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OK, fess up.

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roscoe

roscoe

Jedi Knight
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I am willing to detail something that I did that was really dumb, maybe you'd like to reminisce about a mistake that you made that may have bitten you hard or that you managed to skate on by a cat's whisker. The older I get the less I care about revealing these things so here is mine.

This past weekend I took the Healey out for an overdue spin to the grocery store as a warm up for a cruise up the Capay Valley for our annual almond blossom festival. In the barn, the battery was a bit low and after some cranking I had to jump it. With a the alternator I put in last Fall I figured it would charge up going to town. En-routeI was disappointed to see some large fluctuations in voltage accompanied by a very intermittent misfire. On top of that I had to jump start it at the store again (love those jumper pacs). At home again. Starting with simple stuff I uncovered the batteries, which for me are 2, 12 V batteries in parallel. Because of the paralleling wiring there are more battery cables than were original. I did indeed find that the batteries were embarrassingly low on electrolyte and that the battery terminals were also corroded enough so that between the two I was pretty sure it would be a simple fix. So you probably already know what I did and you are correct. Suffering with a cold and having my nose running every time I bent over behind the seats to work, I managed to push one cable out of sight and misinterpreted the "set" that another cable had taken and as hard as it is for me to accept, I wired them back up in series. Big fat grin on my face for actually finding a problem I hoped would be the fix, I turned on the ignition and in horror saw 23.5V on my volt meter. It was so surprising I hesitated for about 5 seconds before I decided that the voltmeter would not lie about this. I was sure I had fried lots of wiring and instantly knew what a nightmare it could be. I was just waiting for the smell of burnt insulation. But then....nothing. No harm, no foul. All I can figure is that since I didn't have a current draw on anything but the coil for that time there was no current flow anywhere else. Had this been a modern car it probably would have been a total loss for frying the electronics. Lucky doesn't describe it.

I've got more, like the time I found a bad end on an extension cord and proceeded to do other things for a while, returned to it with parts to fix and grabbed my dykes and cut the end off while it was still plugged into the wall 20 feet away. Maybe there is a theme here. Anybody care to join in with a Healey related screw-up?
 
roscoe said:
I am willing to detail something that I did that was really dumb, maybe you'd like to reminisce about a mistake that you made that may have bitten you hard or that you managed to skate on by a cat's whisker. The older I get the less I care about revealing these things so here is mine.

This past weekend I took the Healey out for an overdue spin to the grocery store as a warm up for a cruise up the Capay Valley for our annual almond blossom festival. In the barn, the battery was a bit low and after some cranking I had to jump it. With a the alternator I put in last Fall I figured it would charge up going to town. En-routeI was disappointed to see some large fluctuations in voltage accompanied by a very intermittent misfire. On top of that I had to jump start it at the store again (love those jumper pacs). At home again. Starting with simple stuff I uncovered the batteries, which for me are 2, 12 V batteries in parallel. Because of the paralleling wiring there are more battery cables than were original. I did indeed find that the batteries were embarrassingly low on electrolyte and that the battery terminals were also corroded enough so that between the two I was pretty sure it would be a simple fix. So you probably already know what I did and you are correct. Suffering with a cold and having my nose running every time I bent over behind the seats to work, I managed to push one cable out of sight and misinterpreted the "set" that another cable had taken and as hard as it is for me to accept, I wired them back up in series. Big fat grin on my face for actually finding a problem I hoped would be the fix, I turned on the ignition and in horror saw 23.5V on my volt meter. It was so surprising I hesitated for about 5 seconds before I decided that the voltmeter would not lie about this. I was sure I had fried lots of wiring and instantly knew what a nightmare it could be. I was just waiting for the smell of burnt insulation. But then....nothing. No harm, no foul. All I can figure is that since I didn't have a current draw on anything but the coil for that time there was no current flow anywhere else. Had this been a modern car it probably would have been a total loss for frying the electronics. Lucky doesn't describe it.

I've got more, like the time I found a bad end on an extension cord and proceeded to do other things for a while, returned to it with parts to fix and grabbed my dykes and cut the end off while it was still plugged into the wall 20 feet away. Maybe there is a theme here. Anybody care to join in with a Healey related screw-up?
Click to expand...

We have all been there! Some of my favorite quotes:

“Show me a person who doesn’t make mistakes and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t do anything.” Leonard Rubino
“If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.” Coleman Hawkins
“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.” Sophia Loren
“Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.” Ingvar Kamprad
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein
“Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.” Henry Ford
“As long as the world is spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.” Mel Brooks



 
've got more, like the time I found a bad end on an extension cord and proceeded to do other things for a while, returned to it with parts to fix and grabbed my dykes and cut the end off while it was still plugged into the wall 20 feet away. Maybe there is a theme here. Anybody care to join in with a Healey related screw-up?]

I Think it is time for this guy to hire all future electric work out.--I Ain't LOL
 
Here's my fess - not my only one but the only potentially dangerous one. Like Jon's above, it also demonstrates how a voltmeter can save your a**:

I finished the installation of my 3-wire Denso alternator using the instructions from the Lenshow kit. I'd made up a length of red wire running from the ignition post on the coil to the field terminal on the alternator. So far so good.

A couple of weeks later I reinstalled my Pertronix setup in the distributor and rejiggered the wires from the coil to the pertronix. I inadvertently let the alternator field wire drop down away from the coil terminal. No problems with the car running.

I then proceeded to drive the car several times over the next couple of weeks, including with the driving lights on.

On my way to California Healey Week (2014 I think) I was on the Ventura Freeway in heavy traffic and fortunately I'd moved over toward the right. At low speed my car completely died and I coasted to a turnout spot which by great good fortune appeared directly in front of me. Moments before had been in the fast lane with no turnouts and tons of traffic!

Flatbedded the car home and drove my Real Car to Healey Week.

The following weekend I discovered the alternator hadn't been charging because I left the field wire off!

Bought a voltmeter right away and connected the field wire permanently to the wire from the ignition switch to the coil - no more running without the alternator charging.

Voltmeter = cheap insurance.
 
I put 130 lbs of air pressure behind a brake caliper cylinder. I was lucky. When it POPPED out and flew 20 feet, it went between the boat and wife's car. Didn't hurt a thing. Since then I ask even more questions and do more searches on the BCF! Learn from others mistakes.
 
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. I can identify with cutting electrical wires while they are plugged in...been there, done that.

Griz
 
1) Laying on my side torching bolts off the floor of an old pickup left handed. Forgot where my right hand was. Still have the scar.
2) Threw an XJS into a 90 degree corner thinking it was a sports car- it isn't.
3) BSA gas tank. Didn't half fill it with water before applying torch to push dents. Surely it had plenty of time to air out? No.
4) Tuning a Norton by the "tweak and run" method. I knew the sand was there. Tank slapper.
Oh, I could go on.........
 
*Backed out of the garage with my bugeye door slightly opened, door caught on the opening and creased the A pillar
*Replaced my Fiat 124 Spider exhaust with an Abarth while not wearing safety glasses - trip to the opthamologist to remove rust particle from my eyeball.
*Failed to remove o-ring from bugeye oil filter housing and put another one on top of it. Can came loose, lost oil pressure and engine rebuild required.
*Spilled octane boost on the rear deck of the bugeye - needed to re-clear the deck.
*ran oil cooler rubber hose too close to fender on big Healey, wore through and lost oil pressure - no damage, though.
*while taking apart cherry picker, boom came down on my head - three staples at the emergency room while being asked "Do you feel safe at home?"
 
Ok, now we're getting the good stuff. I thought I was going to be relegated to dorkdom all alone. Keep 'em coming. We're all doers and as Duane pointed out above, the only way to never be injured is to never do anything. I have a friend, who as I was telling him to be careful while trimming a piece of hardwood flooring to make a small buck for bending some metal, proceeded to slice his hand open not 15 seconds after I finished the sentence. It wasn't me but there have been times when it could have been.
My only words of wisdom are (in theory)you should get smarter by the minute. When that process stops, you should make sure you have a responsible adult taking care of you cause you're gonna need it. Before I cut, squeeze, hammer, burn, crawl under something, or plug something in I try to take a breath and ask a question. The question is, "what's the worst that could happen". No lie, sometimes I even say it out loud, at least at home. I have to say to Mr.B that I have felt the heat many more times than once from small welding torch tips that have little flames but are oh so hot. That I have no scars from that scenario is a miracle. I do however have a scar from my youth when one hot summer day I didn't want to take the time to remove my pants to make my jeans into cut-offs. The leg was fine but the forearm bled quite profusely when the knife plunged in. Could I have used scissors, of course but they were inside and I was outside with a jack knife. Cheers and thanks for sharing.
 
My dad tried to repair a temperature sender by re-filling the 'bulb' with ether and soldering it back onto the housing. Well, ether is somewhat flammable--note: understatement (it's what's used in starting fluids)--and the expected happened: the bulb shot across the shop at bullet velocity (they're shaped roughly like a 50-cal. bullet). My dad was lucky he didn't lose an eye, or at least get a nasty bruise.

My dad has a death trap--aka a grease pit--in his garage. My BJ8 would just barely straddle the sides of the concrete-sided pit. One time, after an oil change, I was backing the BJ out and, yep, I dumped it (almost) into the pit. The only thing keeping the car from going all the way in--and possibly killing me--was the right rear knockoff caught on the rim of the pit. I was completely frazzled; Dad calmly got the tractor with the three-point lift, we put a strap on the knockoff and lifted the car out. I've been a bit more careful pulling cars off the pit since then.
 
1. My first car was a '60 Starliner. In 10th grade auto shop, I was putting it on a lift; the kind where one set of wheels go into "v-grooves", and arms are then adjusted to pick up the the frame on the other end. At about 4' up, there was a bang as one of the arms slipped off, and the car began a slow tilt to that side. While my friend reversed the lift (seemed like it took a LONG time), I immediately ran over to stop the car from tilting by pushing on the bumper. That did work, but the teacher really chewed me out, saying that I could have easily been crushed, and to NEVER go near something like that again. I had no clue.

2. A few months later, I had an early-morning, rural paper route. At about 5:30am, I turned the Starliner into a driveway, and dropped the LF wheel into the bar ditch that it crossed. The RR wheel was just high enough to not get any traction. I didn't want to wake anyone up asking for help, so I put the car in reverse, opened the hood, and was able to pull up on the corner of the front bumper, while working the throttle with my right hand. It worked, except that because the POS barely ran, I had the idle speed jacked up a bit, and I had to chase it down. Fortunately, it all ended up OK -again.

3. About the middle of my senior year, I got the TR4. I bought the car in pieces, and had to rebuild the engine. I was successful, but I did learn a few things:

a: While working on any car, remove the watch that you received for HS graduation, or it will connect the hot lead of the starter solenoid to the frame, fusing two links in the band, which will then burn the crap out of your arm as you struggle to remove it;

b: Always make sure the engine has a good ground wire to the car's frame. Otherwise, while attempting to start a newly rebuilt motor, the throttle linkage will do the job - poorly - and will get very hot. It will then burn the crap out of your hand as you grab it to open the throttles a bit when the engine finally catches;

c: Invest in a coil spring clamp, because you may learn the hard way how much energy that spring contains - even if the suspension is in its "relaxed" state. If you're lucky, you will only have a nasty bruise on your right bicep, instead of losing your face or head. Even after losing some energy when contacting your arm, it will still put a large hole in the wall across the garage - which just adds more work to the job;

d: A random rubber washer may not be good for use in contact with engine oil. After a week or so, it will swell and cause a massive leak where the banjo fitting on the oil pressure gauge line attaches to the oil filter head.

4. Just a couple of years ago, one dark and cold evening, I installed the final brake pad on my Ford, backwards. The garage was full of crap - I mean interesting, valuable projects - so I worked in the driveway, and I was in a hurry. Fortunately, it was immediately obvious, and nothing but my pride was damaged (but I guess I'm used to that...).

I won't discuss welding. That would take too long.
 
Bob, I have often thought of putting in a pit in lieu of purchasing a lift which would have limited height in my building. If I do, I will file your story away.

Where I work we have an overhead, remote controlled hoist that is capable of lifting about 4 tons. Remote control is very convenient, no chain to pull, no cable hanging down to a control box. We use it to remove assemblies from helicopters or lift entire machines to change landing gears. One day when the hook was attached to a lifting eye on an engine( which was not prepped for removing yet after a lunch break, someone needed the hoist for another job. As he was looking to see where the hook was he pushed the button that moved the hoist horizontally on the beam track. The hoist could be positioned in 4 directions. He couldn't immediately understand why people were yelling "make it stop!!" before he had dragged a 6000 lb Huey about 5 feet across the floor by the engine. No injuries and a minor amount of sheet metal damage but a lesson very well learned. If it isn't obvious, I am fascinated by industrial mishaps and aviation safety practices is a favorite subject. Sorry to stray from incidents with our cars but it is all related.
 
Dad's pit wasn't built to 'code'--I don't think they even had one in those days--but now CA has strict rules for pits including, I think, having active ventilation to flush toxic fumes that could settle in the bottom. His neighbor--the one with an original Mercedes Gull Wing--installed a pit to code with all the bells and whistles.
 
"I won't discuss welding. That would take too long."

At about 12 years old, I used my dad's welder to fix my broken go kart. I hadn't welded before and couldn't get the hang of flipping the mask down right before striking the arc. In frustration, I decided I could simply close my eyes tight when striking the arc and could maybe get a good enough weld to get me going again. That part worked but later that night I woke up feeling like someone had poured sand in my eyes. Fortunately, a friend suggested I cut a potato in half and put it on my eyes. Sounds preposterous but it worked. If I had had a new-fangled auto darkening mask in those days, I would not have had such a stupid story to tell.
 
Rob, I think "gravel eye" must be a rite of passage. It's happened to me just once, for the same reason that you describe, and it bothers me that some "fabricators" on the car/bike TV shows set a bad example by just closing their eyes when striking the arc.

The auto-darkening mask is a blessing, since I still can't seem to flip a welding mask down without moving the torch. :grumpy:
 
A lot of those experiences sound all too familiar. After decades of believing that I can do pretty much anything myself, I have learned various lessons. Here a few that come to mind:

-When hydraulic jacks slip when under load, it's best not to be in the way of the falling load or flying pieces. I learned that one more than once. Slow learner, I guess.
-As others pointed out, disconnect extension cords before working on them. Especially don't put them in your mouth to strip the insulation before attaching a new end.
-Respect ladders and gravity. I have discovered a number of variations on that lesson, some funny and others just painful.
-Dry wood can conduct electricity, at least when it is 14,000 volts. Thanks to good rubber boots, I lived to tell the tale.

I could go on, including about lessons learned while driving cars, motorcycles, quads, snowmobiles, and heavy equipment, but you get the idea.
 
Soon after I bought my first car, a bugeye, it blew a fuse, and at about the same time the oil pressure gauge stopped working. Being 16 years old and knowing next to nothing about cars (grew up in NYC where almost nobody owns cars) I figured the oil pressure gauge issue was a result of the blown fuse. It wasn't. And so began my long and expensive automotive education process.
 
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