Back when I got my '65 Ford Fairlane I managed to smoke the clutch in it. I was really upset about it but went and got parts to fix it. I got the transmission and floor shifter out just fine then decided I really should have the flywheel resurfaced so I remove that and brought it to NAPA to have them send it off to where ever they do that sort of thing and proceeded to bum rides to work from others until it got back.

When it finally got back I put it in the car and was wrestling the three speed back in place when one of my younger sisters came out nagging be that it was my turn to cook and better get at it because everyone else was starving.

Now, if she would have just let me alone I would have been done in probably half an hour or so but it ticked me off, the transmission slid out of place and landed on my chest. I was so enraged I wiggled out from under the car and tossed it several yards and got up to go make dinner.

It probably took me longer to get washed up enough to cook the meal than it would have to finish the job but I made dinner and went back out to finish the job. It was full dark by then and getting colder like it does in the fall.

I finished the job and went fir a test spin and was happy with the results then went in to take a full bath.

I had a large bruise that finally showed up by then. I don't think I cracked any ribs that time, or maybe since I was so much younger I just bounced back that much faster, maybe.

 

How many of us have needed a little more elevation to work on our 4x4s? So you grab what ever is handy ..... Concrete block, 5 gallon bucket, lawn chair, or what looks "safe enough" to hold our weight. These items worked before , how can they fail now? So up you go...

All is well with no deflection so now you lean in for the reach.....And then your trusty stool decides to go south as you are forced to go north with only mean mister gravity showing you the way.

Now that youve stopped moving you can pull yourself out of the engine bay. Where upon you search for your breath and the tools/auto parts that you dropped trying to stop your fall.

 

When I had my body shop I also had a radiator repair bay. Somehow I managed to get the contract to fix the radiators for the county. You would probably not believe how often someone would back one of the patrol graders into the trees and damage the radiators on the machine.

Also the large trucks they use for snow plows had a lot of radiator problems.

These are rather large machines so sometimes I would find myself needing something to stand on while working on them. I built a large cumbersome heavy moveable device out of 2x4's just for this.

One day decided to build a 'better' one out of steel. I added wheels to the bottom of it so it would be easier to move. The wheels were probably a good idea but I don't know how many times the stand would 'leave me hanging'.

I ended up incorporating feet that I could lower once the stand was in place to keep it from just rolling away.

 

Wheels with brakes work good too. (don't ask how I learned that....)

 

I was at the neighbors shop helping put ball joints in a 4X4. They were coming out of the knuckle really hard. We were on our 3rd or 4th episode of heating and beating, so we were getting the knuckle nice and red-orange KABOOM!!!!!!!! BANG,BANG,BANG!!!, Thud........So, we're standing there, looking at each other, trying to figure out if we're still alive and what the hell just exploded?! The ball stud had shot out of the joint like a cannon, bounced off the bottom arm of the vice, 2 walls (we were in the corner), and hit the far wall of the shop. 50 ft farm shop.

We could believe it, cause the joint was so bad, the stud wasn't far from falling out when we took the knuckle off the axle. The previous heating must have let the grease run out of the cup and seal the ball stud. When we reheated it, pressure built and blew it out! We were lucky to be back far enough it didn't hit us. We were less than a second from shutting off the torch and persuading it with a punch and a post mall. One of those moments you thank God he let you live.

 

When I had the body shop I had a frame straightener. To straighten frames you use hydraulic jacks and chains to pull the bent part back to where it should be.

You also tend to use a lot of heat generated by a Oxy Acetylene torch.

I had several 20 ton jacks in the shop and used as many as I needed. Putting that much pressure on a chain can be dangerous. I had movable towers on the frame straightener and was using two together with jacks and chains at slightly different angles trying to pull the drivers side frame on a pickup out. To make access easier I had removed a lot of the body metal {fenders hood radiator D and some other stuff that needed to be replaced anyway} and the engine.

I had a very large rosebud tip for my torch and was applying heat to the bent part, when the frame would move I would go pump the jacks a bit to put the strain back on frame.

I had just heated the frame and it moved quite a bit so I pumped the jacks quite a bit hoping to get it to move at least that much again. Then the telephone rang so I went into the little office and answered it. While I was on the phone one of the chains broke.

The jack on that chain was propelled through the cinder block wall some 25 feet away and out into the back yard at the shop. The broken chain whipped around and imbedded itself in the passengers side door. If the phone had not rung I would have been standing in the path of the chain and might just have been cut in two.

I spent the next few hours inspecting chains very closely. About two weeks later I found the broken link stuck in the wall of my office. It was very nearly straight, it had snapped on the opposite side of the weld.