Worst accidents while working on the car

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Ill start off.

Was checking the fluid level on a battery, with safety glasses on. And right when I pryed it open, a splash of that stuff zoomed passed my glasses some how and landed right in my eye. I literally loss vision and was rushed too hospital. They hooked up a contact type deal with a hosed attached and flushed it. Two hours later went back to work and didn't get near another battery.
 
Years ago, I was changing the fuel filter on my ex-father in law's 1993 Dodge Dakota 3.9L V6, 4x4. It was about 2002. The truck had about 85K on the factory fuel filter. It was about to recieve a new engine after 2! oil changes....ever. Anyway, I pulled the fuel pump fuse, ran it till it died, opened the gas cap, and thought I was good. Unfortunately, there was probably 200 PSI of fuel backed up behind the filter, which shot about a quart of gas into my ear when I took off the tank side fuel line. That [censored] hurt beyond belief. I thought about lighting my ear on fire to make it stop.....
 
Does this include mishaps of ultimate stupidity?

Spraying running engine with brake clean. (imagine thought cloud) ...warnings on cans are just for dumb consumers ..just in case stuff happens....

as the fireball billowed from the intake area, I grabbed a convenient half spent bottle of some diet cola. It did put out the fire, leaving a nice caramel glaze in its place.

Lots of hand stabbings with screw drivers slipping off the object you're prying on and holding at the same time ...doesn't happen so much these days. I guess you develop a touch for it after so many stabbings. I guess the same touch finally stopped you from slamming into sheet metal when you finally broke a stubborn bolt loose.
 
working on van at dealership, coworker pulled in another van on hoist next to me and proceded to raise on hoist, I was half in the passenger side door with legs on floor working on engine , got up and went to toolbox in front of van to get something and heard holy xxxxx, van fell off hoist sideways to floor taking off passenger door of van I was working on, would have cut me in half.
young and stupid cutting metal bar in half on top of empty barrel of unknown content, top blew off barrel,3rd degree burns over much of upper body ,1 week in hospital, barrel had contained cleaning solvent.
both of these happened at same dealer early in my career
where I work now we have had a full size school bus fall off a hoist and another bus go completely through the brick garage wall,I was not involved in these incidents
 
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Does this include mishaps of ultimate stupidity?

Spraying running engine with brake clean. (imagine thought cloud) ...warnings on cans are just for dumb consumers ..just in case stuff happens....

as the fireball billowed from the intake area, I grabbed a convenient half spent bottle of some diet cola. It did put out the fire, leaving a nice caramel glaze in its place.

Lots of hand stabbings with screw drivers slipping off the object you're prying on and holding at the same time ...doesn't happen so much these days. I guess you develop a touch for it after so many stabbings. I guess the same touch finally stopped you from slamming into sheet metal when you finally broke a stubborn bolt loose.


Haha wish my coworker could see this. He loves to spray carb cleaner all over the engine bay to find vacuum leaks. Told him one of these days your going to start a fire
 
A.G. as a Teenager in the '70s -
In a junkyard getting a differential off an 66 buick wildcat. I asked the yard guy to flip the car on it's roof, he said "no way too busy". Well, I didnt bring a jack, so I used whatever bumper jacks I could find out of the junkers nearby. I Jacked the car up 2 feet in the air and put tires and rims under the rear bumper and gas tank, clambered under there and proceded to remove the driveshaft. Then I took the bolts off the pumpkin - but it wouldnt pop out of the banjo. So I started kicking it with my booted foot. Well, the jacked car didnt take kindly to this, and started to fall over off my haphazard tire stack. I saw the car coming down and didnt think twice and rolled out from under her. Well I ALMOST made it. The bare, tireless rim on the rear axle caught my belly-side and pinned pinched it to the ground. Thinking I was dying, I started yelling and the yardman came flying over with the CASE loader and flipped that car off a me in 20 seconds. I looked bad at first inspection - blood in the dirt mixing with gear oil and old antifreeze, and my tattered flannel shirt sporting a nice gash. I pulled out my shirttails and grimaced at the wound, not wanting to look at it directly for fear of what I might see. But it was just a 6 inch long pinch mark all purple and red with the skin broken through near the middle about a 1/2 in. No ribs sticking out, no snakey entrails slithering out from under my liver. But a good gash - just enough blood and drama to get the car flipped over on its roof where I could then finish my business popping the pumpkin to fix my beloved 65 electra. Next time I reckon I'll slip the guy a tenner to make my work easier and faster.
 
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In the late 70's I bought a 55 ford pu, and it had the front springs installed upside down to lower the front end, well heck i didnt like that at all.

I took off the front end and the truck didnt have the engine installed yet, so i straddled the frame rail and drove out the front most spring bolt, Yep, it jumped up in the air and gave me a tickle i can still feel and came close to hitting my foot, it would have taken it right off if it had hit me.

Some times I wonder how I lived though being a young man!
 
My truck battery needed replacing (83 GMC), as it wasn't holding a charge, and one of the terminal posts was loose inside the casing. I stopped at a Firestone store, removed the battery. I was having problems getting the terminal clamp off the loose post, so I smacked the post with a hammer, and the battery exploded in my face. Didn't get any acid damage, but the plastic casing and possible metal fragments hit me in the face, and I came close to losing an eye. One of the Firestone employees took me to the hospital. I will never, ever, get near a battery with a hammer again!
 
in high school working on a 1997 i believe toyota 4runner limited, we had to work in teams and we had unbolted the cooling fan to do some work and when going to start the car back up my partner told me everything was good and clear... well aparently I should have checked because he didn't bolt the fan back on. well when I went to start the car the fan jumped off and flew into the radiator.
lucky this wasn't a customers car just a shop car, so the instructor made us repair the new holes in the radiator.

I've also seen, but not myself, someone arc a wrench to a battery, and evcen arc the dipstick to an alternator on a 1983 audi 4000S
 
1957 Chevy, trying to remove rear chrome trim, ripped my hand open,30 stitches ER$$$

1964 Impala,friend closed hood on my thumb, smashed the [censored] out of it.. ER$$$

While cutting metal door panel on 1980 Dodge van to install speakers (No safety glasses) metal shaving stuck in left eye.
ER$$ and eye specialist, one week with eye patch...lol

1988 S10, while underneath installing tranny pan I dropped socket wrench on my mouth, knocked out my front tooth...

Dentist multiple visits..lol

No one hurt, but too funny. Walked up on a friend trying to start his Moms car, carb catches fire and he puts it out with dirt... Priceless!!!!
 
Originally Posted By: 95busa
Years ago, I was changing the fuel filter on my ex-father in law's 1993 Dodge Dakota 3.9L V6, 4x4. It was about 2002. The truck had about 85K on the factory fuel filter. It was about to recieve a new engine after 2! oil changes....ever. Anyway, I pulled the fuel pump fuse, ran it till it died, opened the gas cap, and thought I was good. Unfortunately, there was probably 200 PSI of fuel backed up behind the filter, which shot about a quart of gas into my ear when I took off the tank side fuel line. That [censored] hurt beyond belief. I thought about lighting my ear on fire to make it stop.....



Same thing happened to me, only it got in my eye!, with contacts in it BURNED LIKE A ......! I hit my head trying to slide out from under the truck, ran inside and flushed my eye after ripping the contact out. It was like a 10000 suns burning in my eye.
 
Originally Posted By: mcrn
There is more than luck in some of these stories. Some are blessed!


It's called "survivor bias". The ones who did not make it cannot tell their stories.
 
It wasn't really an accident but back in the 80's I was lying on my back working under the dash of a car and had an array of tools on the driver's floorboard. I had long hair at the time, and moved around to get in a different position and somehow my shoulder hit the trigger on my cordless drill. The chuck was spinning and my hair got caught up in it...hurt pretty bad but it hurt my pride worse when another guy in the shop had to help untangle my hair off the chuck. After that I tied the hair back, but it wasn't long after that I got a regular haircut and ditched the long hair.

In the summer of 2000 I was pushing a small piece of mdf through a cheap table saw and didn't have sense enough to use a push stick. The saw kicked back pretty hard and took my left hand into the blade. It cut off the tip of my left index finger at about a 45 degree angle and took part of the nail with it, and ripped open the side of my left middle finger pretty badly. Took some stitches and hand therapy to get it fixed up, and I still have only a little feeling in those two fingertips due to the nerve damage. I now have the utmost respect for any tool with a blade, electric or fixed.

My own worst one was I had an old 280ZX in the shop when I worked at Circuit City, I was in the passenger side and reached across to turn the key to accessory and the key got hung up in start, and the car was in gear, it was a 5-speed. It started "hopping" forward and before I could stop it it slammed into my old Mac tool box, a bottom cabinet with a separate top chest. Spun the box around and luckily my top box just fell over onto the work bench. It put a huge dent in the side of my bottom box but I hammered it out so the drawers still sorta-kinda worked enough to still use the box. The only damage to the car was a few scuffs on the front bumper cover, which the customer didn't mind anyway. The car wasn't exactly in pristine condition. Luckily, no one was hurt.

One of the worst stories I ever heard didn't happen in a shop where I worked. Some guys at a car audio shop in Gainesville FL built a bandpass enclosure for a pair of subs, in an Explorer or Expedition, I don't remember the car. But a bandpass enclosure has 2 ports, usually 3 to 4 inches in diameter to vent and tune the enclosure to the desired frequency and get more bass out of it at that frequency. Anyway, the customer played it too loud, shorted out the voice coils on both subs and the wires from the spiders to the speaker cones were glowing red hot. The guys who built the enclosure had run out of silicone to seal the enclosure airtight, so they had used Liquid Nail instead. The fumes from Liquid Nail are highly flammable, especially in a small enclosure like that, and the fumes ignited violently, sending 2 columns of fire straight up through the ports in the enclosure in the rear cargo area on the vehicle. It burned the back seat and part of the headliner before the customer somehow got the fire put out, but luckily no one was hurt.

And while I didn't see it happen, there was a guy in my high school's auto shop class that was working under a car that was only supported by a jack. It fell on him, crushed his skull and killed him instantly. That's why I won't get under a car unless it is on ramps or a couple sets of really good jack stands. I always check the car very well to be sure it's OK before I slide under.

Jimmy
 
Aside from the normal knuckle busts and screwdriver stabs (found out that gloves help with that a lot). I was changing the fuel filter on my 98 S-10..............the rest of the story has been told twice here already. Gas in your face, eyes, and nose is not the most comfortable feeling in the world. By the time I blindly reconnected the filter I was drenched.

Put a nice gash across the palm of my hand peeling tint off of one of my cars. Razor slipped and gashed the hand that was pulling the tint off. Now I dont mess with tint at all, I take the car somewhere. $150 is cheaper than the ER visit on that one cost.

I was using a screwdriver and needle nose pliers to peel the chrome door handle overlays off of my wifes truck. One of the ABS plastic overlays broke while I was prying on it with the pliers and put a nice gash on the top of my hand. No stitches required this time, probably needed them but figured electrical tape would work, and it did.
 
high school buddy was working on his 455 firebird and a jack failed and crushed his chest killing him. jackstands always from here on out.
 
I was driving home one time in my 1962 Catalina when the mechanical fuel pump started squirting gas out the top. I decided to chance it and try to make it home. Rolling down the road, gas squirting everywhere, for some reason the coil decides to catch on fire. Put it out with the washer bottle before the whole car went up in smoke. Called the tow truck at that point.
 
Mine's a sprayed with gasoline fuel filter story too, although mine happened after the new filter was put on. This was a model where the fuel filter was near the gas tank and the filter came with a rubber hose to slip over the metal fuel line. I didn't put it on all the way, had someone start the car, and got a face full. I should have figured out beforehand that the hose had to go all the way to the flange on the fuel line.
 
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