Jeez, that musta hurt!!!

[brianrupnow]

Jim The Garage-man----
Back in the day, when I was about 20 years old, the fellow who owned a garage across the street was a stock car racer. I was a young motor head, and would stop by to "talk hotrod" to Jim, the garage owner. Jim got one of the local school busses in for an engine job. The bus was too high to fit in the garage door, so they unbolted the front sheetmetal out beside the garage and pulled the engine and took the engine inside to work on it. Those old school busses had a pair of 3/8" diameter rods that ran from the firewall out to the top of the rad, just like on a model A Ford. Somehow they got the engine out through the front with a cherrypicker, but those rods were left sticking out into what was now open space, because the front sheetmetal, radiator, and engine were now unbolted and moved away from the front of the bus.
Jim went to smoke a cigarette, but they weren't where they should have been, in his front shirt pocket. He went out to the bus, and there they were, laying on the ground right in front of the bus. Jim bent over to pick up the smokes, and ran the end of one of them damn support rods right though his right eye!!! It ran in so far, and hurt so bad that he was afraid to straighten up. He yelled for help, and one of the apprentices ran out to see what was wrong. Jim knew it would probably kill him if the kid tried to cut the rod off with a hacksaw, so he got the kid to wrap a wet rag around the rod just in front of his eye, and cut the rod off half way back to the bus with an acetylene torch!!! Jim got into his souped up 59 Chev, holding the end of the rod which was still in his eye, and told the kid to get him to the hospital 15 miles away as fast as that old Chev would go. Somebody from the garage phoned into the cop shop in town and told them what was happening, and said watch for a dark blue 59 Chev coming in from the north at about a hundred miles an hour, and give him a police escort to the hospital at the far end of town. The cops met him about halfway to town, and did a burning u-turn and lit up the lights and siren and led them thru town to the hospital in Belleville, Ontario.
They rushed Jim into surgery, and here is the really weird part---The rod hadn't peirced his eyeball----rather, it had rolled the eyeball up and slid into the eye socket between his eyeball and the boney socket that it sets in. They removed the rod, did some minor repairs, and kept Jim at the hospital for about 3 days. The eye surgeon told Jim that he had 3/8-16 threads on the top and front surface of his eyeball, and that after things healed up, they would be able to tell how much permanent damage was done to the eye. Jim wore a patch like a pirate for about 3 months, but the eye did heal up okay, and Jim could see out of it "as good as ever".--but----Jeez, that musta hurt!!!---Brian

[sfort]

That gave me goose bumps and my eyes are still watering!! Jim was a lucky guy that day.

[HOSS429]

and i get mad at work cause my boss fusses on me for not wearing safety glasses

[ford2custom]

As I was reading I thought about my buddy back in the late 60's when we were apprentices, he was rolling out wire mesh turn around and the wire went into his eye ball, he wasn't as lucky as your friend he lost his eye. I was always being told to keep my safety glasses on and after Wayne had his accident I tried to protect my eyes from then on. Maybe some will read your story and decide to keep their safety glasses on.

Richard

[chevy 37]

Jim was one lucky guy.. That rod could have taken out his eye or worst. Glad things turned out for the beter.

[vara4]

Very Lucky, but I'm sure that most of us older guys have heard stories that didn't turn out so good. I know I have had a couple accidents myself, nothing that I brag about though. I had the index finger on my right finger hand cut off trying to catch a 55 gallon drum of grease comming off the back of a truck. Had it sawn back on to the tune 15,000
dollers and it works fine now. Had my big toe crushed by a hydrolic jack that came lose from a buddies home made cherry picker. See nothing to brag about, just some stupid things that happened at the worst possible time. The Dumbmest thing I did was to put a flex fan in one of my cars, sliced the palm of my hand right to the bone.
Went to to hospital got stitches, came home and removed it before I cut off my fingers on it with the engine running the next time. See what fun I've had.
But I am sure most of the guys on here have better stories than mine.
Kurt

[Whiplash23T]

I am surprised that no one has click to what should of happened to avoid the accident in the first place!!! The old guy, who also was in charge of training young fellas, should of removed the two radaitor support rods when dismantling the front sheet metal to remove the engine at the fire wall. And secondly, maybe that if he wasn't a smoker, he would not of been going out looking for his dropped smokes. Most accidents around workshops are caused by a moment of having ones brain in neutral. Yes I have been guilty of taking shortcuts also in the workshop resulting in injury to myself,but I am now at age where 5 minutes longer to make things safe doesn't take as long as recovery of a self inflicted injury because I was careless.

[Rrumbler]

Oooh, wow-owowow! That story made my gut do a flip flop. Back in "the day" we sort of never thought that much about stuff like safety glasses for the most part, and I wonder sometimes that most of us made it through without much damage. Jim sure was one lucky guy that day.

[chevythunder]

wow that was as close as i would be; lucky i guess had two friends have accidents like that and not recover they were in grande prairie ab wow is all i can say lucky something was watching out for him,i'm not the god fearing type

[RestoRod]

Reminds me of an incident that didn't turn out so well. Back in the day, there was an older mechanic who ran a shop in a village near where I lived. He was the one all us young guys took our cars to because he could fix anything and was very reasonable and was willing to teach what he knew.
His house was just across the street from his shop, and one day he was working on a 54 Chev that had a loose chrome side moulding. The phone rang at his house and as he hurried around the car towards the house, he accidentally drove the moulding into his thigh, severing the main artery. He never even made it to the house; bled to death on the road.
Sad story, he was a great friend to all of us.

[1gary]

You guys remember Corvairs??.You know-the chevy rear engine cars.Well I owned one.I also knew about Crown Corvairs that had a kit to a swap of a 327 SBC mid-ship.One one I owned came from my dad's boss where both of them worked at the chevy engine Plant in Tonn,NY.Well the car developed a problem where it kept breaking the nose off the starters.This Corvair was kind of rare too where it had a tilt steering.So we figured it out that the ring gear on the flywheel had the welds broke so that ring gear would move all over that place and break the starters.So my dad is at work and I on my own decide to drop the engine out the bottom of the car and try to sneak it as a project Crown Corvair kit over time.So that meant I had to release all the shrouding of the engine to get it to drop out of the bottom of the car.I don't to this day know why,but it hung up on something and I couldn't get it to drop.Grrrrrr.So I get under the dumb thing and yank real hard.Yeah a bolt for the engine trapped under it.I lay there what seems like for ever swearing it like a dunk sailor,but couldn't lift it off.Everytime I lifted and had to let it back down it hurt worse than before.So I hear a car pull up and a door close on it and now I am swearing worse than ever.My Dad come into his garage and says what the hell you doing??.Well I let out some more four letter words and he gets a big grin across his face.So he says......Well guess ya really stuck huh.I said ya ya.He lifts the engine up some to take off the pressure,but not enough to let me out.He tells me you done swearing in MY GARAGE yet??.He lets the engine down some again and says ya sure???.I say ya,ya-let me out-let me out.He then lifts the engine off me and goes into the house.He found in the kitchen mags about the V8 swap.I had two bad bruises right in the center of my chest from the engine mount bolts.The next wk the car was gone.Later I found out he sold it back to his boss.For yrs later I remember "that look" on my Dad's face and never would swear around him again.Still I think he thought it was funny to have control over his teenage kid like that....even if was only for acouple of minutes.

[AstroTurf]

You guys remember Corvairs??.You know-the chevy rear engine cars.Well I owned one.I also knew about Crown Corvairs that had a kit to a swap of a 327 SBC mid-ship.One one I owned came from my dad's boss where both of them worked at the chevy engine Plant in Tonn,NY.Well the car developed a problem where it kept breaking the nose off the starters.This Corvair was kind of rare too where it had a tilt steering.So we figured it out that the ring gear on the flywheel had the welds broke so that ring gear would move all over that place and break the starters.So my dad is at work and I on my own decide to drop the engine out the bottom of the car and try to sneak it as a project Crown Corvair kit over time.So that meant I had to release all the shrouding of the engine to get it to drop out of the bottom of the car.I don't to this day know why,but it hung up on something and I couldn't get it to drop.Grrrrrr.So I get under the dumb thing and yank real hard.Yeah a bolt for the engine trapped under it.I lay there what seems like for ever swearing it like a dunk sailor,but couldn't lift it off.Everytime I lifted and had to let it back down it hurt worse than before.So I hear a car pull up and a door close on it and now I am swearing worse than ever.My Dad come into his garage and says what the hell you doing??.Well I let out some more four letter words and he gets a big grin across his face.So he says......Well guess ya really stuck huh.I said ya ya.He lifts the engine up some to take off the pressure,but not enough to let me out.He tells me you done swearing in MY GARAGE yet??.He lets the engine down some again and says ya sure???.I say ya,ya-let me out-let me out.He then lifts the engine off me and goes into the house.He found in the kitchen mags about the V8 swap.I had two bad bruises right in the center of my chest from the engine mount bolts.The next wk the car was gone.Later I found out he sold it back to his boss.For yrs later I remember "that look" on my Dad's face and never would swear around him again.Still I think he thought it was funny to have control over his teenage kid like that....even if was only for acouple of minutes.

Control for a couple of minutes? Heck he sold your car. Sounds like he had more control then you'll admit to.

[HOTRODPAINT]

I have a few of those stories, but it "hurts" too much to tell about it! :-)~

Next we will be reliving those close calls that young men have in performance cars! I should have died a couple times, but God watches out for drunks and fools!