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

^^HAA!!

Remembered another one from my Make-Ready days in the Service Dept. I was getting a new car ready for the front line and it had rail dust pretty bad. Basically brake dust from the train that embeds itself in the paint of new cars. Anyway, we have a acid based fallout remover which you spray on the car and let it soak for a bit, then wash it like normal and it gets most of it off. So I pull the car in and go to spray it down and the bottle is empty. We had a shelf about 5ft off the ground that had the 5 gallon bulk of the acid, its a square pail that you lay on its side and open a spout to fill spray bottles with. It was also empty, so I got a new 5 gallon pail and proceeded to cut the hole out for the spout, screwed it in, then took off the vent cap and drilled the hole out to vent it.

Well, I didnt put the cap back on, and a 5 gallon pail of this stuff is about 50lbs. Instead of lifting it up there and sitting it down, I decided I was going to swing it back and forth one handed until it reached the height, and then slap it onto the shelf. When I did, a stream of acid came shooting out of the vent hole right into my eyes.....Fortunately my ninja skills kicked in and I closed them before the acid got me, but now I am standing in the wash bay with my eyes closed with a face full of acid and no water anywhere, except, you guessed it, the pressure washer.

So I wall walk as fast as I can and feel around for the hose, then the switch and then wish my arms were about 3 ft longer because holding the hose backward the wand was only about 6 inches away. I couldn't tell which hurt worse, the acid or 2500 psi, but I got enough off where I could peek and took off running to the eye wash station squinty eyed. I had a red face for a week, but had to avoid the boss so I didn't get in trouble for being an idiot.

 

I installed a Beer fridge in the garage. I have a keg so some days are real productive.
Some days are "Dog beer" days.
BTW, Jig saws screw up aluminum diamond plate faaast after two dog beers.
"Friggin thing worked fine just a little while ago".

 

Oooh just remembered a good one. You know how every garage door since the 90's has the photo-eyes so nothing gets smashed in them (kids, dogs, etc)? And you know how if you don't have the opener or a keypad outside you can hit the button, run for the door and jump over the photo-eyes?

Yeah, well leaving my shop one day in that way didn't go so well. I ran for it, jumped but mis-calculated the door position...woke up on the floor a minute later with a not on the FRONT and BACK of my aching head.

 

Put an 8" filet knife through my left wrist using it as a scraper in a tight spot. Apparently it weaved through tendons, veins, and arteries. Didn't hurt whatsoever, hardly any blood. When washing up I noticed a small exit wound and realized it went completely through I got real woozy and bounced off the cement making snorting sounds I'm told. That hurt.

 

Just remembered two more. I was doing a body lift on my 95 Nissan 2wd pickup and took out all the body bolts. Was using the shop lift to lift up the body when I noticed it was starting to lean a little, yep. Forgot the corner rear bolt and the lift arm went smashing up through the rocker. Dammit, brand new truck too.

This was just last month. Customers Duramax broke down and was towed in by a wrecker overnight. I jump in it and start it up to pull it around to the shop and when I put it into gear all hell broke loose. I heard clanging and banging and smashing and crashing for a few seconds and when I tried to put it back into park is grinded like a fat bastard. Normally they bring the trucks in on a flat bed but the customer had a 40ft 5th wheel attached at the time of pick-up, so the wrecker driver had disconnected the drive shaft and wired it up under the bed. The drive shaft beat the hell out of everything underneath and spit the u joint caps off somewhere. I calmly walked up front and got the tech, and we went back out and on the way found the caps with all the bearings still inside. When I walked up to the truck I noticed a piece of paper under the wiper that said "DRIVE SHAFT UNHOOKED, PARTS ON FLOORBOARD!!!" All the bolts and clamps for the u joint were on the black floor mats so I didn't see them. Luckily it all went back together and didn't do any real damage....

 

I used to have a little Bronco2 with a BIG suspension lift on it. Ate U joints for lunch.
One day I'm ready to replace them, once again. Being my daily driver as well the usual goings was to pull the rear drive shaft and then drive in front wheel drive until the shop got new parts pressed in.
I had to get to work, so quickly I crawled under and broke the driveshaft loose and pulled it out. I forgot to enage the transfer case or the parking brake.
Bronco started rolling down the driveway after getting the last bolt out. I dart out from under it in time for the door to whack me in the head. and then I smartly put my foot under the tire in an effort to stop it.......

Big lump on the head, broken bones in foot. Last time i pulled that move!

 

I was getting my pontoon boat ready to go to the river ... Hooked the hose pipe to the motor ran it some ... Took off to the river ... Got to the river and there was my hose pipe still hooked to the boat motor along with the spickett and about 5 feet of pvc pipe it pulled up outa the dirt ...

 

Just about fell out of my chair laughing at that one!

 

This isn't shop related, but kinda goes with the theme here so I'll tell it as quickly as possible.

'Bout ten years or so ago, back in the suit and tie days, I walked out front and hopped into the Plymouth to head off to what ever part of my business needed my attention that particular day. Fired it off, snicked the 5 gear into reverse and started backing out of my driveway. I got halfway out and noticed my Nieghbor gal standing at the end of her driveway obviously disraught, crying, not happy at all... So I shut it down and stopped. I walked over to her and tried to calm her down and through her tears she continued babbling and pointed over to her pergola where we all park our cars beside the houses. Issuing forth from the ground was a gyser rivaling that of old faithful up in Yellowstone!
Seems one of the neighborhood kids had decided it would be funny to tie her garden hose to the tie down hooks on the front crossmember of her car! The net result was her water main had been pulled out of the ground when she hit the end of her garden hose... So I ran to the alley, shut her water off, went a grabbed a friends card who was a plumber, and just generally calmed her down.

With all of this done, I walked back, hopped in the Plymouth, fired it, snicked the 5 gear into reverse, let the twin disc clutch out, looked over my shoulder... 'Till I hit the street... My garden hose was just a bit longer than hers!!!

Funny, as I dug the remains of MY water main up that day, I laughed my ass off 'cause I'm sure I knew which little bastard did it. Truth be told, in another time in life I would have been sitting in the bushes somewhere right beside him laughing my ass off too!

 

I have a nice 4 foot jump shear, I had crap piled all over it but was just cutting a small piece of metal so I shoved everything to the left side and lined up my piece of sheet metal and jumped on shear BAM nice big spark and the lights went out, Lesson do not drape extinsion cord anywhere near shear did not get hurt but I pee my self a little and I need new extension cord. Andy

 

Welding in flip flops. Got the scar between my 3rd and 4th toes on the left foot to prove it.

 

Laying on my back inside a Figure Eight car plugging holes in the firewall with pop rivets and aluminum. The electrics were bolted to the transmission tunnel next to the drivers seat. I moved to get a better angle and managed to get both the starter and ignition switches to the on position and wouldn't you know it, she fired off and backed halfway through the rollup door before it died. Breaking glass, rending metal. The open headers next to my ear scared me bad enough to open my forehead on the bottom of the dash. The window cost me 74 bucks and we straightend the door enough to get it to stay in.

 

I was working on my current project on my car trailer,standing on a front wheel.Lost my balance and fell to the ground flat on my back,realised I wasn`t hurt so I got up and tried to resume the task at hand from the other side.Now comes the dangerous part,I lost my footing and on my way to the ground for a second time I said to myself I`m not getting up from this one as I was falling head first.When I landed I heard a lot of crunching in my neck and thought I would be paralised.Fortunatly all my limbs worked and all I had was a stiff neck for a few days.Right then I decided to get rid of all but one of my projects and my avatar is the one I chose to finish.Finishing up the bodywork and after my son paints it I`m gonna cruise this summer.

 

Not as bad as some of these stories, but I put a 235 6 cyl Chevy on a junk harbor freight
engine stand once.
It was fine until I tried to move it....

 

My friends laughed at me when I wore flip-flops and welding gloves on my feet.

 

Thank God you did not try to Use water to put it out!!!!!

 

While working for a dealership in Dallas, I had two stalls. One was just a regular flat stall without a lift and the one next to it had an in ground hydraulic lift. If I remember correctly, there was only one service guy in the DFW area that was "qualified" to work on these lifts. I use the term qualified loosely. Said lift technician replaced the packing and few other parts on my lift on Sunday while the shop was closed. Monday morning I pull a high dollar vehicle in to do some warranty work that is going to require the use of my recently repaired lift. I ran the car up and started my work around 09:00 or so. I had noticed but not thought about the fact that I was having to duck down to get out from under the car. At this point, I'm tired of walking to my tool-cart, so I roll it under the car with me.

I decided to take an early lunch and run down the street to the taco stand. I get a call about 20 minutes into my lunch from the service manager asking that I come back "right the fuck now". I couldn't have imagined what would happened next.

The locking mechanism on the lift had engaged but not performed it's task, mainly due to the fact that it wasn't assembled properly the day before. When the new packing let go, hydraulic fluid shot out of the cylinder jack as fast as it could escape, causing the car to "drop" while 6 feet in the air onto my tool cart (which was a stout piece of equipment). This, then shot the car backwards off the lift onto another car in the shop that had been recently purchased new and was receiving the daunting task reprogramming the ECM....and now a ton of body work.

Now, for the title of this thread, "what's the stupidest thing you've ever done in your shop?". None of this had been my fault. However, I had left the dealership scan-tool on my tool cart before I went to lunch. This is $30000.00 computer that can occasionally help with a vehicle repair. It was no longer able to perform that task and was lodged in the under carriage of the vehicle.

So, the moral of this story is to put everything up before you go to lunch, saves some heartache.

 

Also, Acetylene Bombs are dangerous and fun. Somebody mentioned it earlier in the thread and I thought I would share my experience with acetylene and static electricity.

When I was in my early twenties a friend and I had too much to drink and decided to make a few and set them off outside the shop. A few industrial strength 55 gallon trash bags full of acetylene should be some quality entertainment, right? How about 5 of them? I have an idea, let's be efficient about this and fill them all up and set them off at intervals outside the shop so it sounds cooler.

We filled them up right beside the shop door and had them stored away before we took the outside. Now, the shop we're doing this in is 22000 square feet and under ground. You can drive an 18 wheeler down into the shop and turn it around to drive it back out. Massive building was built by my friends grandfather from a collapsed parking garage and used as a giant 24 hour machine shop years ago. So, needless to say this thing is all concrete and you can hear a mouse fart.

Static electricity took over on the 5th balloon and sent us through the door onto the driveway. We couldn't hear a thing and nor could we see. I hit a compressor skid hard enough to move it about a foot or so. My friend took out a row of hedges outside the shop. The pressure that was created from the explosion blew the windows out of 4 restaurants down the road. I couldn't hear a thing for a week, which was kind of nice. No phone, no boss, no TV, and no radio.

 

Some 10 years ago i was replacing the brakeshoes on my 67 Galaxie.

When mounting the new spring between the shoes i used my arm against my knee as leverage. When i allmost got the hook of the spring into the little hole in the shoe i suddenly lost the grip of the pliers and whacked myself right in the eye with the thumb ... I allmost did a Ko on myself and had to lay down on the garage floor about 10 minutes before i finally come to sense again...

Still laugh at my stupidity wich could have cost me an eye...

 

Let the wife have a key.

 

although, a buddy stopped by yesterday and I invited him to start his car up w/ out the ECM hooked up. Or brake light switch installed.

 

Got mad and yelled at my wife.

 

Not a good idea

 

One separated ACL, torn PCL and meniscus in right knee while moving my 32 truck body. Did i mention this happened to my wife

She's healed now and the truck is long gone....

 

letting sombody talk me in putting a ford into a ford lol

 

I was installing a body lift on a newer Jeep Wrangler, and was using a carbon steel pipe as a breaker bar on the end of my 3/4" drive ratchet to tighten up the bolts. I was on the driver side of the rig, and I had my left hand on the ratchet to keep the socket on the bolt head as I pushed with the right hand to tighten the bolt. Suddenly, I heard a loud bang and everything went dark. The carbon steel pipe had shattered about midway, and the remaining part still on the ratchet came swinging back in the direction of my head as I was lurching forward. The spiked end of carbon steel pipe made contact with my brow just over my right eye, crushed the orbital and sinus, and basically turned my head into a dumbass-kebob. I remember exhaling cigarette smoke out of the wound just before passing out. When I came to I reset the bone around my right eye with my thumb and superglued the wound shut. Then I finished the lift. I never did go to the hospital, and to this day I have a nice semi-circular scar over my right eye to remind me that carbon steel makes a lousy breaker bar. My ex-wife will verify this story.

 

Hey RagtopBuick66, I'm sorry that you went through that, but I would love to see a picture of the wound. No?

 

LOL, that's just sick. Well, this was in 1999, and all that's left now is a scar. Not real easy to photograph myself, but I'll be meeting up with some HAMBers at autofair, and I'll make sure they verify the scar for you. LOL, sick sick sick

 

Antique tractor, fire ants, nudity and a garden hose. Use these words words in a story.
I used to have a 1928 Farmall tractor that hadn't been run in years. It was in my shop that is way out in the middle of no where. I tinkered with it for a while and got it running. After a while of running it in the shop, I realized that there was no water in the radiator. I drove it out of the building about a hundred yards to the water hose that stands all by itself in the middle of the cow pasture. As I'm putting water in the radiator, I noticed that I'm standing in a huge fire ant bed. They are really pissed off and going for the gold medal. I try to swat them off, but now they are even stinging me in my ears and then the little bastards make their way into the promised land. I start squirting my self with the garden hose to try to get them off and it is starting to work. I ram the hose down my pants to try to get them to leave town. I end up having to strip down totally naked and continue to squirt the colony that has started digging in on Plymouth Rock. There are so many of them on the ground that I have to climb back up on the tractor, naked with a garden hose. I set up there spraying my self down like some kind of a pervert. It was then that I noticed that the neighbors were pulling up to check on their cows. They just stared at me naked on the old steel wheeled tractor with a garden hose running between my legs as if that was odd or something. I had past the point of being ashamed, so I just went on ahead and drove around on the tractor a bit to make sure that it was running OK before I drove it back into the shed. I made sure to wave at the neighbors before I went back indoors to put some clothes on. I never liked them anyway. Very judgemental types. I think they are pro-John Deere and don't like me because I had a Farmall.

 

I am sick.