worst injury/near injury obtained in your garage

[dawalkster]

these should be fun.

so as for me i totally made a rookie mistake one day and laid my wrench across my battery terminals. as soon as the other end hit the second terminal it popped off and flew right past my face nearly hitting me squarely in the eye. to this day there is a small chunk missing out of that wrench and now i'm extremely timid to work around my battery.

[irish44j]

Last year, while reaching for something down near the alternator my wedding ring made contact with the positive terminal on the alternator and zapped me good. Burned all the skin under the ring and the ring has a little divot in it where the contact was made.

I'm sure there have been worse...many large cuts that bled profusely, tons of bumps and bruises...but that one stands out.

[MrGone]

I have common sense

[MOHFpro90]

No real injuries, just close calls. Like the time that Dave was jacking up the car and the angle changed on the jack and his e-brake wasnt engaged...it almost fell...on me. Of course skinny me mightave survived anyway but still, not cool.

[irish44j]

Originally Posted by MrGone

I take my car to Pep Boys garage when it needs work done on it. My manicure costs too much to get my hands all greasy and oily

fixed....

[SoonerFan]

my hands are both scarred from working on my car...but its ok, they look manly now

[SilverGLE]

Back when I was jacking up my Camry (front-left corner), I was using the scissor jack, IIRC, had blocks under the back of the rear tires, had the ebrake pulled and raised it up fairly high... The car groaned, thought "Hmmm...," it groaned again, and promptly rolled forward off the scissor jack. Nothing happened to me (thank goodness), but the damn jackstand I was about to slide under the car but a small indention on the side skirt just below the driver's door.

[MrGone]

Originally Posted by irish44j

fixed....

I'm sure Jeff and Chris will have no problems telling you just how far from the truth that is

[MrGone]

Always take your ring/watches/any metal off when working on cars, awsm66 can vouch for it and apparently so can a number of you guys

[Greeny]

One time,on my carport,i kissed a strut spring as it went careening across my nose..

[MOHFpro90]

Ouch!

I guess Im fortunate to have mishaps not injuries...

I broke my scissor jack. It bent and now wont move. It didnt fall, just seized up when the threaded rod bent...was kind of scary though trying to get it out.

[i30krab]

A few deep cuts on slipped tools and sheet metal.

I never let it stop me, I just wrap a wad of kleenex around the wound and secure it with electrical tape.

Oh yeah, how many times have you hit your head so hard your scalp bleeds?

[MorpheusZero]

I sat on a power drill once.

Actually the worst that has happened have been limited to cuts and bruises so far, I'm pretty careful but I haven't done any serious stuff yet. Had a spring compressor give out with my hands in between the coils but nothing came of it.

[cefiro8701]

WELL....

two years ago while working at cerritos nissan i was assigned to the used automotive fluids.

the pressurized oil drum i was using to drain into the massive oil tank was surged with air and blew shrapnel and a mixture of fluids into me...

even though i was wearing safety glasses the tank shot oil at me at such a strong pressure that it knocked them off my face.

i spent 20 minutes in front of the emergency eyewash station clearing my eyes of oil...

*i had long hair at the time so whenever i got up for air my hair would fall towards my eyes and reintroduce oil to them...

i had to wait for the dealer shuttle to get me on the traffic packed road for the next 2 hours.

we finally got to the ER and they flushed my eyes with these contact lens type things attached to a saline IV.

the lens were big enough to cover the whole front of my eye. any movement of the eye caused intense pain...

for the next two weeks i would be subject to numerous eye checks in which they would drip a yellow dye into my eyesocket to inspect for more shrapnel.


...my worst injury next to being hit in the forearm by a moving altima.

[pmohr]

Originally Posted by i30krab

I never let it stop me, I just wrap a wad of kleenex around the wound and secure it with electrical tape.

Mechanic's bandage FTW. Of course, I generally just use electrical tape, there's not much Kleenex to be found around the shop...

Let's see...was carrying a Civic rim once, fingers between the spokes, dropped it and it tore a chunk out of my finger. Electrical taped it up and kept on working, it's all misshapen and scarred up now.

A few days ago when taking Merlyn's Cattman rear section off his A33B, letting it off of the stands was no fun. Basically:
Him: 'Alright, it's jacked up, yank the jackstand out'
Me: 'Is it securely supported?'
Him: 'I guess.'
I push up the handle that locks the jackstand in place, car slips off of the floor jack and slams down onto the jackstand. Luckily, it landed on the pinch, would've been hell otherwise.

Raised up a Yukon once on a (rated) 6 ton Rotary Lift 2 post (red posts, yellow arms to the right of the Toyota, as seen in the youtube movie below). Had it up in the air and just got back with the correct socket to take the lugnuts off when one of the damn steel cables snapped, and the car slowly lowered itself to the ground. Techs inspected it, no idea why the mechanical locks didn't hold 2 minutes later and I would've been underneath it.

Friend raised up a Rav 4 at work, double checked it per policy to make sure it was good to go up, next thing he knows it kinda falls, cocks sideways on the arms of the lift. I told him, 'it's gonna fall again...', got out my cell and started shooting. Sure enough, he got it lowered to just off of the ground when it fell again. Got it on film. He was just about to head underneath it to start draining oil.

Changing the oil on a Wrangler with the 4.0, getting the oil filter wrench on below when I'm blinded by a shower of sparks. Apparently the starter battery connection on those isn't protected by anything, so the wrench made contact and started arcing. Friend told me he did the same thing at a Jiffy Lube type place, customer left the vehicle in gear and it started rolling forward with his arm still up in it. Not a fun thing to experience, I would imagine.

Tearing apart a trans one time (auto), couldn't seem to get the rear piston (I believe) out of it. It was pressed all the way back inside the bellhousing, so asked my instructor to help me out with it. He says he'll use a 'little bit' of air pressure on the lube hole for it to pop it out, so I hold my hand out in front of it to catch it. He doesn't notice my hand, goes wide open on the air nozzle, and the part comes right at me. Bounces off of my hand, puts a dent in a filing cabinet, then takes a chip out of a concrete wall before it stops moving. Little blood, couldn't do much with my hand for a couple hours, other than that no real injuries.

I'm sure I have more, but that's just what I can think of right now.

[DasYears]

was working on an older car one time, was resting my hand on the fan getting ready to do a compression test so my friend is in the car. i told him not to touch it yet, but he heard crank it and so he did, with my hand still on the fan. got a nice wound and a few stitches from that one. to this day i dont have full stretch of that finger, sewed up the skin too tight i guess. thats probly my worst. had numerous jack falling situations but never injury resulting.

[MorpheusZero]

Damn, you guys make me WANT to visit the mechanic more often and do less myself.

[KRRZ350]

Pulled a motor from a mustang using a tie-down........... Well there is a REASON they say on them to NEVER use them to support loads....... It fell from about 6 inches up, dropped down, broke the cobra dohc intake, luckily we didn't have hands in anywhere bad, it could have been BAD. When the tiedown broke there was a 50ft long neon-orange streamer of thread irunning all across the shop. Luckily the rope didn't whack anyone either.

Saw the fuxord tranny pan from an I30 engine & trans that fell from the motor lift about 4-feet onto soft ground. That thing could have taken an entire leg with it. Lolz at everyone in the AM thread that I deleted, because this happened to my buddy when he pulled it from the top. Obviously it was stupidity with the chains though. LIM FTW

[mikekantor]

Does injuring your pride count? I once rolled off the end of my ramps.

[95BLKMAX]

Thank god nothing happened, but like 2 yrs ago, streetz, nismology, and myself were putting nismology's dad's max back together. We had just put the tranny back on (but just in place, the tranny jack was holding it against the dowel pins).

We put on the ypipe and other random crap from under the car. Then finally we come out from under the car and one of our legs accidentally bumped the tranny jack.... the tranny jack rolled away like nothing.... The DOWEL PINS were holding that tranny up with hopes and dreams while we were under the car for over an hr!

Yea that was scary. If it was a 5spd it would just leave a cute lil bruse.. that AUTO... omg that would have crushed us! LMAO

[Delvin]

Two things:

First happened when I was still wrenching for a paycheck and it was late near closing time on a Saturday. My manager was rushing on putting a tire on a car (which I was working on) and was a novice to using air tools so he decided to put on the lugs without starting them off by hand first. Needless to say he stripped the hell out of the studs and nuts and now I got to replace the studs and nuts he f'ed up. Its on an Expedition and I pick up my 5lb BFH to bang the old studs out and somehow I managed to cushion the impact of my BFH to the stud with my pinkie finger on my right hand. Ended up shattering the bones in the tip of my finger and it stayed swollen for amost 2 weeks.

Second boo-boo happened on a fellow maxima owners car. I was changing out rear pads and rotors at the shop after hours and had a socket come flying off of a universal 1/2 swivel adapter while taking off the rear caliper brackets. The impact was facing me and the socket came flying off hitting me in the mouth and chipped both my two upper middle teeth. At the time I didn't even know that my teeth were chipped because the socket actually impacted my lip and all the pain was from the socket hitting my lip which was in between the socket and my teeth. The next week I invested in swivel sockets.

[mfewtrail]

I've only had bruises, scrapes, and cuts thus far. I do my best to keep things safe when working on automobiles.

[95BLKMAX]

OOOO!!!! I forgot to add!!!

Just a few weeks ago, i have no idea what we were doing. Either when loosening the axle nut, or loosening wheel lug nuts. But streetzlegend was using my 3ft breaker bar for it. Anyways I got too close, at the wrong time, and he didnt see me cus he was too busy struggling with w/e he was doing.

Needless to say, when the nut came loose... the end of that breaker bar and this guy's fist came full blast towards my jaw, BAM! lmao!

[Professor]

Several Cuts and scars from many audio instalations, also alot of burns from working on hot engine stuff.