in high school, i was doing some fiberglass work in the garage had mixed up the resin, had quite a bit left over in a quart paint can so i just hammered the lid back on it. Bout 15 minutes later one hell of an explosion..........

 

All I can say is, no matter how many times you rinse out a thinner can that used to have gas in it...always purge it with argon or nitrogen before lighting the torch. Bright lights!!

 

When I was 16 I was told to fill the tire of my father's early 80's ford truck (you know the ones with the "widow maker" two piece wheels). Yeah he didn't bother putting the chains on it because "it would take too long". I get the tire almost full when I hear a loud bang. I woke up 5 minutes later in a heap against the wall with four broken ribs and my shoulder blown out of the socket. The doc said if i leaned forward another three inches I wouldn't have woken up.... The (Your choice word here), (and here) head blamed me for making him buy a new wheel. Now 5 years later I have 80% range of motion in my arm and perminent nerve damage in my hand. Sorry, no flame but a nasty explosion none the less.

 

Dropped a full F sized cylinder of oxygen off the back of a truck once. Just right for it to take the reg off on the loading dock, that sucker took off at a million miles an hour straight through a chain link fence and into the concrete gutter where it exploded.
I grabbed another cylinder and left before anyone worked out what happened.

 

ive caught a couple interiors on fire with the mig welder........


skull

 

29 years ago my friend's dad is helping him jump his 71 Challenger. Gets it started, and his dad (nice guy, but a fumbler) takes the jumper cable clamps off the truck and starts carrying them toward the Challenger- which still had the clamps on the batter. The two emply clamps touch- BOOM goes the Challenger's battery. Nothing like acid all over engine, hood, fenders...

I found out after college that another charging f-up started the battery on fire and ended my friend's relationship with the Challenger permanently.

 

Havent blow'd anything up but a couple fires. Grinding and there was some steel wool on the bench, steel wool burns good once a spark hits it! More recently, lighting a smoke w/ a laquer thinner soaked rag in hand, caught the rag on fire, stomped it out with foot , caught pants on fire, never got necked so quick in my driveway before.

 

The reason I was repainting the garage was that I'd previously set it on fire. I'd left a space heater on which was a little too close to a cardboard box containing my entire collection of rock & roll t-shirts. After leaving it on I went to the car wash thinking I'd be right back. I got the ignition wet, flooded it and ran the battery down trying to start it. By the time I got back the FD had already done their job and left. What a mess! I walked in and said "Honey, I'm home".....If looks could kill...........

 

Well, had a trusty Sears air compressor that had the shut off switch stick The bench it was under took much of the blow! I was on other side of the shop when it let go ...... scared the shit out of me!

Shoebox

 

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Or real ones??????
mart
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Okay not as dramatic as most of the stories here but...

When I was about 14/15 my dad worked at Selfridge ANGB in MI. during the summer my sister and I would ride in to work with my dad, wait for the pool to open and then ride our bikes to the pool until it was time for my dad to get off work. I was always building new bikes back then but had no money so I was stuck using whatever I could pul from the trash. On one particular occasion I had just finished a new one but by the time it was time to head to the pool the front tire was flat. My dad had me pull it into the hangar and used the air hose in there to fill it up. Everything was great. Hop on my bike and pedal out of the hangar. Got about 20 feet through the parking lot and the damn dry rotted tube explodes- and it was freakin LOUD. That was embarassing enough but then every coworker my dad had came running out of the hangar and neighboring buildings to see what happened.

So dad actually gives me a few bucks to go to the Base exchange and buy new tubes. So I walk my bike all the way over and buy the tubes.. and push my bike to the nearest gas station and change the front tire in the parking lot... Then got the bright idea, only the front one was bad, why dont I return the other tube and buy a can of pop. so I finish the front wheel, fill it with air and all is good...... But while I am here the rear wheel feels a little squishy, might as well top of the air in that one too.

You guessed it, this time the tube blew while i was filling it. Same damn loud bang and guys come running from everywhere to figure out what the loud bang a tthe rear fo the gas station was. picked myself up off my back, apologized to everyone for scaring them and then proceeded to change the rear tube..

 

When I was a kid we used to pack the small CO2 cartridges with matchheads, then fire them out a pipe. I never knew where they landed. When we ran out of CO2 cartridges, we used 30-30 rifle shells with the end crimped. One of them was a dud, so my friend decided to find out why by clamping it in a vice and hacksawing it open. It blew up and his dad came running out to see what happened. The shell was opened flat, but miraculously nobody was hurt.

 

Not quite and explosion, more of a 'slow burn'

Worked at a used car lot in the 70's. We had a Chrysler Valiant sedan in stock with a typical 60's 318 sticking valve problem, but smartass mechanic knows just how to fix it, right?
We start the engine and hold it at mid range revs, say 2500rpm. He pops the air cleaner and starts pouring some sort of 'wonder oil' down the carby. The faster he pours the more we have to open the throttle to keep the revs up, but after almost the entire quart can of oil goes into the carby, the valve stops clattering and the engine is as quiet as an almost worn out 318 can be... Success!
Then we get our heads out from under the hood and look around. The oil had freed up the valve alright, but it produced HEAPS of white, choking smoke, and the car was in a huge underground showroom full of cars!
We had trouble even finding our way to the door, and it took a full day for the smoke to clear out of the showroom.

Cheers, Glen.

 

Can't count how many times it's happened...lucky I'm still in one piece.

3 happened on a fellow HAMBer's '49 caddy. Won't name names but after I helped him get the 500 engine mounts fabbed up and all in there we were starting the engine. He'd hooked all up himself and we were using a 5 gal gas can for fuel. Trouble was, he wasn't familiar with the newer pumps that have return lines and that was just open (as I found out later.) He's working the key and I'm leaning over the engine working distributor. trying to cough over but nothing for a few times. I keep hearing liquid splashing on the ground but think nothing of it...that is until I get the timing right and the engine fires up. Did I mention the open shorty headers pointing straight at the large puddle of gas from the open return line? WHOOOSH!! Luckily I had leaned back a bit but I still was hairless on my right arm for awhile. He jumps out of the car while I am running towards the hose and grabs the gas can (that was sitting 2ft from the inferno) and hucks it across the yard leaving a big trail of fire to a large circle of fire around where the can landed. By now I have the hose under the car and his roommate has an extinguisher putting out the gas can and lawn. Then came the most rhetorical quesiton I have ever heard...you guys wanna beer? The other two times with that car weren't as good.

Also recently had a 283 with 4 97's go boom from the fumes in the crank case when I was starting it up for the first time after putting it in my friend's '27 dodge sedan. Luckily I had the valve covers off since I was going to adjust the valves once I got it started so no damage. Sure scared the hell out of the owner of the car and my other friend that were there. I just started laughing while they freaked out.

Had a torch blow a few times but the funniest was this massive scarfing tip that we had at the shop I used to work at. Under car on lift heating broken exhaust studs to get the buggers out. All of a sudden there's a little pop, then BOOM and the whole torch head flares up. I drop the thing and rund out from under the car, hitting my head on one of the lift arms and cut the gas at the tanks. Tell boss when he gets back and his reply? "yeah, that one likes to do that once in awhile..."

Last for now happened at the shop I worked at before the torch story. Had the pressure regulator malfuntion on the compressor and there was 200+ psi going through the lines. Leaning over a car with my air ratchet and the hose lets loose of the inlet fitting and comes back at me going mach ten with the hose clamp still on there and smacks me in the front of the shoulder. Felt like I'd been shot, dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes while the hose flailed around beating me some more while I waited for the pain to subside so I could go pull it out of the wall fitting. Other tech comes back from test drive to find me in a heap on the floor holding my shoulder and firing out every profanity I could think of. You could see the perfect imprint of that hose clamp on my shoulder and it turned some nasty colors the next couple weeks.

 

Let's ask DaTinman how to blow sparks outta his bunghole- or maybe it ain't funny yet...

 

I was working on a 48 volt forklift. It needed a little weld on the headache rack, i was sitting on the seat which is the 3550 lb battery lid. I strike a arc, holy @#$% , the lid is hinged, tried to force me up thru the top like a cheese grater.Blew a bunch of caps off and i didn't want to play anymore that day.

 

i've had a few, me and mates.
One, was oxy cutting some steel out of a pile of bent and twisted garbage at the local rubbish tip. i'd made sure there was no fuel or oil in the pile, i started cutting the bolts and steel and loading it into the back of the ute tray, i'd been going for an hour or so slid one of the lenghts into the tray and heard a loud bank and a flash folowed by half the lengths of steel flying off the back of the ute- i'd shoved one of the lenghts with a red hot end into a full can of areostart that was on the tray. lucky it was a heavy duty tray.
One of the workers needed a piece of pipe for a job. so he went out the back and with the oxy set, soon after there was a huge bang. we ran out to see what happened - most of the surounding grass was alight with a dopey loooking pommy holding a torch. turned out he was cutting a hole in a fertilizer auger out the back when it went bang! i didn't know pommy guys could actually swear till that day.

tyler

 

Can't believe I forgot this one. It's bad, no shit.

Dude that owned a company I used to work for was notorious for being a real cheap bastard. So much so that he wouldn't buy trash cans, he'd go over to the local oil / gas distributor and scrounge empty drums.

One time he got some gasoline drums, don't know if it was on purpose or by accident. The welding shop guy told him not to fuck with 'em because the drum would / could explode if they tried to cut the tops off with a torch.

Well, Mr company owner guy was a college-educated sliderule supergenius and wasn't buying the welder's story. The drums are empty, so there's no danger, right? You can see where this is going. So he proceeds to roll up to the shop early one saturday morning, fires up the torch and gets to cutting. Gets the first one open, then goes to the second one. He burns a hole in the drum...and.......it explodes. Boom. Welder later said the drum was peeled back like a steel banana.

Blew the rollup door out of the frame, fucked up the roof somehow, knocked a buch of steel and aluminum stock off the racks, and set off the fire sprinkler system, which in turn caused water damage to most of the equipment inside the welding shop including the huge TIG machine we had.

Our building was in a large industrial complex, and at 7am Saturday morning nobody was around to hear the explosion. Luckily for Mr. Company Owner guy, one of his employees stopped by, saw the shop door wadded up in the back lot and decided to investigate. He found our man hanging from the rafters inside the shop - the building had a 20'+ ceiling, easily.

He was alive, but not by much, and it took the fire department quite a while to figure out how to get him down without finishing him off. 2nd and 3rd degree burns, broken bones, internal injuries, and the long-term effects of his injuries will probably take a good 10 - 15 years off this dude's life.

All because smart guy had this college boy superiority complex and wasn't having what the welder told him.

 

Same incidence with me few nights ago. I was working on engine suddenly there was a short circuit and fire all around me. It was narrow escape but my car is no more now

 

Had a different kind of blown up last spring.
Had welded up a set of pipes for my bike and was cleaning up some welds with a large air grinder. had eye protection on and the grinder wheel exploded and hit me in the about 3 inches left of my "you know what" on that nice soft fleshy part of the inner leg.
after i picked myself up off the floor i pulled a part of the wheel and my sweat pants out of my leg. stuckit out for about an hour and finally had to the hospital and they tried to stich it but it was so mashed they finally gave up. I could have been a lot worse 3 inches to the right and i could have been a unick

 

had the relief valve on a homemade air compressor stick and blew up a beer keg holding tank in the back of my garage. Fullerton cops cruising the neighborhood for hours could not figure out where the terrorist were

 

When I was about 10 we used to pack match heads in old CO2 catridges then light the ends. They made great rockets. Doing the same thing for 30-30 shells makes a short range rocket. Once we decided to cut open a dud using a hack saw in a vise. It blew up but amazingly did not hurt us. My friend's dad came running out and put a stop to our antics.

 

I think we were in the same garage......... do I know you

 

Man, I was at shop working on a car once and I was using one of those rolling oil drain pans that has a wing nut on the side so you can adjust it up or down, well I just finished a oil change and the nut came off the side, I say fuck it, I'll break out the welder and tack it back on right. I start tacking this nut back on and some spark went down in the bottom and I'll be damned, that thing went off like a shot gun out of the tube and jumped about 10 inches off the ground as I was welding. Scared the shit out of me, looking back now, I was 19, it was a dumb fuck thing to do. Lol

 

While working on my first T Bucket I was welding on the top spring cup for the coil springs. Raised my helmet and some fluid that had leaked out of the tranny had caught on fire and had caught the fiberglass body on fire also. Got it smothered out pretty quickly. I guess it was my first flame paint job too.

 

Left the ignition switch on with one of those Accell super coils with no resistor. Big boom, oil and plastic all over the place

 

I had an ex girlfriend that... Oh nevermind

 

got a short block sbc out of the back of a auto parts store onetime, supposably rebuilt, looked ok. assembled my spiffy new engine with my fresh dart heads and a nice lopy cam. fired it up and it exploded, destroyed new race oil pan bent valves in my new heads, wasted cylinders... must have fell off the truck upon delivery, last time i took anything out of the back of a supply store for next to free.

 

I think I knew her too ......

 

I blew up a case of home brew beer ,went off like a friggin bomb....