I do believe I topped myself today. Decided I should put the motor back in my 87 GMC. As I have the 283 in the air I move the hoist somehow while putting the handle down in the holding tube...hit the release and dropped the motor on my left foot. Needless to say I broke my left foot.

What have you done to yourself??

Just always remember when working on your truck... vice grips can be used to stop the bleeding.

COOL, now I can copy Andy's fingerprints and pin a crime on him!!!!! LOL



I didnt do it but a guy I worked with was getting ready to climb up on top of the radiator support of his 74 K10 and stuck his finger into the running electric fan. ouch.

Just always remember when working on your truck... vice grips can be used to stop the bleeding.


Wel now we know Andy dont use bandaids! :lol:

This is what happened to me the day i chose to play hookie and work on the truck: http://www.67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=243166

cut the end of my finger off once, while getting the shop ready to bring my truck in, luckily i reattached it, but not the darn thing is crooked and the nail just is not the same.

Today I was under my rear axle "bench pressing" it & my friend was raising the jackstand, but it didn't engage & the axle fell on my chest lol

When I was a lot younger & wasn't using safety glasses while using a dremel with a wire wheel, one of the wires shot into my eye

Past that, just the common cuts & scrapes (at least thats all I remember lol)

When re-installing my clutch I was having trouble flushing the lines out. I had my safety glasses on and everything...at first. Anyway, had a helper fill up the res and disconnected the line at the slave cylinder to hand pump it out. The light was a bear so I (STUPID!) took off my eye protection..in the process of hooking up the hand pump...just then my help un-corked the res (I dono why....) and about 100cc of 20 year old rusted and pure black hydraul poured itself into my eyes........

I didn't goto the hospital and thank God I wear contacts because I don't know what would have happened without'm. (They turned solid almost instantly and I bearly got them out in time.) Lots of eye wash in shot glasses and praying and I can still see.....whoo hoo. Yeah, never taking off the eye protection again......

cut my finger by taking the air hose and spinning the bearings to about 200,000 rpm after cleaning them in the solvent tank and the bearing came apart the the outter cage to the ball bearings torn into my finger and one bearing hit my boys

The worst I had was with my first truck a 76 c20. The 350 transmission died on me so I was installing a new one. To lift the truck up so I could get the old one out and a new one in I came up with the brilliant idea of putting wheels under the tires. Everything went fine for the first 3, then as I jacked the last tire up, the truck rolled off of the jack, and wheels, it then sandwiched me between the front bumper and a C7500 twin screw. That was the last time I made that mistake! amazingly there was nothing broken, but I didn't move very well for a few days!

heh i think everyone here remembers my thumbnail incident while working on that jeep , and just a refresher the thumbnail that tore from back to front

well luckily i havent hurt myself real bad working on a vehicle. just a couple cuts and scrapes and of course gas and starter fluid in the eye many times. i have however hurt myself real bad a few times on 3-wheelers and 4-wheelers. and then theres the first time i rode a dirt bike out of first gear. lol ive been riding full size 4-wheelers and 3-wheelers since i was 4 but never a dirt bike till i was about 16. well i took off down the road and got to a curve and dident lean right and for some reason my friend dident tell me the brakes dident work. well i dident wreck but i slid sideways and made the turn. amazed me though. lol
John

oh, its not me but i do have a story my uncle told me happened to him. he drove a big truck for years. well he was out in the shop by his self at like 12 or 1 am and stuck his finger off in the fill hole on the transmission to check the oil. well it got stuck and he layed there for about 3 hours trying to get his finger out. he said he finally gave up and stopped struggling and it just slipped right out!! lol
John

I haven't done more than skin a couple knuckles working on the truck, but I had a good one some years back working on my Camaro.

I was putting a new transmission in the beast. Had the car on stands and used a small floor jack to hold the trans in place while I got the converter attached and a few bolts finger threadd home inthe bell housing.

All was well until I was going to put the bolts back in the cross member. I couldn't get the holes to line up so I got my handy short-handled 5lb attitude adjuster out to tap it into place...

After serveral well placed taps it was getting real close -- but the next tap would have gone better if I hadn't missed the cross member and popped myself square in the kisser with the hammer.

In a wonderfull little fit.. I threw the hammer out from underneeth the car. It bounced off the trashcan and shot back under the car and hit me in the head... I yelled and sat up (under the car) and busted my forehead on the bottom of the car.

If the whole dang mess had fallen on me it would have been the perfect Monte Python moment.

Cost me two teeth by the time all was said and done .. but the car ~did~ gain 1/2 a second (down to 13.90!) with the upgraded trans.

while pulling the motor out last year, I put the garage door done on top of the roof of the cab to gain more room for the hoist (small garage). I went to walk around the back of the truck and smashed my forehead into the bottom of the garage door (I am 6'3) and knocked myself out cold. Woke up laying on the ground next to my truck with a gash in my forehead. Felt pretty stupid explaining that one to my wife:dohh:

This is inexcusable, but I did it. Not having worked on a rear wheel drive vehicle in over 25 years, I dropped the drive shaft without blocking the tires. I stopped the truck from rolling by putting my right foot on the front passenger tire. I laid there wondering how I was going to get out from under the truck, since there wasn't anyone around to help. Luckily, my ratchet set was within reach, and I got it maneuvered under the front wheel. I felt really stupid and really fortunate.

I use gloves "almost" every time I use my 4 1/2" grinder now! I was using the knotty wire wheel, without the guard of course) to clean the firewall on the Chevelle and got too close to a tiny little wire that caught the wheel and broke off just before it turned into a bazillion RPM hand held weed whacker. I couldn't get to the button to click it off fast enough!!! My hands didn't look too pretty after that one.

No safety goggles... used a wire wheel and shot still wet paint stripper into my eye. It was actually lucky I wear contacts, burned the contact and not my eye. It did get a tiny piece of my eye below my eyelid, 3 years later I still have a red mark there. Vision is A Ok. Very lucky.

I've burned, cut, scraped, and injured myself so many times it's amazing I'm still here at all.

moved to shop safety and this was one Josh pulled last spring

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/attachment.php?attachmentid=255409&stc=1&d=1175520704



the on car brake lathe at work bit him

Got pinned under my jeep. Broke almost all of my ribs and dislocated my shoulder. Recovered, bought good stands and better floor jack.

I haven't done more than skin a couple knuckles working on the truck, but I had a good one some years back working on my Camaro.

I was putting a new transmission in the beast. Had the car on stands and used a small floor jack to hold the trans in place while I got the converter attached and a few bolts finger threadd home inthe bell housing.

All was well until I was going to put the bolts back in the cross member. I couldn't get the holes to line up so I got my handy short-handled 5lb attitude adjuster out to tap it into place...

After serveral well placed taps it was getting real close -- but the next tap would have gone better if I hadn't missed the cross member and popped myself square in the kisser with the hammer.

In a wonderfull little fit.. I threw the hammer out from underneeth the car. It bounced off the trashcan and shot back under the car and hit me in the head... I yelled and sat up (under the car) and busted my forehead on the bottom of the car.

If the whole dang mess had fallen on me it would have been the perfect Monte Python moment.

Cost me two teeth by the time all was said and done .. but the car ~did~ gain 1/2 a second (down to 13.90!) with the upgraded trans.

Dude I feel your pain! This is my luck. I fall under murphys law. :lol:

Since kinda gross pictures seem OK on this one :)

Hurt doing it - REALLY hurt getting it fixed :/ Us old guys have tendons like beef jerky...cheap beef jerky :)

This is why I'm so cranky any more ;)

I was changing the transmission filter on my 01 1500HD and moved the shift linkage out of park. My truck came down on top of me and my creeper of the ramps and hauled ass down the driveway. I ended up with 7 broken ribs and a punctured lung seven days in the hospital and almost a year of recovery. Sucks. Please don't forget to set the emergency brake and put wedges behind the rear wheels. The only good thing is that the truck backed down into my neighbors yard turned itself around crossed the street ended up in another neighbors yard and stopped itself without a scratch. Had to have my buddy come over and put it back together so my wife could drive it out of their yard.

Safety first

Wasn't working on my Chevy truck, but one time I was doing some struts on a Chrysler minivan. Got the struts out of the van and started compressing the spring on the first one to get the top plate off. Now, I didn't have one of those fancy, mount-to-the-wall strut compressors. Just a cheapo tool that consisted of a couple of big threaded rods with some special cast hooks on either end. You mounted one rod and hooks on one side of the spring, and one on the other, alternately drawing them down until it compressed the spring enough to take the plate off. It was clumsy and didn't work very good, but I'd used it many times before with no problems.

Anyway, being in a hurry I grabbed one strut and sat down on a shop stool with it standing between my knees and started alternately gunning down the rods. Got the spring compressed, then gunned off the top plate. Just as I pulled the plate away, one of those rods popped off. The other one followed a millisecond later, then the spring launched and hammered me in the forehead. All I heard was a loud "POP," then saw the spring rolling away from me on the floor. I was looking right at it but it happened so fast I never saw it.

I had about enough time to think, "What the . . ." then felt something warm running down into my eyebrow. Reached up, fingers came away dripping blood. I stood up real quick and bent over so it wouldn't run down into my eye while I tried to figure out what to do next. I was at work, but it was late in the evening. No one around except for a cleaning lady way up front in the offices. "Lessee now, climb in a truck and drive myself to the hospital? Bother the cleaning lady? Call my wife and wait for her?" It only took a few seconds to think all that, but while I did I bled out a spot the size of a dinner plate onto the floor. I finally just grabbed a shop rag and put in on my head, then went and called my woman. Didn't notice until after the phone call that my little finger was broken and the nail torn completely away from the nail bed. The spring must have done that on its way to my forehead.

Got about 20 stitches in my forehead and finger and a king sized headache, but I was very lucky. Another inch lower and I'd have lost my eye.

:ack: I have used that kind of spring compressor before. I was worried and very careful each time. Apparently, I had good reason!

A couple of years back at shop, I went to change the head on the cutting torch , and grabbed the head to unscrew it, what I didn't realize was somebody just used it, I got a 3rd degree burn in the shape of the torch head on my hand, that was probably the worst burn I have ever gotten.

ran myself over working on my dodge army truck went to start it thought it was out of gear reached in hit the starter buton and found out real quick it was in reverse truck started door open and wham on my but front tire over my leg and the trck stoped real nice agenst the house now thats good times

I got a burn from my wrist to my elbow about an inch and a half wide while changing the oil and pressed my whole arm against the muffler.

while i was tearing apart a 71 with front end damage, the core support jammed in with the fenders. while i was loosening up it's body mounts it sprung loose, fell over, and struck me in the face. of course the battery was still attached so it had some weight to it and some force behind it when it came loose from the bent up fenders. it split me eyebrow open from nose to temple. i drove myself to my buddies vet clinic and he used a tube of glue to close it up.

I'll add my list of injuries. Most if not all occured at work.

Cut the end of my left index finger while installing an axle in a peterbilt,

Removed a hot headlight on a peterbilt and the bulb hit some water, exploded in my eye.

Welded a pump bracket, pulled my hood up and the slag popped off and hit me in the eye.

Grinding a bracket I made for a depth finder and it slipped and my knuckle went into the grinder with all my weight. Grinded down to the bone.

Welding an aluminum frame on a hopper trailer upside down and some of the weld dripped off. it was winter and I had my sleeves rolled down and gloves on. It went down my sleeve and when I tried to shake it out it went in my glove.

Grinded something in the vise and had some of the metal go in my eye. Was wearing safety glasses. Took three doctors to dig it out.

Under a trailer and rust fell in my eye. Was wearing safety glasses.

Swinging my BFH at some wheel studs on a mack, missed and hit my knee.

Removing an upper coupler on a tanker trailer and it fell hitting my pinky. Think it chipped a bone. Still hurts.

when I was swapping out the 1" coils spring to 3" springs on my truck I didn't have a jack under the lower control arm, and the coil spring came flying at my face lucky I dodged it, and when I was replacing the power window motor, I had the wind rolled up and I had my fingers in the scissor part of the regulator and the glass came down a coupe of inches and regulator squish my finger, luckily my dad was there to help get my finger's out, my figures were cut and bruised

One time I was trouble shooting wiring on an old ford truck. I used an old sewing needle to poke into a wire and i accidentally grounded it out on the metal dash. It burnt itself into my index finger and I of course stuck it in my mouth to pull it out. It probably was not the worst thing i did but its what came to mind

politlely removed the end of my finger with a fram oil filter
came back from the ER and went back to work,,,

got battery acid on my hootus once... (was wearing pants!)
the battery fell off the tray and landed on my belts cut a hole in the battery.... hole poured acid on my crotch

set truck and myself on fire... not once but three times..

HOUSE SLIPPERS! and trucks dont mix..
flipped backwards once off the front end because of house slippers..
did the splits before because of them..
and various other "little things"

OH! and if you slam your fingers into the door.. it realllly suck trying to get them out all by yourself..
havent done that in a long time..

Have done all the usual and "mistake" injurys. But probally one of the better ones was when I was doing a daddo cut on the table saw, I don't know what I was thinking but I used the rip fence. The board jammed and took my thumb and my ring finger into the blade. It took a nice sized chunk out of the bottom of my thumb and cut straight through the nail and down to the bone all the way to the knuckle. Long story short: 4 1/2 hours and 5 stitches (ring finger), I was back at it in the shop workin on my 67'!

Letting someone help work on it one time.

Ran the valves cold one day using a ratcheting torque wrench in the top pulley to roll it over instead of bumping the starter. Got side tracked for a few hours and finally got back to button everything back up. Hooked up the timing light and got into position leaning over the fender and told my son-in-law to fire it up. And then darkness. I kinda forgot to remove the wrench. Glad it didn't start on the first hit and he had quick reflexes with the key. Beside all the stars and blood, no concussion. Lucky I guess. Now, before my hand leaves the wrench, it is pulled out of the pulley. This is for illustrative purposes only, do not try this at home....

Dropped a gas tank that was half full and sloshed gas in my ear, couldn't hear out of my left for a week. The worst thin I have done thought is give myself welders flash, man feeling like you have sand in your eyes and not being able to see anything is the worst feeling in the world.

A few Saturday's ago I was firing off the newly rebuilt 283 for the cam break-in and the choke stuck - causing the RPM to go too high, so I took a swipe at the linkage (don't ask me for the thought process involved here, because there was none) and somehow my right thumb went into the fan.

Glad it was the six blade aluminum unit and not the heavy 4-blade original, and it shaved off all the skin on one side of the sacrificial digit like one of those roast beef sandwich slicing machines.

Pulled the HEI hot-wire, wrapped some gauze around the bloody thing and then circled it with blue masking tape - prior to breaking in my new cam.

I mean, hey, it's a new $2,000 engine after all.

Mac.

After I dismantled an old truck for an off frame, I kept telling myself that I should cover and tape up the end of the muffler because of the sharp edge, which I kept forgetting to do of course. One day I walked behind the truck past the muffler edge, did not even feel the muffler slice into and completly through the layer of skin mid calf on my left leg.

About 1-2 minutes later I felt my left foot seem stickly wet in my shoe, looked down and saw the biggest damn puddle of blood I've even seen, and what was worse it was comming from ME! I actualy made bloodly footprints on the garage floor. - COOL sort of, as long as it ain't your BLOOD!

I must have clipped a nice size vein because it filled up the shoe, soaked the sock and was on the floor. I was by myself and didn't panic, grabbed the handful of "Blue Shop Towles" and a roll of masking tape, made a quick bandage, and wrapped the hell out of it.

I hobbled inside and grabbed a ziplock, filled it with ice put that on top and sat on the chair with the legs up and starting watching TV and must have feel asleep.

About an hour or so later Dee comes home, parks in the garage, sees the blood and ran in the house to call 911. Saw me sleeping, and promptly scared the s**t out of me by screaming me out of sound sleep to see if I was still alive and to ask where the "Will" was? You know in case something happened?

I should have went to the hospital and got stiches. But hell, all it left me was a nice battle scar for Cruise Nites and a quart low. YES I TAPED THE DAMN MUFFLER TIP THAT EVENING, AFTER I FILED THE EDGE OFF SOME!

I took the next day off to build back up a few red blood cells and bought a half way decent first aid kit for the workbench.

Jake

This weekend I was tearing apart the old motor i recently took out of my truck. It was bolted to the motor stand and I was pulling the heads one of the heads didn't have the dowel pins in it, when I unbolted it it slid off and landed on my left foot and broke all the metatarsal bones. It hurts just thinking about walking.

Friends are friends so while my buddy was at work I chemically stripped the paint off his car while wearing heavy rubber gloves. It took the whole day and at the end I guess I was tired cause my hands were tingling. Next Morning while working I couldn't hold the hammer hard enough it kept slipping. Water blisters began to form and I thought to myself what a sissy I must be for getting blisters. Couple of hours later at the hospital the Doctor explained that if not for my callous skin I might have had to have my hands amputated. Till this day sensitive to heat and cold and my hands won't callous. Had to explain to U.S. Customs why they couldn't get a decent finger print for my F.A.S.T. card.

so i am trying to mount a cup bracket up by myself on my 4x4, the sub frame is about 6' tall and it is becoming a pain the arse. so with one hand holding the 8lbs cup bracket and trying to put in place and turn the "C" clamp with the other hand and get it all together, i start to become very edgeeee. i grab on to the sub frame and KAPOW a nice bite from stick welder let me know that it was still there and ready to go, I HATE BEING SHOCKED IT MAKES ME THE MADDEST S.O.B THAT YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO BE MESSING WITH. instantly i drop/throw the cup bracket, it then falls onto the end of rockwell hub (which i had kind of dummy held up cause i was in the process the night before of flipping them) knocking off the what felt like 800lbs hub onto the top of my foot. i fall/jump/stumble backwards from all of this and get clipped by my 52" tire laying on the ground, i fall into the center where i came to a stop. so with a hurt foot, PO'ed from being shocked and a scraped lower back from falling into the center of the rim, i sat there with a thought of WTF just happened to me and why. i laughed, i cried, i got up, walked away and sat down and drank a few cold beers till i figured out a better plan..............i hate being accident proned and yes this stuff happens to me all the damn time, don't even know why i try :lol:,,,,,,,oh wait it's because i love this damn 71' :chevy: truck :metal: :lol:

l8r

One of these days I'm going to quit standing on a bucket while working on my truck.I think I'm gonna have to break a rib before I learn my lesson.I'm a hard learner

I slit my wrist open when i was trying to convertto power brakes i had 10 stickes in my wrist

I was putting a tape deck in my '78 chevy 4X4 and was useing a 4-7/8" folding Buck knife to trim the plastic face plate to get a perfect fit. I had thrown the knife on the seat with the other tools and thought I was done. Looking real close I could see that the deck was not quite square with the world, it was in perhaps 1/32" more on one side than the other. In order to make the appropriate adjustement required that the nuts on the control posts be loosened and adjusted. I laid on the seat and slid under the steering wheel to reach under the dash to adjust one of the inner nuts an 1/8 turn or so then slid back out from under the steering wheel. Apparently, when I had tossed the Buck knife on the seat, it landed with the butt of the handle against the back of the seat and the blade pointing straight forward. As I slid out from under the steering wheel, the knife went into my back. I lifted myself off the seat by the steering wheel and moved forward and THOUGHT I felt the knife fall out but was unsure. I hugged the wheel to stay off the seat (didn't want to stab myself AGAIN!) and made my way out from under the wheel and my wife took me in for stitches. The hospital staff had some rather pointed questions for my wife as they weren't convinced that I had actually stabbed MYSELF in the back. I Later discovered that the knife had gone in the full 4-7/8" right to the handle. I quipped to the doctor that "It's OK, it's a long way from the heart". He said, "Actually no, if it hadn't glanced off your shoulder blade it would have gone right in the heart".

How about another crazy canuck story.
While removing a rearend from a 78 chevy truck to use in a 56 Chev 1/2 ton project I split open my bald old forehead when the u-bolt snapped off due to the long breaker bar and socket I was using. Wacked my head on the rusty old fender. It was about 20 below F that day. Blood ran down both sides of my head around my ears onto my winter jacket. Due to the cold it froze off the wound. Didn't know what a mess I was till I went back to the house to warm up and the wife started freaking at the mess I was in. Cleaned up and went back out to get it finished. If you don't bleed a little when you're working on old iron it's not a good day.

here's my latest...
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm131/dammitmitchell/truck/DSC01155.jpg
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm131/dammitmitchell/truck/DSC01157.jpg

^^^Did ya get hungry or something??^^^^ :) J/K that looks like it hurt!?