I'm an Idiot!

[cttandy]

I normally took my wedding band off and always used a wrench on battery terminals. One night for some reason I forgot to take my wedding ring off, I disconnected the battery to reset the computer on a friend's car. I had a rachet in my hadn with an extension and deep well socket that fit the termal, so I figured screw it. Well, the rubber cover slid off the positive and directly grounded the terminals threw my wedding band. I saw an arc so I stopped moving I looked around, but never moved my hand, I started to smell something and jerked my hand back. My wedding ring went flying and about 10 seconds later my hand started throbbing like you wouldn't believe. My friend wanted to know what the smell was, when I told her it was me she didn't understand.

It burned 3 fingers, the doctor I went to 2 weeks later said it was worse then a 3rd degree burn and the skin would have to be removed. At the time, I had just lost my health insurance so I removed the skin myself. What really freaked me out, is when I pulled the skin off, the smell of burnt flesh came back so strong it made both my wife and me sick.

I have a pretty neat scar left. I can no longer were a wedding ring because the skin is so thin anything touching it hurts. The doctor said the skin will always be thin in that spot. It rips open very easily even after nearly 9 months.

http://s332.photobucket.com/albums/m341/cttandy/dumb/


The pictures don't do it justice, the first were taken the day after (21,19,18 ). The worse looking pictures is about a week later. There is nothing on my fingers, that is the actual skin sticking up.The inside of my finger the skin literally exploded. We figure since that was effectly an arc weld, the temperature of the ring was somewhere around 2000 degrees. The ring is titanium, it was still extremely hot after sitting in the mud for 10 minutes. My jeweler said he had never seen one damaged so badly and the person still have a finger.

 

[SLICK79WGN]

good to know since I wear a ti wedding band as well

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

I have so many stories, most involving fire. Oddly though, my Cutlass has never been on fire unless I was welding something on it, and that's normal. Every car you weld will catch on fire somewhere.

My AMC has been on fire at least 10 times, once while delivering pizza. It has a stupid Holley 750 on it, and one of the float bowl adjustment screws was a little loose. Couple that to a carb backfire, and you can imagine what happened to all that fuel sitting on the intake manifold! Yes, there were flames licking up from the back of the hood. Fortunately, I keep the back of the hood jacked up to help with cooling (so many engineering flaws to go into in that car...). Knowing the car's propensity for self immolation, I also had a fire extinguisher on hand. Did I also mention the recalcitrant hood release cable that NEVER works? So, anyhow, with flames licking up the back of the hood, I jumped out and hit it with the extinguisher through the cap by the cowl. This did not put it all the way out, but since I never screwed the grille in, I pulled the grille out, and used my fingers to pop the latch, and then put it out. So, after all those flames what actual damage was there? The vacuum secondary cover was a little melted, the under hood paint was blackened, and the clear sight plugs were no longer all that clear. I was just fortunate that I had braided steel lines everywhere or it could have been worse.

I could also detail the time I put out an electrical fire in a Camaro I had done an engine swap in with a Wendy's Biggie drink, but I will save that for another time....