Thanks for posting, I needed a good laugh today.
Thanks for posting, I needed a good laugh today.
Ouch. I live alone and I'm so used to working alone that a certain level of "what if something goes pear-shaped right now?" is always on my mind. That was how I justified my first lift. After a couple of close calls when getting MINIs on jack stands - and then the thought of how much it would cost if something went wrong, the price of a lift got a lot cheaper.
That line about the wife watching the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies was so spot on. Thanks for the laugh.
Glad you got unstuck, and yeah, working alone is dangerous. I always keep my Apple Watch on while I'm working, even after I sacrificed one to an errant bit of welding spatter (turns out apple will warranty that as a defective part, btw).
Having voice-activated help latched to my wrist is awesome.
NOHOME said:As much as I dont want one of the Alexa or Whatever things in the house, I have considered it as a safety device for the shop. Nobody would ever hear me yell in my shop cause it is so insulated because I dont want to bother the neighbors with grinders and whatnot.
I got one of thise $25 alexa dots(?) For this reason. Its plugged into the stereo with the 3.5mm headphone jack, and streams music. It can, and will call my wife or 911 when requested. Im not a fan of the privacy issues, but the sagety and convenience are wirth it in this application.
My cell phone is absolutely always with me and has Google whatever on it- it would save me in a jam.
Glad you're ok!
I do tend to try to keep my cell phone close when I'm working in the garage. Though it's much more comfortable to leave them on the workbench. An Echo/Alexa/Google Home device may be in order just as an extra precaution.
In reply to Woody :
At any point did you consider gnawing your hand off?
I am totally getting a device for voice activated calling!
Woody said:Remember: There's always something that you can doodoo to save yourself.
FTFY
Seriously though, this is one of my biggest fears since I live alone. If I couldn't reach my phone for help, I'd be trapped for at least 2 days before someone might come check on me. IF they thought something was wrong.
I have jack stands and a hydraulic floor jack but decided to not use them after I jacked up my car to change the rear shocks and realized that if something happened, there was a real possibility that I could die before anyone realized something happened.
I'm glad your ordeal wasn't worse than it could if been. That's scary stuff.
Cotton said:I keep my phone in my pocket or within reaching distance. My garage is external and no one would ever hear me yelling.
Same here.
I'm pretty sure Woody wouldn't have called the fire department and would've instead had his wife use a reciprocating saw to cut his hand out.
HA! I hate that feeling of being trapped and having to suck up the pride and call for help. That feeling in you mind of this is going to be embarrassing, but I don't want to be here forever.
My experience involved a faulty neutral safety switch I thought was a starter issue after I tried moving the shift level around. When I climbed under the XJ to cross terminals on the starter it fired right up..... in drive... ran right up on my leg and then bumped a fence, and sat there running. I wasn't at home alone, but instead down at a scrappy junkyard in the back of the parking lot. I pulled and pushed and tried to free my knee from under the rear tire and the gravel, but it wasn't going to budge.
Finally I start shouting for help, to no immediate relief, I then opened the back door and used the collection of junk to just reach my toolbox and scoot it over. I was digging through that looking for something to disconnect the fuel line when someone finally found me, but he didn't speak a lick of English and freaked out a little and starts trying to lift the jeep... Which of course didn't help.
A moment later what looked to be Willie Nelsons cousins strolled over and asked what was going on.. I said the jeep is on my knee... So he then too starts to bounce the jeep on my knee...... It took just a second to convince him to just please hop into the jeep and slowly back it off.
Which he finally did.
I had some marks from the gravel which lasted a couple of days, but otherwise no real injury.
Be careful out there!
nedc said:That line about the wife watching the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies was so spot on. Thanks for the laugh.
Tonight on the Hallmark Channel: One of Angel Falls' bravest is trapped in an Accord and only one person can save him...
Brett_Murphy said:I'm pretty sure Woody wouldn't have called the fire department and would've instead had his wife use a reciprocating saw to cut his hand out.
You are correct. Calling the fire department was not an option. In fact, if the garage was on fire, I might have waved them off.
You know, with the good hand.
Glad that you all have survived these ordeals. That car tipping off of the jackstands is particularly terrifying.
I had sort of the opposite thing happen a while ago. I was happily working away in my attached garage, music playing pretty loud, mid-day on a Saturday. My girlfriend was in the house doing whatever. Several hours go by, I decide to go in the house for a snack, or to use the bathroom or something.
That’s when I hear her yelling from upstairs. Not even yelling… it was more like … wailing incoherently. I go running upstairs.
She’s in the spare bedroom, which she had setup as a studio with art/painting stuff. She always kept the door shut in order to keep the cats from knocking things over. Anyway, this room is on the 2nd floor, opposite end of the house from the garage. It has one window… which also faces away from the garage.
So this Saturday she was in there painting away while I was doing “car things”. When she tried to take a break, she discovered that the door knob mechanism had failed internally and would no longer open the door. She tried opening the window and yelling, but of course I couldn’t hear her.
She has trouble with anxiety and panic attacks, so when I say that this was a problem… this was a PROBLEM. We worked out afterwards that she was probably trapped in there for about 3-4 hours, but to her it felt like days, weeks. Maybe forever. No food, no water, no toilet. The mind can go to irrational places pretty quickly when you feel trapped like that.
In the end I got her somewhat calmed down and wound up passing a screwdriver under the door, so she could take the doorknob apart and get the door open. This simple task was like trying to walk someone through diffusing a bomb.
Anyway, we replaced all of the bedroom and bathroom doorknobs on Sunday. 
Wally said:nedc said:That line about the wife watching the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies was so spot on. Thanks for the laugh.
Tonight on the Hallmark Channel: One of Angel Falls' bravest is trapped in an Accord and only one person can save him...
We don’t hit it off well at first, but her kid takes a liking to me. An hour and forty five minutes later we kiss under the mistletoe* and get married in the last five.
*Mother, not kid.
Olive oil would have done it. That stuff is slippery.
On the general topic of safety:
Kid I knew dropped an old Volkswagen on his chest and died. He was 16. This was 1974,
He was changing a flat tire and the wheel had rusted onto the brake drum; this was very common with VW's, I used a hammer for situations like this when I worked at a tire shop . Anyway he got under the car and started kicking the wheel from the back side. Those jacks that came with VW's back then looked like small pogo sticks. He kicked hard enough to knock the car off the jack. His parents found him quite a bit later with the car on his chest.
When I work on cars I always put one of the wheels under the car, in addition to jack stands, just in case.
In reply to jharry3 :
It’s good practice to assume anything mechanical can and will fail. Had a kid come into the ER I was working in after the hi-lift jack under his truck gave way and damn near brained him. The jack flipped out from under his truck and caught him full across the face. How he managed to escape with only a couple of broken teeth is still beyond my ken...
Pete Gossett said:In reply to Woody :
At any point did you consider gnawing your hand off?
Every morning, my friend. Every single morning.
From the thread title I was expecting to read that you bought a Fiesta ST and found something horribly unsafe wrong with it. Glad to hear you escaped your predicament with most of your dignity.
It may sound paranoid ... but I never do work in the garage (or on the roof, or in a crawlspace, etc.) without a fully charged cell phone in my pocket. Preferably in the zipped chest pocket of a fleece jacket so I can get to it with either hand.
Years ago I had a car slip off the jack before I had a a chance to place the jackstand under it. Put a gigantic dent in the floorpan, but I managed to squeak out unharmed. I've been terrified of getting trapped under a car ever since.
Saving one's appendages can never be dismissed lightly.....now, when one is in a man basket 35+ feet in the air trimming limbs and one falls on the main switch down below.....thoughts of shinnying down the boom crossed my mind, but hollering out got the desired response, along with the 'TAKE YOUR DAMN PHONE UP THERE WITH YOU NEXT TIME NUTBRAIN'
Woody, you are still a firefighter, right? Basically, you had to be your own First Responder, even with the slight assist from the wife! That has to count for something! Glad you got out of that situation with your hands, car, and undies intact. Emergency poops while wrenching are the stuff of nightmares!
And on the Hallmark Christmas movies... My wife has been watching those stupid things since around April or so. She gets sucked in and can't help herself, so I can see how your wife wasn't hearing your screams. Every single one has the same exact plot that results in some person that is "from the city" getting stuck in a "small country town" to LIVE THERE FOREVER AND EVER with one of the kids from Full House and sometimes Winnie Cooper. There are slight variables here and there, but it's almost always the same result in the end. This leads me to believe that the Hallmark Cinematic Multiverse is more complex than the Star Wars and Star Trek universes combined.
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