What's the stupidest thing you're ever done in your shop?

Damn, I'm glad someone bumped this to the top again. The wife and I had a couple more LOL's!

 

I'm only 18 and ive done a few of the things on this list, but havent gotten maimed yet thank God. I think the one i laugh about the most was when i was working on my 68 torino fastback in the shop, taking the fuel line out to do some floor pan work. I was too lazy tp jack the car up, so i just sucked in my gut and crawled under it. well i ended up crawling all the way under, then pulled the steel fuel line down where it proceded to get stuck in my exit path. the other side was block by stuff under the car. So i realized how stupid i was, and thought about it for a few minutes. Luckily the motor/trans were not in the car, so i crawled out through the engine compartment feet first. i had to kick the hood latch with my foot to open it the hood. but it was definitely not fun being 6'0 and 180 lbs and trying to do that task, but looking back at it, its fricken hilarious that i made it out by myself.

 

And i thought i was the only one to ever do this........got my torino running without brakes and ran it into the front of my 37 ford truck, ruined the front of my car (had a complete parts car) and hurt the PERFECT original grill on my 37'. grill is almost fixed, have to repair radiator too

 

I had a lot of laughs reading these so I thought I better add at least one..... about 8 years ago I was working at a hot rod shop, starting at the bottom of the feeding chain meant I was the sandblaster when it had to be done. One hot summer day trying to be in a hurry so I could get back to some metal work, I had to refill the tank with sand (about 100lbs tank if i remember right) and I forgot to release the psi in the tank. The cap came off so fast my arm almost went with it and made the loudest bang. Everyone ran out of the shop thinking I had got blown up. Ears were ringing for about a week. Im lucky it didnt hit me. I lite a few trash cans on fire when i was there too, the cans werent junk so they became the trash cans by my tool box with my name sprayed on them... I had to explain that one to a few customers, always made me feel kinda stupid.

 

I got distracted and drilled a hole into my left hand with my bench press. Of course it was my wife's fault. she was bored after putting the kids to sleep and came walking into my shop about 1 in the morning with nothing on but my welding helmut. Sneaky little redhead!!!



Lundy

 

I was using needle nose pliers to pull a drum brake spring off a backing plate while it was in a vise. I was pulling towards me, when the spring snapped and I jammed a 1/4" of the pliers tip in my face, about a half inch below my eye.....It was a real bleeder

 

I did the same thing but didn't stab myself instead the brake spring fish hooked my thumb to my palm. Getting it all pulled apart was the painfully part. Bought a good set of brake pliers after that.

 

Screwed my best friends younger sister. Not good. Well it was good ,not a good idea tho.

 

Yeah...almost the same thing. Was pulling at something with some NN pliers and it broke loose. I got so damned lucky. I had my mouth open because I was breathing hard and the tip of the pliers went into my mouth and I stopped it short of doing damage to myself. Lesson learned.

 

This one time about 10 or 11 years ago, I let my oldest son and some of his buddys tear apart a bicycle and paint it in my nice shop - what a fucken mess!!! (they were 11/12yrs old)

 

Did the exact same thing, except the hit was directly on my eye and i was pulling the pin on the rear axle to take the drum off. luckily my fist hit my eye and the pin and pliers hit right below a bit, didnt bleed much, but i couldnt open my eye for a while. And least i know id be good in a fight now with that kind of punch haha.

 

Thats good. I had a employee leave a new 55 gallon drum of 140 weight open and leaking for the wekend. 55 gallons of goo.

Fritz

 

I had a plastic bottle of wax with a little flip up spout. They tend to get clogged so I squeezed harder to pop out the plug, but the bottle exploded instead sending wax all over everything. From then on, I jam a wire down the hole first.

 

I'm pretty sure it involved beer, yellow jackets, some kind of highly flammable aerosol spray and a BIC lighter. It's a miracle there wasn't a bigger fire...

 

Here's an unforgettable moment that seems pretty uncommon.

Around 35 years ago I was replacing the windshield wiper links in a '67 split-window Kombi.
This involved sitting in the centre of the cab with one hand up under the dash to locate the links on the rotating arm of the motor. The other hand was toggleing the switch off & on to bring the arm to a position where both links and the arm aligned and there was clearance to fit them all together.

Unfortunately, the motor passed the point of "no return" and while trying to return itself back to the origin position it grabbed a finger behind the big knuckle and pinned it between the arm and something hard & sharp.
I WAS STUCK.

Several minutes of calls for help, in increasing volume and degrees of panic brought my mother out to the workshop.

"Turn off the ignition" "Why?" "Just do it"

Here's a lesson: Wipers need the ignition on "accessory" to start ..But not to Stop, they still want to "index" back to the origin...

The motor was still crushing and cutting further into my finger.

I had to explain to my mum, by remote control, head on the dash, how to open the engine compartment, locate the battery in the back corner, find and select a suitable spanner and disconnect the battery.

With no power, the pressure eased slightly, and I dragged out my battered finger. I went and had a little lie down.

 

Forgot to stop and get beer...wait...thats the stupidest thing I do anywhere...oh well never mind.

_____________________________
LIFE'S A GAMBLE......LET EM' ROLL

 

This just happened. Stripping an o/t truck in preparation for a semi on topic project. Ram 1500 4x4 cab and bed pulled off, still runs and drives. Decided I'd roast the old bald tires off of it in the garage before I called it quits for the night. Ended up roasting them right over the air hose. Oh well, I'll splice it back together in the morning. Next morning I go to pull the truck out of the shop to make some room. I just get out into the street and hear what sounds like my entire garage coming apart! Seems the air hose melted and fused to the tire. Drug an 80 gallon compressor tank THROUGH my press and drill press and out into the street! Nothing broken beyond a simple repair but the guys digging up the street sure as hell got a kick out of the whole thing!

 

It would have to be a toss up between knocking up the wife or letting her have a LITTLE shelf space out there.

 

laying under car that i had just swapped a used engine in, no fuel line on,turning engine over to tighten converter bolts & splashing gas in ear

 

I can beat all of you! broke my new vice about 25yrs ago n needed to finnish my alum dash. put the sucker on my leg n went at it! Of coarse it went through real easy! To easy! Also went through my right nut! Houston we got a problem! No pain so put the sucker in reverse! Mucho bigo frickin paino!!!!! Woke up in the hospital with 24 stitches ! Didnt ride the ol harley or ol lady for a couple months! Aint life a bitch! Try to top that short bus moment!!!

 

Just finished my 41 burb. Had it in the shop and was leaning in the passenger side. Thought it was out of gear. Pushed the starter on the floor with my hand to turn over the motor.
Was in gear AND started. Moved the wall out a foot. My wife was planting flowers on the outside of the wall too. Boy did she get a shock.

A;so used to build Dune buggies out of VW's. Came into my dad's shop a little hot one day and tried to put another door through the back.

I guess I hate walls!
j

 

Sounds familiar snidely Whiplash . Iwas underneath my truck changing an inline fuel filter.Thinking it would be a quick fix I thought I could just remove the filter from the lines and slap the new one back in . Somehow the fuel trickeled into my ear filling it up.I quickly shook my head to get most it out while still assembling everything together. It took about 30 seconds for the stinging in my ear to turn into a full on "I cant handle it " pain. I had to run to the garden hose and drown my ear with water for what seemed like an hour. Man was that a lesson learned.

 

I did not do this but it was funny. A friend painted his car...first paint job. Forgot to put in the hardener. Enamel paint stayed tacky forever. The next day his cat jumped on the car and took a nap, got up and left..a special spot covered with long fur and cat tracks. He then freaked and threw a blanket over the car...now the blanket was stuck...time passed and he corrected the concerns, paint it again ..rememberd the hardener and the next day the garage door fell on the car.

 

Now that was funny fossilfish !

 

Not in my shop but at my girlfriends house. her Subaru needed a head gasket and her brother was gonna do it and he asked if i wanted to help him out (i was gonna get paid by her parents too) so i said sure. hes pretty knowledgable on most things mechanical as he is a CAT mechanic. Thing is her brother makes weed oil which is basically a highly concentrated dose of the devils lettuce and he always smokes it when he works on cars. i have never worked with someone who would get so pissed off so quickly if anything didn't go smooth (i later found out thats very typical when one is high). This led to alot of mistakes being made too meaning more time spent. so as we finally get the gasket replaced he reads to me the torque specs for the head as 232 ftlbs. never occurs to me that its wrong (it was actually inch pounds)so im turning that wrench for ever untill hear crack-crack- CRACK. took the threads right out of the alluminum block. a few days turns into a month with all the trips to the machine shop and the dealer for new parts and fitting the motor back in. the stupidest thing i have ever done is working with a stoner.

but i made a cool 800 bucks off of that which got me my air compressor

never again though.

 

You guys are killin me! The one that comes to mind for me wasnt even me that did it, but.....

We had a shop meeting and we were all standing in the middle of the shop gettin an ass chewing from the boss, the porter was sitting on one of the tables swinging his legs without a care and messing with the handle of a 3 tons floor jack that was pushed up under the table. About 20 minutes into the meeting awhat sounded like a giant bomb went off and we all looked over and saw wrenches, sockets and various other tools sliding across the floor and flying through the air. The floor jack was under that table and came out the other side, directly under one of the guys giant tool boxes, and when he was fiddling with the jack it was slowly tipping over the tool box. The only thing that kept it from falling all the way over was all the drawers coming open at the same time dumping everything everywhere. We (except the guy with the box and the porter) laughed for an hour and found tools in nooks and crannies for a long time.....

This one did involve me, I was parking a 2500 Suburban and was backing into a spot while one of the RV techs was trying to take a rig to his bay, I pretended to be messing with something and not see him so as to block his way, just being a jerk, and when finally the not funny joke was old enough, I punched it to move out of his way and hit a parked car behind me going about 10 mph. I shit myself because both vehicles were brand new. I get out and reluctantly look at the two vehicles and as it turns out, the 2" receiver on the suburban hit perfectly over hole in the front license plate bracket with about a 6" deep well in it that had a rivet in the bottom of it. The well collapsed like an accordion and absorbed the entire impact. I ran into parts and bought a new l/p bracket for "a friends" car and swapped it out, told the rv guy to keep his mouth shut, and that was that.....

 

One that comes to mind is I was tweaking an exhaust down pipe and had it clamped in a vice. I was heating it with an Oxy-Acetylene torch in order to bend it a little.
After making my adjustment, I set the torch down and proceeded to remove it from the vice by grabbing hold of the pipe with my bare hand!
Mother F*****!!!!

I hate when that happens.

 

cut my fucking hand off, now i type with my nose

 

how do you wipe your a$$?

 

That's only stupid of she offers you coffee and you drink it.