Hideous Injury from being a Mechanic..?

[Globs]

Jandywa said:

When I was little my dad wouldn't let me anywhere near compressed air/cylinders etc.
Reading the OP i can see why, it may only be 'air' but christ it can't half do some damage.

Lots of energy in it.
A car tyre typically sits at 30psi, a lorry tyre is way bigger and sits at 100psi - so about 15x - 20x the energy.

[redtwin]

wst said:

redtwin said:

One that I personally know of is my uncle who was reaching across an engine to adjust a carb while the engine was running. Fan blade broke off and embedded itself in his armpit. The amount of damage to the various nerves there means that his hand is now a barely usable claw.

That's some bloody bad luck. All those miles the car did without a fan blade breaking off, only for it to not only break off while he was leaning over it, but hit all that.

Even worse bad luck was that the car belonged to a neighbour and he was on their drive helping them with the carb issue which meant no employer insurance cover or disability compensation etc. Neighbour did help with initial hospital bills, but subsequent trips to specialists and additional surgeries were well beyond their means as you can imagine.

This didn't happen in the UK, so no NHS type support.

[hairyben]

carinaman said:

http://www.stripes.com/news/air-force-captain-dies...

It never occured to me that tyres could be that dangerous before I heard about that.

I remember that, first thing I though of. Was it the one where because of the spare wheel well being designed only for a space saver there was no-where else for the wheel to go but in the cabin?

[just me]

Have heard of several people going blind because of tyres exploding in their faces, but I didn't realize enough energy could be released to take a leg off. Scary.

[TonyHetherington]

Asterix said:

Nothing happened to me but being ex-Army VM I've seen a few things that would make you wince.

The power plant (pack) for the Challenger comes out in one contained unit for ease of replacement - all you have to do is attach the fuel lines and off you trot - they spin the cooling fans up so fast that they become invisible and when you're in the 'pack room' with three or four running the noise is deafening even with ear defenders on - you certainly can't talk.

One bloke was working on a pack and pointed something out to someone and put his hand straight through a running fan - it was almost cartoonish in the way it shredded his fingers down to the palm - made a right old mess as well.

For that exact reason (spinny things becoming invisible), I thought you needed two differently phased lights so that you can always see it? (I guess this was after!)

[Asterix]

TonyHetherington said:

Asterix said:

Nothing happened to me but being ex-Army VM I've seen a few things that would make you wince.

The power plant (pack) for the Challenger comes out in one contained unit for ease of replacement - all you have to do is attach the fuel lines and off you trot - they spin the cooling fans up so fast that they become invisible and when you're in the 'pack room' with three or four running the noise is deafening even with ear defenders on - you certainly can't talk.

One bloke was working on a pack and pointed something out to someone and put his hand straight through a running fan - it was almost cartoonish in the way it shredded his fingers down to the palm - made a right old mess as well.

For that exact reason (spinny things becoming invisible), I thought you needed two differently phased lights so that you can always see it? (I guess this was after!)

This would have been early 90's

[TonyHetherington]

My company makes control valves, and so we deal with pressures a lot. Whether it's the way we control the valves, through to the calculations we make in understanding what's going through it.

In our training courses we have a lump of lead that is 1" square on it's base, and weights 1 pound. i.e.; when it's resting on your hand it is 1psi. It's a bloody heavy bit of metal. When you then explain to people that 50 of those are what's going through that little line in the training room, and up to 3500 of those are going through the valve itself when in the field, it certainly puts it in perspective!

[Hugo a Gogo]

hairyben said:

carinaman said:

http://www.stripes.com/news/air-force-captain-dies...

It never occured to me that tyres could be that dangerous before I heard about that.

I remember that, first thing I though of. Was it the one where because of the spare wheel well being designed only for a space saver there was no-where else for the wheel to go but in the cabin?

I suppose the designers dangerously assumed that if a tyre was taken off it would always be flat

always let the air out if you have to carry it in the cabin

[Globs]

Divers air bottles - now those you never want to let go - 200-300bar as I recall!

[Fraser Z4]

I was drivng on a dual carriageway a couple of months back and just as I was about parallel with a lorry on the opposite carriageway one of its tyres blew out; I literally felt it from in my car, definitely wouldn't want to have been stood next to it!

[ShampooEfficient]

Some of these make me look like an amateur - undoing the top mount of a strut and the spring compressor slipped (because in my numptyism I hadn't seated it properly, one assumes) - with my thumb in the middle of it. Luckily my ninja-like reaction meant I got away with only smashing the very tip of it to pieces... good thing it wasn't aimed at my spuds.

[Superhoop]

Globs said:

Divers air bottles - now those you never want to let go - 200-300bar as I recall!

Is that all? Common rail diesels run up to 2000 Bar and no, that's not a typo

Having worked around cars for that last 20 odd years, I've seen a few horrors.. Lost finger tips in belts, cars rolloing backwards on four post ramps, underbonnet fires etc

And then there was me - Rebuilding a gearbox aged 21, too cool to wear goggles when using a chisel to lock up a lock nut, fragment of metal in the eye, 8 weeks off work following a lense replacement and cataract removal

[IROC-Z]

My girlfriend’s stepdad has a mate who was working under a car, I can’t remember the exact circumstances but it fell off the axle stands. Crushed his head and face and he had to have his face rebuilt and was very lucky to survive. Apparently the surgeons recorded the surgery because it was quite unique at the time and they wanted to document it, I think he has a copy somewhere!

My own is fairly tame and I hope to never have any worse. My first job after college was a mechanical engineering apprentice. Despite being told many times not to leave the chuck key in the lathe, when one is running off 250 pieces of identical metal collars your mind soon wanders. I left the chuck key in, turned the lathe on and it flew out and hit me in the chest. F-ing hurt, but luckily it wasn’t any higher, or lower!

[Frances The Mute]

Lorry tyres should be in a safety cage when being inflated for this very reason. They regularly see 100psi+ which is an awful lot of pressure when you about the material that's holding it back - namely steel and very thick rubber. Plenty of people have been killed as a result.

I saw a trailer tyre (385/65R22.5) blow out once. I was stuck in Belgium in bad traffic on a hot day. A 44 tonne artic was in the inside lane and I passed it in lane 2.
I could hear creaking from it and saw the sidewall bulged and mis-shaped so promptly got moving as far away from the spot as I could.

I was about 4 or 5 car lengths ahead when it gave way and it sounded like a shotgun going off in the back seat. I looked back to see a huge cloud of dust and the poor bd sitting opposite in lane 2 with a stoved in door, shattered window and no doubt, ruined underwear.

[cerbfan]

Superhoop said:

Globs said:

Divers air bottles - now those you never want to let go - 200-300bar as I recall!

Is that all? Common rail diesels run up to 2000 Bar and no, that's not a typo

Having worked around cars for that last 20 odd years, I've seen a few horrors.. Lost finger tips in belts, cars rolloing backwards on four post ramps, underbonnet fires etc

And then there was me - Rebuilding a gearbox aged 21, too cool to wear goggles when using a chisel to lock up a lock nut, fragment of metal in the eye, 8 weeks off work following a lense replacement and cataract removal

But a large volume of a compressible substance like air at 200Bar is far more dangerous than a small volume of something relatively uncompressible like Diesel. That is why we (almost) always perform all pressure tests in my industry with liquids.

[mike325112]

My uncles son from an earlier marriage died after a trolley jack failed and the car crushed him. He was a mechanic and as such would have well knew the dangers. To this day we still don't know what possesed him to work on the car without axle stands or ramps.

[TonyHetherington]

mike325112 said:

To this day we still don't know what possesed him to work on the car without axle stands or ramps.

Speed

[ShampooEfficient]

doogz said:

ShampooEfficient said:

Some of these make me look like an amateur - undoing the top mount of a strut and the spring compressor slipped (because in my numptyism I hadn't seated it properly, one assumes) - with my thumb in the middle of it. Luckily my ninja-like reaction meant I got away with only smashing the very tip of it to pieces... good thing it wasn't aimed at my spuds.

I caught a mate doing something incredibly stupid along similar lines one day. Had a strut off a car, no spring compressors on it, and he was holding the strut between his legs, leaning over with his head above the assembly, with a set of mole grips on the piston of the knackered damper, and a spanner on the top mount, undoing the damper top nut.

Would have made a mess of his face when it popped.

I was at least using a vice on a workbench! I saw our apprentice once doing exactly what you describe, doesn't bear thinking about...

[Angry Sheep]

My Grandad was a prisoner of war on the Burma railway. Unlike many POWs he survived and eventually returned to England, where he got a job as a coach driver, driving the good people of Merseyside on day trips to North Wales.

Unfortunately one day he was working on his coach in the garage and didn't realise the handbrake was off. It rolled back while he was stood behind it and crushed him.

Daft sod

[Decky_Q]

I know guys that are into their banger racing and I saw them do a suspension and engine swap in a serria once and the level of safety was atrocious. For the suspension they undid the nut untill it was on the last line of thread and then started throwing it across the yard waiting for it to undo and rocket off, Plastic milk crates with cracks in them as axle stands etc. Still they got both jobs done in a day which I found impressive!